bending iron
Ξ March 26th, 2008 | → | ∇ General, Philosophy |
Nearly midnight again. March 25, 2008.
Vivianne is looking at me questioningly. She seems to say ‘What the fuck are you doing? Go to bed.’
I’m not tired. I felt change today. Real change, major upheavals in the world around me. I’m not certain what all of them were, but I have some sense of those around me, some sense of the world that I am experiencing and how I have changed because of it. The dubious pleasures of being a witch.
Things are unsettled. How do you change the world in a system that refuses to change. How do you promote organicism and holism when people are so amazingly devoted to method that it is more important than results?
I am not perfect, and I recognize that I have methods that are firmly ingrained, perhaps even methods that are entrenched, that I sometimes follow blindly. But I value results more than patterns. I would rather learn to bend than fail at my tasks. I don’t understand people who will not see that process becomes dogma, and dogma is the destroyer of behavioral flexibility. Dogma is the destroyer of growth, of natural development.
How can you make a cat understand that her claws do not feel good when applied to your bare thigh or scrotum? I really do love Vivianne, but Damn.
How can you help people change when they don’t acknowledge a problem? I know damn well that there are plenty of problems with my own life that I haven’t recognized, but I’m willing to look at them when people point them out to me. I may decide they aren’t problems, or that they can be dealt with later, but I will honestly look and consider. I value those around me enough and have enough trust and respect to consider that their perceptions might be valid. Particularly if they are open to discussing it with me, to giving me concrete examples of what I’ve done and why it doesn’t work. If you tell me that I’m not living in the real world, I’ll give you the opportunity to convince me. I do not understand people who don’t behave the same.
This is perhaps the challenge I am to face now. How do I bend enough that the world has to bend with me? The the dogmatic people I deal with will bend with me? That they will see the need to bend, to change, to let growth take it’s own healthy course, and not prune it too severely.
The question remains, how can you convince a man of faith, that his faith is serving him poorly?
