"Even the Almighty took seven days to create the heaven and the earth, and, if the record were complete, we should also learn that it was only at the end that he was aware of just what He set out to do with the raw material of chaos that confronted him."
- John Dewey, 1958, Art as experience, p.65
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In response to this (and the previous post), you highlight an issue that is universal to how we see things, and one which I am increasingly certain is not a valid assumption (in most cases): That is we tend to want to only act in ways in which we can predict the outcome in advance; that we can strategically plan our lives.
ReplyDeleteWe like to believe that there is order in our affairs, and if change happens, we can locate the thing or event that caused those changes to happen. But in actuality, that's far from the case. There is simply too much going on, too many influences modulating our opinions and actions, and the opinions and actions of everyone we interact with - all the time - to be sure of how anything will pan out.
So when we hold too tightly to our favourite hypothesis and refuse to let them be disproved, or we avoid moving outside our comfort zone because we don't know what dwells there, we step out of the evolutionary flow, we stop growing, and we deny ourselves all that we could be.
I guess that's another thing that could be said about the UB. My reading was that Mary effectively laid down the law, and constrained the community's growth to a series of conditions that she administered. She didn't appreciate that too tight the control, too brittle the boundaries, the more likely the experience will stagnate (like the USSR). Some change, some variation, some experimentation with life is essential for health and vitality.
And for that reason, it's sometimes necessary to sit on the other side of the camera - and to look at the subsequent footage!