The philosophical “trickle down” effect
I am feeling a little frustrated. Whenever I think I have my mind wrapped around an opinion or settled into a theory that seems to work, everything just gets messed up. I’m not so much referring to my spiritual beliefs, but more my philosophical, political, metaphysical, all that jazz.
I’m going to coin a little theory of my own (at least I think it is my own- it has probably already been coined by someone else I’m sure), called the philosophical trickle-down, that I will use to explain my frustration. Everything that you read, everything that you understand and believe about the world has been affected or set in motion by some philosopher, or VERY ingenious individual down the path of history. Basically, there is nothing new under the sun folks. The “trickle down” that I am referring to is that you and I, the generally productive and educated members of society, albeit not the philosophers, get the tiny droplets of these philosophers’ major ideas, which after trickling down the ivory tower, grow more simple and manageable, until they are espoused in our cute little easy-to-read books, and we think it is some miracle. But if you just do a little digging, you realize that you would have to read another ten 679 page treatises to really get to the bottom of the ideas that are espoused in our easy-to-digest books. This happens in sermons all the time also, which is understandable, but still super-frustrating to me.
I guess I am just a bit strange, and I really want to get to the bottom of things. Take for example a book I happen to love, by Shane Claiborne, called The Irresistible Revolution. Awesome book, highly recommend it. But there is no way this 30-something could have come up with this stuff all on his own. He has people who he READ. And they read people. And they read people. I guess this isn’t a bad thing, it’s just overwhelming when you want to understand the depths of an idea, and where an author is coming from who has a major influence on your life. So there is my theory. Thoughts?
