Re: language in service to revelation or encapsulated in dyadic

Jim Woods (TrlBlzrOne@AOL.COM)
Thu, 22 May 1997 08:11:52 -0400

In a message dated 97-05-21 10:16:42 EDT, you write:

Wade:

> OK. I'll bite. While I agree on your general characterizations, what I
> want to know is, how do we interpret our stay in the Garden of Eden where
> we are 1) cast in God's image and 2) put in charge of all the animals. I
> agree there's a boundary to 'control' somewhere and, indeed, to even think
> of it as 'control' is to 'go dyadic' and miss it - but where's the
> boundary?

The boundary question is a good one and is critical to the Percy's
understanding of semiotic and its relationship to knowledge and morals as
those are present in lanuage as it is used in Triadic exchanges. I think one
element of the Genesis narrative that speaks to your question is the fact
that the 'innocence' of the Edenic
story is a qualified one. It includes awareness of a boundary as a necessary
component of humans relationship to God and the awareness of the boundary
arises in the first instance in relation to the issue of refraining from
eating the fruit of the tree of life. In other words, Edenic conciousness
included as part of the pre-lapsarian experience the awareness of boundaries
as a natural correlative of man's relationship to God. It seems to me that
that original boundary was constituitive of, and hierarchically related to
boundaries relating to the way in which human stewardship of creation would
be addressed in relation 1) to fellow human beings and 2) other
creatures.....eg. thou shalt rest on the sabbath and so shall your servants
and your oxen <G>

> The same can be said of gasoline or any technological advance. But to
> play Devil's Advocate, how many people have been killed by atom bombs?
> How many have been killed by napalm? More people died in the fire bombing
> of Tokyo and Dresden. What makes Nagasaki so important? Walker Percy was
> always fond of having Tom Moore read about WWI battles where casualties
> were in the millions. One could argue atom bombs are a good thing because
> they at least force us to realize how interconnected our actions are.
> It's virtually impossible to launch them without bringing terror down on
> yourself (though freelance terrorism poses a problem).

I agree with you that Nagasaki and Hiroshima do not represent a unique
problem vis-a-vis technology. And as Vonnegut pointed out Dresden was in
many was as horrific as Nagasaki and Hiroshima. There is an important
distinction still to be made, I believe between weapons and lawnmowers <G>

I think that while more people have been killed following the exhortation to
'see the USA in your Chevrolet' than by the dropping of atomic bombs, there
is a qualitative difference between these matters. In the first case the
existence of the atom/hydrogen/neutron bombs moves the threshold of
possible/acceptable/usable violence to such a horrific level that it makes
other forms of violence appear more 'acceptable' or 'humane'. But what is
interesting in both cases--the car and the bomb is that each becomes a terror
when
> I think the ultimate problem with technology is, we all get it. It gives
> us greater and greater power over our world and, hence our own physical
> body. I know this may irritate the orthodox Catholics out there but,
> what's wrong with cloning or artificial insemination? Enough alcohol is a
> pretty effective birth control device. Should we see it in that capacity?

What you say here is very interesting. The matter of gaining power 'over our
world and hence our own physical body' is an interesting one. It seems to me
that 20th century man is increasingly baffled by the fact that being an
emodied creature is one part of his creatureliness. Whether through the use
of steroids by athletes, lsd/heroin/alcohol for escape or the use of Sodium
90 for therapeutic control of populations, mankind seems to have great
difficulty living with the Cartesian solipsism of dyadic understandings of
human beings.

> I bring it up, not because I wish to criticize but because I myself don't
> know. I've always been troubled by Paul's advice to the early church on
> vegetarianism. I forget what book it's in but it says something to the
> effect of nothing in and of itself is inherently bad unless we make it so
> or cause it to lead to the downfall of our bretheren.

> How are we to understand such a powerful statement?

I think you may be referring here to Paul's teaching re: eating food offered
to idols and the matter of religious fasting. Without getting into
exegetical matters, I think Paul was reminding his readers that the intention
of the persons engaging in any practice is to honor god and in so doing they
must also take care not to give offense to those weaker than
themselves....more hierarchical boundaries <G> in this case saying that we
need take care for one another in making our choices....This all in
refutation of the Gnostic belief that 'all things are lawful'...

> > I think that language such as this is a classic example of the way in
> which
> > dyadic thought, not only denies humans insight into the transcendent
> > character of human life, but also endangers mankind by making accurate
> > practical moral judgements much harder...something I think Percy
> recognized
>
> I agree and yet something still troubles me about this, as if the moral
> judgment shouldn't just be a reaction (maybe)? as if it should be prior?
> or have no relation to the technology? That's not quite right either...
> Oh well. That's life. As Paul Valery said, "The future's not what it
> used to be."

I think the moral judgement is to be taken before we take the stopper off the
bottle, yes. We won't be able to do that unless we take Percy's injunction
to stay with the
triadic understanding of semiotics and explicitly relate it to scientific and
technical questions. In other words, the locution 'knowledge for knowledge's
sake' is itself the beginning of the disassociation of knowledge from
boundaries arising out of the triadic nature of human existence....

I enjoyed your note very much, made me think! <G>

Jim
>
> Wade
>
>
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> From: Wade Riddick <riddick@MAIL.LA.UTEXAS.EDU>
> Subject: Re: language in service to revelation or encapsulated in
> dyadic
> reductionism....?
> To: Multiple recipients of list PERCY-L <PERCY-L@its1.ocs.lsu.edu>
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