Meditations

Today, while I was meditating, I had (unintended of course) some thoughts: there is a sort of analogy between the duality of some brain domains and some metaphysical views. Zen, among other things, deals with the abolition of dualities. Thus mind/body, matter/idea or other dualities could be abolished without the help of reductionism. The reductionist position always puts one before the other. But are there not connection lines like in a dynamic interaction between action and structure in social theory?

As Sociologist (and Sociogole [for all those who know what this is]) you learn to hold different opinions or perspectives, as long as you don't like to position a theory as "the" theory. Many are satisfied with the specialization in one theoretical framework, in one world of thought. But where are the bridges?
In the way that there is "ratio" and "emotio", there is also materialism and idealism, or is there a continuum in both cases, one in which we as human beings only inscribe our shameless dichotomy.
Also the relation between theory and praxis seems to be part of this problem.
Be the world will and imagination or just matter, this, for me as sociologist also only means to take a position, to hold an opinion, a perspective.

If you assume such a perspective, in one second the degrees of freedom that are left are reduced to zero, and you are trapped in a fully deterministic model: all just mind, or all just matter.
If you leave the perspective behind, the one-sided perspective and you will be accused of excessive holism.

Finally, also in this case there is a continuum, from one-sided reductionism to all-encompassing holism.
Also in this case we can, no we could, save ourselves on the island of emptiness, if it were not also a form of holism, or is it reductionism?
Voilà - we come to a subsidiary tool (emptiness), that is well understood in the East and which gives us the delight of being able to bath in the paradox. We do not like that very much in the West.
All in all, this, these thoughts from the last meditation, this debris of mind, shall be a plea for the building of bridges of thought, emotion, epistemology and perception: a way towards synthesis and convergence and a path away from dead-end-road differentiation.

Bauernbergpark News Again

The man has put two park benches together to make a bed for himself. He has a blue sleeping bag. Recently he owns a knife too, which scares me a little. However, he only seems to use it for sharpening tips of branches to stick them into the ground, or to arrange them in other ways. This arrangement of benches and twigs is almost in the middle of the path, in the lower bend on the north side of Bauernbergpark. When I walk the dog, I carefully avoid this place when the man is there for two reasons. Firstly I am afraid of him, secondly I do not want the dog to spoil the man's territory. It has been raining for the last three days and the man has not shown up at his park benches. Maybe he has a dry place somewhere else.