Hi all!
Last article we explored why context matters so much not just in doing our own work, but in considering the larger picture of the world we inhabit.
Like considering what was happening around the lives of our parents when they were kids and when they became parents in relationship to our relationship with them.
For example, it matters that my mom was born during WWII with two much older brothers who were involved in the war. It matters that she lived through the Vietnam era. It matters that she lived in a time when women were not free to pursue their dreams. It matters that she lived during one of the major movements of the Civil Rights Movement with all its anger, hope, hatred, strife and possibility.
What is happening in the world around us is the greater context of how we engage or can engage our work.
Makes me think of how we learn to take things out of context in many ways. The other day, I was speaking with a friend who is also writing a book about the research we have both been doing. On her part, she is researching an historical figure from the 6th century and, during her reading about the time period, not even in relationship with the figure, she discovered that the figure had lived through some massive ecological events that changed the shape of the world and culture. But when reading actual biographies about the figure, these ecological events were not mentioned as part of the equation of her life.
Bill and I were also talking about the roots of some spiritual practices/traditions, like Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism was founded in China by a monk from India as an offshoot of Buddhism and it also took root in Japan. But it came into being in China during an era of incredible violence. There were wars between dynasties, wars within dynasties and Zen Buddhists were often persecuted. But go to the Wiki page about Zen [I know, I know – but many people do go there first], and it talks about the tenets of Zen as well as some of the history, but not the impact of constant warfare on the development of the practice. Or how many forms of Buddhism, like all religions, was both forced onto occupied countries by colonizers and suppressed and persecuted by ruling powers. But when we think of Zen and Buddhism, we often think of peace and meditation. As Bill said to me, what is the context of war to the roots of practices around meditation?
We have done this as humans as long as we have been humans. Not just the retelling of history through a ruling power’s point of view in order to justify and condone actions [such as war, colonization, suppression and oppression of peoples].
But maybe as a way to frame history and story in ways we can receive them. Sometimes, I wonder if the way we contextualize stories is about survival and a response to trauma.
| My father had one brother, my Uncle John, who was a working class, first generation Italian man living in Chicago. Most of his life, he worked as a forklift operator for one company in an industrial part of the city. He was a sweet man. I remember him singing along with Sinatra albums in the basement of his small house, mixing a drink at the bar he had set up. Telling us we could not touch his model train set, which took up half the basement. [It was amazing!]. But I never knew that he had been in WWII and seen action. I never knew that he had come back from the war and did not speak of it. Ever. I was never told this part of his story and by the time I did find out, he had passed and I could not ask him. There were no war memorabilia around his house, there was nothing to commemorate his time as a soldier. I do not even know where or when he fought. Just that he had. He curated his history not just for us, his niece and nephews, but for himself. He excised that part of his life out of his narrative. But it was always there. I never understood the deep sadness in his eyes until I found out he had fought in the war. ~~~~~~~~ I think of this kind of storytelling, the shaping of story, as a kind of scientific exercise. It is what we do with science, often. There is the attempt to isolate and understand elements in some kind of pure form, but no elements of anything exist in a pure form. Just like when the atom was discovered to have particles whizzing around a nucleus made of protons. When this was first discovered, an atom was defined by the particles. How long did it take for them to consider the movement more deeply [i.e. as waves not orbits], the electrical charges created, AND fact of quantum clouds? |
It is what we do – reduce facts to something that feels reasonable when considering something. The way science isolates things for study. But it is not real-world because every thing is influenced by the context around it.
Science teaches us to isolate and remove context. So does history and storytelling. But this is part of what is so dangerous.
Because we can bring this to our dreaming and our line of inquiry around our dreams. We can take them out of context, take images out of context, take our behavior and our experiences out of context. When the context is part of the equation.
We also bring this to the stories of our lives, our narratives. Which is equally dangerous.