Becoming

In keeping with yesterday's topic, and taking the opportunity to explain the meaning of my blog, I think I may be able to also provide a quick explanation in a discussion I'm having with a friend on Facebook on the same subject: Art. (3 Canadian geese with one stone lol :) )

Yesterday's post titled NOW talks about my faith in the human spirit to want, and do, good. The innate and prevailing desire for good is what heals the human race as a body, of disease, just as the human body regenerates and heals itself.

Artistic creation is unique to human beings and, as I argued in my Master's thesis on the subject of identity, the rational means to understanding ourselves and the universe. I specify rational because science, rather, prevails as the "rational" means to... I presupposed on philosopher Charles Taylor's view of what constitutes identity before going on to add the role of aesthetics, the study pertaining to the arts, in the picture. I'd like to quickly share some excerpts from Taylor's Sources of the Self. But, first, I can't help but insert this bit by Lincoln Barnett from his book The Universe and Dr. Einstein (because I love it so much).

It is perhaps significant to man that in terms of simple magnitude he is the mean between macrocosm and microcosm. Stated crudely this means that a super-giant red star (the largest material body in the universe) is just as much bigger than man as an electron (one of the tiniest of physical entities) is smaller. It is not surprising, therefore, that the prime mysteries of nature dwell in those realms farthest removed from sense-imprisoned man, nor that science, unable to describe the extremes of reality in the homely metaphors of classical physics should content itself with noting such mathematical relationships as may be revealed (Barnett 1957, 21-2).

Pretty cool thought, isn't it? I'd like to return to sense-imprisoned man at sometime. But, for now, on to Taylor:

It has often been remarked that making sense of one’s life as a story is also, like orientation to the good, not an optional extra; that our lives exist also in this space of questions, which only a coherent narrative can answer. In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going… I have been arguing that the issue of how we are placed in relation to this good is of crucial and inescapable concern for us, that we cannot but strive to give our lives meaning or substance, and that this means that we understand ourselves inescapably in narrative. (Taylor 1989, 47, 51)

And on to some more from Taylor (because I love it so much):

Perhaps the best way to see this is to focus on the issue that we usually describe today as the question of identity. We speak of it in these terms because the question is often spontaneously phrased by people in the form: Who am I? But this can’t necessarily be answered by giving name and genealogy. What does answer this question for us is an understanding of what is of crucial importance to us. To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand…
And this situation does, of course, arise for some people. It’s what we call an ”identity crisis”, an acute form of disorientation, which people often express in terms of not knowing who they are, but which can also be seen as a radical uncertainty of where they stand. They lack a frame or horizon within which things can take on a stable significance, within which some life possibilities can be seen as good or meaningful, others as bad or trivial. The meaning of all these possibilities is unfixed, labile, or undetermined. This is a painful and frightening experience.
What this brings to light is the essential link between identity and a kind of orientation. To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary. (Taylor 1989, 27-8)

But if this is so, then the naturalist supposition that we might be able to do without frameworks altogether is wildly wrong. This is based on a quite different picture, that of human agency where one could answer the question, Who? without accepting any qualitative distinctions, just on the basis of desires and aversions, likes and dislikes. On this picture, frameworks are things we invent, not answers to questions which inescapably pre-exist for us, independent of our answer or inability to answer. To see frameworks as orientations, however, does cast them in this latter light. One orients oneself in a space which exists independently of one’s success or failure in finding one’s bearings, which, moreover, makes the task of finding these bearings inescapable. (Taylor 1989, 30)

The last part is perhaps my favorite: "One orients oneself in a space which exists independently of one’s success or failure in finding one’s bearings..."

This space is who we are. We are, consequently, not what we see. Man's artistic expression on the other hand reflects, and in my opinion proves, the activity Taylor describes - namely where he states, "To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary."

So I think our creative activity, in other words, is an attempt to make good out of the bad, perfection from the imperfect, beauty as opposed to ugliness. It seems to be a physical acting out of the invisible activity Taylor describes as pertaining to the self. The judgements we make on works of art are sometimes unanimous and sometimes conflict, in the same way they do about people; because persons are works of art to begin with. And because we find ourselves in narrative, as Taylor suggests, we are always changing; particularly when we engage in communication. The continuous tension, in becoming, within the space which we exist portends to the artistic creative process; between the artist and the work of art...

We come away changed, to greater or lesser degree, for better or worse, with everyone and/or their works of art that we encounter. Such was and continues to be the case for me upon encountering Christ, and then his word, for example.

I hope this post sheds light on the enigmatic, perhaps, meaning of my blog where it reads:

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT
Art; in its fullness. Insofar as I see and understand, it's occurring as you read these words.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery