Category: Thinking

5.25.02 INT. HESBURGH COMPUTER CLUSTER KIOSK 1:42pm DAY

i know why i like anthro­pol­o­gy so much. i think i have final­ly under­stood the holism of anthro­pol­o­gy. anthro­pol­o­gy is applied phi­los­o­phy. i’ve read so many things that describe types of behav­ior and dis­cus­sions of what defines real­i­ty, etc that seem total­ly unaware that anthro­pol­o­gists deal with these con­cepts as a mat­ter of course, not only meta­phys­i­cal, but doc­u­ment­ed and observed in a vari­ety of cul­tures. i was dis­cussing with Hani the oth­er day about con­cep­tions of real­i­ty and this man named Rorty says every­one has their own real­i­ty, some­thing sim­i­lar is posit­ed in Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance. i heard/read these things and thought…of course! the real­i­ty i know is struc­tured from the soci­ety and mythos i am sur­round­ed by. my rela­tion­ship as sub­ject to object, “Qual­i­ty” in the book, is deter­mined by the asso­ci­a­tions learned and expe­ri­enced by exis­tence. those who are termed ‘insane’ are those whose learn­ing and expe­ri­ence have formed ana­logues that are sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from the soci­etal norm. their real­i­ty is not invalid…just dif­fer­ent. the con­flict aris­es because the real­i­ties can­not coex­ist and remain in har­mo­ny.

after that digres­sion i will attempt to be suc­cinct.

i think when­ev­er a new philo­soph­i­cal argu­ment aris­es, the per­son who comes up with it should head to their local anthro­pol­o­gist to find out if there is doc­u­men­ta­tion of the belief sys­tem in the real­ly real world.

chances are there is.

the more i shuf­fle my anthro­po­log­i­cal knowl­edge and sup­ple­ment it with oth­er forms, the more i under­stand what the hell humans are.