tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7635597501156678473.post714726689338804453..comments2014-09-03T06:28:55.547+10:00Comments on The House of Every: Sunday Sermon: Logos 3Hamish Alcornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03697731397475746830noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7635597501156678473.post-87472046431479815752012-06-18T10:04:53.782+10:002012-06-18T10:04:53.782+10:00Thanks Tim. I appreciate the encouraging nod. I...Thanks Tim. I appreciate the encouraging nod. I'll just note that both yourself and Dawn used a metaphor of food for my words. In itself that is an enormous compliment. I hope it's deserved. Cheers.<br /><br />Dawn, I think the entire construction of language is metaphor and most certainly the idea of logos as 'living' is deliberate metaphor. What it refers to with the idea of life, in my view, is organicism (a complex organised unity), metabolism, procreation and evolution. It also refers to direction (in evolution) but only in the hazy sense that you can refer to biological evolution having direction. When I say the direction - the <i>telos</i> - however unattainable - of Logos is to know Everything and understand the truth of Everything, I am way out on a limb, but I'm content to defend the limb for now. It's as defensible as any untestable proposition might be, and powerful at the same time.<br /><br />I don't think we would exist in anything like the same way without logos. As misanthropes enjoy pointing out, humans are only a little bit more intelligent than monkeys, and as a rule an individual human cannot be expected to show a lot of intelligence on many subjects, even though a well read human will (in speach) assume that she has been to the moon and can lay railway. "We" know a stupendously monumental amount about thousands of aspects of reality, and every day we behave as if we own all of it, using technologies and relying on institutions, not to mention language itself. But without our contact with this enormous legacy that I am calling Logos (I recently began to capitalise it), we would be (possibly inferior) monkeys.<br /><br />But having said all that, yes, it is a symbiotic relationship I guess. Does Every, Logos and (say) mind form a sort of trinity? Now I'm playing, but it's explorable.<br /><br />There are some who theorise about a post-textual world brought about by technology. I'm not sure if this makes me a modern form of luddite but I am very skeptical that this is possible. Text is too referencable, searchable, micro-maleable. It seems to provide a DNA-type basis for inremental evolutionary progress that video and audio don't entirely capture. I also note that all of the mediums you mention do rely on language and do, in practice, use texts (even for the very reason that they are easilly changeable in rehearsal and development). Anyway, I don't mind reiterating that text is <i>not</i> all of Logos and does not really define it. All the mechanics of Logos exist in language before text. But text massively accelerates and extends the process to the extent that modern life would not be recognisable without it. I know it seems I'm struggling with different definitions of Logos, and I do fear it is that kind of word. :)<br /><br />Love you Dawn.Hamish Alcornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03697731397475746830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7635597501156678473.post-25713101230511134132012-06-17T12:04:34.237+10:002012-06-17T12:04:34.237+10:00Thanks Hamish
I am really enjoying these sermons a...Thanks Hamish<br />I am really enjoying these sermons and the food for thought they provide.<br />Tim CAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7635597501156678473.post-61816366664620102682012-06-17T11:23:51.960+10:002012-06-17T11:23:51.960+10:00By the way, the comment above was from me, Dawn.
X...By the way, the comment above was from me, Dawn.<br />XxLadyfingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10782218328587238000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7635597501156678473.post-1783559475172312932012-06-17T11:22:28.011+10:002012-06-17T11:22:28.011+10:00Thanks Hamish. Some random thoughts:
It is inter...Thanks Hamish. Some random thoughts: <br /><br />It is interesting to think of Logos as something alive and separate to ourselves. Is even thinking about it in this way metaphoric thinking? If it is the detritus of our symbolic engagement with our world/s, it comes from us and is external to us: we cyclically consume and excrete it. Or birth it. It's a symbiotic relationship, isn't it? I doesn't exist without us - would we exist without it?<br /><br />Your observation that the Greeks are given credit for our leagcy of knowlege because "they wrote stuff down" reminds me of feminist playwright and philosopher Helene Cixous, who in the mid 1970s famously exhorted women to create a "contract with time" by coming to writing. Which in turn reminds me of the House of Every's commitment to universal literacy. The written word is now longer the only way for stores to be recorded in time however - cinema, video, television, youtube all offer ways for individuals and groups to record their 'stories'in ways that also establish a 'contract with time'.<br /><br />Anyway, thanks for the Sunday morning reflection. Nourishing.Ladyfingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10782218328587238000noreply@blogger.com