On Roots

 

Banyan Tree Painting - Ken Dahl

Entries from Dynaxiom with the word "roots":

1994. The roots of inspiration in the arts date back into deep history; Epigenetic forces are the gravitational centers that coalesce and help it to stand the test of time. Essentially, this is what traditions are. 

1793. Uncertainty is like the continuous chord inversion: You lose a sense of where the roots are, but they are always close by.

1505. Jazz is sometimes viewed as elitist, but it is still essentially a form of roots music.

0762. The new era of 'R&B' is untethered from its roots—perhaps intentionally. Any artist that wants to part ways with the past shouldn't even be associating itself with the genre unless making a parody of it (which is fine). Imitation with reverence for the art form is flattery, but imitation without reverence is mockery. (12/2010)

0636. There's a huge difference between people thinking for themselves, groups of people thinking for themselves and society as a whole being totally idiotic. Even if you have smart cohesive groups with good intentions and strategies, they ultimately hit the brick wall of group-think. This is how despotic societies can work so well: all the stupidity is already baked into the system. Up until the Arab Spring, no large society even dared to challenge the status quo. These new democracies will have similar challenges, plus centuries-old tribal loyalties to contend with. All the intelligence at the grassroots level—the ideas, the optimism, and hope for the future will be challenged by the freight of history. Not everyone will want to settle for the same kind of change or pace of change. (11/2012)

0322. It's better if what you do has deep roots. That way if you get deracinated, you can regenerate. [Rick Hanson: "When you find your North Star, you know where you're headed. That alone feels good. Plus, your North Star is (presumably) wholesome and vital, so aiming toward it will bring more and more happiness and benefit to yourself and others. And you can dream bigger dreams and take more chances in life since if you lose your way, you've got a beacon to home in on."]

2470. In Edward T. Hall's book, Beyond Culture, he discusses cultural context and its effects on how individuals interact. He talks about high and low context systems; the former, those systems where the rules that govern interaction between people are implicit, developing over hundreds or thousands of years; and the latter, those that change from time to time, with no deep roots to the past. (Chinese culture is an excellent example of high context; American culture, low context.) Cults are primarily low context because they have a propensity to be a hodge-podge of tenets drawn from many different religions and social structures–masquerading as a high-context social structure. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to know exactly what the context could be at any given moment since the members of the cult have inculcated a philosophy of life that is in a state of flux. This is the polar opposite of the high-context of ancient cultures where context is etched in stone. (12/1996) 

***

More "roots" on this blog.

***

Postscripts:

From the introduction of Beyond: "Once people began evolving their extensions, particularly language, tools and institutions, they got caught in the web of what I term "extension transference" and as a consequence, they err in judgment and become alienated from, and in incapable of controlling the monsters they have created. In this sense, humans have advanced at the expense of that part of themselves that has been extended, and, as a consequence, ended up expressing human nature in its many forms. Man’s goal from this point should be to rediscover that lost, alienated, natural self."

[8/19/2024: Re-invention, re-discovery, re-modernism, going back to nature, going back to the roots. This is the natural reaction to the effect of too much involvement with technology for the sake of itself–even language itself.]