Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Been thinking alot lately. It's funny how relationships with the same people can change. I guess its the classic epistemological crisis. You think you know someone, and then that someone goes and does something that seems to you so uncharacteristic of them. They make you wonder if you really knew them well at all.
You could do three things with an epistemological crisis:
1. You could decide to ignore it altogether and act like nothing happened (which more ofen than not only serves to prolong the crisis).
2. You could be so utterly devastated by the new information that you reject the new stranger altogether,
3. Or you could accept it - accept the new person with his/ her new behavior - and attempt to reconstruct a new relationship with him/ her.
Some people (linguists more likely) would call the third option an attempt to "construct a broader narrative that is able to both account for the last and encompass the present". The third option, they argue, is the only option that results in a resolution of epistemological crisis.
While I can understand how it is possible for someone to "reason away" the troubling new behavior of a familiar, I don't see how "acceptance" of the new behavior can be purely a mental faculty.
You could understand the circumstances behind the new behavior, and even appreciate how and why the person has changed, but would that count as a resolution of the crisis?
Understanding (or even empathizing with) a new behavior does not equate to accepting the behavior, much less embracing it.
Nevertheless, we are friends with people, not behaviors.
Which then raises the question: are the two so intrinsically intertwined that it becomes impossible to separate person from behavior? Or can we love the one, but hate the other?
planted @
9:58 PM
