Sunday, October 01, 2006
As most know, I think that one of the paths to enlightenment on earth is to constantly seek new information that does not fit into our mental conceptions of reality. As we accommodate (Piaget) this new information and as we get into the habit of constant accommodation, our minds become not only wider, but less rigid. This gives us the great advantage of being much more adaptable and much less judgmental. The positive implications of that are, I feel, self-evident.
One accommodation that I have had to make in the past half year or so has held particular interest to me for no particular reason. That is that the 4 seasons are not universal. In nearly every, if not every, western mythological system, there are myths about the seasons, so they take on an almost archetypal meaning to the western mind. However, not every place is configured thusly. Even some places in the modern western world do not have, for all intents and purposes, the 4 seasons. Other places have two: the rainy season and the dry season. In the book that I'm reading now (admittedly fiction, but still), the character relates that he once heard that temperate areas have 6 seasons: summer, autumn, locking, winter, unlocking, and spring. While I have now accepted that I must accommodate this information, I think that my fascination with it rests in the fact that my brain will try and re-evaluate all of the connections to it and figure out the implications of this widened view on culture.