Re-Visioning “Things”: Part Five and Conclusion

Reflecting on Things as Meetings

Humans as Meetings with Narratives

In Part Four of this series, the illustration of re-visioning a thing as a meeting is inspired by an indigenous, pre-Christian, Anglo-Saxon view of things. The Ancient Greeks and Romans had similar views. For example, Ancient Greeks viewed humans more as meetings of smaller wholes than as it-objects. They had no word for a human being as a whole. They were a specific meeting of soma, thumos, psyche, logos, phrenes, noos and others. They were things with names, ancestors, places where they lived, and stories of the things (meetings) that revealed their vices and virtues.

Naming Those with Whom We Often Meet

Perhaps now we can now better understand why our pre-Christian ancestors named those with whom they often met. They gave personal names to trees, herbs, swords, axes, hammers, horses, houses, castles, rivers, ships, mountains, springs, valleys, caves, and large stones. We still often nick name those with whom we often meet. 

Meetings as Co-created by All Participants 

More importantly, perhaps we can see how re-visioning things as meetings can change how we interact and live in this world. We are not doing things to it-objects. We are co-creating things with the immediate living and non-living participants in our things. 

Each Meeting is New and Unique

As far as we know now, the things we co-create are new and unique. They did not exist before we met and co-created them. They exist nowhere else in the world. They happen once, never again.

Each Participant has Power and Influence

We have power. Every one of us influences the narratives of the things we co-create. Whether we believe in heavenly things or not, we know without a doubt that what we do matters. What we do has consequences. We get to choose how we use our power and influence in the things we co-create.

Each Participant is Responsible

The things we co-create affect us and everyone else. They affect the whole world. We are responsible to everyone else in the world, living and non-living, for how we wield our power and influence in the things we co-create. Are we wielding our power and influence in ways that affirm life or deny it?

Conclusion

The Newtonian and Christian views of things were significant re-visionings of the indigenous Western views that preceded them.  The time has come for us Westerners today to re-vision “things” again. It is time for us to re-vision “things” in the light of both our own indigenous Western views and the views of our modern physics.

The Anglo-Saxon view of “things” is compatible with modern physics. Modern physics can inform, develop, and expand our re-visioned view of things as meetings. However, the Anglo-Saxon view of things as meetings is much easier than modern physics to understand and apply in our everyday lives. It holds much promise for us transforming our own lives, the lives of others, and the whole world to more life-affirming ways. We can and must accelerate our transformation now, before it is too late.

Re-Visioning “Things”: Part Four

Let’s Re-Vision “Things” Again

We have re-visioned “things” in the past when our circumstances required us to do so. It is time for us to re-vision “things” again. We must re-vision “things” in more life-affirming ways. If we do not, we will continue to lengthen the list of extinct species, and in the foreseeable future, add ourselves to the list. Fortunately, we have in pre-Christian Western culture the seeds of re-visioning “things” in more life-affirming ways.

One such seed is our word “thing.” It is an Anglo-Saxon word. It originally referred to a meeting, assembly, or gathering. It did not refer to objects. To have a thing was to have a meeting with another, not an object in our possession. To go to a thing was to go to a meeting, not to an object in another place. Consider the following illustration:

Things as Meetings

If you are digging a hole in the ground with a shovel, meet a rock, toss the shovel, pick up a hammer, and strike the rock with the hammer, you are engaged in a thing, a meeting. The immediate parties in the thing are you, the shovel, the rock, and the hammer. None are passive. All are active participants in the meeting.

The thing is not an object. It is a meeting that has a narrative: The shovel and your hand meet and join. The shovel goes with your thrust, meets and cuts the ground. The ground splits in response to the shovel’s cut. The shovel and rock meet. The rock blunts the shovel as it repels its attempted cut. The shovel falls and meets the ground when you toss it aside. The hammer you grab meets you hand, joins, complies with your swing, and delivers a blow to the rock. Rock and hammer meet. The rock responds to the blow you and the hammer deliver together. The rock chips but repels the blow, and moves out of the way.

All in the vicinity attend this meeting: the ground surrounding the cut you and the shovel make, the bugs in that ground, the trees in the vicinity, the birds and bugs on the trees’ limbs and in their leaves, and all the other plants, rocks, and animals in the vicinity. 

The living and non-living have dynamic roles in the thing, they influence its narrative. If they influence the narrative of the thing, they have power. If they have influence and power, they are alive. The thing is an organic, creative process that all the participants create together. Together they affect the thing and are affected by it. By their co-created thing, they are forever changed.

Part Five of this series provides additional reflections on things as meetings and the conclusion of this series.