[FoRK] Re: Please Help

[Jeff Bone]

On Dec 4, 2007, at 3:03 PM, Lion Kimbro wrote:

>   Would the Magic Compass work without Souls and Daemons,
>   the imagination, and warm glowing glittery Dust?

You're really straining my patience, now, Lion.  I feel like I've /  
we've been pretty accommodating so far.  But let's try this one more  
time.

You do realize, I hope, that Pullman's books are WORKS OF FICTION,  
right?

You do realize that the Magic Compass DOES NOT ACTUALLY WORK because,  
like the Souls and Daemons and Dust of the series, it DOES NOT EXIST  
except as literary devices in a fanciful work intended not as a  
roadmap of reality, but rather merely as a work of art?

You keep talking about "the story," how reality is "a story" and so  
on.  Yet this is a metaphor, surely you understand that.  Reality is  
not *literally* a story in any meaningful sense.  And a metaphor is a  
symbol;  it is not the thing symbolized but rather a semantic  
bookmark, if you will, to that thing.  It is map, not territory;  the  
map is not the territory.  By recursively mapping story to reality,  
you overload and ultimately short-circuit the very concept of  
metaphor.  That's not helpful if the goal is understanding the world  
as it *actually is.*

>   Evolutionary spirituality isn't about "turning a blind eye"
>   to anything.

Evolutionary spirituality isn't "about" anything, because it's  
nonsense.  It's about dressing the mundane up in fabulous trappings.   
Why?  I have no idea, really.  It boggles me.  The mundane is  
fabulous enough without fluorescent pink drapes everywhere.

>   I think all of us have  "magical, wishful thinking."

Some of us, through diligent effort, seek to purge that tendency in  
ourselves.

> We fall in love with other people, right?

Nothing magical about that, except in a (charming, but unnecessary)  
poetic sort of way.

>   I don't think we should wish it away.

Why do you think that attempting to deal with things purely as they  
are is the same as wishing them away?

The fact that I understand that a large part of e.g. my attachment to  
my wife is driven by evolutionary imperatives, neurochemicals, and so  
on... doesn't make me appreciate her any less.  That understanding  
certainly isn't equivalent to me wishing my relationship away...

>   The Universe is a much nicer place to me with a
>   dash of magic in it.

The universe would be a much nicer place for everybody if it had  
unicorns.*

But that doesn't mean that unicorns exist.

* "unicorns" should be understood as a variable denoting "something  
wonderful that doesn't exist"

>   anti-Naturalistic way.  Reality is what Reality is,
>   and we should always take it full on.  Reality
>   comes first.

And, what, "Magic" is just the condiment we apply liberally to add  
that special, otherwise-missing soupçon?

You're probably the kind of guy that asks for a salt shaker at The  
French Laundry, too.

>   That's why "The Great Story" is the Story of
>   the Changing Story -- because Reality is what
>   persists after you cease to believe in it.
>
>   Our Beliefs  <<  Reality

Fiction != non-fiction.

>   Reality is Our God, We Are Its Bitches.
>   This is humility.

No, that's confusion.

jb