Dog Food And Truth

I had a truly terrible dream last night.

I had a dream I was taking a German exam and I was unable to prepare for the exam–my ability to memorize got me through undergrad and a scholarship for graduate school (I once got a 100% on a Spinoza exam mostly by memorizing a shit-ton of Spinoza)–so this was terrible for me. 

But, it got worse, the way some dreams do. While taking this awful exam, with pictures I couldn't make sense of and directions I couldn't make sense of, pages out of order, I tried to go up to the front of the class to ask the prof for clarification. But you know dreams, while trying to make my way to the front of the class, I get lost, end up on a crowded sidewalk in a crowded city and almost get hit by a trash truck, only to reach a prof for a previous Marxism class, plus my exam is all out of order and I can't even ask her questions. So I'm trudging back to my German class, exam in hand, fighting the people on the sidewalk and the occasional car up on the sidewalk when, I wake up.

I have dreams of this ilk and they are awful. The feeling resides upon waking. The feeling of being lost and unprepared. I hate to Heidegger this up (do I though? Don't I love Heidegger?) but this feeling of geworfenheit, of being thrown...into the world is truly awful, almost horror...for me.

And I thought about writing upon awaking. And I thought about perhaps my son, asking me why I have these kinds of dreams.

And I thought about explaining to my nine year old Juju that: I'm not satisfied with quaint little stories. Though quaint and cute they may be. I think I have these dreams because I seek accurate explanations.

"But you're a relativist!" I hear from the interlocutor.

Indeed. You have me pegged. 

But my relativism doesn't quell the questioning. This is the crux.

Consider an example:

You're starving. You haven't had a crumb of food in, let us say three weeks, and the only reason you are alive is you've had access to water. Truly starving is my point here. You'll die unless you find something to eat.

You find something to eat.

A can of wet, dog food.

Yes, dog food. It'll keep you alive and sustain you. Perfectly edible, dog food is. 

My relativism is dog food. Can sustain me but it doesn't taste very good and it doesn't go down easily. Different from the quaint, candy-like stories that go down oh so smooth, but rot your teeth.

Truth is relative, per Lakoff and Metaphors We Live By but I am still thrown into this world and I live and move about in the minutiae and the people who thwart my projects (so much Heidegger this guy!) and offend my delicate sensibilities.

The world gives me dog food when I want to order off menu–the Dirty Steak from Al Forno in Providence, after a grilled pizza appetizer, with a single malt to wash it all down.

Dog food.

And relative truth.

"We do not believe that there is such a thing as objective (absolute and unconditional) truth, though it has been a long-standing theme in Western culture that there is. We do believe that there are truths but think that the idea of truth need not be tied to the objectivist view. We believe that the idea that there is absolute objective truth is not only mistaken but socially and politically dangerous. As we have seen, truth is always relative to a conceptual system that is defined in large part by metaphor. Most of our metaphors have evolved in our culture over a long period, but many are imposed upon us by people in power—political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, advertisers, the media, etc. In a culture where the myth of objectivism is very much alive and truth is always absolute truth, the people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true—absolutely and objectively true. It is for this reason that we see it as important to give an account of truth that is free of the myth of objectivism (according to which truth is always absolute truth). Since we see truth as based on understanding and see metaphor as a principal vehicle of understanding, we think that an ac-count of how metaphors can be true will reveal the way in which truth depends upon understanding."