Fiction vs History?

[jbor]

>>> No matter how many times you say it you cannot reduce the cosmos to
>>> text.
>> 
>> That is precisely what all those positivist historians in Europe said
>> theywere doing back in the nineteenth century ("simply to show how it
>> really was" was their mantra).
>> 
>> The cosmos is indeed a text which we read. Different people read it
>> differently.

on 27/10/04 1:17 AM, Ghetta Life wrote:

> Just because the human psyche needs structure (in your terms"text") in order
> to process/understand/relate to the cosmos does not convert the cosmos into
> that structure.  

That isn't what I'm saying. Positivist historians believed that they could
accurately represent "the cosmos" in textual form. What I'm saying is that
individuals read and interpret the world in particular ways. The way in
which we all do this defines who we are in relation to the world and guides
our every interaction within it.

Different individuals and different cultures and societies impose different
structures on the world. It's when a person or community begins to act on
the conviction that their structural interpretation of the world is better
(more "valid", closer to "the Truth") than the guy down the street's, or the
Native American's, or that of Muslims across on the other side of the
planet, that conflicts and oppression arise.

best

> All humans could evaporate but the cosmos will still exist.
> And just because different people read this cosmos differently does not
> mean their readings are equally valid.