I think I can shed some light on her behavior. In the view of religious people in the mystical traditions which paganism tries to emulate (with varying degrees of success, but that’s beside the point), the world is vast and beckoning, yet our faculties are barely adequate to scratch the surface.
A mystic, or even a skeptic, sees our thoughts and perceptions of the world as metaphors in themselves, which become more and more deeply abstracted. Our vision and sense of space has a “metaphorical” relationship to the actual, physical reality that we find ourselves in. In the same sense, language and mathematics (math is a subset of language, but I thought it was worth singling out) have a metaphorical relationship to the raw universe.
The point of mysticism is to snap one’s consciousness out of the notion that what you experience in day to day living can be trusted, and it calls for the mystic to look more closely at what experience really is: a useful metaphor for what is actually taking place in the universe around us.
So it seems that what this woman was trying to do was at least two “layers” deep. The first, most obvious layer, is that she was emphasizing the ridiculousness of taking the story literally, to force the audience to consider it as a useful metaphor. The deeper message she was conveying by making it clear that what she was saying was not to be taken literally, was a wake up call. It was a call for the audience to think in a fundamentally different way: not only is this creation myth a metaphor representing psychological and physical phenomena, but those phenomena themselves must be examined as metaphors.
She was trying to train the audience members’ brains to think mystically. And appropriately enough she did it in an abstract, almost metaphorical sort of way, that the concrete thinkers here totally missed. Biases abound!
There are some people who revel in the gibberish of others, and think if a statement is nonsensical but spoken with pride and self confidence, it must be profound. Call them Mysterion Masochists. If I don’t get your gibberish, you must be profound.
This woman seems like a Mysterion Sadist. If you don’t get my gibberish, I must be profound. I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than that.
Her attitude is just what I would expect from a self confident Mysterion when faced with a large number of rationalists. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a self confident Rationalist have a similar exaggerated presentation and prideful tone when facing a large number of Mysterions.
In the view of religious people in the mystical traditions [...] the world is vast and beckoning, yet our faculties are barely adequate to scratch the surface.
Does it mean that science has got it all wrong, and we need to start again from the beginning? Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel?
Or perhaps science generally is OK, but there is a part of reality that remains unexpored, so we should acknowledge that in this specific part we are “barely adequate to scratch the surface” and should focus on this area knowing that we start almost from zero and that at the beginning a good metaphor is better than nothing. That I could accept. I only find it difficult to believe that creation of Earth and especially the movement of Earth in space belongs to this unexplored part.
Our vision and sense of space has a “metaphorical” relationship to the actual, physical reality that we find ourselves in. In the same sense, language and mathematics [...] have a metaphorical relationship to the raw universe.
Not all metaphors are created equal. Some of them allow much better prediction than others. Mathematics and physics allow us to predict position of Earth very precisely. Now could you make a similar prediction based on “Earth is on the back of giant turtle”? Is imagining giant turtles really the right way to “to look more closely at what experience really is”?
I think I can shed some light on her behavior. In the view of religious people in the mystical traditions which paganism tries to emulate (with varying degrees of success, but that’s beside the point), the world is vast and beckoning, yet our faculties are barely adequate to scratch the surface.
A mystic, or even a skeptic, sees our thoughts and perceptions of the world as metaphors in themselves, which become more and more deeply abstracted. Our vision and sense of space has a “metaphorical” relationship to the actual, physical reality that we find ourselves in. In the same sense, language and mathematics (math is a subset of language, but I thought it was worth singling out) have a metaphorical relationship to the raw universe.
The point of mysticism is to snap one’s consciousness out of the notion that what you experience in day to day living can be trusted, and it calls for the mystic to look more closely at what experience really is: a useful metaphor for what is actually taking place in the universe around us.
So it seems that what this woman was trying to do was at least two “layers” deep. The first, most obvious layer, is that she was emphasizing the ridiculousness of taking the story literally, to force the audience to consider it as a useful metaphor. The deeper message she was conveying by making it clear that what she was saying was not to be taken literally, was a wake up call. It was a call for the audience to think in a fundamentally different way: not only is this creation myth a metaphor representing psychological and physical phenomena, but those phenomena themselves must be examined as metaphors.
She was trying to train the audience members’ brains to think mystically. And appropriately enough she did it in an abstract, almost metaphorical sort of way, that the concrete thinkers here totally missed. Biases abound!
There are some people who revel in the gibberish of others, and think if a statement is nonsensical but spoken with pride and self confidence, it must be profound. Call them Mysterion Masochists. If I don’t get your gibberish, you must be profound.
This woman seems like a Mysterion Sadist. If you don’t get my gibberish, I must be profound. I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than that.
Her attitude is just what I would expect from a self confident Mysterion when faced with a large number of rationalists. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a self confident Rationalist have a similar exaggerated presentation and prideful tone when facing a large number of Mysterions.
Does it mean that science has got it all wrong, and we need to start again from the beginning? Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel?
Or perhaps science generally is OK, but there is a part of reality that remains unexpored, so we should acknowledge that in this specific part we are “barely adequate to scratch the surface” and should focus on this area knowing that we start almost from zero and that at the beginning a good metaphor is better than nothing. That I could accept. I only find it difficult to believe that creation of Earth and especially the movement of Earth in space belongs to this unexplored part.
Not all metaphors are created equal. Some of them allow much better prediction than others. Mathematics and physics allow us to predict position of Earth very precisely. Now could you make a similar prediction based on “Earth is on the back of giant turtle”? Is imagining giant turtles really the right way to “to look more closely at what experience really is”?