Monkey see doo
My husband is reading a book called Chimpanzee Politics, in which a scientist documents 6 years of observing power dynamics and pecking orders among colonies of chimpanzees. Fascinating stuff. Apparently the author notes that those who study chimps long enough often face destabilizing questions. Chimps are so much like humans that they force you to wonder just how fair it is to classify them as animals and us as, well, not animals - different, civilized. When questions like this are asked, worldviews and self-definitions get wobbly.
We were talking about this this morning, wondering whether it might be true that no matter what you study, if you study it long enough, and with enough openness to the broader implications of your discoveries, you will inevitably face a crisis. Or many of them. Sure, crises come to varying degrees, and with varying amounts of pain and disruption. But the thought is that they come. They happen. My crises came initially with impassioned study of religion. But scientists face them, too. Physicists. Mathematicians. Psychologists. Anthropologists. Even Joe Bloe, diving deeper into self-knowledge. Study anything deeply enough, and with that openness to broader implications, and WHAMMO! Worlds collide.
The thought strikes me oddly today. Makes me feel funny. Like all of us go about our lives, creating through that complex mix of genes and experiences a sense for who we are, how the world works, how the parts fit together, why things are the way they are and do what they do. We create extensive webs of things to take for granted. But in the process we’re all of us, far more than likely, really, really wrong about a lot of it. Maybe most of it. But we don’t know it. And in fact we need to not know it in order to feel…normal. Stable. Like we’re not walking around in some science fiction novel where appearances are or aren’t what they appear to be. Talk to anyone in crisis and you’ll get a sense for how wobbly and fluid their world has become.
Despite all the crises I’ve faced in recent years, or maybe because of them, I think I don’t mind admitting that I’m glad my web of things to take for granted is getting put back together, and I don’t even care that despite my best efforts, big chunks of it are inevitably going to be wrong. I need it. I need a web. I need something to hold me up in this crazy world of relative space and time.
July 8th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
This book probably wouldn’t be something I would read, but I’m glad your husband did as your musings surely make me think of life in general. One of the things I like about A Course in Miracles is that EVERYTHING we see, experience, etc. is filtered through individual memory–our perceptions are our perceptions. That isn’t to say that we don’t all search for Truth, whatever that may be. The more I know, the less I know. The first Noble Buddhist Truth is that life is suffering–and that I know and believe. Our own crises become our teachers, whether we want them to be or not.
Have you read Blaugustine’s Interviews With God? I’ve got a link in my blogroll.
July 9th, 2005 at 8:55 am
Fran, I haven’t heard of Interviews With God or the Course in Miracles. Thanks for the leads…I’ll check them out. And yes to our crises being teachers, as much as I sigh in saying so. Maybe our joys can be our teachers too, though, if we let them. There’s a thought that makes me smile!