There’s a Reason I Live in Halifax

THE HALIFAX MIND (II)

“The meaning of a process is the inner being which the process expresses. The denial of any such inner being to the processes of nature leads inevitably to the denial of it to man himself.”

Owen Barfield – “The Rediscovery of Meaning”

Barfield, whom I happen to be reading at the moment, was talking about meaninglessness in our time. Such meaninglessness has arisen, according to Barfield, from the hegemony of the scientific mentality which, since it deals only in that which can be measured in terms of quantity (the philosophy of empiricism), necessarily overlooks – or even denies in its extreme form – the existence of that which relates to quality, that which resists any reduction to the empirical. But without such a concept of quality, what Barfield refers to as “inner being,” there can be no meaning whether in the processes of nature or in man himself. In effect, Barfield has turned the modern world view on its head. It is his “inner being” and not his external attributes which bestows upon man any meaning his life might possess.

This was the “deep structure” of my previous post on “The Halifax Mind.” What I had in mind by “Mind” (a little joke there) was the “identity” or “soul” (if the word doesn’t frighten anyone) of Halifax as a collective and, by extension, the identity of the Haligonian as an individual which he shares with the collective. In other words, is he identifiable in any coherent fashion and if so, how?

Of course, Halifaxman eats, sleeps and goes to work. He lives in a variety of abodes. He has a variety of pass-times and recreations. But is this all? Is there nothing which distinguishes him from, say, Dartmouthman? Is any such distinction illusory or does it have some substance? (Of course, Halifaxman looks down on Dartmouthman but this is only a negative aspect of his “inner being.” What we are looking for here are his positive attributes.)

If the distinction after all is not illusory, can some account be given of Halifaxman’s “inner being” so that some meaning might be bestowed upon his existence?

Thank you once again for your attention.*

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

* Indicates another of my little jokes. I find the formality humourous but I suppose no one else does. I forgot to indicate it in my last post. Sorry.

THE HALIFAX MIND (III): “RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE”

One of the advantages of posting a comment on Friday is, since no new Bitches appear on Saturday and Sunday, the possibility exists that the Friday comment can mellow and mature in the mind and so culminate in a more developed fashion. I think this has occurred in the case of “The Halifax Mind.”

My initial posting on “The Halifax Mind” (July 15, 8:12PM) raised the question, “What is the nature of The Halifax Mind?” How, if at all, was it to be distinguished from the “Minds” of other places? Also, were its internal distinctions such as to prevent any global assessment of a collective Halifax Mind? The question had just popped into my head and I didn’t know where I was headed or, for that matter, if I was headed anywhere at all.

In “The Halifax Mind (II) (July 16, 4:11PM) the question was coming more into focus. Using Owen Barfield’s concept of the “inner being,” that qualitative life of any organism (including cities) by virtue of which they acquired meaning, I attempted to refine the concept of the Halifax Mind into that of its “identity” or even “soul.” Could some account be given of either? Stealing the title of one of George Orwell’s essays (“The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell”) I discovered that the answer was “right under my nose.” If the Halifax Mind was the embodiment of a “sense of place,” then the sense of place was the embodiment of a sense of the passage of time, a sense in other words of the history of Halifax. To the extent that one had a sense of the history of Halifax, one came to embody the Halifax Mind.

But – there’s always a but – I mean a “sense of the history of Halifax” in a special sense (another little joke there). What I mean is not history in its narrowly specialist or cognitive sense – History as it is studied in the academy – but rather in its “affective” or “romantic” sense, that vague but real penumbra which envelopes one’s sense of place and time.

But there’s an irony here. Just yesterday (July 16) I wrote a rather long letter to The Gazette attacking an op-ed piece that championed just that affective or romantic sense of history as it applied to Montreal as the proper method of teaching it. (Since The Gazetter doesn’t publish on Sundays, it might still be available in stores specializing in out-of-town newspapers and periodicals. There used to be one at the corner of Queen and Morris. You might want to check it out.) Rather than history being a matter of putting up plaques and dating buildings to commemorate important people and events in the past in order to get students to “get a feeling for their history,” I argued that the proper method of the study of history involved “an active hermeneutical exercise aiming at the assessment of the significance of rational explanation and interpretation as they apply to man’s past.” But this is an academic, rational approach to history, not the romantic or affective approach which stimulates a sense of local identity or soul. It is not the sort of history which, in the present case, lays the foundation for the Halifax Mind.

So what’s the answer to the question, “What is the nature of the Halifax Mind?” The answer lies with those who possess an affective or romantic (but also a reflective) sense of the history of Halifax. It is more a feeling than a rational construct. But it is real.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

RSVPs

: Admiral Ivanwhatshisface (July 17, 10:24AM)

Glad you liked it. Give my best to everyone in Flyspeck.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!