‘Everything is Miscellaneous’?
Not in India, yaar.
Over there, Everything is Predetermined.
Destined.
Your future’s written in the stars.
But the book released this month by Harvard Law School fellow David Weinberger says human experience 2.0 is written on the Web:
“The Web,” Weinberger writes,” is a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are. 500 million of us aren’t there because we want a better “shopping experience.”
He keeps going:
“We are rewriting ourselves, hearing voices we’re surprised to find coming from us, saying things we might not have expected,” says Weinberger, who also wrote Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
“We’re getting to know many more people in many more associations than the physics of the real world permits.
“These molecules, no longer bound by the solid earth, have gained both the randomness and the freedom of the air-borne.”
But c’mon. Is everything really miscellaneous, or is there order in connections between seemingly unrelated ideas?
Juxtapositions spark inquiry. Free associations reel off on tangents, follow vectors that launch new ideas.
What we choose to do next is programmed by what we’ve done and learned a step before. Isn’t this “miscellany” really just a collection of individuals following their predisposed paths?
The word karma is derived from the Sanskrit kri, “to do”. All action is karma. Technically this word also means the effects of actions.
In connection with metaphysics karma sometimes means the effects of which our past actions were the causes. — Swami Vivekananda
Maybe Weinberger’s idea of the Web “showing us who we are” makes some sense–filtering helps us clarify what we’re not. But what about real life?
Isn’t “who we are” really just the sum of all things we’ve experienced–rich and poor? The people and places we’ve encountered shape our identities.
Aren’t we defined, ultimately then, by what we know to be true, through experience or better, wisdom? –DK
Dipika, I love your posts! Thankfully, we are not so predictable as to be able to pin ourselves down and neatly, numbingly categorize ourselves. Your ideas are right in the current. Yes, I think we are - among many things - our memories … and the meaning we make of those memories. And these keep changing. Learning to swim, with y’all ~ M.
Thanks, Mara. I had a conversation the other day about trying to be more “analog.” I’m not even really sure what I meant, but I think you get the idea.
Also, finding out more lately about marketers mining sites and tracking our online movements is rather disturbing. I’m logging off more. Going for walks, taking pictures. Browsing bookstores, scanning magazines, popping into libraries I’ve never noticed around town.
You’re more likely to spot interesting stuff spontaneously this way than by clicking and sifting through God knows what unedited stuff lives online.