A Series of Class-Prompted Thoughts

[debka_notion]

Just got back from my last day of class for Studying Sacred Texts, and I was just struck by how the class didn't make a point, or cover a set of contiguous bunches of information, or even focus on learning facts at all, and yet I learned a huge amount- without quite knowing how it happened or what I learned. I mean, our discussions rarely focused for too long on the readings or their topics alone: they got related to everything under the sun, in many, many different lights, so that the analogies rather than the original materials became the focus. The majority of the work for the class was ungraded, and often doing extensive preparation for many of the assignments ("come into class with information about topic or item x") was discouraged ("don't spend more than 15 minutes on this"). And yet I had a fabulous time, and it felt entirely useful, even though there was rarely much to take notes on- it was rare that I filled one sheet in a full 3 hours. I had class with a bunch of people many of whom (if I can say many, considering that htere were 8 people total in the class) were people I didn't really know how to relate to at the beginning of the class, and somehow it worked fabulously well.

As the last part of class today, we did some text study relating to U'netaneh toqef, a prayer (more accurately a piyyut, a liturgical poem) from the High Holy Day liturgy, and looked at both the traditional story about its origins and at some sources for where a particularly difficult set of words (kivnei maron) could come from, and what they likely mean and why. It was interesting, and highlighted two very different, maybe nearly opposite views of text- that the more you know the more options you have, and therefore the more chances it has to be meaningful at different times and in different personal circumstances, and that the more you know about a text, the more limitted your understanding is of the text.

It seems to reflect this difference in attitudes towards reality/truth that I've been running into a lot lately: the question of whether or not more information limits your knowledge to the confluence of where all the information pieces can all agree/apply, or where only one set of them is Right, or a scenario where more than one set of interpretations/ideas can be right, and they don't have to all agree in order to all be right. It seems like perhaps a distinction between an interpretative view and a factual view: is our perception of reality a filter of a larger, greater thing, or is it a cut and dry, one right answer set up where we do have the ability to see the whole in a clear light. Except that I don't think that our ability to see the whole should prevent us from understanding that same whole in many different ways. I don't see why truth has to be so monolithic in our perceptions, when as far as I can tell, there's always more to it, and there are always more nuances. I dislike limitting truth to a single viewpoint. In our reading for class today, we read about a view of scripture that regards the importance of scripture not beign the text itself but the relationship between humanity and the transcendent/divine, as mediated by the text- a triangular relationship rather than a two-way one between the text and humanity. When you make the text a mediator and a tool through which to relate to something larger, it gives the text the ability to be many different things at once, something that a text just as text doesn't quite have the authority to maintain. It seems like a remarkably powerful reading to me.

With all that, class left me with snippets of the U'netaneh toqef tune that I grew up with in my head. It's funny- I usually wasn't too fond of the organ stuff, or the choir at my family's shul- but that one prayer I do occasionally miss the power of the organ, and the drama of the whole production. I miss almost none of the other music that can't exist outside of settings that allow musical instruments- and most of the tunes I miss I can sing with my mom at home or something. And really, that one tune isn't enough to make me want to deal with that style of service, which really doesn't do so much for me spiritually- but I do sort of miss that one piece.

Comments

[thevortex.livejournal.com]

Because I am short on time...

Ultimately, even if God is the only One who knows it, there is an objective truth. Moreover, actions can be binary insofar as they happened or they did not. Because people base actions on their momentary definition of truth, one could argue for both local and global facets to truth. The problem is, one cannot act locally and then rant about the existence of multiple truths. In taking action, one accepted a given truth. That truth was either right or wrong.

I left plenty of room for debate on that opinion, folks. Feel free to fire on it.

Huzzah!

The Vortex

Right on

[yemeknight.livejournal.com]

I like the cut of your jib, Vortex-man. As a man of much math, I follow your logic completely.
If there is a Right, you either act in accordance with it or not.
If Right is whatever happens, then there is nothing that is not Right, and we can throw away all guidelines: anything is right!
However... picture the infinite number of possible actions. Suppose an infinite subset of them are Right, and another infinite subset of them are Wrong. Is this a valid description of your views, Maya?

Re: Right on

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Sort of but not really. I see a right and a wrong, but not necessarily as stand alones, but as mediated concepts to some extent. Aka, an idea that combines a gray-scale idea of right and wrong, and one that takes into account circumstance, and one that is built relationally to some extent. But yes, I often do opperate on a world concept that leaves the idea of multiple universes open, which seems sort of relevant to your suggestion. But the thought I'm having now at least is that every word or movement is a choice, and it's rarely a black or white choice: there are best, worst and middling answers always, and any unit, say, an answer to a question, is made up of so many rights and wrongs of varying degrees that it's very hard to measure anything into one category or the other. It's overly simple and creates an almost unrecognizable "image".

Re: Right on

[thevortex.livejournal.com]

(I apologize for the time delay...)

Infinite subsets...an interesting idea! But, consider this:

By making a selection, one zeroes in on that facet of the pair of infinite systems. And, then, that choice ends up being from the right continuum or the wrong continuum. And, even with the infinite realm of nuances that contribute to the definition of a truth, I point out that the infinite is denumerable! And, ultimately, all that a human being would be able to work with in any situation is a localized context. On the basis of said context a person makes a choice, which is either right or wrong. And I do not think that pointing out the infinite justifies a localized choice -- there might be infinite scenarios, and infinite nuances, and even more than one right/wrong way to do things. The existance of multiple rights, however, cannot be used to defend a choice that turns out to be wrong. The defense to which I am referring appears as: "there is more than one right way, and just because the choice appears wrong does not mean that it is not right from another point of view." It might be right from the latter point of view, which may be rooted in the continuum of the wrong. Ultimately, however, I would posit that only God knows, but that the choice, once made, belongs in one set or another, regardless of the sizes of the sets.

Even the infinitely infinite has its binary moments. =P

"So many times, we stand and fight. So many reasons can't be right!" -- The Alan Parsons Project, "The Real World"

What think you, yemeknight?

Huzzah!

The Vortex