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SusanofO -> RE: Understanding ruins experience? (1/9/2007 7:16:11 PM)
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Well this will sound like a perhaps dry comment after that one, but I read a fascinating article a few weeks ago in TIME magazine, between atheist Richard Dawkins (a reknowned biologist who has written several books on various biology topics that explain complex concepts in relatively simple terms to the mass public), and Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project (which a few years ago, successfully and for the first time ever, mapped the human genome).
Collins is a Christian, but not a rabid, evangelical one. He used to be an atheist. Dawkins is still an athiest. At one point in the interview, Dawkins became upset because Collins couldn't "prove" the existence of God. Collins said there are some areas of science (like perhaps, the existence of genes to begin with, maybe) that are just "beyond the reach" of science's ability to provide an answer as to their origin. Science can study genes, he insinuated, but it's not going to probably come up with an answer (very soon) about why they developed at a deep, "why anything happens, philosophical level. Maybe someday soon, some scientist will be able to say "because the Neanderthals died out, humans developed an _ gene" or something - but that isn't the kind of "why" question I was referring to. I was referring to why humans exist - at all.
Collins said science can be particularly bad at answering these types of fundamental "Why" questions - which are usually the ones that fascinate me anyway. It was a very interesting article - and it wasn't a very long, one, either.
As far as people are concerned, and relationship-building, etc. - bdsm oriented, or not (although maybe it is easier in a bdsm context, I dunno)I guess I am all for creating a mood, taking people at face value while realizing there is a lot beneath the surface yet to be discovered (and that is just wonderful, I think - it is so interesting poeple can be so multi-faceted) and then letting human creativity do its work as far as "analyzing" something in a bdsm context. Enoy it. Make of it what you will. Enjoy it. Learn something about yourself from it.
I mean basic understanding of someone's personality can be a good thing, I think, as far as being able to communicate with them or help or try to understand their viewpoint - what makes someone else "tick" or how they may react to this or that - But- even that, with many folks, has depths that I believe are almost unfathomable.
I think analyzing something, or some scene or event, or person "to death", so to speak, as if to come to some "final conclusion" about why something happenend the way it did, or how to handle this or that aspect of someone, just seems to somehow partially ignore and cut-off the fact humans are fundamentally creative and changeable beings. Problem solving is good as far as "correcting behavior", etc - but - putting someone's character and-or personality in some box and labelling it so it never changes and stays the same for the rest of eternity is probably wrong. And seems stultifying, and against the implicit goal of many bdsm relationships, somehow.
How can anyone grow or change or have fun if nobody else expects that because they've got them "all figured out?" and know they "always do" X, for example. Maybe this is a values issue with me. I don't operate that way, and don't appreciate it much. I think getting to know some people can be great. And I am not saying I dislike stable people (I think that's important). But -
People, I think, can and are writing the novel of their own lives - every day they live - they can make things have a happy beginning, or middle, or end, simply by the way they choose to veiw events and the context in which they put these things indie their own heads. Including their impressions of themselves.
They are the author's of their own books - their life stories. It's not a cut-and-dried thing we are looking at, here - when it comes to other people's lives (or our own), I don't think. I don't think it necessarily need to be analyzed in a way that will allow some sort of "final answer" or figure out exactly why X or Y happened. Of course I am the sort who thinks even if I did figure one answer out, there are probably ten others out there that may be just as "valid". Maybe via analysis and understanding, several ways of looking at something will surface, though. That would be my goal, anway.
Sometimes, I agree, hard-core analysis (that results in a definitive answer as far as what something is, or what someone is all about, or why an event occurred) seems to destroy the mystery and wonder that allowed it to maybe spring into being in the first place.
That might just be the pessimistic viewpoint, however (and also seems to imply that the thing or person or event being analyzed was a good thing, a beautiful thhing, and not some horrible event). I am sure analysis has its good and creative uses and healthy uses, in regard to bdsm many times too. I have not been around long enough to be a judge about that, really.
Hope that even made sense - it got a little long-winded.
- Susan
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