Reaching the impossible dream with a rickety ladder


 Highlighted parts in blue are for discussion

‘We learn from deconstruction that language and narrative and media are necessarily incomplete in understanding and conveying reality. For me that was a profound shift in my life. I changed from searching for a grand narrative to live my life by to searching for multi narratives to live my life by. Which is tantamount to recognizing an intrinsic limitation of being human. It gives clues as to the nature of ourselves and our relationship to each other and the world around us. 

Ironically this isn't a purely negative realization. The abandonment
of a search for perfection, 'the truth', actually gives rise to freedom and new possibilities. For sure there may be a sense of loss and confusion too. Fear has to be accepted with such a radical disappointment, but the realization that we were trying to reach the impossible dream with a rickety ladder is also the realization that we were kidding ourselves anyway.

Having said that, I think it also reveals that accepting multi
narratives overtly was actually not so different to what we were really trying to do before, because we constantly had to turn a blind eye to living that way even in denial. Everybody does it anyway ..... Whether we strongly dislike it or not. But that doesn't stop many of us trying to reject post modernism (and multi culturalism?). It is a tendency of being human at times to believe in the truth and tradition. We gain by recognizing that in ourselves and others because it is a strong force ............ and often a very creative one as well as destructive’.

Personally i don't see anything wrong in principle in slipping back into grand narrative belief. I just have a tendency to notice it, not least because i came across the likes of post modernism and buddhism, and i am a practicing pagan.’

Comments