We Approach Significance with Halting Feet
Bruce Charlton’s latest post made me wiser than I was. It is as pithy as it is true. (In it, he is also, if I may so so, at his most JG).
We want significance in our lives; but we fear it too. Significance implies that what we think, say and do have permanence and universality; but that clashes with a sinful desire that we can act without consequences, avoid responsibility.
-thus Bruce Charlton.
(Related JG posts–
And also this post on contradictory commandments from the Old Country.)
Bruce C. then takes one step beyond and explains why love and the significance and objectivity are all related. That is the part that filled me with joy. You submit to reality not as a hardheaded rejection of love in favor of practical things, but as a form of enchantment. Reality is what lets you reach out and touch someone.
Bruce Charlton
August 29, 2019
Thanks G. I was indeed in a JG mood when I wrote it; strangely enough having had a distorted dream that night involving my family visiting the US and meeting up with yours! All rather jumbled, but that was in it. Then I came up with this extrapolation of some shared concerns. Tho I prefer Not to call this justice, because I think that it has been over-emphasized in Christianity. And because modern Man craves significance, rather than justice (as is obvious from ‘ social justice’ being almost the opposite of traditional justice).