(`. On Being (Known And Knowing) .`)
[Following on from train of thought started by the poem 'Mirrored Windows'.]
We like to think that we can know somebody; that we can really know somebody. We like to think that we can put a finger on that which is quintessentially them.
We try to assimilate all we perceive, including our definitions of those people we have contact with, into a construct that is the sum of our experience and belief: all that which we hold to be knowledge. The construction of such an intellectual 'Tower of Babel' is the perennial pass-time of a species that craves an omniscience that it can never have.
We make conjectures about the personalities of the company we keep, conjectures that usually presuppose dictums that are already held: bricks that are already in place in a tower that is willed to stretch higher and higher unto the divine. We do not like our towers of understanding buffeted by winds of uncertainty; for, as each brick falls, so quickly will all others that depended upon it for support....
We wish, and sometimes demand, that people live up to our definitions of them; and when they do not, it is sometimes easier to refuse to acknowledge apparent contradictions as to who they are than to re-evaluate that which we hold to be them....
~~~~ How to Navigate My Journal ~~~~
[Following on from train of thought started by the poem 'Mirrored Windows'.]
We like to think that we can know somebody; that we can really know somebody. We like to think that we can put a finger on that which is quintessentially them.
We try to assimilate all we perceive, including our definitions of those people we have contact with, into a construct that is the sum of our experience and belief: all that which we hold to be knowledge. The construction of such an intellectual 'Tower of Babel' is the perennial pass-time of a species that craves an omniscience that it can never have.
We make conjectures about the personalities of the company we keep, conjectures that usually presuppose dictums that are already held: bricks that are already in place in a tower that is willed to stretch higher and higher unto the divine. We do not like our towers of understanding buffeted by winds of uncertainty; for, as each brick falls, so quickly will all others that depended upon it for support....
We wish, and sometimes demand, that people live up to our definitions of them; and when they do not, it is sometimes easier to refuse to acknowledge apparent contradictions as to who they are than to re-evaluate that which we hold to be them....
~~~~ How to Navigate My Journal ~~~~