Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Peace
  • Truth
  • We ALL live off a Narrative Of Peace

We ALL live off a Narrative Of Peace

19 Jan ’10 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

Ok so I’m laying in the water enjoying an early morning swim at a nearby harbour-pool when all these thoughts stream into my mind. A sign that my mind has had enough vacation? I’m not sure.. Narratives of Peace is a topic I’m looking at doing a research project on in the second half of this year…

We ALL have a Narrative Of Peace (NOP) – that is, a story we tell ourselves will bring us toward a more peaceful place.

Even suicide bombers have one – acting with the conviction that their action will bring about eternal peace for themselves and their families, and bring about a world of greater peace for their descendants.

Religious narratives are quite obviously based on a NOP. If you do this… believe this… say this… then you will go to heaven and live in eternal peace.

In a capitalist world a majority look for the next purchase that they hope will bring them peace. Or maybe it’s a mortgage paid-off, moving to a bigger house, a better street, buying a boat, accumulating a certain digit on a bank statement. After this and this and this, then I’ll be happy, then I will be at peace.

Politics, ideologies, even the histories as told by the winners – are told in a narrative, one said to lead toward peace. Even our culturally defined pursuits of love and success – are narratives with at root a narrative of peace: a desire for happiness, harmony and completeness.

Evolution is a narrative, although the scientific one might not set its sights on peace. Is that the missing link? Over and above whatever other “missing links” exist… what meaning can be drawn from this 14 billion year process of evolution? What is it that we are evolving towards?

Which narratives are right, which are wrong? I guess that depends on the storyteller. It depends on the lens he or she sees the world through.

Is there a “grand narrative” of truth that transcends them all? If a grand narrative does exist we can be sure we will never know it, not in our present conscious anyway.

I understand where the postmodernists come from – the rejection of a grand-narrative, the rejection of absolute truth. I do see their point.

Today I was thinking about post modernism and the (very little) understanding I have of quantum physics… if all possibilities exist simultaneously until the observer observes one or the other, then surely we, as observers, are the creators of whatever individual truth we wish to create? Maybe postmodernists are right – it seems like at least on quantum levels no one truth exists until we select it.

Ok, crap. Now I think I’ve tied myself in a knot.

I do believe there is a grand narrative in the non-quantum dimension we find ourselves in. Sure I will never know for sure, maybe there are millions of grand narratives sitting, awaiting us to select one to observe. But I like to think there is one grand narrative that exists, one we can engage with and move closer to… and let me tell you why.

I suppose it is reasonable to say that some narratives that exist today are more true than others – depending on the sources of one’s data and the mental processes one engages in.

If we were able to look at our world through a lens that sat outside our universe, observing past, present and future all as one… I suppose it is reasonable to say that this non-earthly perspective or “Godly” perspective, we would be closer to the “truth” than any earthly lens we look through today.

If these to propositions are true then shouldn’t we be setting our sights on discovering this grand narrative, and drawing from it a narrative of peace? What would the world look like from the perspective of The Universe or even from a perspective outside our universe?

What is the point? How will it help us?

Ok. Consider the fact that fundamentalist religions are experiencing the most rapid growth they have ever experienced. Why??? I think it is because they offer a grand narrative. Granted they are a grand narratives based on words of historical men misinterpreted in our modernistic mentalities (mythos interpreted as logos, Jewish midrash as literal event, symbolic meanings stripped to create historical “truths” that our degenerating modern minds can understand)… but what they do offer the masses is something that evolution as it stands is often not presented to offer. Religions offer people a sense of wholeness: a sense of completeness; a sense of meaning; a purpose for one’s life.

Ok, now consider the “clash of civilisations” predicted to come from the clash of such fundamentalist movements. And the growing animosity between atheism and theism. Surely that is motivation to identify gaps and seek bridges?

Evolution as it stands, particularly since the dawn of post modernism, has failed to provide such a perspective. Where does my tiny individual consciousness fit into the big monstrous picture of an expanding universe? Evolution provided us a grand-narrative but somehow we abandoned it after WW2. We don’t need to look for a new ideology or new religion to replace it, we just need to take another look – reinterpret what it means to be a part of the grand evolutionary process.

If we little humans are but tiny pieces of a universal puzzle that continuously becomes more complicated as the space expands, what the heck can we do about it? Can we actually have a role to play?

Yes, I believe we can. I believe we do. The self-awareness of human consciousness is more advanced and complex than any other form of consciousness that we are aware of. And rather than running away from this gift we have to embrace it, figure out whatever the heck we are going to do with it in the millions of years to come.

As far as we know this awareness is new, extraordinarily new – given that our bodily shape has only been in this form for 700,000 years, and our minds have expanded exponentially faster through to the speed of change and information transmission we are witnessing today.

Recognising this gift. Living in awe of our awareness. And hopefully preventing it from imminent self-destruction has surely got to be a step in the pursuit of peace.

Have I lost you? I might even have lost myself in this one. Somewhere in my mind this makes sense but the rest of my mind hasn’t quite caught on. Maybe when these ideas are clearer in my own cognition I’ll be able to share this a little better than I’m doing today.

Peace, Truth
Meaning of life, philosophy, religion
Similar posts
  • Business leadership in climate change — I am consistently surprised by the initiative and leadership taken by businesses to address the climate crisis. Not all businesses obviously (e.g. ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and the other vested interest that have funded climate denial movement and created vast climate confusion), but MANY businesses and business analysts, scholars and consultants are doing a extraordinarily better job than many governments [...]
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer a... — I have been trying to remember where I read or heard this story, perhaps Eckhart Tolle or Deepak Chopra. After a big of Googling (key words like “farmer”, “horse”, “neighbour”, “son”), I discovered this story is claimed by various sources as Zen Buddhist, Chinese Proverb, Taoist and Sufi. The story goes something like this: There once lived a farmer and [...]
  • Why the right (brain) is right… — Are you a right-brain or left-brain type of person? Is there such a thing? Are there differences between our left and right brain hemispheres? Does it matter? Research into the left and right brain hemispheres was popularised in the 1970s, it exaggerated and reified the two sides of the brain as if some people were “right-brain” dominant: creative, image-based, intuitive, emotional; and other people [...]
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]F... — On 15 April 2016 the so-called “Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015″ was “Lapsed at prorogation” and the current status on the bill is (thankfully, at this stage) “Not proceeding”. I’m not sure whether this is a permanent status, or whether they just ran out of time and will return to the bill later…  When I see the word “fairer” associated with this bill [...]
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the ... — My latest academic publication – on the work of my favourite philosopher of all time: Alan Watts, and how his “dramatic model of the universe” can contribute to peace 🙂 Abstract This article explores the contribution of Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model of the universe’ to the pursuit of peace. It locates Watts’ critique of dominant Western worldviews alongside process philosophers, ecologists and [...]
Chapter 24: When in Rome (Buenos Aires)
When you lose your peace narrative….

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
    25 Mar ’10
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Related posts

  • Meaning of life
    • Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
    • Are the laws of science and “God” the same thing?
    • MOMENTO MORI (remember that you will die) so CARPE DIUM (seize the day)!!!
    • Potentialism: a philosophy for life
    • IS LIFE MEANINGLESS?
  • philosophy
    • Is “God” a Fractal?
    • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    • Joseph Campbell – The Hero’s Journey
    • Curing my incurable optimism
    • Disasters and Delhi
  • religion
    • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    • The Spirit of the Times (Zeitgeist)
    • Happy Ishtar!
    • The Religion Debate
    • What does this mean for my life today?

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress