Here\u2019s a myth I heard: We sing and dance for the gods. This is our task. They don\u2019t have hands and feet, so we need to do it, and they enjoy through us. I think it was about Australian Aborigine nature religions, but I\u2019m not sure. It\u2019s a deep idea, though. <\/p>\n
Dancing and singing has been an important part of my life, apart from professional or scholarly endeavors. Poetry, the visual arts, aesthetic endeavors in general\u2014the point is that they aren\u2019t obviously useful. They elaborate life, add dimensions that aren\u2019t very rational. Then there\u2019s philosophy, which should be rational\u2014but my point is that it shouldn\u2019t be entirely rational. There are too obviously certain elements that resist rational exposition and trying to make these and all existence rational is a Procrustean endeavor\u2014alluding to the ogre Procrustes who tied his \u201cguests\u201d to a bed and then either stretched them if they were too short or sliced off bits of their feet or legs if they were too tall\u2014in the ancient Greek myth of Theseus. The point is that existence transcends our puny models of how it should all be. Our culture has created a subtle religion of philosophy, an assumption that it can and should be rational. I disagree.<\/p>\n
Foolin\u2019 around and all the other aesthetic enjoyments are great, too. A largely or fully rational theory or scheme can be aesthetically pleasing, but that doesn\u2019t mean that whatever is aesthetically pleasing must be rational!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here\u2019s a myth I heard: We sing and dance for the gods. This is our task. They don\u2019t have hands and feet, so we need to do it, and they enjoy through us. I think it was about Australian Aborigine nature religions, but I\u2019m not sure. It\u2019s a deep idea, though. Dancing and singing has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,24,15,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-mandalas-doodles-scripts","category-autobiographical","category-favoritethings","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2011,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions\/2011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}