this is the first post in series that i hope to begin on a new idea that i am having. i don't know what to call it, but i want to explore what it means to be post-teleological, and if this is a feasible or pragmatic path to head down. perhaps it is heretical (wouldn't be the first time i've waded in those waters), but it a place that i want to explore (create?).
my question is, why do we suppose that there is a goal? i still haven't found what i'm looking for, well why am i looking? is there anything to find?
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Is there another alternative than aimlessness? Also, is this a personal or communal experience? If the answer is "yes," how do you engage a text like "being made conformadable (sp) to his image" which seems to have a goal. I think there are many erronious goals, goals that distract more than anything else, so I am more than open to this as an intriguing alternative.
I also think there are erroneous ways to spell things too.
but what if imagio dei is more fluid than that. recapitulation seems to point to a creation that is fraught with potential and i hope that it is a potential never realized (or maybe i dont). even at that, my current interpretation of my experiences has led me to believe that there is a lot more give in this whole thing. it is very reactionary and episodic. but i need to read more hume as i alluded to before.
Good point. Something else I was thinking of after I put the computer to sleep last night- does this move you to being post-narrative, because it seems story has a plot, or does it just redefine it?
I concur with episodic understandings. There seems to be a lot of treading water. "intriguing" sounds like I am not for such an exploration as you have embarked upon, but I am.
post-narrative. hmmm. perhaps. but rather than plot being the aim to finish the book, perhaps we discern the plot looking back. or perhaps we shape our memories in such a fashion to find a plot. even here we want to categorize.
we want to find something to relate to. to make sense of our life. so in looking back we pick and choose the memories and events that will begin to give consistency to this story. thus the memories that fit become the highlights. the watershed events. and then the memories that do not fit, are either assimilated, wrote off due to randomness, or they cause us to reconsider where we want to go and what story we want to use. just some musings.
So then in saying "we want" you are making the concession explicit that reality is a construct of our own making? I think this is correct, and acknowledging it from the outset is helpful. And the ordering of memories is our own devise?
If we find what we seek to relate to in the Holy Spirit (or relate whether we want to or not) doesn't that drive us to an ordering that is (perhaps; or somewhat?) outside of our sphere of self-understanding? So that memory's signifacance (and pattern?) is revealed rather than quantified?
I have no idea if this is the tree your barking up, or if I am even in the right forest. Just throwing something out there.
i think for the sake of this conversation that i will say that reality is constructed. i also would say that present events (events of presence) do have a role in the encoding(?) of memories. thus we both construe the cuurent situation to conform to the order already created, and perhaps allow a change in the 'supposed' narrative due to the current event. i want to say that all is revealed, but my construction has a bearing on that revealation.
I seem to remember a previous conversation we had involving epistemology. One observation from that which might possibly be applicable here:
Much of your reasoning/experience concerning existence seems to revolve inside of yourself. You seem to be deconstructing and then looking at the rubble trying to figure out what it all meant. It may not mean anything.
Imago dei is telos. But don't define telos. Definition comes from within you. And right now you seem to be in a pattern of deconstructing. Any definition or thinking you attempt on the matter will end (or not) in a pile of rubble where you are again asking yourself "what does it mean?"
I don't think we are unable to understand meaning aside from the one who gives meaning.
Kant would tell you the drive to an end is one of the categorical imperatives. I don't know. But it seems we all know something else is out there.
I think to have post-telos implies that telos has an end. If "I am" is the beginning and the end then I do not think "the end" ever ends. Just as the beginning never began.
Again you are looking within yourself. Temporal constraints (that exist within you) cannot apply to God.
Perhaps what you see as telos looks like the end of the game when it was only a touchdown or perhaps it was only the first down. Downs, touchdowns, games, seasons - each serve as an end but none truly end. Each serve as a marker, a chapter an end to a certain part of the story. But perhaps the story is eternal.
Perhaps it's not your story. Which is why you're still looking. You don't know how it ends.
**I wrote "I don't think we are unable to understand meaning aside from the one who gives meaning."**
I mean "I don't think we are ABLE to understand meaning aside from the one who gives meaning. We can't know the end of the story because we aren't th eones writing it."
in a sense i agree. i do not want to couch this in the time constraints that have been passed to me. again kant may be wrong there. the thing i am getting at is that telos is not some some static state to which we acheive. the end is moving. thus the end can be now and then.
as for my deconstruction, i do not feel as if i am trying make sense of the rubble, i am the rubble. i dont want to recategorize and destroy again. but maybe i am unknowingly/unwillingly.
maybe post-telos is the wrong language. perhaps supra-telos. or ante-telos. a telos that is not confined to a horizontal plane of time/space, but one that transcends. the nodes, or places/episodes of experience, do have an end, and can be self conained containers. but where is the line that past episodes of experience inherently point towards what is next. certainly there are signs that point ahead but what if you are acts 8'ed and removed to another place time, that was not on the map?
uber-telos
But perhaps where our telos has limitations and boundaries. God's telos does not have these same restrictions.
Maybe this post-telos or hyper-telos is really just God's telos and what we have been speaking of is simply a shadow of that which is imperfect because of our interactions with it. Upon contact with our sin nature it was given boundaries and restrictions but will be restored, as so many things will be, in the "end".
Maybe what we looking for is the restoration of that which was stained.
no i think it goes beyond that.
i do want to say it is god's. whatever "it" is. but i certainly dont think that whatever was lost is the goal. i think that we have been presented with a "new" situation and that whatever was before can be no more. i also would want to say that there was and always has been more intended for us then in the first adam. because this is a relationship there is room for change.
i also think that boundaries and limitations can be obliterated in the contact with the spirit. to fall back and only say that there is more because we are sinful is not what i am going after. for the experience of god is as authentic now as it was/will be. just some more ramblings.
Perhaps in saying that God is the one who makes everything new again is to say in a sense that each "node" is a telos in itself.
But I would say that contact with sin has diminished in some sense ones' involvement with these "nodes." Thus life in the Spirit, or that journey in God to God with God is a recapitulation of the first intentions and is a re-forming experience (or numerous random experiences) done by the Spirit in us.
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