The search for 42

I've spent years wondering what is the most fundamental choice I need to make about how I choose to think of the Universe, as part of my search for that great thing I call "Wisdom". Eventually I identified the following distinction.

IMO, either persons (not "people") are afterthoughts and therefore relationships are window-dressing, or persons and therefore relationships are right at the heart of the nature of things. One way or another, either choice implies something about the value I will place upon persons and relationships around me, both in their nature as representative of the class of "things" I'm calling "persons" and "relationships" and in their particularity as individual instances of "persons" and "relationships". Either choice also determines why I will assign these things the values I do, and what I will do about them.

My working hypothesis now? I suspect there are ways of saying it that would be better, but the one that appeals to me right now, because it allows me to layer in more of what I think I mean and don't mean, and to explore more avenues of what I might or might not mean, is this:

"In the beginning was the Relationship, and the Relationship was face to face with God, and the Relationship was God. The Relationship was face to face with God in the beginning."

I'm trying by this to "cast a brick to attract a piece of jade". Are there any jade-carvers out there?

-- Lord Groundhog

42, part 2 (Apr 18, 2001)
In the middle of a discussion this morning (on "persons" and "relationships", as it happens), it occurred to me that I should have explained here why I distinguished in my first entry between "persons" and "people". Although to me the distinction is self-evident, it might not be to everyone.

I tend to think of "person" as referring to any sentient being, apart from considerations of which species it wears. So in my usage, any genuine locus of intelligences, emotions, intentions, and such qualities, in whatever proportion and range or limitation of function, I call a "person". I imagine (I choose that word deliberately) that there are individual members of other species than humans -- not necessarily on earth, but non-terran species -- who say, "cogito ergo sum". And to me they would be "persons".

"People" I think of as being weighted by custom for use as a collective term for human persons.

I know it's arbitrary, but I find it useful when I want to focus my attention on the elements of personhood rather than allowing my attention to be diffused onto elements of species or culture.

-- Lord Groundhog

~~~~~~~~~

Just for the sake of it, I want to point to an interesting site, with an interesting range of bulletin boards on matters serious and frivolous and in-between, a distributed computing project on particle acceleration, great graphics, some cool programs -- oh yes, and a fascinating on-line adaptation of an old game. It's at <http://stephenbrooks.org>" >http://stephenbrooks.org>.

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