Center of the universe
We should not tell children: “You’re not the center of the universe.” This statement is not only cruel, it is manifestly false. Instead, let’s say: “You are not the only center of the universe.
Search Results for: "center of the universe"
Unsolicited advice to altruistic nihilists
Anyone who tells a child “You are not the center of the universe!” is arguing against the most immediate self-evident truth. Only an “adult” could fall for such a lie. What we should be saying is “You are not the only center of the universe.” When the child is a little older we can say … Continue reading Unsolicited advice to altruistic nihilists
Yes, but
The first challenge to the religious life is objective reification, which peoples the spiritual world with beings with supernatural properties. The second challenge to the religious life is subjective deification, which replaces the false scales fallen from the initiate’s eyes with new true ones. The third challenge to the religious life is apophatic nihilism, which … Continue reading Yes, but
Pluricentric Maxim
Two quotes from my last post deserve to be separately framed: Sarcasm is what we do when another neglects their ironic duty, and we must do it for them. And The Pluricentric Maxim — Always remember: “I am not the only center of the universe.”
Absolutism, Sarcasm and Alienation
Sarcasm is what we do when we are forced to do the ironic work another refuses to do themselves. As Richard Rorty taught, irony is a core virtue of citizenship in a liberal democracy. A good citizen must both hold to their own ideals while also respecting the fact that others do the same — … Continue reading Absolutism, Sarcasm and Alienation
Conscience warfare
I am blessed-cursed by an overactive intellectual conscience. That intellectual conscience conducts incessant pincer attacks on my complacent certainty. On the right flank my intellectual conscience attacks with the challenge: “But what do you really believe?” And sadly, since the late 1980s — when my future wife taught it a devastating form of feminine skepticism … Continue reading Conscience warfare
Polycenteredness
Each person was born directly into the center of the universe, and dwells there now, however far they have wandered. To reach them, we must address this central point, but from our own centrality. Our best originality polycenters us together, speaking from and to our common origin.
Polycentricity
Every citizen today seems to have a non-negotiable issue. “I will play by the liberal-democracy game on any issue except this one issue, which, to me, is more important than liberal-democracy itself.” Here, one is entitled — no, one is obligated! — to use force if persuasion fails. But what if your fellow citizen takes … Continue reading Polycentricity
Polycenter yourself
You are not the only center of the universe. Polycenter yourself.
Schmoness: a tantrum
We humans have no idea how to handle conversions. When “the scales fall from our eyes”, or… …when we suddenly become aware of the element within which we swim (“this is water!”)… …when we suddenly become aware of the gross institutionalized, systemic injustice of a system that we, ourselves, have participated in… …when we wake … Continue reading Schmoness: a tantrum
Since you asked…
A friend of mine has a habit of sending me emails consisting of simple, beautiful questions. Years ago he introduced me to Christopher Alexander. When Alexander died I sent him an email, and that started a discussion of Alexander’s later work. This was the context (at least for me) of his latest question-poem: What is … Continue reading Since you asked…
Polycentric virtues
Until quite recently, design has been monocentric. All the various x-centric design disciplines were named after the single protagonist of the design. User-centered. Employee-centered. Customer-centered. Citizen-centered. In search of something more general and accommodating, most designers have settled on “human-centered’. Human-centered design centers design on the experience of a person. While “human” can, of course, … Continue reading Polycentric virtues
Sacred and profane
The bits of reality that understand that they and all other bits of reality are finite participants in absolute infinitude — each its own center-point in the infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, but whose circumference is nowhere — seem almost essentially different from the finite bits of reality that mistake themselves for the absolute … Continue reading Sacred and profane
My categorical imperative
Live in accordance with the axiom: I am not the only center of the universe.
Please do not decenter yourself
Decentering one’s self or one’s identity as a response to one’s former egocentrism or ethnocentrism is just this year’s model of altruism. Altruism is benevolence modeled on a stunted vision of individualism, which it tries to overcome by simply inverting it: Selfish people care about themselves at the expense of others, so unselfish people care … Continue reading Please do not decenter yourself
Passage
What have I learned reading millennia of eloquent bellyachers? Every generation is convinced it is the last because life without self is inconceivable. What we can’t conceive, seems to us, nonexistent: thus, the eternally receding nigh of endtimes. Every generation longs for the simplicity of earlier days, because all we want to bequeath the future … Continue reading Passage
Foundations and landmarks
We seek common ground to serve as a foundation for establishing new agreements. However, common ground has another equally important, but often neglected, function: providing landmarks needed for precise triangulation of subtle but consequential disagreements. Without shared points of reference, it is impossible to trace perspectives back to their originating standpoints — which, for each … Continue reading Foundations and landmarks
Meditation on the ten-thousand everythings
….it was said that one god, Hermes Trismegistus, had dictated a variously estimited number of books (42, according to Clement of Alexandria; 20,000, according to Iamblichus; 36,525, according to the priests of Thoth, who is also Hermes), on whose pages all things were written. [Anomalogue: From what I’ve read, Hermes Trismegistus was not a god; … Continue reading Meditation on the ten-thousand everythings
“Pascal’s Sphere” by Jorges Luis Borges
(Published in multiple collections, including Labyrinths and Other Inquisitions.) Perhaps universal history is the history of a few metaphors. I should like to sketch one chapter of that history. Six centuries before the Christian era Xenophanes of Colophon, the rhapsodist, weary of the Homeric verses he recited from city to city, attacked the poets who … Continue reading “Pascal’s Sphere” by Jorges Luis Borges
Ptolemaic social justice
To preserve the simple self-evident fact that the Earth was the center of the universe all kinds of complex mechanisms had to be devised, cranking the heavenly bodies in epicyclical orbits, around orbits of orbits. Likewise, to preserve the simple self-evident fact that the principle active cause of inequality between categories of people is prejudice … Continue reading Ptolemaic social justice