Schizophrenic aporiae
Aporiae are apparently irreconcilable conflicts between two entities or concepts. Zen Koans are meant to highlight these fundamental contradictions to encourage Zen students to achieve a higher level of awareness. This is not an easy task, which is why enlightenment is so elusive. The following is a partial and continually expanding list of the aporiae I have identified in my own life and mind:
Nature/Culture
Socialization/Solitude
Activity/Passivity
Reflection contemplation mindfulness/Routine
Creativity/Mechanistic rule-following
Broad Perspective/Details
Humility/Boldness
Fungible skills and knowledge/Expertise
Open-endedness/Exhaustiveness
Create/Discover
Know/Feel
Be/Do
Individual/Group
Chaos/Discipline
Ambition/Serenity
Restlessness/Quietism
Consumer/Producer (of culture, for example)
Entertain/Educate or Inform
Originality/Derivativeness
Create/Codify
Organize details/Big Picture vision
Ambition/Laziness
Free time (and bored)/Busy (challenged and engaged)
abstract (universal)/concrete (particular)
It occurs to me that some sort of integration of all of these elements is required in order to flourish. It also occurs to me that achieving some sort of integration of these elements is the proper task of living. Making money, raising a family, competing for social status, and every other motivation people experience can be placed into this taxonomy. When Aristotle advocated seeking to be virtuous (for humans, that means rational, and balanced) as a prelude to eudaimonia (a state of well-being akin to happiness, but much deeper and more stable), I think this is what he had in mind.
posted by schloctor at
9:35 AM
2 Comments:
Is it safe to say that humility is a state of "humbleness"?
If so, can't someone actually be bold by being humble? Isn't humility a bold statement at times in our culture?
If they don't mean the same thing, ignore me.
By
keeta, at 11:54 AM
I think it's true that humility and humbleness are the same, and I also think it's true that it is bold to be humble, especially in our culture. Here's the rub--it takes a truly self-possessed person to be so bold as to be humble in our culture of obsequious self-promotion and (usually empty) vanity. It wears a cat down to be a certain way without getting ANY kind of positive reinforcement. For an introvert like me, it seems almost too much to ask. I think that's one reason I crave community so much. Like-mindedness helps reinforce those behaviors that one ought to do for their own sake, but which it is often hard to find the intestinal fortitude to do consistently in isolation.
Your "humbleness" in your last sentence did not escape my notice. Positive reinforcement, coming your way!
By
schloctor, at 1:40 PM
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