Centreless/ Centerless Self/World
I think I picked up the term 'centreless' (which I'll spell that way) from the industrial process, which gave me an image of a machine floating over a perfectly polished surface with random movements. It turned out to be nothing like that, but the word stuck, and I liked the image. Quite recently I typed the two phrases into a google search and found a lot of references, apart from grinding.
Buddhists regard the self as centreless, in fact they deny the existence of the self as an identifiable entity. Post-modernists also speak of the centreless self. These notions can be easily researched if not easily understood. As a beginning of my own understanding I want to see if I can set out what it might mean to have a centred self/life/world. NB I don't know if these terms need be treated separately, they may be interchangeable.
I can imagine one's life could be centred upon one's job, family, home, church, community, interests, where these -or one or two prominent ones- provide enduring anchoring-points in life, giving direction and focus. If one's life and world has a central point, theme or focus, then they are centred. If one drifts between jobs, marriages, places of residence etc., the less one could be said to be centred. It seems to me that the subjective side of this is at least as important as the objective, visible side. If someone has lack of purpose or direction, a sense of rootlessness, their self/world is centreless. I think Emile Durkheim was referring to this very state when he talked about anomie. The sense of alienation he described occurs in societies undergoing great change, as in the industrial revolution, when he wrote. In some form it has been with us throughout the industrail and post-industial periods, some two hundred years.
An examination of the various manifestations of existential angst in society is too large an undertaking for me to tackle here. Suffice it to say that much of twentieth century art, philosophy and sociology touches on it, and the preoccupation undoubtedly continues.
Another indication of the centreless self occurs to me in the temporal nature of life. If you consider a lifespan from birth to death, you would be hard-pressed to say where the centre is; not necessarily the middle, which may or may not be the period of greatest achievement. One goes from one stage to the next, loosing one's grip on the past except through tenuous memories. In the final stages, at least in my experience, the whole thing becomes a set of contingent episodes with no really unifying theme. If I propose that the central fact of my life was having a family, it could be argued that this was never a central plan of mine and though momentous, still merely contingent. My vaguely disastrous career path and later activities, even more so.
For all that, and in some degree because of it (ie. external influences and personal nature) I like the idea of centrelessness, in art forms such as abstraction, nouvelle vague films, novels with minimal plot, music with loose formal stucture, and the idea of the flaneur, the casual but interested stroller, observing life without being much of a participant.
Buddhists regard the self as centreless, in fact they deny the existence of the self as an identifiable entity. Post-modernists also speak of the centreless self. These notions can be easily researched if not easily understood. As a beginning of my own understanding I want to see if I can set out what it might mean to have a centred self/life/world. NB I don't know if these terms need be treated separately, they may be interchangeable.
I can imagine one's life could be centred upon one's job, family, home, church, community, interests, where these -or one or two prominent ones- provide enduring anchoring-points in life, giving direction and focus. If one's life and world has a central point, theme or focus, then they are centred. If one drifts between jobs, marriages, places of residence etc., the less one could be said to be centred. It seems to me that the subjective side of this is at least as important as the objective, visible side. If someone has lack of purpose or direction, a sense of rootlessness, their self/world is centreless. I think Emile Durkheim was referring to this very state when he talked about anomie. The sense of alienation he described occurs in societies undergoing great change, as in the industrial revolution, when he wrote. In some form it has been with us throughout the industrail and post-industial periods, some two hundred years.
An examination of the various manifestations of existential angst in society is too large an undertaking for me to tackle here. Suffice it to say that much of twentieth century art, philosophy and sociology touches on it, and the preoccupation undoubtedly continues.
Another indication of the centreless self occurs to me in the temporal nature of life. If you consider a lifespan from birth to death, you would be hard-pressed to say where the centre is; not necessarily the middle, which may or may not be the period of greatest achievement. One goes from one stage to the next, loosing one's grip on the past except through tenuous memories. In the final stages, at least in my experience, the whole thing becomes a set of contingent episodes with no really unifying theme. If I propose that the central fact of my life was having a family, it could be argued that this was never a central plan of mine and though momentous, still merely contingent. My vaguely disastrous career path and later activities, even more so.
For all that, and in some degree because of it (ie. external influences and personal nature) I like the idea of centrelessness, in art forms such as abstraction, nouvelle vague films, novels with minimal plot, music with loose formal stucture, and the idea of the flaneur, the casual but interested stroller, observing life without being much of a participant.
Labels: angst, centerless, centreless, flaneur, society
posted by Peter Shelton at 11:35 AM
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