Monday, September 11, 2006

Brief point...

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.

No comments: