One marker of liberalism is the belief that relevance and familiarity are the same thing. This idea murders growth.
Familiarity is only the first part of relevance; however, when something is absolutely familiar, it becomes irrelevant. Nothing is more familiar to me than my boxer shorts; which is precisely why I spend the least amount of my day thinking about them.
It seems to me that relevance--as in, something that is bound to get one's attention and retain it--must be above all understood as a matter of urgency. And that which is urgent must in part involve the unfamiliar, the strange, the not-yet; all of those things which shake us off our comfortable balance of familiar things. By it's very nature, the 'urgent' temporarily disables our "auto-pilot" manner of living, not necessarily in exchange for panic, but rather, to give our bodies over to deliberate and mindful being.
And transcendence, when it is respected, is always urgent; if only it has the slightest hooks into familiar consciousness, it will be relevant.
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