Somnambulist?
Knowing is not awareness. If it were, Kant would not have talked about being awakened from his dogmatic slumber.
Somnambulist?
Catch this: your eyes see your nose but your brain ignores it.
Catch this as well: you learn when you are surprised.
And for the final twist: familiar truth can be a stumbling block.
Why have I written the preceding ramble? Well, because I realise that there is a gulf between "knowing" and "realising."
Knowing seems like what happens in a library. When books are well piled on a shelf; arranged methodically. On record, the book is in the library. But of what use is a book in a library if no one reads it? That's where realising comes in.
When we realise something; probably something that we already know, it strikes us. Or in simpler lingo "it dawns on us." In fact, that description works well. I will show you how.
What separates dawn from dusk is sunlight; not presence or absence of sky.
The absence of sun rays is not the absence of the sky. It is merely the absence of light. Yet, we go about our lives like there is no sky. We quietly vacate activity for the day and go into the night. Notwithstanding, the sky remains. It does not go anywhere. But a few hours later, after the sun returns, we go about the day with a different attitude. Just like day, sky, and night, when we speak of "realising," we speak of light. When we speak of realising, we are talking about actually flipping the pages of the books that are in the library. Acknowledging that they are there and using them for their good purpose That is, awareness.
When people tell you “that is not new,” or “we already know that,” they are not lying. Like books on a library shelf, it is on record that that piece of knowledge exists. But for most of these people, the books are closed and dusty — never before has anyone opened them.
Knowing is not awareness. If it were, Kant would not have talked about being awakened from his dogmatic slumber. Even for a philosopher of his calibre.
The danger with merely knowing is that it causes somnambulism. You will walk about and be active like a man who is awake. Yet you will be asleep—your life unchanged by what you know. In fact, because you are asleep, you will be active because there will be no conscious mind to slow you down. Even worse, you will teach it.
Politics and activism are prime foformsf somnambulism. It is where the most active people congratulate themselves for being active but those truly awake to the creeping power of politics and the self-righteousness of activism know that these people have their eyes shut and they are fast asleep irrespective of how "woke" they claim to be. Wake up.
Awake then, thou that sleepeth, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:14).
The Medium is The Message Oversimplified
On this subject of how technology vastly changes (and “changes” is a weak word compared to what it really does) our world and nature of society, I will let the great writer, Aldoux Huxley, do the talking for me with a long paragraph:
New methods of transport have profoundly modified the life in the village and small town. Up to only a generation ago most villages were to a great extent self-sufficing communities. Every trade was represented by its local technician; the local produce was consumed or exchanged in the neighborhood; the inhabitants worked on the spot. If they desired instruction or entertainment or religion, they had to mobilize the local talent and produce it themselves. Today all this is changed. Thanks to improved transport, the village is now closely bound up with the rest of the economic world. Supplies and technical services are obtained from a distance. Large numbers of the inhabitants go out to work in factories and offices in far-off cities. Music and the drama are provided, not by local talent, but over the ether and in the picture theater. Once all the members of the community were always on the spot; now, thanks to cars, motor cycles and buses the villagers are rarely in their village. Community fun, community worship, community efforts to secure culture have tended to decline for the simple reason that, in leisure hours, a large part of the community's membership is always somewhere else. Nor is this all. The older inhabitants of Middletown, as readers of the Lynds' classical study of American small-town life will remember, complained that the internal combustion engine had led to a decline of neighborliness. Neighbors have Fords and Chevrolets, consequently are no longer there to be neighborly; or if by chance they should be at home, they content themselves with calling up on the telephone. Technological progress has reduced the number of physical contacts, and thus impoverished the spiritual relations between the members of a community.
If you still think that technology has a minute effect on the structure of our society then I will like you to send me a message. Read my complete essay here.
Selah (Pause and Think): (Of Technology) If it can be made should it be made?
There are not enough of us who do this. And I can hardly blame anyone. I since realised that the vita contemplativa is something that those who have understood the concept of leisure (or “rest” in Christian theology) will intuitively pick up. Nevertheless, we can do more to be awake to how our actions contribute to the world. In the end, nothing is exactly without consequence but we can gain mastery.
It takes contemplative life to build a house that endures. And as Joseph Pieper wrote:
“To “build our house” at this time implies not only securing survival, but also putting in order again our entire moral and intellectual heritage. And before any detailed plan along these lines can succeed, our new beginning, our re-foundation, calls out immediately for ... a defense of leisure.”
Read the complete essay here
Here is your picture for the week. Have a creative week.
