I speak of my own mind moving in and out of active formation. I’ve reached a point where I wish to deal with issues that I can’t wrap my mind around. And, so, I’m trying to expand and reshape my mind in the appropriate ways, acquiring more of the contents which will become the container which is my mind if I’m successful in properly responding. I’ve found that it’s also useful and interesting to read some books not so immediately useful though very interesting. A healthy human mind can’t be developed the way of a piece of machinery can be designed and built. So it is that I’m back to working on novels, experimenting with theological poetry, working on pulling my weblog writings into one or more books to be published on the Internet, reading a variety of material. I’m back to reading more articles on science published on the Internet as well as a variety of political and economic writings which are beginning to seem beside the point as our existing human institutions show little sign of being reformable. My active reading pile contains a collection of Graham Greene’s novels (alternating by month with a collection of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels), a collection of poetry and prose by Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel, The Liberal Mind by Kenneth Minogue, and two final ‘refresher’ works in physics/math before I finally tackle somewhat more serious works in general relativity and quantum mechanics. I’ll be rereading Relativity and Geometry by Roberto Torretti and also studying somewhat diligently Wave Phenomena by Dudley H. Towne — an undergraduate textbook which seems quite good for learning or reviewing about all that vibration stuff. The truly mature and well-formed mind could — in principle — use insights from Wallace Stevens to better understand created being including the weirdness of quantum mechanics.
My current thoughts are roaming over a wide range of created being as I know it, mathematics and physics as well as human nature. In fact, my head is filled with vague images of human communities, including that ultimate community which is the Body of Christ, as I struggle to find ways to describe the formation of such, the relationships which make such communities of individuals a unity and its own entity as the universe is its own entity in addition to being the entirety of this mortal realm. I ponder such questions as: Would a generalization of simultaneity, as understood by Einstein, help us to understand the way in which individuals remain such in the Body of Christ while somehow coming to a deep sharing of… Perceptions? Thoughts? Relationships? All of these?
I don’t know where my writing will eventually head, though I’ve got several years of projects already planned and I have ever stronger desires to put a greater share of my efforts into novels — I haven’t written more than 20 pages of keep-able novelistic prose over the past seven or eight years.
As I think matters through, I’ll be studying in a variety of fields and commenting upon various matters while trying to develop the more abstract ideas which can tie these various matters together and maybe provide foundations for future or in-progress works of fiction. For example, I’ll be commenting upon our historical and political contexts and what that might mean as many human institutions are destroying themselves at various paces. We may yet see few hints of the new instruments which might arise in their place, but I’m not holding my breath. For those who haven’t read the historian Carroll Quigley or my essays discussing his work, instruments arise to serve a civilization but eventually decay into self-serving institutions. This is as true of religious orders and educational institutions as it is of the Pentagon and banks. The way forward will involve efforts to escape from the control or even influence of such corrupted institutions and to form new instruments.
How can we do this? Will we have to wait for the ‘forces of history’ to destroy those institutions and individuals which block progress before we can rebuild? Can we start rebuilding now even while the cityscapes are covered with the skyscrapers of bloated banks and theaters where we can watch light operas based on the the comics of my childhood years? I don’t know and won’t know in this mortal realm unless I live to see it happen, that is, to see a significant number of human beings strike out to find new ways to live. Even then, I’d be seeing experiments and not knowing which will work out.
Like all organisms, we go through various stages of growth and consolidation and active use of newly developed skills and knowledge along with those still useful skills and that still plausible knowledge we already possessed — if we retain such. There is something similar to be said about our communities, especially those large-scale communities known as civilizations. I’ll be saying some of those somethings but not now.
As both Plato and St. Benedict knew well, knowledge is good but we are physical creatures and knowledge doesn’t become truly such until it’s manifested in our behaviors, both habitual and occasional. We can’t live the lives of decadent barbarians from a corrupted phase of Western Civilization while pretending to hold better thoughts in our heads. Such thoughts are less than ghosts until we try to live the corresponding lives.
I have too many tentative and half-formed ideas right now to be able to write effectively about many of the topics of great concern to me and other human beings. I see too many ways that the decayed West stunts and deforms its citizens but I don’t see any clear paths to a better civilization and won’t see any such paths until some pioneers are traveling them. If I happen upon a good path, I won’t even see it until I’ve traveled a ways down that road. If I see it at all.
I’ll continue to post to this weblog, but I imagine there will be changes in my blog essays and articles for at least a few months. I might often be noting the thoughts or empirical findings of others without yet being able to fit those thoughts and findings into my worldview. Then again, maybe some fresh insights will come sooner than I expect. It might not be long before I’m writing dense prose to confuse myself as well as others.
This change is itself a result of contemplating my own beliefs about human nature and about the use of the mind not to make moral decisions on the fly but rather to shape our behavior next week. That includes proper use of the mind to further enrich and strengthen…the mind.
My beliefs about human nature and about the use of the mind would mean little if they were really just academic dogma rather than insights to be lived with and to be used to nurture my own self. But I see no ways out of our mess and, like many, have to rely on faith and hope for a while and mostly on the love of God. Maybe a few possible paths towards a better future will appear in my lifetime. If so, I may not even notice.
God is telling His story and our hard times are part of that story. As Job told his wife, “We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?” [Job 2:10]
I fear we should be preparing to accept much evil over the next few decades.