Little Museums ([info]heartgut) wrote,
@ 2009-03-04 12:04:00
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"The future" is a Western concept, she said.

It is a strange habit-- trying to sum up a life, to abstract it into a compilation of opaque snapshots and frozen dioramas.

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[info]heartgut
2009-03-05 05:02 pm UTC (link)
I feel like two parts of myself have been battling over the value of abstraction vs. direct experience. In part I blame it on the influence of primitivism, where symbolic mediation (numbers, language, time, art, agriculture...) is viewed as a point of severance from the lebenswelt that leads to alienated ethics.

I'm looking for the resolution-- there are different types of language, and not all types can be used to lie or obfuscate reality (e.g. to justify unjustifiable actions through abstracted logic). I can't blame the technology that language is, as if "culture" and "nature" are essentially separate rather than perceived as such, because I think the nuances of human consciousness include some experiences that seem only able to be expressed as emergent properties of abstract language, and these can be incredibly valuable (the interior world that can be furnished to enrich lived experiences).

Still a rough edge on that one, though...

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