"'...the Old Way is not for you to tread to its end - nor me, I confess. We have the real world to cope with, and we will not do so by abandonment of reason.'"
- Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 302.
What is the "Old Way" and why does it abandon reason? The speaker is Merseian, not human, and refers to members of other species, including a four-armed, six-legged witch. However, Djana, who speaks of "'The Old Way to the One...'" (p. 303), is human and we can seek understanding among Terrestrial "old ways" which, after all, implicitly inform Anderson's text:
the Indian tripod of asceticism, yoga and meditation;
the Chinese equivalent, Taoism (Tao means "Way");
the ubiquitous shamanism - including Voodoo?
This is a mixed bag. Extreme asceticism is potentially self-destructive, indeed sometimes aims to destroy the body in order to free the soul. (One very extreme tradition died out because of this practice.)
Since I practice the Buddhist-Taoist synthesis, Zen, I have a personal stake and a more than academic interest. One Upanishad says, "I have found the small path known of old that leads far away..." but does this path lead to abandonment of reason ("The sleep of reason brings forth monsters...") or beyond reason? Sub-rational consciousness and supra-rational contemplation are opposites but might be misidentified.
2 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Shouldn't you have included Judaism/Christianity in your list? Except for shamanism (which I define as a fairly primitive type of paganism), that tradition is older than the others. Moreover, recall how Poul Anderson cited philosophers like Whitehead and Mumford in "Delenda est" for believing it needed the Chrstian belief in one all mighty God before a true science could arise.
As recently as John Paul II's encyclical FIDES ET RATIO (1998), the Catholic Church has been defending the rightness and need for reason and logical thinking.
Sean
Sean,
Yes, Hebrew prophecy should be included as a Terrestrial "old way," although not perhaps the kind of "Way" that Ydwyr was thinking of.
Paul.
Post a Comment