Overcoming The Other (3) Stories essentially the classic story (their fundamental story and all the tales which develop from it) has been proposed as the link between them (doing what they represent themselves to themselves) has been proposed as the link between them (doing what they do when they represent themselves to themselves) and us (doing what we do when we represent ourselves to ourselves. The fundamental need for stories among (or, better, between) human being suggests a formal agreement in principle even if there is a radical divergence in practice. What if the stories of the other so radically dialogue with what I know (from the stories in my own tradition) that there can be seen no correspondence, no sense, no (in short) me in their stories. In cases like this, which may be more plentiful than not, the fault would again, and more clearly, seem to lie in my epistemic approach to the other. It is "I" who do not understand. It is "I" who blocks the sense which the other does obviously find in their stories. It is "I" who resists their culture and background, their hopes and imperatives of which stories is the core. One may abstract, there is no imperative in my tradition to understand the culture of the other, and plenty of argument that I ougfht to resist, nullify, and abolish their culture. There are also strains in various cultures which not only tolerate, but approve the culture of the other. In contemporary society, true greater of our knowledge is, the greater our wisdom will be. The more we know about the culture from which a story was developed, the more we are able to appreciate the story. While it is apparent and appreciated when it is a question of our own culture, and stories, the epistemological structure which excludes the other may make us think that it is neither relevant, nor required when, it is a question of the other. They may be tolerated, but need not be understood. Besides, do we ever sufficiently understand our own tradition? Would not our time be better spent learning about ourselves? These two questions can be answered as such: First, to tolerate not understand is, ultimately, fundamentalistically and essentially, not to tolerate. It is not to be tolerated but to ignore, not tolerate, but ignorance and, thus, the very problem with which we are beginning with and from which we whished to escape. Second, if it is the case that the more we knowledge we have will provide conditions more and greater wisdom and, if, as also seems true, knowledge is obtained from contrast and distinction, then to know another culture, to know the distinction of otherness (and preserved the distinction so as to milk it for all the knowledge, potential wisdom, it may render), it ultimately to know our own culture that much better. An elderly philosophy professor once told me, when asked why we should study schools of thought which were obviously wrong, replied "Know your enemy." This seemed sound advise then as well as know, having lived thought an atrocious war with potential memories of an even more atrocious war, and seeing skirmishes (one hopes) growing fewer and smaller (seeing the coming of peace), being concerned that my children, and any children will eventually look upon the studies of war as just so much inapplicable nonsense, we may espy a day when "enemy" denotes merely an intellectual opponent. It has been said repeatedly that stories - in the classic and developing from the classics, explain our past and project our future. The fullest aspect of peace may be considered under a number of cogent but not equal categories. First, the other takes delight when a stranger investigates, or tells their stories in sincerity. The other is pleased that a stranger may take the initiative to spend time, exert the effort to learn about and enjoy their stories. While this delight of the other has obvious benefits in terms of peace, this is a rather law order of tenancy toward the good life. More important than oar interest in the stories of the other and their reaction to our interest in terms of extending good will and thereby broadening the conversation between us. More important still is, as should be apparent from all that has bean said to tries point, is the way the stories of the other challenge and prod us to know our own stories and tradition more deeply. Thirdly, it is the case that stories tell us about our past and speak our future. But in the tales tiger is produced a better vision, or a better way of proacting life into deeper signs of certainly projects more coherent, livable and interesting than would have been fated from our multiple silences and bombing in the past and present. Fourthly, if stories elucidate through the classics, the fundamental background of the classic (if, in other words, the classic itself was projected forward) then the results of a multiplicity, which results from mutual interest, interest the others (strangers to strangers developing a reward, peaceful, familiarity) then the result of our stories interest in one another will elucidate the behind/forward which is the background to, and the dawn of, that which is behind our stories as well as the stories of the other. Dis-course is a means of slowing down the eternal rapidity of the word which, once spoken, ascends rapidly into silence. Dis-course does not dislodge the word, but approaches the word from each possible direction. Dis-course approaches the word just as the seven blind men approached the elephant. But if the blind could specks long enough, and slow enough to be understood. They would eventually deduce that they were speaking about a simple phenomenon. Diverse perceptions must be given to conversation. Not only so, it is good to freeze some discourse, some roundabouts (which are not subtractions) so that scholars might note the course of the discourse. Stories draw our inter(est). Not all but some tales tell the exciting news about our inter-relations; the fundamental which defines inter-est. On the one hand, by being "inter," denoting distinctive diversity related with, on the other hand, "est" being and existence. This does obviously not denote the malt of human beings (a suggestion, in any event denied by both empirical reality as well as reason and rationality). Nor does it denote a future merger of any particular (nor certainly all) beings. Distinction is the essence of reason and reality. Any and all oneness must ontologically be invisible: yet even in this oneness (invisibility) is distinct. We are living in and with diversity. Stories celebrate such diversity. Yet celebration of this diversity is by making, forming, creating, delivering, showing, telling interest. A people may delight in the new offering of its people, in scientific, literary, technological, and artistic innovation but people define themselves by the old, worn out and true past codified in classics. Yet there is a connection between the new (and by implication, the future) and the old insofar as a true classic never runs out of things to say. Neusner�s project asks: can my stories make sense of the stories of the other, or can sense be made of the others stories in light of my own (and vice versa). It is a difficult question to ask: can I find the basis and justification for others in my own divergent stories? This is to ask more than whether the other has a right to the others stories. It should be noted here that the other, when impinging on by external violence, does not espouse violence him/herself. What they do is seek the good life. Where the story is, otherness is not. In other words, in those instances wherein we embrace the unified narrative of our (pietistic) tradition, we embrace thoughts, ideas, structuring which generate non-debilitating insight into the other. To put it differently, when we embrace our tradition of narrative discourse which involves us in the paradigm of necessary behavior, not molly do we necessarily drop our illusions of the stranger but work through the principles which would have us embrace the stranger (not as one of us, but as one our tradition would have us treat in a specific manner: as a neighbor, as one dear to God, as a person doing different things but a human none the less). The religions work to understand the bible, as well as everything else, on a primary level. This understanding is the gospel. The church has "no gospel, no good news, except in its own human words and according to its own human understanding. In the New Testament we do not only have a collection of parables but we have a story of parables being told. Thus the parables are not only not context less, but the context defined the place of / for the parables. Much thought is creativity. The passive langue holds together; creative language is language which means to express (which is advance, design, newness) or create (design, newness and/ or stretch) may well be divisive. Controversy occurs first, big and large, through language. A deed seen rarely causes fighting. What is controversial is the deed reported. Can the goal be to end jargon and expand communicative thought? Can the goal be to turn language to Speech and speech to Language? In misunderstanding a people hears itself talk as speech yet has the other barely talking in language. The problem is not "us" and "them." The problem is "as" and "out." We are "as" (metaphorized into all goodness). The other is out = the outer. Christianity was a metaphor in Judaism upon which an initially alienation conceptualized/polarized the metaphor and therefore disassociated it from "the given." The conceptualization abstraction - Christianity - was/is itself a metaphor. Metaphors are both satisfying to be themselves - what they mean are taken to mean, obviously mean, etc. - and require re-conceptualization through interpretation. Hence, the metaphor is at once clear and dead as well as challenging and suggestive. Yet a metaphor is not something we need to accept whole-heartedly (i.e. to be converted) nor rejected vehemently. A metaphor may be enjoyed or ignored. Judaism is a metaphor for Christianity and Christianity for Judaism. Stories are always metaphoric and metaphors always require perceptions and translation into all the forms of discourse. Dialogue as language in use as or become stories. Not everyone uses language to say, imply, denote, hide the same idea, plan; emotion etc. stories are not trends to habit, nor roads to intangibility. They are however, roads toward a better life. Dr. Bidpai writes: "The very worse habit would be that of moralizing away the effective substance [or a tale]... It amounts to a bypass around the story�s true destination: to explain away is to forget." "Thus, let the stories which you can remember do their own work by their very diversity," The other exists best in stories he or she or they create about themselves. Were this not so, Levinas would be right during our best moments, Sartre during our worse moments and Camu arbitrarily. We need stories to achieve stability. We need the other for fields of development. The story teller embodies that "situation of stasis and movement in which far-away was brought to the here and now." Various disciplines, precisely by being a discipline, limit and structure the various ways thought may proceed. Stories, on the other hand, are limited only by the structure of plot and rhetoric which as shown in the diversity of types, can be far expansive. Various disciplines are also beyond limit; limited by public opinion. Stories are stretched even through the inspiration they afford others. A discipline is always disciplining; a story is always more than itself. We learn from our own fictions; we might learn from the best image presented by others, but as the last image (which necessarily eschews negative aspects. This is not disingenuous on the part of the other, but statement of goals rather than deeds done. Reminiscent of Prometheus, the Igbo tell of Nkida, the dog who carried fire to his people. While there was "warmth and happiness all over the land," Nkida had burnt his nose so often that he never recovered his breath." He has been breathing fast ever since." Stories are in every civilization and are said to be "the glue holding everything together" Stories "fade" into fiction. Memory plays tricks. Memory is the art of tricksterism. Fiction remembers the imperfect and pleasantries of the past and turns them into a reconstruction. Fiction, then, remembers the future. We forget abstract arguments but remember examples. The abstruse is forgotten, but the sense, the memory, the encapsulation, the story is retained. Freud�s genius was to transform theory into narrative. Approach to the other is best made through stories. Reading my stories for what they reveal about the other is an obvious statement of negativity. It is also an implicit statement of care and concern. Reading the others stories for what they say about me reduces negativity because the fiction is always read as fiction but not untruth. Nor does the other wash him or her in a stream of lies, errors, or erroneous facts. Most of all, the other tells stories which explain our relationship A scholarly tract may be read once through and the logic of its presentation sufficiently well retained that the argument may be reconstructed even years later. A piece of fiction, on the other hand, may be read repeatedly and, each time, reveal a new insight. This is odd, inasmuch as the plot of a story can be identified and picked up more quickly than a scholarly tract; and, secondly the language of a story is generally simpler and therefore more easily retained. Stories may mean more things to one person than another; may mean even some thing more and different than the author intended. Stories certainly mean more things than intended by precise pieces of scholarship, and thus are in a formal sense more debatable and/or less secure as wisdom. Nevertheless, stories are repeated and repeatable while scholarship is rigid. The sources of power are stories, and everyone has access to the tales. What needs be learned, perhaps, is how to put narrative to use. An excellent story in any tradition is one which the reader/listener can hear or read any number of times and not get bored; obtain new insight each time one returns to the work. What accounts for this ability is, first, a familiarity with the text (in a world where, I imagine, too much familiarity leads to excruciating boredom. In this case, familiarity breeds contentment! How so? Each time one returns to the text, one brings the loop of experience which we have circled around on our way from the last page. The wider the loop the fuller enclosed the text. The legend of Icarus tells us that even if human beings had the power of flight, we would muff it. The four who entered the garden tells that mystical experience is naughty and dangerous, yet even in the telling we are told that Akiba evaded the danger. History is memory shorn of consciousness; story-telling is the gift of the return of memory. The historian tells us what people did in the past and how they behaved. The storyteller not only tells what people did in the past, but also how we ought behave in the present. What ought we do? Where are our examples? We ought to do as (Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Socrates) did. They are our examples, them and others. The historian, appealing to readers, is a critical reader. The storyteller is a creative speaker. The less interesting contrasts between the historian and the storyteller are the contrasts between critical and creative. There are creative historians, and there are critical stories. The more interesting contrasts between the reader who writes for readers so others can do what he / sue can do contrasts with the speaker who does one thing so others, the hearers can so something different, that is, hear. The historian in this light is monolithic dictatorial, the story teller gliding the ambiguity of speech and tale, is engendering. The practice of the storyteller is ambiguous. One telling leaves details out; not only the implied details but the never told alluded to details. Insertion and deletion are editors. Editors are rhubarb. The touchstones are expert storytellers. Thus, stories tie an ambiguity. As apposed to histories, which simple report or analyze or detail or structure, stories create. Historians appeal to the interested reader; stories appeal to the creative reader. The person interested in a subject may read several historians. Historians encode limits of discourse. Several historians of a specific circumstance or event tell different stories. Nevertheless, each �story �of the historian is guarded by similar criteria. Storytellers, on the other hand, never tell t the same story twice in a close approximation. There is always some subtle difference between one telling and any other. Events and details are added and subtracted from each different telling and each different reading, events are a series of details which historians encode limits; storytellers enact extensions We learn from the historian what really happened. We learn from stories what R E A L L Y happened. Whereas history establishes an objective perceptive, stories want to get the reader involved with his or her new thoughts to the quay. According to history, Moses ascended the mountain and returned with the torah. According to the true story we all received, there were created a true religion. But creation has many stories connected to "explaining" what, how, and why some things occurred as they did, and why some other things were not created. According to Michel de Certeau, fiction "narrates one thing in order to tell something else. � It is �metaphoric;� it moves exclusively in the domain of the other." Our fiction is our other come to greet us. By the same token, because it is fiction and shares in the trait of fiction, the fiction of the other is �familiar.� Hence our fiction posses a degree of otherness while the others fiction possesses a degree of being ours. A story which speaks to me is one which is heavenly endowed with meaning, information and trustworthiness (the meaning makes common cause with my interests and the information is relevant to my world view). The otherness of the others story lack one of more of theses criteria, or do not evidence them to a sufficient degree. What is a sufficient degree anyway? It may be difficult to determine because they are storied. As all stories, stories have all the formal quantizes of stories (beginning, middle, and end) and it must be true that they contain all three. Given the way we currently affect human nature, if you and I discover we have something in common, we begin to fight about its possessor, claim to have been its discover (thereby implying its directors, etc). The more abstract the commodity the more likely we are to form into clicks (e.g. numistic clubs, but certainly not joint owners of a particular coin but competitors in fact). The most abstract thing we share are stories. Yet these too are abstract in the sense that the deeper we delve into them, the more motifs and forms wobble and waif in favor of communication of something hidden but findable. When I read the stories of others I become a witness among other things. I view the others search for meaning and their quest for the good life. I become, in short, knowledgeable about what is important to the other. Hence, in extending myself to the paradigm of being a witness (and to witness to the stories of the other who is to be a witness to G-d). I fulfill the paradigm of being sageous ( a sage of G-d)
Copyright © 2004 G David Schwartz |