How do you think about the future? How does the past influence you? Do you live “in the moment”, is that something to strive towards?
Dr. Philip Zimbardo gave a talk at RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) about time perspectives. He discusses past orientated, present orientated and future orientated perspectives (and two of each), and the impact these perspectives have on how we live our lives. The talk is 41 minutes long, but RSA also posted a 10 minute condensed version. The condensed version is sufficient to give an overview, get those mental cogs turning, and maybe kickstart a conversation. Take a look:
In Many Faiths, One Truth, an op-ed in the NY Times, the Dalai Lama (a Buddhist leader of religious officials of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism) calls for religious tolerance, for finding common ground among faiths, bridging needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever.
I couldn’t agree more. I think pluralism is the only way forward. Rather let me rephrase, it is an essential ingredient in our way forward. I easily become a fan of any religious leader that persistently encourages openness to the good found in traditions not their own.
Let me not detract from the article with further commentary just yet. Go read it.
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Approximately September last year I stumbled upon a particular app in the Android market: a Tao Te Ching app by Barclay Osborn. It contains the original Chinese and three public domain translations (specifically: a translation from 1891 by James Legges, D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus’ 1913 translation and Dwight Goddard and Henri Borels’ 1919 translation). There is another Tao Te Ching app on the Android market, but I don’t like the one translation it has.
I had heard of the Tao Te Ching before and read some extracts here and there. However, it was only after reading the first three chapters in these parallel translations that my curiosity really got piqued, and I decided I want to blog my way through it. It consists of only 81 “chapters”, with each chapter typically having only two to five paragraphs, with just a couple going up to about eight. The challenging part will be grappling with multiple translations in order to try to get a better understanding of the layers in the original poetic Chinese.
We are a story telling species. Our culture and our minds developed around the stories we told, the narratives we weaved. And they weren’t just narratives on some big screen that we watched for two hours, and then walked out and continued with “real life”. Our narratives were woven into our lives. And still are.
In modern times we got quite serious about separating fact from fiction. “Those are just stories. This is reality, the facts, real life. Don’t go confusing the two. Get real, you’re not living in a movie.”
But of course we are. We weave ourselves narratives about our own lives. Our ambitions and dreams for our fictionalised futures are narratives we dream up for ourselves. Our present doesn’t always follow the plot, but still, around it we are also weaving a narrative, part storyteller, part audience, but how we choose to interpret events carries much weight. Our past provides back story on which to draw to weave both our interpretations of the present, and our dreams and plot line for the future. And many sources of inspiration from which to steal ideas.
I’m going to more consciously throw myself into a narrative, let it be a source of courage, a rudder for steering the ship, enabling the sails to catch ambition. Though the plot may often get lost, though the genre may be unknown, though the critics might label the book “absurdist” and end with the police arresting the medieval nuts and putting an end to the filming, if you’re not at least pointing in some direction, you’ve got no incentive to catch the wind.
This is a rerun of Community Meta-Guidelines with one word replaced — which do you prefer? Which word should I run with, or should I simply use both at once?
Meta:
In epistemology, the prefix meta- is used to mean about (its own category). For example, metadata are data about data (who has produced them, when, what format the data are in and so on). Similarly, metamemory in psychology means an individual’s knowledge about whether or not they would remember something if they concentrated on recalling it.
Thus here follows some “guidelines” about the tribal guidelines. Yes, there aren’t guidelines yet, other than those floating around in my head, but I’ll start sharing them this week.
Words are interesting in their nuance and their power. Languages are interesting with regards to how they differ in what they can express. I remember seeing my favourite pastor back home using the English word “community” in an Afrikaans sermon/talk/whatever-it-was, because the Afrikaans words available simply don’t catch the idea that well. (Suggestions welcome! What would you use?)
That’s a small digression actually. The main pondering point for this post is that I intend to start using “tribe” where I had used “community” in the past — in particular, for referring to those people that I consider a part of “the tribe”.
The decision was made from the gut. I have started grappling with rational arguments for making the change, enough to conclude it isn’t a bad choice, but not enough to motivate it with concise words. And I don’t think I’ll bother, other than in a discussion below should anyone feel like commenting on this. Instead, I will soon rerun an old post with the words swapped out and see how it feels.
Joss Whedon (the guy behind Dr Horrible and Firefly, and recently Dollhouse) on Humanists as “True Believers”:
This clip is relevant to the recent discussion as he talks about “faith” and points out that it isn’t the enemy. In fact, “faith” is important, faith is something we have to embrace he says in a wonderful climax to his talk. The climax can also be read towards the bottom of Dale McGowan’s post My cover is blown, which might or might not have been the first place I spotted that Joss Whedon clip.
A month ago I wrote the post There’s No Such Thing as “Faith”. This intended to challenge the “contemporary fundamentalist” or conservative-literalist definition of “faith” in order to talk about the more human, non-rational, emotional or psychological meanings of the word, or concepts the word could refer to, and does refer to for a particular subset of Christianity.
Some of the discussions that post sparked were particularly interesting and in line with what I was hoping for, others went off on a tangent. The most recent comment by Bendul got right back on topic. First an extract from Bendul’s comment (do also go read the comment in full):
Rather let me rephrase, it is an essential ingredient in our way forward. I easily become a fan of any religious leader that persistently encourages openness to the good found in traditions not their own.
Why I Cannot Join Shofar:
There's No Such Thing as "Faith":
Tackling the Tao Te Ching:
The Dalai Lama on Religious Tolerance: