What's The Big Idea?

Some of the next generation are at the stage where they have to make decisions about their future studies and careers. It is an interesting and anxious time of life. I recall being there, having to choose between English and Science and trying to see myself in various sorts of work. I happened to meet somebody who fancied himself as a mentor. After he had seen me in action for a day or two, he offered the opinion that I would make a good teacher. Maybe he thought I wasn't good enough to get an actual job, I don't know. Anyway, I took his opinion seriously, poorly informed though he was, and as a result more than three thousand young people were subjected to my tutelage before I retired. My mentor didn't know what he was unleashing on the world. 

Any Big Idea is perhaps wrong and certainly incomplete. 

Imagine that disclaimer as the unpublished prologue of every piece of advice, lecture, documentary, blog, editorial, sermon, political speech, thesis, Facebook meme, and philosophy text. To be consistent, this idea of mine about big ideas being fallible is perhaps wrong and certainly incomplete.

Anyway, big ideas, including this one, are by their nature not so big; quite the opposite. An idea describes a piece of reality, not the whole thing, because the whole thing is too much to think about. Take it from me. I spent the morning following the Wikipedia links for the age of enlightenment, modernism, postmodern philosophy, post-postmodernism, transmodernism, and metamodernism. Don't suppose I have read or understand it all. I haven't and I don't and I am not your teacher.

Conclusion: an idea is a fragment of knowledge composed of words (or other symbols) that are abstractions (signifying select bits of reality assuming that certain bits matter and others do not). That is perhaps wrong and certainly incomplete because the world is not made of simple independent pieces and most of the dependencies are unknown or ignored in the exposition of an idea.

This idea about the limitations of ideas did not come from Wikipedia. It grew out of a faith tradition stretched tight between dogma and dissent, a science education that was out of date before I graduated, a profession (teaching) that demanded I know what I was doing when I knew that I really didn't know what I was doing, and a culture conforming to rapidly advancing technology that is stranger than fiction. The only Big Idea of which I am certain is that nothing is certain.

So don't tell me you know what's going on and what to do about it unless you are winding me up because you enjoy a good rant. And don't give advice. Sorry; that sounds like advice. But I'm still peeved because I didn't get to be a poet.

This is where ideas come from. We rely on stories, or we trust those who claim to know, or we imagine possible futures and take a chance. And then we learn from consequences so we might do better next time we make a choice. Not much certainty in any of that. 

But it's all we've got. So we use it. 

Next time maybe I'll be a poet.