In continuation of trying to figure out
how the Western world would be able to function both objectively and
subjectively, the authors of Metaphors We Live By seemed
to anticipate my thinking and give me an answer thusly: “Each of us
has a realm in his life where it is appropriate to be objective and a
realm where it is appropriate to be subjective. The portions of our
lives governed by objectivism and subjectivism vary greatly from
person to person and from culture to culture. Some of us even attempt
to live our entire lives totally by one myth or the other” (189).
Of course, they go on to say that there is another alternative! The
experimental alternative!! Where we can have the best of both worlds!
The
thing that I struggle with while thinking about this third
alternative is the idea that the classical and the romantic
ideologies have had physical repercussions on the world, as the
authors have so often stated and cautioned. Would a readjustment of
Western ideology into one of the experimental view mean that these
physical structures that we have created must change, as well? That
seems awfully hard to me. Almost impossibly hard. It makes more sense
that we would just continue what we are doing right now – splitting
our world into two binaries and allowing ourselves to play certain
ideological roles while in either one of them.
The
main thing that I really appreciate from the author's discussion and
differentiation between the classical and the romantic is the idea of
how we see the world in relation to ourselves, and the emphasis put
on either the natural world (objectivism) or on ourselves
(subjectivism). I love that “the experientialist myth takes the
perspective of man as part of his environment, not as separate from
it. It focuses on constant interaction with the physical environment
and with other people” (229). This is what really sells the experientalist myth to me, plus it sounds pretty Zen – the idea
that we should constantly be thinking of the present, of our
experience within the world and how we can orient ourselves to the
experience, how to choose the best way to look at the world around us
through our metaphors.
Interaction
with the world around us makes the most sense, I think, because of an
example that I encountered a few years ago. I was charged with
reading a book entitled, Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering
Our Importance to Nature by Dan Dagget. Dagget basically makes the argument that there is an
understanding within environmentalism that “nature will take care
of itself,” or essentially, that “real” nature is an
environment completely devoid of human interaction and contact, but
this is entirely false. He supports his argument by showing various
examples of land that had been left alone for years and showed no
improvement in conditions for plant species or animal species, but as
soon as someone became involved with managing the landscape, these
species began to flourish and different populations (he uses an
endangered bird species as one example) strengthened. This book
really opened my mind to the idea that we can't have one without the
other (at least not at a certain scope) – just as objectivism can't
define itself without subjectivism.
I also
like this idea in regards to what the authors say about
Self-Understanding (231), and I think this section speaks most
directly to this class, along with Yancey's article on reflection. We
need the interaction with the rest of the world in order to
understand ourselves; therefore we need to think of our journey or
story or life as within a larger community and a larger environment
that speaks us as much as we speak it.
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