This is a sentiment that echoes feelings that I have had for some time, namely that there is really an over-emphasis in modern intellectual thinking towards reductionism.  We feel that if we understand the pieces that make up a system, we have understood the system as a whole.  While this works extremely well in the physical sciences, I fear that in the behavioral sciences this approach is misguided and exists with entirely too narrow of an epistemological framework.  Noë describes this narrowness as the difference between thinking of the brain as an engine and thinking of it as a car on a road.  Engines are essential for driving but understanding ‘driving’ requires more than understanding the engine.  I think that a better example would be the difference between a computer program that sits on a hard disk as a series of magnetic charges that represent 0s and 1s and a computer program as it is executed and experienced by the user.  The understanding of what ‘the program’ is differs vastly between the two!

Noë gives philosphical reasons why this is dangerous, but I would like to suggest that this has more broad implications for the average person.  It is easy to pick up the reductionist sentiment from media and news and the perspective is much more deeply entrenched in contemporary consciousness than one might first believe and many people are reductionists without even realizing it because they are simply unaware that alternatives exist.

I think it is terribly important to understand the world in a way that is both accurate (informed by science) but that is simultaneously meaningful.  Accuracy is wonderful, but it loses its value in a world that is so informed by accuracy and science that it cannot appreciate meaning, beauty, art, religion and sentiment.

I feel crazy for saying these things. Everyone else seems sad that the warm days are over, but for me, this is the beginning of the real enjoyment. Granted, I will probably be stuck in the grays by February along with everyone else, but is not that part of Life as well? To me somehow the Cold has a depth of soul to it that just does not happen in the Summer months, which tend to feel sticky and lazy.

Along those lines, I have come to realize that gray skies are in fact some of the most colorful skies out there. If you look closely at a gray sky, it is not gray at all, but a shimmering mass of reds and purples and blues and sometimes even greens.

The best part about cold is at night when you go out away from lights and buildings and people and stare up into the vast expanse above us. Winter skies are unparalleled for their beauty.

Summers and Springs are Golden, but I am a lover of Silver and will be content in my Winter Nights and Gray Days.

What is it about this setting that is so profoundly attractive? Rain is supposed to be depressing. Football is active and even a bit violent. Tea – well. I like tea. What is it about late fall that brings me back to some profoundly comfortable memory of life. “Comfortable?” That isn’t the right word. There is an element of comfort in the feeling though. It is a feeling of comfort of sorts. Like life has become this loveseat and I can just sink into it and relax – a point of “having arrived” at my destination.

Of course none of this is where I actually am. This is the memory, the ideal that the situation brings back. It is as though times like this open a window that I can look out through but through which I cannot go. I enjoy the feeling of course, but it is a enjoyment that comes in the not-having of this ideal rather than in the having of this ideal. Oddly enough it is the situations that I enjoy most like this one that cause me to want it the most.

Nostalgia is a good word for this feeling (and one that I will use from here on out) although Nostalgia tends to refer to a longing for a past perfection. Here I am referring more to the longing and the prefection rather than the past. Sometimes I think that the divide between well-meaning members of “left” and “right” is that those on the right see the perfection in the past and those on the left see it as in the future. Personally I see it as both. Humanity certainly is not where it should be now.

Nostalgia is an inexplicable but fundamental part of human existence. It is the goad that reminds us that this world is not sufficient for us. It is the fuel of religion, art, architecture and holidays like Thanksgiving. The whole Romantic movement was defined by it. It is that which makes some people just so unbelievably attractive to us in such a wholesome simple way.

This entry is not very well organized. It rambles and draws from cliches and mixed metaphors, but perhaps that reveals as much about the subject matter as it does as to my skill as a writer. The subject matter by its very nature is something that is difficult to grasp or define and for that very reason we spend much of our lives seeking after the answer to that question and perhaps it is one of the most important questions we need to answer.