Post by laughter on Nov 23, 2013 16:27:55 GMT -5
So the topic of "coming empty" has been coming up quite alot in the past few months.
In my estimation coming empty is not amnesia: it doesn't mean forgetting the conversation you had yesterday or the week before or even one you had years ago. It doesn't mean abandoning the mental maps that we make along the way as we get to know each other, as best we can, each of us separated by the pairs of keyboards and monitors that deliver our medium. The images that we build up of the people we correspond with here are bound to form, and denying that is sort of a way of denying our humanity, and in doing that, we deny life itself.
To me what coming empty means is that we see these images for what they are: images .. and in this, what I'm referring to of course, is clarity. Now these images are like coins in that they have two sides. There are the dark brush strokes where we paint another as having some sort of bad intent, suspect motive, or as acting out of ignorance, unconscious reactivity, or some other bit of beknightedness.
On the obverse side of the coin are the positive feelings that the words of another can evoke. When we read something that touches us and moves us in some way, what we are likely to associate with the writer is something bright and uplifting, perhaps even the qualities of goodness, kindness or charity. Now most of you are no strangers to the ideas of distinguishing the image from what the image is an image of, but this idea of positive feelings as having no more value than the negative ones seems to be a bit controversial.
I certainly understand the controversy, because in regarding the images that I have of each of you, in setting aside the coin, I can honestly say that I feel an affection for everyone I've corresponded with here, even those of you I've had knock-down drag-out conceptual or emotional food-fight fests with. What's left, at the core, in setting aside the images, both positive and negative, is a residual that begs the word friend, but in the end, there is no vocalizing the heart, and that word, like any other word, can only ever point.
But in suppressing either set of impressions in favor of another -- in either nursing a grudge, or cultivating a positive image of another, in discarding only part of it, we mistake the image for what the image is an image of. This might even raise, if you think about it, an interesting question on the notion of loyalty, but as with any other conceptual conundrum, there is no conceptual resolution to it, so it's best not to think about that one too much.
It is this type of suppression that is behind the idea of mistaking deliberate selective amnesia for coming empty, and I've seen this game played out in it's most extreme and comic form in the practice here of account resignation and reincarnation under a different name. Now don't get me wrong here -- I'm not disparaging or discouraging that at all. It's kinda' cute really -- I take it as a sort of light form of slapstick comedy.
Coming empty isn't something that one can do alone.
In my estimation coming empty is not amnesia: it doesn't mean forgetting the conversation you had yesterday or the week before or even one you had years ago. It doesn't mean abandoning the mental maps that we make along the way as we get to know each other, as best we can, each of us separated by the pairs of keyboards and monitors that deliver our medium. The images that we build up of the people we correspond with here are bound to form, and denying that is sort of a way of denying our humanity, and in doing that, we deny life itself.
To me what coming empty means is that we see these images for what they are: images .. and in this, what I'm referring to of course, is clarity. Now these images are like coins in that they have two sides. There are the dark brush strokes where we paint another as having some sort of bad intent, suspect motive, or as acting out of ignorance, unconscious reactivity, or some other bit of beknightedness.
On the obverse side of the coin are the positive feelings that the words of another can evoke. When we read something that touches us and moves us in some way, what we are likely to associate with the writer is something bright and uplifting, perhaps even the qualities of goodness, kindness or charity. Now most of you are no strangers to the ideas of distinguishing the image from what the image is an image of, but this idea of positive feelings as having no more value than the negative ones seems to be a bit controversial.
I certainly understand the controversy, because in regarding the images that I have of each of you, in setting aside the coin, I can honestly say that I feel an affection for everyone I've corresponded with here, even those of you I've had knock-down drag-out conceptual or emotional food-fight fests with. What's left, at the core, in setting aside the images, both positive and negative, is a residual that begs the word friend, but in the end, there is no vocalizing the heart, and that word, like any other word, can only ever point.
But in suppressing either set of impressions in favor of another -- in either nursing a grudge, or cultivating a positive image of another, in discarding only part of it, we mistake the image for what the image is an image of. This might even raise, if you think about it, an interesting question on the notion of loyalty, but as with any other conceptual conundrum, there is no conceptual resolution to it, so it's best not to think about that one too much.
It is this type of suppression that is behind the idea of mistaking deliberate selective amnesia for coming empty, and I've seen this game played out in it's most extreme and comic form in the practice here of account resignation and reincarnation under a different name. Now don't get me wrong here -- I'm not disparaging or discouraging that at all. It's kinda' cute really
-- I take it as a sort of light form of slapstick comedy.Coming empty isn't something that one can do alone.
