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.

Re-Visioning "Things": Part 1

This is Part One of a five-part series called Re-Visioning "Things." It inspires us to consider how seeing the everyday "things"of our lives as meetings rather than it-objects can transform our lives for the better.

Why “Things” Are Important

It is impossible to live and not experience “things”. Our interactions with “things” weave the fabric of every moment of every day of our lives. Rather than take “things” as granted, we do well to look closely at the “things” of our everyday lives. By re-visioning “things,” we can transform our lives in more life-affirming ways. When we transform our own lives, we transform the lives of others and the world.

Things as It-Objects

Things as mechanical objects dominates the view of “things” in Western culture. Isaac Newton inspired this view. In this view, we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste things as objects. They are objects other than and unattached to us. We do things to things. We test, measure, and form opinions about them. We own them, give them away, and throw them away when we are finished using them. They are it-objects.

We distinguish between living and non-living things, but we see and treat them same. We see and treat them both as it-objects. Seeing and treating each other as it-objects is the norm in Western culture. 

Take visiting our physicians, for example. Physicians tend to treat us as it-objects. They work in the health care industry like assembly line workers in factories. They have a quota of patient visits to produce each day. To reach their quota, physicians must limit how much time they spend with us. On average, they limit their time with us to seven minutes per visit. During those few minutes, many get financial bonuses for “giving” us injections, prescribed medications, and diagnostic tests. Treating us as it-objects on an assembly line serves the capital investors who want a quick return on their investment in the business.

Businesses other than health care follow the same factory assembly line model: manufacturers of products, insurance companies, department stores, agribusinesses, grocery stores, gas stations, music producers, mining companies, and any business driven by reducing all costs of production to increase the financial gains of the capital investors. To increase profits, they must spend as little time and money on us it-objects as possible. It is the matrix in which we live, move, and have our being.

Part Two of this series sketches how we Westerners, dominated by Christianity, re-visioned things as either earthly or heavenly and what happened as a result