Sailing Beyond the Sight of Eisegesis
As the blind men argue whether the elephant is a tree, wall, rope, or snake, they go into politics, as we see in the first two issues of this publication. Then they cannot fathom why this perverse, misguided world does not just tune in on their “visions” and beat a path to their doors, whether the mousetrap is better or not. Everything would be so grand if their intentions were properly extended. What else is there to life, anyway?
Try to tell them there is no necessary connection between intentions and results. They will take it as an insult to their intelligence. The absurdity of some other faction’s exercise in generating political will is too painfully obvious, even laughable, of course, whether it is trying to create new socialist man or old conservative woman. Then it busily, obliviously, reverts to generating its own. Try to extend their frame of reference and consider yourself fortunate indeed if you do not get some peevish, precious blow-off. Some might even call you a relativist, if you suggest their perceptions are less than absolute.
You do not have to be an activist to do this in your personal life, but figure this sort of thing keeps the divorce courts busy and workplaces acrimonious. Figure this sort of thing, too, is why so many are disconnected from politics altogether.
What to do about it? Actually, dear reader, if you are that far along, there is hope for the world. Try the definitions in a psychological dictionary for such concepts as egocentrism, false consensus effect, individuation, deindividuation, animism, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, pleasure principle, projection, and reality testing.
Look up index entries for egocentrism, Piaget, and science in Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, the point being that the ability to separate internal thoughts and external reality is the basis of science.
Likewise, look up artificialists, creationism, evolution vs. argument from design, and Piaget in Paul Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human, that evolutionary concepts are difficult to comprehend. Belief in creation by fiat is so much more automatic or reflexive or “natural,” whether in physical “first nature” or social “second nature.” (Which is a fancy, perhaps diplomatic, way of describing those who have to have their own way in matters large and small.)
Likewise, Robert Fritz, Creating, the chapter on first vs. third person orientation
Good luck, but figure it will take a religious approach, even among the irreligious. Actually, everyone is religious in the sense of having a frame of reference that is not easily expanded. There is a very bad religious practice, in any event, eisegesis, about which not much is written. Usually applied to interpretation of Scripture through pre-conceived notions, it applies to life in general. In common language it comes out, “Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind is made up.”
What else is there? A beginning computer programming course had one of the few college lectures yours truly got anything out of, and a good decade before “user-friendly” became a household word. You think the computer is a very smart machine but it is not. You would not tell it, get me a glass of milk. No, you would tell it, take two steps forward, two steps to the left, two steps to the right, find the refrigerator, find the door, find the handle, pull the handle, find the milk, etc.
In other words, the computer does not tune in on your giddy trips. No, you have to climb out of yours and deal with it on its own terms.
Too bad so many people have such difficulty doing this with other people, in private or public, whether face-to-face or through public policy.
In pagan, polytheistic, pre-Genesis Mesotopo-tamia there was “no correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being,” by Rabbi Nahum Sarna’s exquisite exegesis of Genesis, in particular one paragraph likely to be reproduced in every issue of this publication.
Ancient Mesopotamia? How about here? And now? Exegesis, probing the “original intent” of Scripture or whatever, as opposed to sloppy, infantile, disconnected, self-defeating eisegesis?
Is there any "correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being”? If not, then life is just a big crapshoot, an orgy of impulse gratification. Maybe it is, judging by the way so many people go through life, in matters great and small, in stations high and low. Such is eisegesis as a way of life, the source of the world’s anti-social and self-destructive conduct.
What if there are “correlationn(s) between right conduct and individual or national well-being” If so, and we realize it, then we can no longer tell the world, “Get me a glass of milk.” The world is then a computer to be programmed. If we want results, it is no longer a matter of being louder than thou or more obstreperous or peevish or precious. It is a different game altogether, or exegesis, life beyond the legends in your own mind.
And we have to remember that primeval law of all computers, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
In other words, there is no necessary connection between intentions and results. Intentions have to be translated first, losing something of course in this less than ideal world but that beats leaving them untranslated altogether.
There is more to life than social chemistry, that is, generating proper intentions in others. There is social physics, the “correlations” between intentions and results, or the “program(s)” by which the world works, or the “falling dominoes” by which actions produce consequences, quite independently of the intentions or expectations with which they were taken.
Social engineering has gotten a bad name because, heretofore, it has been almost entirely an exercise in social chemistry, or eisegesis of some sort. With a proper application of social physics it will gain a whole new respectability. Perhaps we should call it “social gardening,” since it does not have the precise calculations by which space probes are directed to outer planets or cheapo DVDs are produced for the store shelves.
Exegesis in social physics would find some constructive parallel in chaos theory, which views the paths of particular particles as indeterminate, but still uses Newtonian calculations to predict overall system behavior.
But beware “intuitive social physics.” At least one psychological dictionary (Oxford) describes “intuitive physics” as pre-Newtonian notions such as heavy bodies falling faster than lighter ones or moving bodies stopping when they are no longer moved. This is eisegesis in physics. Since Galileo and Newton did exegesis in physics centuries ago, we know that heavy and light bodies fall at the same rate and that bodies in motion stay in motion unless acted upon.
Ayn Rand’s followers might supplement her generally useful notions of objectivity with exegesis of other points of view. Otherwise such “objectivity” turns into just more “whim worship.” Especially if their “intuitive social physics” is oblivious to government garbage in the market and takes objections to current corporate, development and transportation practices as “interference with the free market.” Embroiled in “principled” if truncated argument, they forget that old business adage, win an argument and lose a sale.
Showing such respect and appreciation for others’ views and motivations, libertarians might not be taken as such loose cannons by the rest of the world. Libertarian loose cannons? How about all the other political eisegetes? That is how they generally inpress each other and even the rare political exegete. They are loose cannons because they have no frame reference beyond their own perceptions and intentions and are oblivious, often militantly, to those of others.
Political exegetes will not be taken as loose cannons, at least if the eisegetes can comprehend anything beyond themselves. Exegetes will not be obliviously “shoving blind,” the railroad term for a locomotive shoving cars with no one on the end to signal a stop, a pretty good way to cause a train wreck. As the method in their madness sinks in, the restraints of objective reality upon their own perceptions and intentions will become more and more apparent, however slowly at first. True political exegetes will be savvy enough to offer reassurance they are considering what is on other peoples’ minds, whether they agree with it on not. As the judge told the rapist, the difference between rape and rapture is salesmanship.
Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, describe a supreme act of exegesis, one important key to a larger frame of reference:
“... A student has to know how to distill a body of material to the essence or to put the pieces together into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires the ability to see things from at least two points of view....” (p166)
Truth be told, it is not easy for a blind man do do exegesis on the elephant. Nor is it instantane-ous; it takes at least a walk-around, more likely, reaching over the top from a ladder. Then he has to put it all together, a project that is never really finished. When the method in this madness is finally recognized, however, political exegetes will not be seen as loose cannons.
Menwhile the eisegetes will be impatient with all this foolishness. They will likely call him names, maybe even question his loyalty or sanity. They might become impatient enough to push on the elephant, uttering such a battle cry as “direct action” or such. They might even be sumo wrestlers and, who knows, they might even push in the same direction. It is laughable, to say the least, at least if no one gets stomped.
Several thousand years ago, however, some brilliant exegetes came across the elephant’s “program.” Thus they turned the elephant into a heavy-duty beast of burden under their control, just the thing for dragging logs and such. Even a blind man can use such techniques, as long as he does not ride into some low-hanging limb.
Activist, tune thyself first.
WHOLE ELEPHANT QUARTERLY
William F. Wendt, Jr. Editor and Publisher $5 per copy 10 for $35 hard currency accepted
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Copyright 2006 by William F. Wendt, Jr. permission granted to reproduce and distribute in whole this two page advertising supplement reproducible two page advertising supplement