The proper meaning of a word … is never something upon which the word sits perched like a gull on a stone; it is something over which the word hovers like a gull over a ship’s stern. Trying to fix the proper meaning in our minds is like coaxing the gull to settle in the rigging, with the rule that the gull must be alive when it settles: one must not shoot it and tie it there. The way to discover the proper meaning is to ask not, ‘What do we mean?’ but, ‘What are we trying to mean?’
--R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (hat-tip to David Pierce for the quote in his blog https://polytropy.com/2020/09/01/map-of-art/ (Pierce, a professional mathematician, is also a Collingwood . . . shall we say "enthusiast"? I'm not sure the right term for him or me regarding our attitude toward Collingwood, but we're both avid readers & proponents of Collingwood's thought.)
Meaning perception is our ability to step back and see something as a whole, to see the forest, and not only the trees. Immediacy perception, as its name suggests, is our ability to focus on individual details, what is immediately before us. It is like a searchlight. It has a powerful beam, yet it has one problem: “it can only focus on one thing at a time,” hence Hume’s failure to see the connection between cause and effect.
SNG note: This is written about Colin Wilson discussing Whitehead and (in effect) anticipating McGilchrist.)
Clearly, progress is not wholly concerned with resources, but how resources are distributed between individuals within one generation and between generations is a matter that no discussion of progress can ignore.
If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.
And in a new feature that I'll start today, I'll be quoting from Hannah Arendt's Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954 (at the end of the post). I'll be starting with the essay "Understanding & Politics," which was originally published in Partisan Review in 1954. I'm reading this collection of essays as a part of my participation in the Virtual Reading Group of Arendt's works hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College and led by its director, Professor Roger Berkowitz and assistant director Samantha Rose Hill. These quotes will sometimes be longer than a sentence, perhaps a paragraph or two--I want to capture complete thoughts. While normally I like to keep my quotes to bite-size morsels, sometimes you want to sink your teeth into something meatier, or at least I do. Arendt provides so many meaty quotes that I find compellingly relevant to our times that I want to share a bunch of them. And, apropos Arendt, I want to prompt you to think. The quote for today (a short one):
"Understanding, as distinguished from having correct information and scientific knowledge, is a complicated process which never produces unequivocal results. It is an unending activity by which, in constant change and variation, we come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality, that is, try to be at home in the world."
--Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954
