common sense
Out of all the assignments I've ever been asked to complete, this paper has been one of the most intellectually challenging, and by far my favorite. After reading Clifford Geertz's "Common Sense as a Culture System" and realizing that common sense is NOT a universal like we assume it to be, I was asked to choose one concept that I hold to be common sense, and write about it. That was as specific as the parameters got, so I chose to look at it fairly critically because I figured that would be the most useful to me. Here's what I ended up with.
This is my intellectual property, please do not steal it!
"That there is inherent truth in all organized information, especially the written word, is a bit of common sense that periodically alters my worldview. I still maintain borders between ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction,’ but I cannot classify fiction simply as something that is not real or true. This can probably be attributed to my lifelong reading habits, my experiences with religion, and my willingness to accept new ideas.
I was never popular growing up, so books were my best friends. I read everything from veterinary journals to fantasy, and it never occurred to me that any of my books were less true than the others. How could I mistrust the only intellectual beings I felt I could relate to? Information I learned from journals could be applied in the real world, but would not serve much purpose in the world I inhabited while I was reading fantasy. In the same way, the magic that I possessed alongside my friends in the realm of fantasy would not carry much weight in the scientific world. Simply put, all knowledge is useful and therefore all knowledge is true.
Where this becomes problematic is in the quest for the religious label that society insists I inflict upon my faith. I have claimed several religions as my own, but each one has eventually been replaced by another. The question that has always plagued my mind is this: how can I ever trust my faith when I have believed so many seemingly exclusive doctrines? The only satisfying answer is that they all contain truth. For almost a year I was the epitome of a devout Latter Day Saint, but then I bewildered everyone by suddenly drifting back into semi-agnosticism. I joined the Church when I read the Book of Mormon and recognized truth in it. The missionaries taught me that if I believed the book to be true, then I should be baptized. I did all the things a good Mormon is supposed to do, until I realized that to be active in the Church was to disbelieve many other doctrines that I hold to be true (despite the LDS article of faith that states “We believe all things…”).
I no longer consider myself a member of the Church, but I do not doubt the truth of the Book of Mormon. It was true to its author(s), and it is true to millions of people all over the planet-just as the Bible, the Qur’an, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the New York Times all possess truth for their authors and readers. I would rather believe that a doctrine possesses truth than accept that its audience is grossly misguided. To believe the latter would be to accept that huge percentages of the world’s population are consistently wrong, and I have more faith in humanity than that.
I think that I have always felt this way, but I never realized it until I read it in someone else’s words. “There's no such thing as fiction,” Charles DeLint writes. “If you can imagine something, then it's happened.” Immediately this statement resonated with truth for me, but as I thought about it I was slightly shocked that I could so easily believe such an unconventional statement. Because this concept was always evident to me, it never seemed startling until I realized that it is, in fact, unconventional. I always thought it was common sense."
Interestingly enough, although I still hold that there is truth in the Book of Mormon, it is by no means the truth I once assigned to it. I do not believe it as I once did--it is no longer true for me but that does not make it untrue. I suppose if I really wanted to make my thinking clear, I'd have to write an entire book outlining different types of truth, but I'm going to fall back on Ishmael again and compare this to a comment in the book...something to the effect of 'no...story is a myth to the people who tell it.'
This is my intellectual property, please do not steal it!
"That there is inherent truth in all organized information, especially the written word, is a bit of common sense that periodically alters my worldview. I still maintain borders between ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction,’ but I cannot classify fiction simply as something that is not real or true. This can probably be attributed to my lifelong reading habits, my experiences with religion, and my willingness to accept new ideas.
I was never popular growing up, so books were my best friends. I read everything from veterinary journals to fantasy, and it never occurred to me that any of my books were less true than the others. How could I mistrust the only intellectual beings I felt I could relate to? Information I learned from journals could be applied in the real world, but would not serve much purpose in the world I inhabited while I was reading fantasy. In the same way, the magic that I possessed alongside my friends in the realm of fantasy would not carry much weight in the scientific world. Simply put, all knowledge is useful and therefore all knowledge is true.
Where this becomes problematic is in the quest for the religious label that society insists I inflict upon my faith. I have claimed several religions as my own, but each one has eventually been replaced by another. The question that has always plagued my mind is this: how can I ever trust my faith when I have believed so many seemingly exclusive doctrines? The only satisfying answer is that they all contain truth. For almost a year I was the epitome of a devout Latter Day Saint, but then I bewildered everyone by suddenly drifting back into semi-agnosticism. I joined the Church when I read the Book of Mormon and recognized truth in it. The missionaries taught me that if I believed the book to be true, then I should be baptized. I did all the things a good Mormon is supposed to do, until I realized that to be active in the Church was to disbelieve many other doctrines that I hold to be true (despite the LDS article of faith that states “We believe all things…”).
I no longer consider myself a member of the Church, but I do not doubt the truth of the Book of Mormon. It was true to its author(s), and it is true to millions of people all over the planet-just as the Bible, the Qur’an, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the New York Times all possess truth for their authors and readers. I would rather believe that a doctrine possesses truth than accept that its audience is grossly misguided. To believe the latter would be to accept that huge percentages of the world’s population are consistently wrong, and I have more faith in humanity than that.
I think that I have always felt this way, but I never realized it until I read it in someone else’s words. “There's no such thing as fiction,” Charles DeLint writes. “If you can imagine something, then it's happened.” Immediately this statement resonated with truth for me, but as I thought about it I was slightly shocked that I could so easily believe such an unconventional statement. Because this concept was always evident to me, it never seemed startling until I realized that it is, in fact, unconventional. I always thought it was common sense."
Interestingly enough, although I still hold that there is truth in the Book of Mormon, it is by no means the truth I once assigned to it. I do not believe it as I once did--it is no longer true for me but that does not make it untrue. I suppose if I really wanted to make my thinking clear, I'd have to write an entire book outlining different types of truth, but I'm going to fall back on Ishmael again and compare this to a comment in the book...something to the effect of 'no...story is a myth to the people who tell it.'