Meditation III

Lately I worried about relations, and of course I still do. Even though things like our little car accident, the stolen car radio, the mice under our roof, or the search for the ideal roof rack for the summer vacation should concern me more, I am still caught up by relations. Should the worries continue, or can I ignore them and move on with my Alltag, the continuous ritual of self affirmation? Are relations worth worries? Are worries worth worries, or are recursive skeptics mad?

I think the opposite is true, the knowers, the zealots, the preachers, the philosophers with a system, are mad, and most humans are in between, mildly recursively skeptic, and mildly mad. Just at the point where the complexity of all the questions that continuously bubble up (Swift) in 'me' when I am confronted with reality, their implications, presuppositions, contradictions, overwhelm me, and I decide that the worries must stop, that I have to believe in something, must, just now, feel right about something, and without further inquiry or inner argument I take that, for the time being, for granted, and embark on a fantasy, a journey with a flying rug, a little everyday madness.

Given that we are like most humans, then, I soldier on (Children of men/ Gordon Brown) . Relations, in any case seem a worthy subject of inquiry, because every thought, every perception, every emotion that moves our poor unfortunate souls (The little Mermaid), has them relations as its subject, never isolated objects. Of persons we can't even form a concept without considering their relations to us and to others. And persons and others are what makes our life bearable, human and beautiful. If we think about something abstract like the number one, maybe by repeating it a number of times, or by trying to understand what its meaning is, or by trying to understand what Frege thought what its meaning is, we'll also have to think about the number zero and its relation to the number one. And of course universals, abstract terms, they all draw their meaning from their relations to certain particulars.

Yese, its all an infinitely interconnected tissue that world of ours, into which we are grown like a deeply rooted organ. Let's then continue our relational donquichottery:

mad I am, and mad I must be until thou returnest with the answer to a letter that I mean to send by thee to my lady Dulcinea; and if it be such as my constancy deserves, my insanity and penance will come to an end; and if it be to the opposite effect, I shall become mad in earnest, and, being so, I shall suffer no more;