Categories
I swear I’ve been meaning to write this post about “Categories” for the last couple days, even before John Regan wrote his post today about “Categories of Thought.” My post is more mundane and of a housekeeping nature: As part of my intermittent quest for minimalism in this blog’s presentation, I’ve replaced both the Blogroll and the Links page with the Categories drop down menu to the right. Note that each of the bloggers who used to be on the Blogroll is now his own Category, so you can select his name and see every post here in which I’ve mentioned and/or linked to him. Most of my Categories are People. (I decided to clean up the blog and revamp my Categories this weekend, and have actually only gotten halfway through all the posts, working sporadically from the most recent back towards the very first post a couple years ago. Therefore, clicking on a Category won’t yet bring up any of the older posts that fit under that Category.)
But back to John Regan’s far more interesting post on Categories. He writes:
This is one reason it is important to keep the heart of a child even in manhood. Because when the young notice you have to pay attention; but typically, this early warning of trouble ahead is met with disdain and disparagement by those whose hearts have become too grown up, too set in their ways. To them the question of whether the categories themselves require revision or revisiting is off the table. If there is a problem it resides in the complainers. The whiners. The slackoisie.
I suppose my incessant fantasizing on this blog about Cowboys and Indians is pretty childish. At least I hope it is.
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I’m not really sure what I was trying to say, exactly, in that post. It’s mostly about the occupy thing, and the way people react to it, which is generally stronger both pro and con than my own reaction.
I’ve begun to think the movement, as it is called, is more significant than it first appeared; and beyond that I just think it requires more thought.
Seeing the contrast between Greenfield and Norm Pattis may be a clue. Greenfield has his good points, but he’s prosaic and with him categories are as rigid as with any establishmentarian; Norm is more lyrical and poetic and far less bound to convention.
It’s important to remember that day to day life would quickly fall apart without well known categories and conventions. If you had to think long and hard about tying your shoes every day things would grind to a halt very quickly and unpleasantly. But the time comes when you have to rethink things. Knowing when that is might be the toughest part.
1I think I agree. Conventions are important. I haven’t wholly lost my old affinity for tradition. It’s just that the prevailing conventions are very bad. If nothing else, by their fruits you shall know them. We have old traditions and old conventions that are more humane, but that are dormant and need to be revived. I think the convention that is most due for over-haul is the persistent and tenacious underlying notion that the State rules by Divine Right. We have much better, more reality-based, conventions in our social history that directly contradict that grossly mistaken notion.
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