Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Being part of something bigger, which is part of something bigger...

From time to time I feel the urge to be intellectual. The most common way for me to do this is by reading a science or philosophy book. Now, I know some people think any adult reading a book which does not revolve around a detective or a raven-haired beauty suffering from amnesia, has to be a guy who ate paste in grade school and only kissed one female in his entire life, his mom. I beg to differ. I never ate paste, maybe a couple of tastes of Elmer’s glue, but I didn’t like it. (Quick note to my wife: I have only kissed one female over the last eighteen years.)
Before any readers of this column start accusing me of being an intellectual snob let me say I seldom finish any of these books. After a couple or three chapters my brain starts swelling like a tick which has accidentally hooked on to the femoral artery of the most recent Belmont Stakes winner. Really, I was fifty pages into my most recent book before I realized the author was not talking about Ray Nitschke, the middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but rather Friedrich Nietzsche, the middle linebacker for the Prussian Existentialists (their cheerleaders’ favorite cheer is: “What does it matter. We’re all going to die eventually.”). Uh, sorry, I am now told he was a German philosopher of the late 1800’s. This heavy thinker said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” In my life I have to admit what doesn’t kill me usually makes me whine and complain like a debutante whose father took away her credit card. I can’t understand the paradoxical nature of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, nor can I drop a 230 pound running back behind the line of scrimmage. I’m afraid neither Mr. Nietzsche nor Mr. Nitschke would be very proud of me.
The work I am wading through now is a book by Ken Wilber called A Brief History of Everything. First of all I have to wonder about Mr. Wilber’s grasp of the English language. In my dictionary “brief” means something of short duration. His book is 548 pages. That ain’t brief. Brief is the attention span of my children as I explain why they…well, why they should do anything. Brief is Billy Donavan’s tenure as the head coach of the Orlando Magic. Brief is the amount of time I spend contemplating whether I should have that second doughnut at breakfast. (The answer is always an emphatic “Yes”.) Brief is not 548 pages.
Okay, here is what I think I learned within the first fifty pages. Everything, and I do mean everything, is a holon. (There will now be a slight pause while everyone looks up at the ceiling as if the answer for each confusing question in life is written up there.) What is a holon?” You ask (as you notice a water stain which looks remarkably like a hedgehog riding a unicycle). I just told you. It is everything. Try to keep up, will you?
Anyway, Mr. Wilber explains the word holon was coined to denote something which is at once a whole unto itself and a part of something else. Since Mr. Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time (not my idea – it was written on the back cover of the book) he explains the term by talking about the atom is a whole by itself yet part of a molecule. A molecule is a whole by itself yet is a part of cell. A cell is a whole by itself yet…well you get the idea.
Allow me to try to put the concept into terms of the more common man. A hamburger patty is a whole unto itself. A special sauce is a whole unto itself. Lettuce is a whole unto itself. Cheese is a whole unto itself. A pickle is a whole unto itself. An onion is a whole unto itself. A sesame seed bun is a whole unto itself. Yet they are all components of a Big Mac. A Big Mac is a whole unto itself, yet it can become a part of an enlarged waistline requiring elastic pants. Elastic pants are a whole unto themselves, but they are also part of my wardrobe because I keep saying yes to the second doughnut at breakfast. Which is a part of my crummy diet, which is part of the reason my wife keeps telling me I need to exercise more, which is part of…well, you get the idea.

2 comments:

Eric Pyle said...

It's a little known fact that Nietzsche did play one season as a running back for the Basel Dionysians.

He entered the record books by catching an Apollonian kick-off in his own end zone and running it all the way for a touch-down, a play that has come to be known as the "Eternal Return".

Chris said...

Didn't Nietzsche only wake up day after day to find he had to catch the ball and run the length of the field over and over...or was that Steve Sisyphus, the wide receiver for the Corinth Comets?