creative discourse

The creative impulse is kind of funny. I've been reading a lot of philosophy from the Medieval period, and they talk a lot of discovering truth, and how there's a certain way to go about it. They develop complex systems of ideas that would take years to follow, just to understand, before even considering if they're right or not. That seems like a bit of a pain. And as I was sitting in Logic class last night, I realized that an education in philosophy is really kind of a drop in the bucket. I was sitting there, just listening to the discussion and I realized that I had no idea what anybody was saying. Maybe it's just that I'm a little bit dumb, but everyone was saying stuff like, "Well, considering Russell's conception of truth, it seems that he is relying on logical monism, which suggests deviation." And that might make perfect sense. That might be all fine and dandy. A few minutes later in class, the punchline to someone's joke was, "That's Wittgenstein for you." And people laughed. I had no idea what it meant or why it should be funny. I laughed anyways, mostly because this whole thing seems so ridiculous. And it occurred to me that there was this very specific type of language that grew up around any discipline. You know, a psychologist will have words that only another psychologist will understand. A theologian will have terms only another theologian can understand. A doctor has a whole language built up around saying what are the proper names of body parts and diseases and types of treatment. A philosopher will speak in concepts that only another philosopher can understand, and make references to Derrida's early work that are intended to clarify things. The thing I'm getting at is that each language system is closed, it excludes people. Foucault came up with the term "discourses" to describe the body of knowledge that encompasses the practices, assumptions, language, and behaviour of a particular group. I think the big problem is when a discourse does exclude people, does keep truth from someone else. I've heard it said that the theologian's job is translation; trying to interpret God for each generation and try to show how he is relevant. But in order to do that, in order to make any headway in any discipline, you have to learn the language. And this realization bugged me because I think there's a lot of people who think about pretty brilliant things, but they just can't communicate it. I might try to explain God, or at least how I understand God to be, to a philosopher, and they might jump back and yell heretic because I said that God exists. And the problem isn't my saying God exists. The problem is that the philosopher has climbed this precarious ladder into the heights of philosophy and "discovered" that strictly speaking, God does not exists, but rather God is. And once you're teetering on this magnificent ladder, the only thing that's keeping you upright is your careful use of language, the use of very specific and defined terms and concepts. So it seems perfectly legitimate and understandable to most everyone what "God exists" means. But it just gets in the way if you're not able to step outside the language. I think this is why people are so convinced that philosophy is just posturing and defining words. Just kind of kicking the can around the parking lot. Because in order to gain any ground, you need reliable terms that you can work with.

And so, in the last fifteen minutes of my last logic class, I was no longer able to pay attention. Instead, I wrote a little song at the bottom of my page. It went a little something like this: "Say logic, it's pedagogic, you can't dodge it..." That's just the beginning, but it went on. And then I drew these little stylized lines, with an ornate kind of circle thing. I spent a few minutes shading it all, and making sure that the shadows all went the same way. And then I wrote "End of Logic" in stylized letters. And then it felt finished. (Then the stifled buzzer went, and if you've sat in any classes at University of Winnipeg you'll know what it sounds like: the sound comes from the clock on the wall and always makes me think that there's a couple hundred volts pulsing through the wall.)

Finally, this brings me to where I started: the creative impulse. Being faced with all these discourses, ways of making sense of the world, I couldn't help but do something creative. And I don't necessarily think that these two things are directly connected. They are related, because any type of making sense of the world seems to be a creation, a kind of making up. But I just want to abandon any attempt at discovering the truth of the world as it is, at trying to reveal how people have wrong conceptions simply because they don't use words the same way I do. I want to find those connections. I want to give the benefit of the doubt, and have it given to me. I don't want to lose myself in some closed system. I want to create something. Dorothy Sayers talks about the creative mind a lot, and how humanity has this need to create because we are made in the image of God the Creator. And I like the idea that any time I make something, I'm becoming human. In some way, I'm being a little bit more who I was meant to be.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -TS Eliot