The other day, I received an abundance of happy birthday wishes via Face Book from friends all over the world. Though I've heard criticism regarding the limitations of social networking– a weak replacement for actual social interaction that may further estrange us from fellow members of our species– I felt embraced, deeply moved, happy. Talk about warm and fuzzy. What a wonderful gift, FB. I'll leave discussion of the phenomenological relationship between virtual communication and actual human emotional response (feeling) to someone with a bigger brain (leave discussion of the relationship between feeling and thinking to the BB too). But my Face Book birthday party, and the feelings aroused, got me thinking.
After the party, the phrase: "A sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere," sprang to mind. I recalled when I first heard that, a very long time ago, I dismissed it as a seemingly profound statement concealing absolute hokum. I'd also seen it written a few ways with "God," "Infinity," and "Nature," inserted at the beginning, and took it to be a metaphor about a numinous presence. Agnosticism prevented me from giving it any further thought, and I buried it alongside quandaries about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Of course, like many things we burry, it came back to haunt me. Most recently, and ironically, in relationship to the internet and the social networking experiences I've had with sites like Face Book. Ironic in that that phrase, an idea regarding a sphere as a metaphor about a conception of god, infinity, or nature is a good definition, or description of cyberspace and the World Wide Web.
The internet is a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. And to further complicate issues, the inverse of this statement also seems to work: The internet is a sphere whose circumference is everywhere and center nowhere.
Have I gone off, or is there something remarkable about the fact that this ancient concept is perfectly applicable as a description for cutting edge technology? I dug a little deeper, and my superficial research unearthed a millennia old attribution to Hermes Trismagistus, the legendary Egyptian associated with the third century Corpus Hermeticum, and various other esoteric and mystical ideologies. A few more clicks cited Plotonis (c. 204-270 C.E.), the first proponent of Neoplatonism; another click, 12th century French theologian, Alain de Lille, then Pascal, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Emerson, and Jorge Luis Borges. There's something lapidary, and eternal about this that smacks of truth.
As I write (and realize I risk sounding delusional saying this), I wonder if when posting a blog I'm a kind of "center," like many of us doing the same thing all over the planet– everywhere– within a sphere whose circumference is nowhere really, but in cyberspace. That we can now comprehend, and exist within that sphere which had for thousands of years been used as a metaphor to describe god, gives pause for thought. Does this indicate a perceptual leap, a shift in cognition? A different way of seeing? Far beyond the simple binary optics of a Parallax View, I'm thinking about JL Borge's short story titled, The Aleph, "one of the points in space that contain all points."
Is it time to devise a new metaphor for god?
6 comments:
Well... you know I think you have captured one of those glorious Borges' themes here. A lot of people who were against him (for his politics) now embrace him for his weirdly accurate vision of the internet and how it is everywhere at once...
At any rate, thanks for the invite. Please keep me on the list.
Abrazos,
K
God is Love
Love is Blind
Stevie Wonder is Blind
Stevie Wonder is God.
HI Phillip. Happy Birthday. I'm running late with life this month!
This is agood topic, as All THINGS ARE and accessible all the time. Is the internet yet another model of life? What did Woody Allen say? Something like "art doesn't imitate life.. it imitates bad television." In this case, the Internet is an upgrade! You get more channels.
We are all the center of our spheres and circles. We manufacture bubbles that extend as far as possible beyond that center. This is called being a member of any given class of animals that move over the face of this earth. Conflict is inevitable.
Wow Philip, Thank you for sharing your magical words! I believe the global heart and mind are connected in an unprecedented fashion these days. Can't wait to hear more!
2011? 2011? It's October, 2013? I live alone in my stone farmhouse and can't see other people out any window, if I am lucky. Most of the time I am alone and loving it. Well I do have a dog. Across the road is a nursery, hundreds of acres, where they grow lovely trees, reminds me of Tuscany. The only people I see are Mexican farm hands and the farmers who drive down the road on their equipment. A short walking distance away, in the woods, out of sight is a full service butcher shop. Between growing my own vegetables and walking there.... I probably wouldn't have to deal with anyone. Have I become socially dysfunctional? No, I have become selective and spend time in nature and my studios. I find it incredible that I can wake up, choose to tap away on this little rectangle of technology and reach people and places I probably won't visit. I don't let the notion of infinity overwhelm ......I use this miracle of technology to reach out to friends, provide information for me when I need it and to encourage and urge others to spread energy! Come back to your blog Philip! Or are you somewhere else, where I could read your work?
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