I am impressed with the social media displays of personal resilience in the face of our common yet uncommon troubles.
I see landscapes that ground us. I see paintings that express us. I see humor that refills us. I see poems that reframe us in our world, and hear music that reminds us of our history together. I see family that binds us and pets that tie us in friendship with Nature. I see adventure, escape, exploration and discovery and I see invention and creation. I see mirrors of mirrors of our humanity.
We each pursue our diverse strengths and passions and offer them up to support others. We graciously accept the humble offerings of others.
And what have we left behind in the rush to be modern?
There are few higher pursuits than those of identity, belonging, mastery and self-actualization. What is the meaning of self? We are value-generators. And I find there is no goodness, no value, without truth and no truth without meaning. For me, chasing the nature of meaning is an unparalleled paramount pursuit.
As for me, I am pursuing the nature of meaning. I am peeling back the layers to reveal a network of relationships among ideas. How are worldviews constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed? Ideas are connected by perceptual patterns, abstract classifications, cause and effect, patterns of conceptual similarities and differences.
Yet meanings as a whole are self-referential, grounded only in our often faulty perceptions. And then I see that there are innate ideas grounded in millions of years of evolved DNA. Our brains are wired by Nature to deal with elements of a reality that has changed very little in billions of years — energy and form, entities and events, causation and communication.
It makes sense that evolution, as a long-learning process, has discovered constant and reliable practical truths. Through centuries of progress we have sufficiently approximated reality with cultural constructs. Science and engineering are usually not wrong, but always incomplete. What have we missed that stalks us elusive in the darkness of ignorance? I mine that darkness.
The evolved innate ideas form the circuitry of our brains and set the foundations for meanings in our cultural and personal worldviews. They are ‘instinctive’, assumed and never questioned. I assume order in the universe. I’d like to reconstruct my worldview based on some yet undisclosed primal master fractal that organizes our universe.
Wish me well!!!
In the meantime, don’t take anything too seriously. Stay resilient!
Randal Adcock 