Introduction — First Blog Post

I am in search of a high-minded rationale for launching yet another blog, given the more than adequate supply of such things that society currently enjoys. But upon further review, to quote football referees, I will instead simply describe what I’m up to.

The permanent description of “Neither/Nor” on this page gives the gist. We are shipping out–in search of the great white whale. What that whale exactly is, I am no more sure than Melville was. Our white whale is not quite truth (never mind Truth), not quite knowledge, not quite faith, not quite pleasure, not quite laughter, not quite tears . . . . Not quite a lot of things. That’s the nature of white whales.

What are the tools for the hunt? Ruminations. Siftings. Pokings. Snortings and snufflings. Smackerals of conjecture. Sometimes bright flairs of speculation.

All this for what purpose? To understand life? Too grand. Too strike a bargain with the human condition? Closer but still too big? To explain the ways of God to man? I leave that to Milton and present-day apologists.

I’ll try something more modest. All this to provide a bit more raw material for living well. More thought, more reflection—often passed on from wiser heads—for answering the question that arises each morning as consciousness returns, “What ought I to do today?”

I would like to raise, for myself and for you, the quality of our answer to that recurring question. I should make that plural, of course—answers. Because there is no single answer, hence the potential excitement of living.

And sometimes, perhaps often, I won’t aim even this high. Just something curious, something humorous, something floating by the ship that draws our attention. A bit of bright flotsam.

A word on the passage from Whitman, which I will quote within this post since I may change the epigraph for the blog from time to time:

“You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”
Walt Whitman, “Song Of Myself”

I am not a Romantic, nor a Sinatra-like “I did it my way” type, but there is something useful in what Whitman affirms. Skeptical believers, of which I am one, are hyper sensitive to arguments from authority or tradition or “just believe it” fundamentalisms. Like it or not, everything is filtered through the subjective self—even objective, factual truth. So one may as well admit that and defuse it, rather than pretend it isn’t so.

Read and respond to this blog as you see fit. Don’t take my word for anything. Test the spirits. Be thought-filled and thoughtful. Join the hunt and respect your fellow hunters. We’re all in this together.