Propriety

After the Detroit Loss, (only a 2-1 loss despite the best attempts by the officiating to call it in Pitt's favor as much as possible), I was not ready to sleep quite yet.

I needed to unwind a bit. So I grabbed the book that so far, until last night, has put me to sleep w/in a few pages. I haven't given up on it though. First, it was written by Wendell Berry. Second, I actually like having something there that I can read that puts me to sleep. So I grabbed it. But wouldn't ya know, it got interesting. This chapter really got into his Propriety argument and the roll of science now as a religion.

It got me thinking. And it got me being thankful I actually worked to keep my personal research (when i did that sort of thing) well grounded in its relation to everything. Most people here are pretty good about the overall perspective around here, more so than many places I've been. Some departments are better than others, on the whole it isn't bad being surrounded by these folks. One might take it for granted that everywhere is like this.

So really I've just barely started the book. Into the second section. But the definition of Propriety struck me as something I really haven't considered too much, or at least in terms of using it to describe a rather ordinary and ever present awareness of mine.

Now it can have some solidly snooty meanings, and the definition certainly would strike some people towards anarchy or what ever the optimal antonym is. But I really like the way Berry goes about defining it in the book.

I dug up a handful of links:
Eco books has a bunch of excerpts:

Quotes from Life is a Miracle

"The most radical influence of reductive science has been the virtually universal adoption of the idea that the world, its creatures, and all the parts of its creatures are machines—that is, that there is no difference between creature and artifice, birth and manufacture, thought and computation. Our language, wherever it is used, is now almost invariably conditioned by the assumption that fleshly bodies are machines full of mechanisms, fully compatible with the mechanisms of medicine, industry, and commerce; and that minds are computers fully compatible with electronic technology.

"This may have begun as a metaphor, but in the language as it is used (and as it affects industrial practice) it has evolved from metaphor through equation to identification. And this usage institutionalizes the human wish, or the sin of wishing, that life might be, or might be made to be, predictable."

. . .

"I am aware how brash this commentary will seem, coming from me, who have no competence or learning in science. The issue I am attempting to deal with, however, is not knowledge but ignorance. In ignorance I believe I may pronounce myself a fair expert.

"One of our problems is that we humans cannot live without acting; we have to act. Moreover, we have to act on the basis of what we know, and what we know is incomplete. What we have come to know so far is demonstrably incomplete, since we keep on learning more, and there seems little reason to think that our knowledge will become significantly more complete. The mystery surrounding our life probably is not significantly reducible. And so the question of how to act in ignorance is paramount.

"Our history enables us to suppose that it may be all right to act on the basis of incomplete knowledge if our culture has an effective way of telling us that our knowledge is incomplete, and also of telling us how to act in our state of ignorance. We may go so far as to say that it is all right to act on the basis of sure knowledge, since our studies and our experience have given us knowledge that seems to be pretty sure. But apparently it is dangerous to act on the assumption that sure knowledge is complete knowledge—or on the assumption that our knowledge will increase fast enough to outrace the bad consequences of the arrogant use of incomplete knowledge. To trust 'progress' or our putative 'genius' to solve all the problems that we cause is worse than bad science; it is bad religion."

. . .

"If we lack the cultural means to keep incomplete knowledge from becoming the basis of arrogant and dangerous behavior, then the intellectual disciplines themselves become dangerous. What is the point of the further study of nature if that leads to the further destruction of nature? To study the "purpose" of the organ within the organism or of the organism within the ecosystem is still reductive if we do so with the assumption that we will or can finally figure it out. This simply captures the world as the subject of present or future "understanding" which will become the basis of further industrial and commercial optimism, which will become the basis of further exploitation and destruction of communities, ecosystems, and local cultures.

"I am not of course proposing an end to science and other intellectual disciplines, but rather a change of standards and goals. The standards of our behavior must be derived, not from the capability of technology, but from the nature of places and communities. We must shift the priority from production to local adaptation, from innovation to familiarity, from power to elegance, from costliness to thrift. We must learn to think about propriety in scale and design, as determined by human and ecological health. By such changes we might again make our work an answer to despair."

Copyright © 2000 by Wendell Berry

The shift is an amazing one. Fortunately the costliness to thrift is happening a bit right now, at least more than it has in the past. I fear though that the movement towards thrift will end soon unless the "recession" lasts for years. Long enough for the expense reductions to become habitualized.

There are some great lectures here. I'm listening to this

The Restoration of Propriety: Wendell Berry and the British Distributists Compared
William Fahey, Assistant Professor of Classical and Early Christian Studies, Christendom College
Seelbach Hotel, Louisville, KY11/20/2007
MP3

(really well worth listening to - well at least until he starts talking about the Distributists stuff. The Hollister apple fest story that he started with is pretty good)

Another link with some great quotes and discussion is here.

“What I was thinking, then, looking down on the little fields of the Andes, was that the most interesting, crucial, difficult questions of agriculture are questions of propriety. What is the proper size for a farm for one family in a given place? What is the proper size for a field, given a particular slope, climate, soil type, and drainage? What is the appropriate crop for this field? What is the appropriate kind and scale of technology?. . .We farm, generally, on flatter land, and for us the questions have not been so obvious, so far. We have had the luxury of pretending that the questions do not exist, that there are no problems of propriety, proportion and no limits to scale.” (43)

That is the nugget of our social/corporate/marketing problems. Capitalism decided that profit is more important than anything else and well these generations have a slogan that fits much too well: "He who dies with the most toys wins!" I refrained from making it gender neutral because it is really a male driven problem (historically - but as culture blends more to being gender neutral it is more across the board).

Propriety. Make an appropriate choice.

Now i just need to finish the book. It will be one of the ones I'll take on vacation next week. An analog week. Gonna be fun.

heddwch
G