- You are either a Mac or a PC.
- You are either Republican or Democrat.
- You are either a capitalist or collectivist.
- You are either Catholic or Protestant.
- You are either cardio or weights.
- You are either an artist or a nerd.
- You are either a rationalist or an empiricist.
Really? We live in a society of extremes; a society that says we have to be on one side or the other. Either dominant or recessive. But we aren't like that as people- we try to explore all sides, all angles, all perspectives today. In the development of the new scientific theory, scientists and philosophers polarized between rationalism and empiricism. They fought over whether we can discover with reason alone or whether we need only hard facts. Dustin Wax said, "We get ideas from within ourselves and from without, or more to the point, from the interaction of the two." We can learn from all the various theories, sometimes by reasoning and other times by experimentation. There can be partial or co- dominance. We can learn from both sides and be a combination of them.
I remember in a poetry class (of all places) we talked about the reactionary trend within poetry. In distancing themselves from the past, a new generation of poets would reject all tenets; in other words, they went to an extreme. But if you read their works, you see hints of the past in the texts. So is it a culture of extremes or a culture desiring labels?
ReplyDeleteWe definitely want labels, but I think they way we tend to label things today pushes us to the extremes.
ReplyDeleteOne of the defining characteristics of a "Renaissance man" is that he did not allow himself to be blocked in by those boxes. Leonardo da Vinci was both an artist and a science geek, for example. Most health enthusiasts do both cardio and weights (it's awfully silly to limit yourself to just one).
ReplyDeleteMost people, of course, don't fit into boxes like that. Often, it's a personal effort to identify with a group, or it's a group trying to find a reason to attack someone else, that creates boxes around people. It's interesting to watch.
Kristi! It's interesting that you post about extremes and include a playlist with country, because often times I am tempted to put people who like country into a box. But how dumb is that! I recently fell in love with a Dolly Parton song, and I usually go for Indie music. Now I wrote a blog post about it! But you know what, I like Faith Hill, at least listening to your two songs, and I say don't worry about the boxes! :)
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