Human Experiential Relativity

The inveterate belief of all mankind in myth, sometimes crystallized into dogmas, sometimes degraded into superstition, was always excluded from the field of philosophical interest, either as divine revelation, which philosophy could not touch, or (especially in modern times) as a miscarriage of logical explanation, a production of ignorance. […] And it dawned on the philosopher [Ernst Cassirer] that theory of mind might well begin not with the analysis of knowledge, but with a search for the reason and spiritual function of this peculiar sort of “ignorance.”
 ~ Susanne K. Langer, preface to Ernst Cassirer’s Language and Myth

I have already (perhaps to an excessive degree) discussed the relationship between our individual human experience (especially in the realm of intimate relationships) and our expression of self in symbol to ourselves and to our partner (i.e. communication) as an ongoing process in the love symbol negotiation. Yet at the root of the rather philosophic end of my excursions I some time ago hit upon just such a “reason and spiritual function of this peculiar sort of ignorance” (whether it be absence of knowledge, or myth, or religion, or ideology, etc.), at least one I believe might work for myself:

For it may (may!) be that we can ‘know’ nothing more than the meaning we get from the very process of living life. Indeed, just as the ambiguity and imprecision of language and of symbols gives us the opportunity to create a fun and entertaining puzzle to express our selves and be happy ‘playing’ at and with, perhaps not knowing some key important things about life is (at least part of) the point in existing at all.

If one reason for life’s ‘ignorance’ is to experience, find meaning and express ourselves and our experience, then all those ideologies, myths and dogmas are stories of human expression (regardless of their technical fictive status) - and perhaps the most important measure of any one of them is how well they capture, express and communicate the human experience. (Thus ‘what ever symbols work in a relationship work’, be it female led or not.)

Thus it should be no surprise that, as I recently realized, maintaining awareness of the relativity and multiplicity of individual perspective on human experience and its expression (to self or other) I have found (so far) to be the best antidote to my own interior darkness. (It is also interesting to note this post of mine about how ‘no one is interested in what I am interested in’, not only demonstrates my interior darkness by its negative, whining and arrogant tone, but is essentially wrong as the quote above proves.)