Ultimate Concern

For our Thursday class, we began by everyone sitting in a circle on the floor. We stretched out our legs so that our feet touched each other completing the circle. Then we went around the circle and each named a thing we find in the world that is circular (e.g. donuts, bagels, balls, tires, etc.). This followed a practice of the Efe pygmies of the Ituri Forest.

After we spoke for a bit about the importance of the circle–as shape and as idea–we went on to discuss four questions: 1) How are we to tell the difference between a physical experience and a mystical experience? 2) Why are some stories called “myths” and others the truth? 3) At what point does philosophy reach a place where it stops asking questions? Is there no answer? and 4) What is the affect of globalization on smaller cultures, esp. indigenous religious traditions.

After a bit of discussion and drawing out important highlights–like “mythos” is the Greek word for narrative–I asked everyone to consider whether “Globalization” itself is a myth or narrative about the “right way to order the world.” Then we took a break, and afterward I lectured for a bit on Tillich’s notion of “ultimate concern” as well as introduced the third perspective of where religions come from: faith in ultimate reality.

Before we left, I introduced the oldest standing stone structure that has yet to be discovered by archeologists.

The oldest structure probably built before the “agricultural revolution.”

A common practice of human exchange seems to have arisen from groups of hunter gathers coming together and building standing stone sites.

The most well known site: Stonehenge in England.

Paul Tillich’s notion of faith as ultimate concern primarily asks us to examine in what or in whom we put faith and whether that person, place, or thing is an “ultimate concern” or something that is unconditional or independent.

I disagreed with the notion that mysticism means direct knowledge of the truth. Rather, I put forward that mysticism is an opening experience to that which cannot be fully expressed.

An interesting fork in the road of a word: The original root for machine and magic is the same. It originally meant a short cut that made things (seem) easier. In time, one fork went in the direction of human contrivances that allow us to do more. The other went in the direction of “tricks”.