Signs and Wonders
I've been iced in for two days, I'm bored out of my mind, and I've been having a discussion over at another blog about the meaning and value of symbols.
In the process, I've had to do a lot of mental flailing and hand-flapping to try and clarify to myself what I think, and I might as well give Teh Greater Intertubez the benefit of my wisdom.
One of the basic cornerstones of Randian Objectivism, it is said, it the axiom that A = A. While that is hard to argue with, it doesn't say nearly enough, in my worldview. It isn't wrong, exactly; it's just that it's so incomplete as to be virtually nonsensical.
When I read the statement "A = A", my immediate question is, "But what is A? A random letter standing for an algebraic constant? An indefinite article? Absolutely top grade? Alpha, the pre-eminent and originator of the universe? A pictographic depiction of an ox's head? A very small unit of length? The nickname of an internet acquaintance?"
This isn't just quibbling about context and referent. Because in my idiosyncratic version of Neo-Platonism, the answer would be "Yes, and yes, and yes, and..." Because all these A's in a very real way do equal all the other A's; while each remaining notionally distinct, they all intermingle, they co-imply, the mutually inhere -- to use the language of Platonism, they participate.
Or to take another example: 1 + 1 = 2.
Hard to get more empirical than THAT.
Except that in the Neo-Platonist point of view, "1" and "2" are not just shorthand abstractions for measuring, but gain their very "oneness" and "twoness" by "participating" in the supra-reality of One and Two. Moreover, by participating in this idea, they simultaneously participate in all sorts of sorts of symbolic associations:
One is primacy, purity, totality, indivisibility, simplicity, the paradoxical obverse of the Infinite, uniting all the complexity of possibility into the undifferentiated Divine Who is Truth and Goodness and Beauty and Love without complexity or multiplicity. One is the Something that stands against Nothing. Yet One is also loneliness, isolation, and conclusion of potential.
Two is the primal division: Creator / Creation, Male / Female, Black / White, Good / Evil, Myself / Other. Two is the first step away from One into Many, thus the source of the ego, the essence of Original Sin. Yet Two is also balance, harmony, possibility. Above all, Two is the necessary condition for relationship, by which the original fall from grace is restored in the mutuality of Love.
It is important to note that when I say "symbolically, this is that", I don't mean "this represents that" or "this makes me think of that." I mean, in a quite literal way, that this IS that -- that the sign and the signified actively take on the essence of the other, while remaining distinctly themselves.
Indeed, the very being of the sign depends on the signifier; the more symbolic "weight" any thing carries, the more real it is.
And so I swim in a constant sea of metaphor. Every creature -- by which I mean everything I touch, see, feel, think about, including most especially me -- is its own self, but also at the same more importantly a link in a great chain of meaning, mutually referential and reinforcing, yet all leading inextricably to a single Infinite point.
It as if we are all tesserae in a great and glorious stained glass window, of absolute value for our own intrinsic color and shape, yet made meaningful by the overall pattern -- which itself exists to reveal the Light that streams through.
Goodness. When I think of it that way, I'm less embarrassed by my inability to balance my checkbook.
In the process, I've had to do a lot of mental flailing and hand-flapping to try and clarify to myself what I think, and I might as well give Teh Greater Intertubez the benefit of my wisdom.
One of the basic cornerstones of Randian Objectivism, it is said, it the axiom that A = A. While that is hard to argue with, it doesn't say nearly enough, in my worldview. It isn't wrong, exactly; it's just that it's so incomplete as to be virtually nonsensical.
When I read the statement "A = A", my immediate question is, "But what is A? A random letter standing for an algebraic constant? An indefinite article? Absolutely top grade? Alpha, the pre-eminent and originator of the universe? A pictographic depiction of an ox's head? A very small unit of length? The nickname of an internet acquaintance?"
This isn't just quibbling about context and referent. Because in my idiosyncratic version of Neo-Platonism, the answer would be "Yes, and yes, and yes, and..." Because all these A's in a very real way do equal all the other A's; while each remaining notionally distinct, they all intermingle, they co-imply, the mutually inhere -- to use the language of Platonism, they participate.
Or to take another example: 1 + 1 = 2.
Hard to get more empirical than THAT.
Except that in the Neo-Platonist point of view, "1" and "2" are not just shorthand abstractions for measuring, but gain their very "oneness" and "twoness" by "participating" in the supra-reality of One and Two. Moreover, by participating in this idea, they simultaneously participate in all sorts of sorts of symbolic associations:
One is primacy, purity, totality, indivisibility, simplicity, the paradoxical obverse of the Infinite, uniting all the complexity of possibility into the undifferentiated Divine Who is Truth and Goodness and Beauty and Love without complexity or multiplicity. One is the Something that stands against Nothing. Yet One is also loneliness, isolation, and conclusion of potential.
Two is the primal division: Creator / Creation, Male / Female, Black / White, Good / Evil, Myself / Other. Two is the first step away from One into Many, thus the source of the ego, the essence of Original Sin. Yet Two is also balance, harmony, possibility. Above all, Two is the necessary condition for relationship, by which the original fall from grace is restored in the mutuality of Love.
It is important to note that when I say "symbolically, this is that", I don't mean "this represents that" or "this makes me think of that." I mean, in a quite literal way, that this IS that -- that the sign and the signified actively take on the essence of the other, while remaining distinctly themselves.
Indeed, the very being of the sign depends on the signifier; the more symbolic "weight" any thing carries, the more real it is.
And so I swim in a constant sea of metaphor. Every creature -- by which I mean everything I touch, see, feel, think about, including most especially me -- is its own self, but also at the same more importantly a link in a great chain of meaning, mutually referential and reinforcing, yet all leading inextricably to a single Infinite point.
It as if we are all tesserae in a great and glorious stained glass window, of absolute value for our own intrinsic color and shape, yet made meaningful by the overall pattern -- which itself exists to reveal the Light that streams through.
Goodness. When I think of it that way, I'm less embarrassed by my inability to balance my checkbook.