Idiom, Resonance, and Destiny

It seems that the poetic mode of knowledge is very much tied in with the slack required to exercise it. Through it "we gain our first touch... of our final purpose, which is to experience happiness, a resting from activity, a return to where we began, to a state of repose: leisure" (Taylor).

Thus -- and this is impoïetant -- "the poetic precedes the scientific" as "the passive precedes the active."

I was reminded of this the other day in the account of the 12 year old Jesus hanging out with the teachers in the temple, "both listening to them and asking them questions" (Luke 2:46, emphasis mine). So, we would do well to remember that listening and inquiring are prior to teaching or evangelizing or bloviating. We should make ourselves as receptive as Socrates, who knows only one thing. However, unlike Descartes, who uses his One Big Think as a foundation to build upon, Socrates uses his only as a vast and fruitful space of unKnowing.

This is a resonant space; or in other words, truth seems to have a "frequency" or vibrational quality that stirs our inner tuning fork. Aristotle (in Taylor) compares it "to musical modes and rhythms," such that "some philosophers say that the soul is a tuning, others, that it possesses tuning."

Now, tuning is not the tune, but we cannot play the tune unless the instrument is tuned. Therefore, playing music or thinking truth requires the proper tuning. How do we tune the soul? In other words, what would be the mind-brain-relations analogy to tuning an instrument? Remember, proper tuning only "prepares" us to play something. It is not the playing itself.

Obviously -- whether or not the educrats would express it this way -- the purpose of a public education is to help tune the soul so that it resonates with truth.

How's that working out?

What does the barbarized and liberalized (but I repeat myself) soul resonate with, anyway? I don't really want to know.

We've discussed this subject in the past, in particular, with regard to some of Christopher Bollas's ideas of the destiny drive, psychic idiom, and the unthought known. These terms are all related, in that we become ourselves (via the destiny drive) by finding the objects and relationships (idiom) that somehow precede us (i.e., are known but unthought, the unthought known).

So: "Human idiom is the peculiarity of person(ality) that finds its own being through the particular selection and use of the object [which also refers to people, ideas, and relationships]. In this restricted sense, to be and to appropriate are one."

Although I did not know it at the time (this book I'm looking at, Forces of Destiny, was published in 1989), this comes very close to a trinitarian way of looking at things. Think about it: we cannot "find our being" within ourselves per se, only in relationship, whether with people, ideas, scripture, works of art, God, etc. When we hit on one that bangs the interior gong, this means that the object is resonating with our idiom.

In this regard, "idiom" may be thought of as our unique soulprint. Now, everyone is unique, but how do we know this, and how do we make it a reality? Consider, for example, the Islamic or Academist worlds, where everyone must think the same thoughts, regardless of personal idiom. Another name for this is hell.

Of course, the same thing can happen in families, and usually does to one degree or another. For example, I was born into a family that did not share my idiom, to put it mildly, so it took quite awhile to discover the objects that bang my gong.

In one sense I was "lucky," but if Bollas is correct, there was also a Destiny Drive at work, and in hindsight I can see how I was able to manifest it by passively surrendering to its higher wisdom (or stupidity, depending on how you look at it). In other words, I never "planned" my life in a top-down way, but rather, allowed it to play out in a spontaneous and organic manner.

Not that I am a model human or anything. But at least I'm myself, so I got that going for me.

I'm sure I must have quoted this resonant passage before, but in the introduction, Bollas talks about the birth of his son: "What struck me was how he was who he is from scratch. He seemed to be in possession of his own personality, his very own unique configuration in being (what I term idiom) that has never really changed in itself."

Megadittos.

Q: "But what is this idiom? How does one provide evidence for it?"

A: I would say, start by inquiring within. What moves your soul? To what are you spontaneously attracted? What lights you up inside? This vital work "is a form of play in which the subject selects and uses objects in order to materialize elements latent to his personality, akin to a kind of personality speech, in which the lexical elements are not word signifiers but factors of personality."

Example.

Okay, the other night I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the hundredth time. While doing so I had a kind of flashback to when I saw it the first ten times in 1975, when I would have been 19 or so. Importantly, I was a complete idiot at the time, with no understanding of art & stuff (or of anything else, really). However, the film resonated deeply with me, but in a seemingly unusual way.

That is -- and this is in hindsight, because I wasn't consciously aware of it at the time -- it was as if the film were comforting to me. In a weird way, it was as if I were "at home" (in a psychic sense). Hence the compulsion to repeat the experience, for reasons known but unthought by me.

I won't get into that for which I was searching. Probably just the person writing this. In any event, the point is that something about it spoke to my idiom, an idiom that I was years away from actualizing. Has anyone else had this experience with an object, work of art, idea, religion, person, etc.? I'll bet you anything Rick has. What about the rest of you?

(And I see that this post has come fullcircle, in that we are inquiring into that first touch of our final purpose, which is to experience happiness, a resting from activity, a return to where we began, to a state of repose...)