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Originally Posted by Daniel Birdick  I suppose the “problem” that comes up for me when applying this to Steve’s polarity concept is that I don’t buy all of the premises that come with it. I see no reason to. It doesn’t seem to be a coherent philosophical system nor does appear to be an accurate snapshot of real world psychology. |
But that's not what a crystallized idea is. There's no requirement that the idea is Truth, has coherence or consistent logic; it just needs to be stable. Part of what validates the analogy of the lifespan is that a person's image is an idea, too. For the sake of discussion, let's invent a concept. I'll call it Endymism, because Dan Simmons' Endymion happens to be sitting on the desk, and we'll define it as the philosophical perspective acquired by close friendship with a messiah figure.
Is this idea crystallized? We could say that it is: if we accept that there's nothing more to it--it's just a perspective, after all--then we know what it refers to and what it doesn't. Or we could push and prod at it, maybe expand it from friendship to being of the same community, or narrow it to being an intimate lover. In that case, it isn't crystallized... for us.
Now, let's say you're the one making these suggestions, and I don't like them. In fact, I'm dead set against them. In that case, Endymism is crystallized for me, and you're deriving a new concept from it. If the idea gains traction, they might call it Michaelean Endymism and Danielean Endymism. Endymism, then, is naturally reclassified in the participants' mind as something more abstract that ably encompasses both ideas. Or they might choose to call it Endymism and Neo-Endymism, in which case my originally professed version would have the esteem of the better name.
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Originally Posted by Daniel Birdick Hence my pick and choose approach when it comes to this particular concept. |
And this is precisely it. You can pick and choose from it
because it has crystallized. You know what it is, and you know what it isn't. You know what it's made out of. So you can take some things that you like, discard other things you don't, and build a new concept.
Were it Endymism, you might have taken the relation to the messiah figure as a good thing, but the stipulation of friendship to be a triviality.
If it
weren't crystallized, then you would instead find yourself asking questions rather than making assertions. You wouldn't be able to say it's just New Age foolishness, because you couldn't compare it to other New Age concepts. Because it'd be incomprehensible: the human mind trembles before the awesome expanse of true chaos. You can't reject it, because you don't know what it is, but neither can you accept it.