I was mulling over Angel's comments about religion (which I feel rather
oversimply things,) when I came to an odd thought.
My own personal belief is that western religion is dead. That is to say
the social phenomenon that was Christian religion in the 8th to 17th
centuries simply is not to be found within Euro-American cultures. . . .
. . But how could we tell?
My thoughts drifted back to my passion for things past. If we want to
understand innovations in automobile or locomotive practice, we can look
at actual running artifacts of the period. Why don't we have a "running
16th century Church" or a "running American family of the 1950s?"
The question is deliberately very odd, but I think it raises important
questions about practice and history. We have learned much about
ourselves by studying our past practices that have become "shipwrecked"
in odd places (apprenticeship for example.) While not exactly complete,
The tailors that Jean Lave studied form something like the "Lost world"
the Sir. Author Conan Doyle describes.
If we learn something about ourselves from naturally formed "practice
time capsules," why don't we explicitly preserve practices? Why don't we
preserve an office that works without computers so that we can in a later
time study the differences that result?
The counter argument is of course "the butterfly in Brazil syndrome." An
office cannot function isolated from the computer world and still be
meaningful office. But if that is true that is something important for
all theoreticians to accept (implicitly most theories ignore that very fact.)
There is still another issue that troubles me. Why don't we *want* to
preserve practices? I enjoy preserving my old 1965 wagon. There is a
move afoot to save the U.S.S. Hornet from the scrapyard here in San
Francisco. Yet, to preserve a thing is much like preserving a steam
locomotive in a museum - it becomes dead dinosaur bones. Anyone who
knows steam engines knows it the sounds, smells, the visions of bellowing
steam that makes a steam engine something worth preserving. For some odd
reason, preservation is tantamount to mummificato ?eo'A the
practicoCeave been objectified out do we seem to even have the desire to
preserve it.
We do seek to recreate practices, the largest example I know of are the
civil war battle reenactments. Why must we wait til something is dead
and buried before deciding it has value after all? Something just
escapes me . . . . .
Edouard
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: Edouard Lagache :
: lagache who-is-at violet.berkeley.edu :
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: Thus man makes History; this means that he objectifies himself :
: in it and is alienated in it :
: Jean Paul Sartre, Search for a method, 1960 :
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