I have decided, despite all previously cited reasons, to start publishing my own blog; this will probably be a fairly temporary thing, and if it doesn't work out for me, I'll quit. My reason for starting is that I have thought of a line of questioning which intrigues me, and would like to see what kinds of comments it would elicit. I chose the title "Earl Donald the Bewildered, of Grasshopper-in-the-hole", because I wanted something fairly self-depreciatory to show we are all equals in this arena; "James the Thickheaded" I thought good, and that blog with the title "Absolute Nonsense" or something like that, but I wanted something a little different. Then I came across a site where you could get faux English titles produced by typing in your first name, and have it combined with a title description in overblown heraldic-sounding language. I thought it was hilarious, and produced one for all the members of my immediate family, and then promptly lost the address of the site. My birth-name is Donald (Maxim is my Saint's name, which I go by except in Family situations), so I decided just to use my fake title as the title of the blog.
On this site, I would like to primarily explore some very basic questions of philosophy, mainly by way of retracing the steps that brought me out of secular materialist darkness; these are very simple questions, but my wrong understanding of them made it impossible to break my chains and set out on the road to freedom.
As I have contemplated my life, I have thought it's a little like being born in the upper branches of a mighty tree in a great forest, and one day setting out to discover the unshakable certitudes in which these trees are rooted. As you work your way down the trunk, everything becomes so much more massive and impressive, until finally you arrive at the very base of the tree, and find that the whole forest is literally rooted in nothing; maybe a thin tendril of root or two still connecting it to terra firma, but otherwise unsupported, living off of the nourishment it stored away in the days when it was still connected to the life-giving earth.
This discovery motivated me to set off on a quest for things truly rooted. It is a perilous quest; if you are not careful, like Gollum you may find the deep secrets you expected are only hunger and lightless misery, but it is better than going back to your tree, rootless and rotting from within, for knowledge of roots is what our people are dying for. I constantly run into people who are more intelligent and better informed than I (not difficult), but they seem to have an elemental confusion in all their deepest thoughts, and I have concluded it is usually because they are of the forest, and have no knowledge of roots. So, dear readers, let's do some grubbing around in the roots, shall we?
12 comments:
Welcome. I look forward to reading your blog.
I'm taking at least some of the credit for this blog; if you remember, I pestered you on Owen's blog to start your own!
Hooray!
I also became acquainted with you on the Ochlophobist's blog, and have just started The Hobbit because of your saying the Lord of the Rings movies didn't do the beauty of the books justice. (but I continued to read and enjoy Harry Potter anyway - hope you wont hold that against me)
All the best to you, but Oh. How. This. Hurts. My. Eyes. Text on black background . . . It's literally painful to read for any length of time. Please reconsider.
Andrew: Yes, it was you that started the ball rolling; by the time Sophocles started urging me to start a blog, I already had an idea of the kind of blog I would want to do, "if". Thanks again.
Bloggingsbetter: I'm glad you're reading "The Hobbit", but it is really a different kind of book than "The Lord of the Rings"; it's kind of the seed from which LOR sprouted, then combined with Tolkien's fictional mythology. Still, it's the place to start, unless you wanted to begin with the creation of Tolkien's world in "The Silmarillion", but that's for enthusiasts. I try not to hold anyone's likes or dislikes against them; you have to gather your supply of Truth and Beauty where you find it, and environments that would be deadly for some others seem to go through and take only the good with them. I only assert that we need to be a good deal more careful about the kinds of things we admit into the citadel of the imagination than contemporary men and women tend to be; after all, something that seems perfectly innocent and beautiful may be in fact a Trojan Horse filled with enemies.
Anon, I will be changing the template, just not today. Bear with me, I'm still experimenting.
Maxim,
"The Silmarillion" - baby steps!
The power of the written word... Since becoming Orthodox, I now believe one has to be like-minded/hearted with the author to have the words bear the fruit they intend, to some extent. If not like-minded or at least like-goaled, then people will take the words according to their habit of thinking or wishing. This is where abuse of text comes in, and it's not confined to fiction. But reading is a communal thing, and the type of communion depends on the relationship. For that reason I think it's important to know the author, but more importantly, our faith. That way we can filter appropriately. And if we don't realize a disconnect, then we weren't mature in that area anyway, and were thus susceptible. So I pray God's healing, instructing, protecting, guiding, maturing mercy on us all.
Even before the HP discussion I looked for your blog. Happy writing!
Andrea Elizabeth - blogger blogs have changed how they identify commenters, so I'm writing in my name in case it says "bloggingsbetter" again.
I'll be interested to see what rooting around looks like.
-V.
I knew it was you, Andrea Elizabeth, because I followed the link to your page, but I thought perhaps for some reason that's how you wanted to be identified here.
Maxim,
Sometimes I write things on purpose, and sometimes I dont. Mostly I think what ends up on the page is an accident.
Sorry about the turtles.
A.E.
How could I resist?
Well... My best wishes for your blog. You're a better man than I to venture down this path. The source of material... the source of prodigiousness... that is a mystery I look forward to watching unfold. And no matter what, I admire your commitment to produce material... hoping merely that unlike the Beatles, you won't find it overwhelming or assuming a voracious life of its own. I imagine that if you manage to keep the perspective you've started out with, things should work out fine. My best wishes!
Andrea Elizabeth - if you've ever read Jasper Fforde's books... there's a wonderful description of the characters in fiction as they experience being read... and ultimately Fforde's own statement of the engaging role of the reader that conforms to the Orthodox view of the necessity of reading scripture in the spirit of the fathers... by acknowleding how the differences in the reader change the physical experience of the work with each reading. Fforde's description of the world of fiction is truly a gem of its own and highly recommended. But like Wodehouse, Monty Python, or Douglas Adams... encrusted with the wackiness of the erudite English attic some might call the mind.... and therefore equally hard to explain. For surely there is a certain sense of whimsy that is the twin of the wonder of Orthodoxy, and why we can't explain it simply.
James '(may your tribe increase)',
Thank you so much for the apropos Fforde recommendation. And for resolving a distressing delimma that has perplexed me for quite some time - How to fit Monty Python et al (and I would add Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories) in an Orthodox worldview. Masterfully and eruditely done!
James: Say rather "a more pretentious man than you". Save any compliments until you see what a mixture of the trite and the dubious I call "grubbing around in the roots". Thanks for the Fforde recommendation; maybe I'll read it sometime.
I think we need to be very careful to make sure we are adapting our perspective to that of the Fathers, and not just adapting the Fathers to our own environment; we can so easily cut and trim until anything uncomfortable or foreign (or salvific) is edited out. Of the three you mention, Adams is the only one I think would fit at all in an Orthodox worldview, and he somewhat occupies the position of Balam's Ass, speaking truth unconsciously; so much of his writing seems to hilariously dissolve the myths and fables of modernity, and yet he himself was as thoroughgoing a secularist as anyone. Wodehouse I think relatively innocent, only you have to disable your thinking capacities while reading him; thieves are funny fellows who, of course, must be prevented from walking away with the jewelry, but that object attained, can be permitted to depart with no question of the police being involved. No one really gets hurt, and no one is really poor; that kind of difficulty exists only in the form of young gentlemen who are afraid they will have their allowances cut off if the "guv'nor" finds out how much they owe on racing debts. The only people who really seem to be dislikeable are Aunts, portly Psychologists, whimsical Poetesses, and Efficient Young Men in Spectacles. It is a dreamworld; at its worst, it can become a "glamour", an evil spell which makes vile things seem fair. Monty Python I think the worst of the three, just because they are on a par with modern humor generally; they seem to me to be pretty much the British version of SNL. I used to really like them both, but it began to bother me that so much of the humor depends on rather cruel (and inaccurate) caricatures of ordinary people; I would find myself subconciously despising the subjects of the skits while I was watching them. MP is just one of the knights of the Round Table of modern humor. They are the anti-Wodehouse, sworn to go out and mercilessly slay any and all illusion, only they regard as illusion also the True, the Good, and the Noble. I still read Adams and Wodehouse occasionally, and watch Monty Python (The Holy Grail being my Brother-in law's favorite movie), but not without suspicion.
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