Creation and order.
When we create, do we do so within the confines of an order or is the
thing we create order itself? I have
been mulling over our mantra, “To impose is not to discover,” while I have been
reading, and an idea keeps flitting into my face and darting away again. “To impose is not to discover.” Linnaeus is
the father of taxonomy, founder of binomial nomenclature, a naming system. Genus and species, both rooted in Latin
grammar, but can take on roots from other words. On one hand, I like to think he took as much
care to name plants as Vera and S-DS did.
On the other, he named a useless European plant, “Siegesbeckia,” after a critic he didn’t like (Father of Taxonomy). I think that’s a little petty.
“Nature is God’s law, placed in all things during creation,
according to which they multiply, sustain, and destroy themselves.” (Linnaeus).
Here, Linnaeus describes the “economy of nature,” the cycle of how the
natural world runs and he attributes it to God, since God was and is often
thought of as the ultimate creator, but I wonder if Linnaeus “discovered” God’s
natural order or did he create it and become a god himself? His “discoveries” seemed to fit in like the
right numbers in a Sudoku puzzle.
Everything has its “place in the divinely ordered creation”
(Linnaeus). But is he just imposing all
of nature into a form he created, which he says God created, because it makes
sense to him? And is that bad. . .
I thought the singer from “the Idea of Order at Key West” was the one,
who created the sea and made it “whatever self it had, became the self,” but
she’s actually the one creating order, turning the “meaningless plungings of
water and the wind” into something meaningful.
She’s taking chaos, things that exist and transforming them. But discovery and creation. . . .
“To impose is not to discover.” I feel like creation is an imposition. When we create, we are making an order. We are imposing, creating boundaries, “demarcations.” We are mushing and mashing all the stones and
dirt around us into something we can understand, but maybe the order we create
isn’t what they are supposed to be. We’ve
“given” them meaning, like the Muslims gave meaning to the Mecca Stone. But maybe the real meaning is that a stone is
a stone and wants to speak for itself. Maybe its name isn’t really a
stone. The tragedy of that situation is
that it can’t speak and tell us. (Ironically, I’ve heard that my Korean name, “Hyun,”-
means stone, but I’m always talking).
Which brings me to the Doll House.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but both husband and wife
created a world (an order) they thought they wanted. They imposed a lifestyle upon themselves and
played along, because they knew it was just pretend, but that pretend was
ordered around societal rules and games and it gave their lives purpose. When the order disintegrated, their lives simultaneously
lost meaning but had the potential to have greater meaning. I think they both
felt it, they knew it was “wonderful,” but couldn’t see it or figure it out
yet. I don’t know how they’d know
that. I felt though, that Nora was on
the path of discovery by breaking down the order she created.
I have no idea where that leaves us or what we are trying to do. “To impose is not to discover.” “To order is not to discover?” Or maybe not? Maybe? Probably not.
For the record, I’m okay with some impositions, because I want to absorb and organize information somehow, but I’m also okay with breaking some stuff to
look at something in a fresh way, before I try to make sense of it again. I’m
down.
“Father of Taxonomy.” September 18, 2011. http://www.ucmp.berkley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
“Linnaeus, physicotheology, and protoecology.” September 18, 2011. http://www.linnaeus.uu.se/online/eco/fy_teologi.html
No comments:
Post a Comment