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Robert A. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance drew a distinction between 'classical' and 'romantic' modes of perception. Classical is concerned with inner workings, with gears and levers that lurk behind the surface; romantic is concerned with impressions and associations. (It does not, in this context, refer in particular to romantic love.) There appears to me to be some similarity to Jung's 'thinking' and 'feeling' preferences, and probably to Snow's two cultures of the sciences and humanities.
As I start fleshing out ideas, I am at my grandparents' house, probably for the last time before they move out; I have looked around at the impressions and memories. What I realized a little while ago, with some degree of surprise, that my conceptual paraphrase, equating classical with what is deep and concerned with what lies beyond the surface, and romantic with what is shallow and only concerned with the surface, was mistaken. Perhaps it is a fair representation of Pirsig's book, which defines 'classical' and explores its inner depths, but does not explore 'romantic' much at all -- but it is not a fair understanding of 'classical' and 'romantic'. The romantic mode of perception is also deep and is also concerned with what lies beyond the surface; this is true in a way that a classical perspective would not recognize. With this realization came an awareness of romantic impressions I've had -- impressions which mean something.
The meanings that the impressions hold to me would not necessarily be evident to other readers; for this reason, and because I do not know of an existing genre that serves my purposes, I am writing about the romantic impressions in a non-romantic (some would say 'classical') manner. I will describe the romantic impression first -- or, more precisely, the image evoked in my mind -- and then talk about what it means to me.
Or that is one way to put it. A slightly more informative statement would be that there are meanings in my mind, and they are represented by visual symbols and romantic images. What I am doing is recording the image, and then recording the meaning behind it and which is manipulated through that symbol. It may be a form of writing that captures nonlinguistic thought better than a direct enfleshing in words -- and perhaps something will shine through the poetic images directly that is not captured in the analysis.
A missionary's kid jumps up on a top bunk, sitting Indian-style, and is eating noodles with chopsticks.
One of the entries in You Know You're an MK When... says, "You worry about fitting in, and wear a native wrap around the dorm."
One division experienced by most people is a division between public and private. It is mauled in various vulgarizations -- C.S. Lewis begins an essay by talking about a bad sermon from a parson eulogizing the family as the perfect place where you can put off all of society's artificial restrictions -- and showed how in the parson's case this translated to setting aside every human decency and treating his children in ways he would not consider treating a stranger. It is mauled in various distortions, but it is a legitimate distinction, and some people experience it more intensely than others. There is a public world where one conforms to the agreed-upon compromises necessary for a world of different people to live with each other, and then there is (inside a boundary) a private sphere where agape is still needed, but where there is unique room to be yourself (a cliché -- and a cliché is a cliché because it's true). The basic distinction is human, but metaculturals experience it more intensely; it is to us not simply a fact of life, but a basic tension of existence.
Finding another person who can pass through the glass wall is difficult; I've been burned many times. But I have found some people who can pass through, and it is a rich reward. Dealing with someone through the glass wall requires both agape and acting according to standards designed by and for people who do not function as I do -- while dealing with someone inside the glass wall "only" requires agape. It is still a high standard, but there is not an expectation which distorts a person who is different and has not yet acquired a great deal of maturity.
What does "through the glass wall" mean? In the movie Time Bandits, the bandits are walking though a vast desert wasteland -- and bump into a glass wall. It's invisible, but they can't pass through it. They have been walking for hours in pursuit of a castle, which is nowhere in sight -- and they start bickering. Tempers flare, and one of them picks up a skull and throws it at another. The other time bandit ducks.
The skull shatters the glass -- and through the hole, the bandits suddenly see the castle they were looking for.
What I mean by "through the glass wall" is that, after being burned numerous times in approaching people -- in ways that I didn't understand were unusual -- I have erected a sort of glass wall that (badly) hides those aspects of me that are alien to most people, and then pull people through the glass wall to something inside that is very different. By 'pull' I don't mean either force or deceit; I rather mean that I draw the other person into my world.
One of my friends is jumping along, her arms raised, cheering.
There is a certain quality, loosely that of being 'unashamed'. If the above impression is of having a private world, this is the quality of being unashamed of it, of being comfortable. It is self-awareness without self-consciousness. There is room -- not absolute freedom, but definite space none the less -- to publicly differ from what is usual. This impression of one of my friends captures this quality.
"VMWare: Providing Linux with backwards compatibility with legacy computational infrastructure."
If you're a hacker, any explanation would is superfluous. If you're not a hacker, this one would take a while to explain. If you really want to know, ask a hacker (if you know any), or appropriate newsgroup or mailing list.
At an Asian culture festival, a group of non-Asians (mostly white) in martial arts uniforms gives a Tae Kwon Do demonstration. The head instructor steps up to the microphone, and says both "If you're surprised at seeing us at an Asian culture festival, don't be," and that they have taken the Tae Kwon Do tradition and removed its competitiveness and militarism.
The analysis on this one is a bit more complicated than most. I am not bothered perforce by the presence of non-Asians at an exhibition of Asian culture. What did stick in my mind, quite a bit, was the presence of non-Asians at an Asian culture festival who exhibited attitudes contradictory to those of Eastern culture, or for that matter of Western culture for most of recorded history. I mean specifically the regard for a tradition as something arbitrary, to be changed according to whatever the Zeitgeist is blowing. Environmentalists are fond of the proverb, variously attributed to different aboriginal peoples of Africa and the Americas, that says, "Be kind to the earth. It was not inherited from our ancestors; it is borrowed from our children." Members of a great many societies across much of history embody an attitude that could be stated as "Be careful with this tradition. It was not inherited from our ancestors; it is borrowed from our children." Jewish children grow up acutely aware that it would take only one generation of Jews to finish Hitler's work, to sever all future generations from the heritage and identity that has survived for so long under the most difficult of circumstances. This attitude, quite conspicuous by its absence at an Asian culture festival, is present in the medieval mindset -- the environment that made cathedrals possible, masterpieces that (in the words of Jeffrey Burke Satinover) "are as impossible for us on spiritual grounds as our photocopiers would have been to medievals on technological grounds." The romantic impression is distinctive as the inverse image of something very, very important.
A traveler who is visiting a house turns to a servant, and addresses the servant in his native tongue.
The traveler is someone of grandeur, and he shows this grandeur in the un-thought-of courtesy of speaking to a servant in his native tongue. Speaking in another person's preferred tongue -- even if it is only with the twenty words of politeness -- is a kindness, if one not often thought of in 21st century America. Showing this courtesy to a servant -- someone who is looked down on and ignored when not needed -- is a mark of moral grandeur.
This has application, not just in literal languages, but in entering another person's world -- "speaking the other person's language" in a figurative sense.
In Lawhead's Merlin, Merlin stands stumped by a locked gate, then as it were shakes off a dust of sleep, remembers his powers, and magically removes the lock. He speaks of "that which men call magic", learned from the fhain.
The meaning of "that which men call magic" -- which for me signifies an incredibly diverse (non-magical) collection of skills, such as writing HTML, jury-rigging things, and reading languages (some computer and some human) -- is a birthright of gradually collected abilities that is described for my temperament in Please Understand Me II. The meaning of what the fhain taught Merlin in Lawhead's book, "that which men call magic", is an intriguing idea which I will not attempt to reproduce here.
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