2004-12-29 - 2:14 a.m.
Wanted to write about this, but I don't feel like doing it again at the moment. Maybe there is something interesting or of worth here?
LanceHalberd: I wrote a paper a while back where my final conclusion was written about er...
LanceHalberd: what is the word
LanceHalberd: Ah, reductions.
LanceHalberd: Or at least, what I decided the word meant.
LanceHalberd: Feminist critics often bitch about female character being made into reductions by other critics.
LanceHalberd: Basically they say that woman have many different aspects, that may end up conflicting with eachother, and often what happens is a person will be analyzing them and choose to say that one aspect of them is how they really are, and to put aside the rest of them as some sort of fluke.
LanceHalberd: They create reduced versions of the characters in order to discuss them more easily, or to make the points they want to.
LanceHalberd: This was the first time I had ever thought about such an idea.
LanceHalberd: But it is useful in many other places than feminist criticism, for it isn't just women that are multiple in their behavior.
LanceHalberd: Men can be too.
LanceHalberd: Actually, anything can be.
incognito: just picking and choosing the traits you'd like to notice. the ones that fit your idea the best
LanceHalberd: Yeah, even something as simple as a stone can be reduced.
LanceHalberd: There is hardly anything imaginable that doesn't have an indescribable amount of qualities to it.
incognito: there really is
LanceHalberd: So anyway, the conclusion of my paper was basically along the lines of a few points.
LanceHalberd: One is that you shouldn't be lured into thinking that only certain things are being reduced. Especially don't let your focus be drawn to one thing so much that by trying to focus on it, you unfairly reduce something else to the point of absurdity.
LanceHalberd: I noticed in the feminist papers that while they gave the female lead a much nicer picture, they simplified male characters, and even entire societies of people.
LanceHalberd: Then the other point was just about the necessary attention that need to be given to balance when talking about, or really, even thinking about things.
LanceHalberd: On the one hand, if we didn't use reductions, we really couldn't say anything about anything.
incognito: that's very true
LanceHalberd: But if we take them too far, we can say something incredibly precise and perhaps "true", but only about something so specific that it really isn't like anything in reality.
LanceHalberd: ER, that isn't clean...
LanceHalberd: I guess, the more we reduce, the more we can use our reductions to say,
incognito: "reductions," as you call them, goes along with the whole everything's relative thing
LanceHalberd: but the less our reductions actually have anything to do with the actual things they are supposed to be describing.
LanceHalberd: Hmm, explain your sentiment a little more.
LanceHalberd: ..still with me?
incognito: well, everything's relative. for something to have any... definition? at all, it must be compared to something else.
incognito: yes
LanceHalberd: Ah okay.
incognito: and when you make that comparison, you have to "reduce" some aspects
LanceHalberd: I see. That is definitely one way we reduce things, though I suspect we do it in other ways too.
LanceHalberd: But perhaps it is all just variations on that theme, I'm not certain.
incognito: i am not either
LanceHalberd: Mm
LanceHalberd: Well, regardless, I don't think it changes too much of what I was thinking.
incognito: it doesn't
LanceHalberd: For me, that was all just an idea for a paper, and sort of interesting to think about, but I didn't take the idea terribly seriously, though it stuck with me.
LanceHalberd: I was thinking that many people must be using such complex reductions to look at there lives.
LanceHalberd: They see themselves in this system of how things work
LanceHalberd: But there is no "system"
LanceHalberd: At least not in anyway we can really conceive.
LanceHalberd: We reduce what is really out there into a "system" and we see ourselves living in that reduction.
LanceHalberd: But we don't really live in it, it is all in our heads.
LanceHalberd: It is often useful, like other reductions.
LanceHalberd: But it can also hurt us.
LanceHalberd: We simplify the world so much, we are blinding ourselves to the true possibilities that exist.
LanceHalberd: The real threat here, I think,
LanceHalberd: Is that for some reason, this is one place where many people seldem think to check if they are oversimplifying things.
LanceHalberd: Perhaps.
LanceHalberd: (oh, and to ellaborate on it being useful, we have to make a lot of important decisions in our lives, and this system gives us something definite to plan by, thus allowing us to be decisive)
LanceHalberd: So, I was thinking it would be nice if people when they are faced with hardship, would consider the possibility of redefining their particular "system" more often, instead of surrendering to the feeling of being trapped in a hopeless sitatution.
incognito: sometimes we must simplify things though. if we do not, then there is no way to make a really good decision
LanceHalberd: Yes, it is all pretty obvious stuff when you think about it.
LanceHalberd: And perhaps people do think about it more than I suspect.
LanceHalberd: Anyway, the only really new thing about this that struck me tonight is how similar it seemed to aspects of Zinn philosophy.
LanceHalberd: Zenn?
LanceHalberd: Zenn...
incognito: zen
incognito: ?
LanceHalberd: Eh, no matter.
incognito: haha
LanceHalberd: Anyway, I don't know a lot about Zen, but it has always seemed like one of the most appealing practices to me for some reason.
LanceHalberd: And what I'd gathered about it was that it can be applied to anything really, and it is mostly about being able to understand or experience things as they are.
LanceHalberd: I guess to make the connections so that the world out there, and the world we experience are turly one and the same, or something like that.
LanceHalberd: It seemed that perhaps an important aspect for doing that is to find that balance of using reductions...
LanceHalberd: but maybe not.
LanceHalberd: Perhaps it is learning to understand the world without reducing it at all.
incognito: i don't think that's possible
LanceHalberd: In that case, rather than being a balance of meeting between,
LanceHalberd: It would be like being at both extremes simultaneously..
LanceHalberd: Or not even just the extremes, but every way of seeing it.
LanceHalberd: Like,
LanceHalberd: I've made a reduction here, about reductions.
LanceHalberd: I have made it into a spectrum, with reducing absolutely on one end, and not reducing at all on the other.
LanceHalberd: But like all reductions, this isn't really how things are, it is just a convienent way of thinking about it.
LanceHalberd: Your view of life can probably be simplified into existing on this spectrum, but that doesn't mean it is really there.
LanceHalberd: Maybe you can exist so that you are actually not even on the spectrum, or everywhere on it at once... the two seem the same to me really.
LanceHalberd: Sort of like a divergent point on a graph or something, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
LanceHalberd: Of course, now I'm just spitting out random thoughts that our occuring to me, and I really have no idea as to what use or meaning could come from it.
And that is where I will leave it for now. In the mean time, I think I want to consider more closely the worth that a paradox may hold to our minds and lives. It seems possible now that to experience a paradox directly may allow us to have a more enlightened, or direct relationship with reality. Perhaps reality exists more clearly in forms that can only be seen as paradoxes to us. Good night.
