to sao paulo and back

Luana went to Sao Paulo last Monday, and I left Tuesday and got back tonight. It´s about 22 hours by bus, but the time passes remarkably quickly when you´re a complete poindexter and you´re reading Arthur Schlesinger´s Cycles of American History.

I was thinking about the relationship between intellect and action on the ride to Sao Paulo. I´ve always felt san impulse to retain critical distance and skepticism -- and along with it, a deep uncertainty about everything. And uncertainty is the cause of stifling indecision. I was thinking about how curiosity leads to uncertainty which leads to indecision, and the metaphor occured to me -- being in eucalyptus farmland -- of the intellect as a tree. Damn that sounds lame.

Trees are useful, but they take a long time to grow. They´re also nice to admire and enjoy. Some trees we chop down and use to make paper and houses, and others we leave alone for their own sake. Similarly, our intellectual growth is slow, and usually pursued for pragmatic ends -- to acquire useful knowledge -- and at times as an end on its own. Making a decision based on our knowledge of a situation is like cutting down a tree. It´s acknowledging that the suspension of skepticism and the possibility of false certainty -- preventing the tree from growing -- are worth the practical benefit of avoiding permanent indecision -- the value of a tree for wood. Allowing all the trees in the intellectual forest to grow permanently, as Pragmatism reminds us, will keep us from heat and shelter.

But cutting down a tree can also be productive. When we dissect a dead tree we can better understand living ones, just as making decisions helps us revisit our understanding of ourselves and our world. There´s significant value in both cutting trees and letting a few patches grow forever and undisturbed. Similarly, it´s important to retain deep and ultimate curiosity and uncertainty, while making decisions on a daily basis that require a degree of certainty. I get afraid that part of being a responsible adult is leveling the entire forest.

I like the Buddhist conception of conventional truth versus ultimate truth, which parellels the paradox of the scientific method that produces very useful laws and models while never being able to definitively prove any of them. Thinking of personal truth as trees is a good way for me to model this. I guess the task is to keep from picking the apples from -- not to mention killing -- the oldest and most pristine trees in the deepest part of the forest.

Luana´s still in Sao Paulo so I´m alone for this week. That means a lot of quiet time and a lot of eggs.