Nobody to whom to talk let's keep grammatical!

16 2 2010

It's a lonely life when all but one of your family refuse to talk about ideas though love airing their opinions and correct you on the basis of less information than you've had when venturing an idea, a little knowledge rather supporting the ill informed opinion than opening the mind to listening and acquiring more. What the hell it's like this for lots of people I'm not whingeing, well not much, don't we all thirst for intelligent conversation and appreciation of our ideas? Thomas Traherne says that illimitable desire for communication with others is evidence of our immortal souls, we are Godlike in our desires and craving for understanding, our appreciation of others who can converse on an equal basis, each one of us is born to inherit the earth which is why we appreciate one another so much and crave for talk and show kindness and kindliness towards one another, seeking to elicit that precious response. Traherne says in looking at nature and outwards to the stars we are on the first steps of the Kingdom of Heaven, he rejoices in the thought of worlds out there populated by sentient creatures, caused to come into being by God so they could come to know Him, not bad for a seventeenth century cleric in a retired parish near Hereford!

I like Traherne, he kept in touch with other thinkers of his day and denounced contentment, why be pleased to settle into a narrow rut without intellectual stimulation when you only have to look at the intense tender blue of the spring sky, the budding trees and singing birds, to know in advance of the power and the glory and to long to speak of the fullness of ideas in your heart? Traherne knew of telescopes and microscopes and the infinities of worlds they revealed both macro and micro, fitting studies for infinite minds like ours he said, I wish militant atheists like Dawkins would read a little and learn a little about the religion they denigrate, refutation by denigration always seeming a very poor way of arguing to me. Dawkins would be the first to claim he has an infinite mind, the authority therefor might stick in his throat but as he doesn't even know what he's talking about he's safe from that one. I don't like messy vituperation nor do I like the mythologising of science, if you believe the narrative all scientists work for the love of knowledge, not so says Patricia Farah, a scientist herself and Cambridge don, science has always been funded for the hardware and or prestige to be acquired, both commercial interests, this Great Man working in isolation towards the goal of Knowledge is just a myth, it annoys me too it has to be a Great Man, what about Rosalind Franklin and Jocelyn Bell, discoverers of the structure of DNA and of Pulsars, respectively?

I wouldn't be a critical thinker unless I noticed how the narratives can be skewed, my tutor at Oxford Elizabeth Mackenzie would expect no less, she had this intimidating habit of whipping her specs off and demolishing one with half a dozen other authorities, with a background of horrid crunches on bone, her Persian Wolfhound spent our tutorials behind the settee demolishing bones from the butcher. It was a sort of counterpoint, Dilys my tutorial partner and |I would crawl out into the fresh air feeling chewed, Dilys would go for caffeine and cakes, I'd go for caffeine and nicotine and we'd talk and talk, usually with me going for a debunk and timid Dilys being surprised and startled by my daring. That was only because Dilys was upper middle class and shy of authority, and I was a bolshie bastard nurtured by listening to self educated miners argue, and very well, in the pit village where my parents lived.

I've ben reading my back numbers of the Times Literary Supplement, the TLS dismisses Dawkins as trespassing off his own patch by finding himself incapable of talking about religion in scientific terms, he has to fall back on abuse. The TLS is quite clear, they are clean different narratives and can't be talked about in the same terms, and Dawkins is largely ignorant of what he abuses so vehemently. Let's hear it for Tranherne who loved the natural world, there are massive amounts of reverence for nature in the major and minor religions, why can't we learn then moblise all religions in the fight against global warming and irreparable damage to the planet?I love the natural world myself, I see we can farm it but must stop before we harm it. The days are getting longer, there's a sweet smell in the air, best wishes.

Anne Rees