Let’s say you want to study pottery from long ago. You are specifically interested in studying the piece for its composition and any clues it contains about its construction. You could break off a piece, powder it, and then analyze, but in doing so, you will have partially destroyed the object. That’s not a good practice for rare artifacts. What if you could examine it without any destruction? Well, you can. You can X-ray the thing or subject it to a Time-of-Flight nondestructive neutron diffractometer. Don’t have access to either? There’s a parallel in our trying to understand the development of and makeup of one another.
That’s the same problem we have in trying to understand one another without somehow changing our underlying makeup. We want to dig up the artifacts of an individual life to understand how one gets to be the way he or she is at the moment. However, our interactions always disturb the essential nature of one another.
No, we aren’t turning each other into some powder for examination, but in examining we add something of each to other.
No precious artifact from the historical development of another can be examined without interference. We have no nondestructive neutron diffractometer for character and character development. Whatever we dig up from personal history, we alter by what we are in the present. We always end up breaking or altering the vase (“vace” or “vahze”) of development.
That’s the same problem we have in trying to understand one another without somehow changing our underlying makeup. We want to dig up the artifacts of an individual life to understand how one gets to be the way he or she is at the moment. However, our interactions always disturb the essential nature of one another.
No, we aren’t turning each other into some powder for examination, but in examining we add something of each to other.
No precious artifact from the historical development of another can be examined without interference. We have no nondestructive neutron diffractometer for character and character development. Whatever we dig up from personal history, we alter by what we are in the present. We always end up breaking or altering the vase (“vace” or “vahze”) of development.
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