Change like Cause is an Intelligent Design

[coberst]

Change like Cause is an Intelligent Design

 

Change is an abstract idea; it does not exist by itself but only when combined with a substance, which is also an abstraction that does not exist independently. Humans appear to be the only animals capable of abstraction.

 

An example of an abstraction might be the concept ‘love’. I love my dog, I love chocolates, I love mom, etc, are specific examples of how the concept ‘love’ is used. If we remove all the contingencies (not necessities) we are left with an emotion. The necessary and sufficient essence of ‘love’ is emotion.

 

Absent the concept of change we humans need deal only with the here and the now. We can include the past and the future but only in that they are an extension of the here and the now. Since the past and future are extensions they must be a unity like the present, the past and future can be only what now is, they can be nothing else.

 

Thinking, that excludes change, eliminates a great deal of complexity. It simplifies greatly our task of thinking, because we need deal only with concrete things; we need to deal with only what we sense here and now. Some call this a traditional mode of thinking. It exemplifies the thinking of primitive humanity up to the Greek period that began around 500 BC. It is, I think, a good way to comprehend what myth is all about.

 

I have read a small bit of Joseph Campbell’s writing on the subject of myth and have discovered that Soros’ book “Age of Fallibility” helps me better comprehend myth; at least in so far as comprehending the mind of primitive humans.

 

I quote Joseph Campbell--“poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it…the intellect is not the font of poetry, it may actually hinder its production…the first axiom of all creative art…is that art is, not like science, a logic of references but a release from reference and rendition of immediate experience: a presentation of forms, images, or ideas in such a way that they will communicate, not primarily a thought or even a feeling, but an impact.” “Mythology was historically the mother of arts” and cannot be understood rationally.

 

Myth, the “mother of arts”, cannot be understood by reason but by emotional “impact”. Joe tells me that myth is an art form that can be understood by its impact upon me. Just as myth impacted the primitive (and everyone I guess) so I can understand it only if I use an entirely different way of understanding than I used to understand science.

 

If we recognize that primitive humans had not reached a stage of using abstract concepts, then we can more easily see how they created the myth stories and ritual. I find the process difficult because I am in this modern age in which abstractions permeate all our thoughts and thus I have a difficult time holding the abstract back when trying to comprehend the primitive mind.

 

Does this comprehension of abstract thinking help you better comprehend myth? Can you explain this difference in primitive mind and how it clarifies myth in some other way than I have tried to do?