Sure, those are reasonable goals. They are so reasonable that I can't imagine them being controversial. Can they be achieved ? If so, how? To some degree I think we want the world to burn. That WWII happened as it did is theoretically amazing, and yet it makes a sick kind of sense. There's something empty about the respectable, rational approach to life. I understand the goal of wanting to re-spiritualize the corrosive Western knowledge-is-power paradigm, but I'm anything but sure that this can be done. I tempted to see this as an impossible longing for a somewhat fictional past. (Was there ever really a general agreement that wasn't sustained by the threat of violence?)

What if our spirituality has been reduced to the photos on a glossy college brochure? As far as I can tell, the more powerful motives in the West are the desires for material comfort and status. A 'true' passion for culture is associated in my mind with a skepticism toward the money-glamour system that is likely enough to lead to relative poverty and low status, the exception being someone like the critic who becomes an internet sensation. (There's an episode of Black Mirror that really nails this: it's the guy whose trademark is the shard of glass from his wall-screen he puts to his neck.) To be sure, in a sufficiently affluent society these half-rebels might live especially beautiful lives.

Keeping in mind you and I don't seem to agree on exactly what a worldview is, no, I don't think categorizing people is an important part of a world view, certainly not mine. I work hard, with some, intermittent, success, not to characterize people at all. — T Clark

What I have in mind is something very simple. Take this forum, for example. Of course we are all individuals, but I find hard not to see general types. To be sure, we lose detail when we think in types, but I find it happening quite naturally. In a quote above, there's a comparison of cynics and hippies. I think 'belief system' talk is going to come from cynics seeking distance and 'forgotten spiritual tradition' talk is going to come from hippies, more or less by definition or association. Or there is the blue versus red of U.S. politics. Of course I do see the value of trying to look around our projected categories. By calling attention to them, we remind ourselves of stereotyping tendencies that might otherwise lead us into trouble.

It's not the number, it's the fact that I remembered it. That I thought it was worth putting on the list. That I thought to write the list in the first place. That I think the list and the things on it show something fundamental about me.

If nothing else, I think we have established I am charming. — T Clark

Fair enough! And you are indeed charming.

A central feature of a worldview is: who is in charge, and why should we accept their authority? — frank

Indeed. If I had to pick a center, that would be it. And this is an old issue: http://www.iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/.

One possible narrative is that Thrasymachus is right, and that lots of traditional philosophy is a defense formation against that terrible possibility. Of course humans are more powerful in groups, and groups come with rules, but then an intellectual can play by the rules publicly and be a private sophist.

Modern mass cynics lose their individual sting and refrain from the risk of letting themselves be put on display. They have long since ceased to expose themselves as eccentrics to the attention and mockery of others. The person with the clear, "evil gaze" has disappeared into the crowd; anonymity now becomes the domain for cynical deviation. Modern cynics are integrated, asocial characters who, on the score of subliminal illusionlessness, are a match for any hippie. They do not see their clear, evil gaze as a personal defect or an amoral quirk that needs to be privately justified. Instinctively, they no longer understand their way of existing as something that has to do with being evil, but as participation in a collective, realistically attuned way of seeing things. — Sloterdijk

Life thins out into a veneer over the possibility of revolution, and so the whole world is sick, but the bad guy is untouchable.

What do you think of the government-type you live under? Do you see in any beauty in its foundation? — frank

I think the 'untouchable bad guy' is a good theme. Some thinkers make Nature itself the bad guy. Along the same lines, they see human existence as essentially fractured. Man is a futile passion or just of bundle of passions with no center. The disaster is universalized. The gods themselves are evil, or at least amoral. This kind of thinking is seductively monolithic. The good guy and the bad guy are the same guy. The good guy is the bad guy who has stopped thinking he is the good guy. (The distinction breaks down, in others words. The position has something melancholy about it. It may occasionally thirst for a kind of lost innocence, without really being willing to pay for it.)

I live in the US, and I do see beauty in its foundation. Individualism is the siren song that still rings in my ears. I understand opponents of individualism. They are right that there's something profoundly lonely and sterile involved. On the other hand, there's something cloying and stagnant in the other direction. Die of thirst alone in some open desolate space or rot in the crowded nursery. A thinking that creates distance from the law and a thinking that wants to become law --something like that.

Only if the conflict thesis is fundamentally true. — Wayfarer

Sure. I agree that the worldviews/identities I sketched above depend on or embody that thesis. Of course I wasn't putting forward that thesis myself. So we can say that the knight of spirituality and the knight of positivism need the conflict thesis in order to cast their vision of the social drama. What they have in common is a sense that the truth in their possession is something to impose on the community, for that community's own good. They depend on one another.

It's another issue, but I think we take deep pleasure in ideological conflict. While we like to feel that we are winning or on the right side, a complete victory would condemn our current identity to obsolescence. If we run out of bad guys, we start a new war in a new uniform. For instance: I start as the one-sided spiritualist or positivist, but eventually learn to doubt the conflict thesis. But who am I now? What treasure (or sword) can I bring? Ah ha! I wage war against the conflict thesis itself. I invent a third way that sees these the first two ways as the two sides of the same counterfeit coin. But the story doesn't end there. It continues at least to this very narrative of evolving narratives.

I think that just shows a lack of imagination, vision, on your part. Seeing people as they are is a skill not everyone has. — T Clark

This response tells me much more about you than all those details. Some details are more significant than others, I think you might agree. — praxis

I have to agree with praxis here, T Clark. In your response you seem to divide humanity into those with the skill of seeing people and those without. For me it's pretty natural to assume the purveyor of invidious distinctions find himself or herself on the bright side of that distinction. For what it's worth, I value seeing others. I count it as a virtue, so I'm definitely not attacking your distinction. I'm just defending my thesis.

Do you at all agree with the following?

Probably the most important part of our worldview is our categorization of others. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? If the environment is understood as the most pressing issue, then environmental activists are central good guys. If the world has become a spiritual flatland, then resuscitators or keepers of the holy flame are central. If superstition is the problem, then defenders of science and rigor are the good guys. A diagnosis tends to come with a doctor. Even a cynic wants to cure at least himself of bothersome illusions. Other self-concerned philosophers of their own worry or fear or pettiness. (And I'm playing at being a knight of self-consciousness, one might say.)

To the contrary, I think what I've provided gives a much better understanding of who I am and what my life means to me than any narrative could. I guess that's the point. Narratives round off corners and putty over holes. Sand rough spots. — T Clark

To the contrary, I think what I've provided gives a much better understanding of who I am and what my life means to me than any narrative could. I guess that's the point. Narratives round off corners and putty over holes. Sand rough spots. — T Clark

It's a charming list, but does your childhood phone number really give us a better understanding of you? I remember my childhood phone-number, too. It has a certain magic for me. But it's just random numbers for others.

But all theories are the same kind of tool - a map by which to navigate the territory. So while - like blind men feeling an elephant - that might result in many partial mappings, there is still that single territory being explored. — apokrisis

Your position is reasonable, but I'm not convinced that chiseling the tool metaphor down to the map metaphor is the way to go. Of course I do see that theories are especially used as maps, but I think it fair to emphasize how theories create or become and do not merely reveal reality. What I have in mind is especially the long human conversation about who humans are and who they should be.

And there could also be the most complete map possible map. The Map of Everything. — apokrisis

That does seem to be goal. As desirable as such a map is, it's hard to imagine reality standing still long enough to be mapped (or to 'map itself'). Of course I don't think anyone will deny that some of our maps/tools have gotten better and better, at least for certain purposes.

So actual life is rich because it it rich with a history of accidents, fluctuations, contingencies and particulars. Chance and unpredictability are basic to actual existence. And inexplicable to the degree they are just accidents. — apokrisis

I also see things this way.

But then the other side of the coin is that Peircean semiotics is founded also on the growth of global habits, the emergence of structural-level necessity. Peirce called it the spontaneity of tychism vs the continuity of synechism. — apokrisis

As I understand physics (not my specialty), we have chance at the very small scale but a kind of law-of-large-numbers pseudo-determinism or determinism-enough at the scale of everyday life. Do you mean something like this?

It is just like real maps - the kind you use to get around. The metaphysics wants to boil away the unneeded detail. It wants to create a picture of the world that doesn't tell you what kind of trees grow on that there hill this year, or the colour of the front door that Mr Smith chose a few months back. Instead, the simplest map just tells you where are the obstacles, where are the paths. That is, where are the constraints, where are the degrees of freedom.

So to call a metaphysical model a tool is too general. There are many kinds of tools.

The kind of tool we are talking about here is a map. And maps are interested in the global structure of an environment, not its inessential details. — apokrisis

This is a great way to develop the map metaphor. But I'm not sure that humans are only mapping human nature. Does a fiction sometimes become the truth in a way that threatens the distinction itself in some cases?

I love the reply, but you ain't foolin' me with that rhetorical strategy. :smile: I think you've painted very well the kinds of things that aren't central to identity. They are charmingly concrete and abstract. They are flesh on the bones of the big narrative. Novelists use them to emphasize 'incarnation.' Our bright, universal fantasies of ourselves are entangled with a background of master-plan-neutral detail.

I have been interested in the topic of free will for some time, and while considering the traditional idea of God's judgement of individual lives, a thought has persisted for me. Not only is the idea of God's judgement nonsensical, it seems to me that God is the only conceivable being who cannot rightly judge human beings. That is because if there is anyone who is ultimately responsible for the way we live out our lives, it is God. This is assuming that God created the universe and that we are part of the universe (made of atoms). We as human persons can judge ourselves and other people to some degree, but I believe that this is ultimately for pragmatic reasons. We hold each other accountable in order to maintain a peaceful society. But God has no pragmatic reason to judge human beings, and if He is omniscient, then He is fully aware of the precise reasons we act as we do, down to the last firing neuron.

What is your opinion on this idea? Do you agree or disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts! — Philip

I agree. I don't believe in this God you mention, but I did at one time and wrestled with this kind of question. For me it would just never add up. Some perhaps deal with this cognitive dissonance by redecorating their defeat with compliments to God's mysterious ways. In other words, they just accept that their fundamental theory of existence doesn't make sense. The bug becomes a feature. God is not absurd, He's just wonderfully mysterious. It's as if the idea of a divine, benevolent intelligence behind al things is just too attractive to sacrifice over a little absurdity and confusion. All that's need is a new verbal coat of paint.

The physics that gives rise to consciousness may also give rise to free will. — LD Saunders

But what is free will? There's an ordinary sense of it that we all understand. So and so did this or that no one 'put a gun to his head.' We use it in calculating praise and blame, successfully but very loosely. In that sense, free will already exists. It's hard to see what the religious version of this could be other than a bigger version of this same idea, one that justifies the evil in the world while keeping God's hands clean.

The bright side of this religious free will is that humans are understood to be outside the law-of-large-numbers-deterministic 'machinery' of nature. That troubled teen down the street can theoretically turn on an infinitely small time, no slave of his so-called conditioning. That he tortured animals yesterday theoretically tells us nothing about his mysteriously free future. I can't find this plausible. I find it more plausible that machine learning will become eerily accurate in a way that threatens the religious understanding of free will.

Of course I'm just playfully trying to communicate what the concept means for me. As far as I can tell, identities come largely in narrative form. We know that we have evolved, and we tell the story of that evolution to ourselves and others. And we are doing this already as teenagers. So telling the story of our lives is also telling the story of all the stories we have told about ourselves about ourselves throughout those lives.

Well yes. I do what I do because it has extraordinary beauty for me. — apokrisis

I can relate. I also like what I understand of your view. Reality is (among other things) something that makes sense of itself. It is self-exploring, self-describing.

It is about actually being able to see and feel this structure in the mind's eye, recognise its form in every encounter with the world. — apokrisis

I relate to seeing and feeling a structure when in the theorizing mode. Philosophy strikes me as a blend of art and science. Maybe a good theory just has the beauty of efficiency, of bang for buck. On the other hand, a good theory also allows the philosopher to either peer into the 'mind of God' or even host this mind (or more believably co-host the self-knowledge of 'the divine.')

I'm not particularly attached to this vocabulary of 'mind of God' and 'divine,' but I do think it captures the secret thrill of philosophy. The fantasy or just goal (or just one of a family of goals) seems to be to view the 'machine' from outside and beyond it. The hero is maybe dialectically evolving conscious crossing some end-of-history thresh-hold or (alternatively) maybe just braver than all who came before and therefore able to tolerate the grimly beautiful truth. Or even just lucky, even in his own eyes, to be shaped by circumstance into a lens of the perfect shape.

You actually have to spend a long time building up that integrated picture that brings it fully alive. — apokrisis

I still think that we are dealing with a useful and/or beautiful grid placed against the fullness of reality (or rather the grid is an isolated piece of this reality understood as its essence.)

I see life/existence as the world of mere appearances - at least in being the foreshortened subjective view of what it is to be me, some bag of flesh and prosaic needs, in some highly particular moment of the here and now. And then the Peircean theory is the map of the abstract or objective reality of which my immediate pressing existence is a tiny accidental shard. — apokrisis

I can relate to the distance from the 'bag of flesh and prosaic needs.' I can relate to becoming bored with one's tedious idiosyncrasies and the sense of one's life-story as a tiny shard. But the point that I would make is that the grand theory (god's self-consciousness, let's say) is part of an experience that engulfs it. The sense that one's life is a tiny accidental shard is 'within' that shard. Experience is sorted and 'non-essense' is thrown into the no-longer-fascinating merely-subjective bin.

But then what could really drive me? It is only that you can get to experience the wholeness of reality as it comes alive gradually as a living structure in your thoughts.

Isn't that what everyone seeks from metaphysics? And so, that makes the best metaphysics such a worthwhile journey. — apokrisis

I agree with all of this. And of course I'm trying to do metaphysics even as I theorize its limits or delineate what all metaphysical visions have in common. If reality is largely sense-making itself, then I'm interested in modeling this modeling. Of course to do so I have to throw away detail. 'Tool' is another master word or skeleton key. Others may be as good, but I haven't found any that are better, I don't think. That theories are tools suggests motivated tool-users. And the word 'tool' isn't as loaded with the 'sentimentality' that inhibits a distancing from whatever vocabulary one happens to have used successfully in the past as circumstances demand a fresh invention. Of course it's nice to feel done with all that distancing too. We want consummation and closure. 'All theories are tools, including this one' is one flavor of that closure, and more traditional metaphysical visions is another.

But if you're not *really* the 'persona' - then what else could you be? A meta-person? — Wayfarer

I read through some of your old posts to try to find an example. You mention the 'vertical dimension' in a way that suggests that it's a kind of key phrase for your 'philosophical identity.' I'm not saying that that is bad or good, just presenting an example. Anyway, I didn't have to read much to get a general sense of a set of interlocking positions. It was hard not to imagine someone who imagined himself as a sort of knight of the vertical dimension. (I'm a 'knight' of something-or-another myself, so I mean no offense. )

As I see it, it is angst or doubt that is crucial here. It's one thing to be aware of your positions and passionate affirm them, though even this puts a little distance between the eye that sees and its image of itself. But angst or doubt really makes aware of wearing what we have been and may not continue to be. 'I am my past in the mode of no longer being it.'

Maybe we could talk of the center of a self being a pure consciousness devoid of personality, pure seeing if you will, the dry witness. But I think it's useful to think in terms of an onion. Some identifications are so lightly held that it doesn't hurt to reverse them completely. Others are so deep and 'natural' that they are invisible. They are too close to the 'eye.' As I see it, one way to be a great philosopher or exciting thinker is to become aware of these deep/'natural'/invisible parts of a worldview and simultaneously make them both explicit and optional.

I suppose in cultural terms, our 'defining meta-narrative' must be something modelled from a composite of your occupation, your family ties, and artistic or professional aspirations. In the absence of an meta-narrative, what else is there? — Wayfarer

Indeed. But is there ever an absence of meta-narrative? Or are there just moments of one dominant narrative and other moments of thousands of individual narratives? Theocracy versus democracy.

What you did repeat was that any bid at abstract totalising must by its own lights fail to capture the wholeness of an actual world.

Well again, I made the arguments on that. [1] I agreed that modelling is modelling. [2] But then the larger Peircean story is that modelling constructs its own world. And so the actualised wholeness is itself an emergent from the core semiotic process that is the engine producing any reality. — apokrisis

I think I know what csalisbury was getting at. It's a thought that I've had myself, so I'll try to reply to this in my own way.

Any philosophical theory, no matter how grand or successful, is still a mere conceptual piece of reality as a whole. It exists among toothaches, beautiful faces, and screams in the distance at night. It exists among other grand theories, equally plausible or implausible, at least until further investigation.

So (as you may well understand), it's not about opposing abstract thought to sensuality but rather about opposing abstract thought to the richness of an experience that includes all abstract thought, and not just that grand theory.

It seems to me that theories are useful because they are reductive. They ignore the right things. They collapse elements into equivalence classes, for instance. Presumably you'll find all of this obvious. It's trivial, really. Of course a theory isn't life itself, right?

But if a theory isn't life itself, then what exactly remains of accuracy? A theory can't catch the wind in a net, but it can help us decide what to do. Our grand theory and the plurality of little theories it organizes are one part of reality that helps us navigate reality/existence as a whole. Concepts are tools in a realm that includes but transcends concept.

In the quote above, I don't see how [2] cancels [1]. Are you offering a model, a useful perspective? Or something more? Do you grant that theories are not life/existence itself? That all theories are 'smaller' than existence?

The only way to be integrated as a self is to understand the disintegrative forces at work. — apokrisis

I strongly agree with this.

Thousands of years ago, poetry and improv were at the heart of personal identity within a tribal social setting. They were the right technology for an oral tradition.

But thousands of years on and we are not in Kansas anymore. That is why I find them inauthentic if taken out of that tribal context and advanced as a viable modern mode of analysis. — apokrisis

Right. For analysis, I agree. But it seems that the role of serious analyst still has a poetic foundation. Why be an analyst, a scientist, a philosopher? How do we decide that it's better (for us) to accurately model existence with words than to blow on a saxophone and create an ecstasy without words?

If a person makes their living that way, then we have (among others) economic motives. But Schopenhauer, for instance, was not financially dependent on philosophy. It seemed instead to be his pride and joy. And even many of those who were paid seem to have been quite passionate about their work. I can imagine a thinker who presents an ugly truth of existence, but even here it seems that this thinker would have to find accuracy itself beautiful. Or why immerse himself in a otherwise optional ugly perspective?

Isn’t the term ‘meta-narrative’ just another word for a belief system? Lately I’ve been pondering this idea of being ‘addicted’ to a paradigmatic mindset. It does seem, in a sense, that once indoctrinated, or bought into a given prevailing collective meta-narrative, oblivious to any alternative, it could be said that one becomes entirely dependent and fixated upon that mindset, through and from which one then derives a filtered interpretive understanding of one's experiential domain, and the meaning of one’s relational role within it. So it surely seems that, in effect, one’s identity and purpose in life becomes inextricably linked to that. So, for example, if indoctrinated into the materialist paradigm, it then becomes a meta-narrative of cultural materialism, and thus the ‘addictive’ need to attain more and more materiality, and carnal satisfaction, in order to feed and fulfill that corporeal identity and its cravings. Likewise, one can be indoctrinated into a religious or sociopolitical or militaristic meta-narrative, with its own problematic addictive implications. No doubt there are many examples of more extremist identifications from religious fundamentalists to neo-Nazis to militant fanatics of all types. — snowleopard

Totally. Yes, these are good examples. This is the kind of thing I have in mind.

I guess things get really interesting when one starts to pride one's self on being critically minded --on not being a slave to bad narratives at least. So then there's a motive to push against one's prejudices. What comes to mind is the pleasure-pain of picking a scab. There's a kind of self-mutilation in critical thinking turned against one's self. A person 'dies forward.'

Most def. Meta-narratives mostly serve to bind groups in common values/purposes. It is important to identify with such groups in order to be bound to them. — praxis

I agree. Groups seem to tend to form around a few basic virtues and vices (hoorays and boos.) Philospohers are fascinating because at least some of them enjoy trying to get outside of any group, except for that group which hoorays transcending every other identity.

Sure. For whatever reason I tend to be a loner and not a joiner, so meta-narratives tend to not hold much weight for me. I'm naturally drawn to those that express my values and goals, however. — praxis

I feel you. I would, however, see being a loner in terms of one of the more interesting metanarratives --that evolving narrative of the hero that thrusts against being possessed by narratives. That's what I've perhaps loved most about the philosophical tradition.

I don't think there is a "worldview", "an overarching account", rather there are many narratives that intersect, combine, diminish, accentuate, are modern, postmodern, anachronisms... all part of our language game. — Cavacava

But isn't this absence of an overarching account a kind of overarching account? All of the many narratives seem to be squeezed together into one grand language game in the quote above. Of course I agree that we can zoom in and see plurality. Still, I speculate that individuals tend have a set of interlocking or systematic self-descriptive and world-descriptive keywords that they are especially slow to relinquish.

The fragmentation of the overarching meta narrative, has lead us to the fragmentation of the autonomous self, into our schizoid personalities. The neutrality of the ego as witness and role player who plays multiple parts but without full absorption into any of its roles. This is the difference between parody of an officially designated style, and pastiche where there are many styles and none of them are official. — Cavacava

Well written. While I think you capture something important about our current situation, I still think we have (often enough) a full absorption at least in a role play for the mirror. We know ourselves to be the grand and absurd beings who play lots of little roles that aren't us in our fullness. Only we know our fullness. Even friends and lovers can only follow us so far, since at some point our differences are threats to one another. So we learn to play in the intersections and politely ignore these differences. And when it comes to business or just interacting with strangers, we might not even think of trying to be authentic. It's safer to collectively agree on a kind of neutral background. (This is the public/private split in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, for instance. )

but even then it can become an identity of 'I am one who is non-attached', with some attendant story attached. Seems to be our story-telling destiny. Perhaps all I really know for sure is this presence of awareness, while all else is story time ... End of story :wink: — snowleopard

Great example. 'I am the non-attached.' 'I am the one who sees through all illusions.' These (as you imply) are leading roles themselves.

I think every living moment of a human being’s life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status. — Tom Wolfe

Maybe that's putting it a little too strongly? But it makes for great novels.

When push comes to shove, metanarratives are illusions. As a person who has lived most of his life mired in illusion, I think they are probably self-destructive. They're lies we tell ourselves. We have no stories. I think maybe poetry would work better. I think life is more about tone, mood than it is about meaning. — T Clark

But isn't this a grand narrative too? You are person who lived much of your life in an illusion, the illusion that there was a narrative or a plot. Now you see the truth on tone and meaning. I like this and can relate, by the way. I'm just saying that I'd count it as a worldview.

So, what's the difference between a metanarrative and a world view? Is it that, with the metanarrative, I'm in the picture? It's a story about me and how I fit into the world. I'm thinking now - "So, what is T Clark's metanarrative?" Am I the only one who can write my metanarrative? Can I write yours? — T Clark

No difference really. I suggest that worldviews tend to come with roles for the worldviewer.

Can we write our own metanarratives? In some sense, yes, perhaps, but it also seems that our metanarratives write us. As soon as we get distance from our worldview, it's no longer our worldview. It is already a former worldview. We see ourselves as the kind of person who used to see ourselves that way. Or currently but now optionally see ourselves that way. Occasionally there's an explosive reversal. But mostly we seem to change our worldview piecemeal. It's a boat that we replace part by part, so that we don't drown in a kind of chaos. That's what I'd suggest.

Who are you to ask who I am? I definitely don't want to get tangled up in somebody else's metaphorical metanarrative. — Bitter Crank

Ha. Well, there's no chance of avoiding that, is there? This is one way to read 'Hell is other people.' These others are 'hell' because they refuse to see us as we want to be seen. I speculate that enduring this 'hell' is important to growth. Isn't reading at times a walk through the inferno? A risk of one's precious prejudices?

Imagine that you become aware that you're acting out a role in a play. You peer around trying to get a sense of this play. What's the tone? Where are you in the dramatic arc? How is this the same play that's forever been played? How is it unprecedented?

I think that's what it's like to try to see your own worldview. — frank

Good description. Hamlet comes to mind. What's interesting is our power to shape the play. A charismatic person can influence others. It seems to me that the great philosophers have, among other things, shaped the way that others see themselves. For the less bookish, the lyrics of a rock star or rapper seem to accomplish he same thing. I'd guess that whether or not we take bookish or pop-culture heroes is itself a function of even earlier identifications.

The best choice is always both ... to their extremes ... in an overall resulting balance. — apokrisis

This sounds good, but it's hard not to doubt the extremity of these extremes. The theoretical physicist can get down to some hip music, but presumably without putting a needle in their arm or living in poverty in the name of the art of the future or just the holy, mortal moment. And the reverse. The species casts us off in different directions, and some of us do what we can to assimilate as many fragments of this splintered god as we can. But even this goal is 'fragmentary.'

he'll nevertheless claim that his metaphysics are the ground for all the things in which he was, temporarily, unreflectively engaging. If such a claim is to be taken seriously, as the metaphysician intends it to be, then the things which he was doing un-metaphysically are things that can, in principle, be brought back into his metaphysical ambit. However he can only do so by reducing them. Yet its that very irreducibility that makes up the substance and texture of reality. — csalisbury

To me this is almost the criticism of theology metaphysics. For me this is tied up with the idea of God becoming flesh. Words like 'flesh' point toward the irreducible texture you mention.

apo mentioned pragmatism. That's a good ism. I like understanding 'theologies' as tools that we carry into the jungle of real life. I'm grateful to the earnest 'theologians' and the itch that compelled them to build tools for the rest of us. Some of them wanted to make all other tools obsolete with their own. They wanted to have personalities big and/or strong enough to engulf and/or cancel all others. In some ways it's a likable trait. On the other hand, we've all been (?) trapped in a pair of word-goggles or trapped with someone trapped in a pair of word-goggles. These 'word-goggles' can obscure the immediate social reality especially.