Words&Dirt

“This Great Tradition in telling the story of its own origins explains how a human responsiveness to context has in the past, and continues now, to enchant the cosmos.  The remote ancestors Fu Xi and Shen Nong established a rhythm in the human experience, enabling them to chime in with the cadence of the ‘flux and persistence’ (biantong) that they perceived as persistent characteristics of the world around them.  Encouraged by the efficacy achieved in applying their insights into the workings of the cosmos to the human experience, they then represented their interpretation of life in the world in a hexagramic language of images, models, and patterns for the benefit of generations yet to come.  Importantly, these antique sages were not natural scientists engaged in some disinterested interrogation of objective nature, but rather were fully occupied by a project of personal understanding and articulation.

According to the Yijing, when things run their course, there is flux (bian), where there is flux, there is continuity (tong), and where there is such continuity, it is enduring.

By their efforts at ars contextualis––the art of effectively contextualizing and coordinating the experience of the human being within the processes of nature in an effort to optimize the creative possibilities of the cosmos––Fu Xi and Shen Nong cultivated a thick continuity between ‘nurture’ and ‘nature’ expressed in the evocative images that constitute the Yijing.  This perceived resonance between human experience and the natural and cultural forum in which it occurs is made explicit in expressions that have come to characterize the relationship, such as ‘the continuity between the religious, natural, and cultural context, and the human experience’ (tianren heyi), and the ‘mutual responsiveness of the numinous context and the human experience’ (tianren xiangying or tianren ganying).  It is important to note that such expressions report on the continuing symbiotic mutuality of these dimensions of experience rather than on the reconciliation of two originally separate aspects of the world after the fact.  Personal cultivation is not the bringing together and the ‘uniting’ of the world and human experience, but is rather the deepening and intensifying of the productive continuities that conjoin two inseparable aspects of experience, that is, oneself and one’s world.

Indeed, this assumed continuity between nature and nurture––between petroglyphs and the striations in stone, for example––is reflected in the fact that the same vocabulary is used to express the creative advance in both the human and the natural ecologies.  For example, ‘the way of things’ (dao), vital energies (qi), ‘inscribed culture’ (wen), ‘patternings’ (li), yinyang, and the perpetual interface between ‘flux and persistence’ (biantong) itself are all terms that reference both the human and natural worlds.

In this co-creative relationship with the world around us, there is no initial and originative logos.  Language and its significance emerge pari passu with a world that is continually being spoken into being.  Imagination is anything but imaginary.  That is, the process of making meaning within our world of experience, inspired by our imagination, becomes our imaginaire, our lived reality.”

––Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, pg. 53-4

“‘Papa, papa, papa,’ whispered Grego.  His trembling had given way to great shudders, almost convulsive in their violence.

‘Is he afraid of Father?’ asked Olhado.  His face showed deep concern for Grego.  To Ender’s relief, all their faces were full of worry.  There was love in this family, and not just the solidarity of living under the rule of the same tyrant for all these years.

‘Papa’s gone now,’ said Miro comfortingly.  ‘You don’t have to worry now.’

Ender shood his head.  ‘Miro,’ he said, ‘didn’t you watch Olhado’s memory?  Little boys don’t judge their fathers, they love them.  Grego was trying as hard as he could to be just like Marcos Ribeira.  The rest of you might have been glad to see him gone, but for Grego it was the end of the world.’

It had not occurred to any of them.  Even now it was a sickening idea; Ender could see them recoil from it.  And yet they knew it was true.  Now that Ender had pointed it out, it was obvious.

‘Deus nos perdoa,’ murmured Ela.  God forgive us.

‘The things we’ve said,’ whispered Miro.

Ela reached out for Grego.  He refused to go to her.  Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for.  Grego turned in Ender’s relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically.

Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly.  ‘How could he show grief to you, when he thought you hated him?’

‘We never hated Grego,’ said Olhado.

‘I should have known,’ said Miro.  ‘I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me.’

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Ender.  ‘It’s the kind of thing that only a stranger can see.'”

––Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, pg. 120