The manuscript has become noticeably easier to open than to close.
Blottisham: I think I've finally located the author's central mistake.
Quillibrace: Congratulations.
Where is it?
Blottisham: The manuscript keeps describing civilisation as though it were a collection of habits.
Surely civilisation is a collection of achievements.
Quillibrace: Is it?
Blottisham: Naturally.
Cathedrals.
Universities.
Constitutions.
Scientific discoveries.
Works of art.
Quillibrace: All admirable examples.
How many survive if the habits that produced them disappear?
(A pause.)
Blottisham: Fewer than one would hope.
Stray: The manuscript seems interested in that very distinction.
Achievements can often be inherited.
Habits must continually be performed.
Quillibrace: Exactly.
One inherits a library.
One must repeatedly inherit reading.
(Silence.)
Blottisham: That's annoyingly elegant.
Quillibrace: It was waiting to be said.
Stray: There's another sentence here.
"Civilisations remember procedurally before they remember intellectually."
I'm not entirely sure what it means.
Quillibrace: Think of language.
Children learn to speak long before they learn grammar.
Blottisham: Obviously.
Quillibrace: The practice arrives before the explanation.
Indeed, the explanation frequently arrives centuries later.
Stray: So perhaps societies become competent before they become self-conscious.
Quillibrace: Quite.
Reflection is a remarkably late invention.
(A thoughtful silence.)
Blottisham: Then civilisation isn't preserved by monuments.
Quillibrace: Not primarily.
Monuments remind.
Habits continue.
Blottisham: That's rather disappointing.
Quillibrace: Only if one has invested heavily in marble.
(They laugh.)
Stray: The manuscript also says traditions are often misunderstood.
People imagine traditions preserve the past.
Perhaps they preserve successful ways of entering the future.
(Quillibrace looks up slowly.)
Quillibrace: My dear Miss Stray...
that is extraordinarily perceptive.
(A brief silence.)
Blottisham: I don't quite see it.
Stray: A tradition isn't repeated because yesterday mattered.
It's repeated because tomorrow still requires something from it.
Quillibrace: Precisely.
Traditions that no longer assist the future eventually become history.
Traditions that still assist the future continue being traditions.
Blottisham: Then tradition is less conservative than I thought.
Quillibrace: Much less.
Successful traditions are remarkably adaptive.
Otherwise they would have concluded centuries ago.
(They continue reading.)
Blottisham: Here's a curious observation.
"Every civilisation develops techniques for surviving disappointment."
That seems oddly specific.
Quillibrace: Does it?
What are constitutions?
Appeal processes?
Scientific replication?
Insurance?
Peer review?
Blottisham: Administrative optimism?
Quillibrace: Administrative pessimism.
They assume human beings will occasionally be mistaken.
Stray: Or unlucky.
Quillibrace: Exactly.
The manuscript's deepest admiration seems reserved for institutions that expect fallibility without surrendering to it.
(A longer silence.)
Blottisham: I think I understand now.
The manuscript isn't celebrating uncertainty.
Quillibrace: No.
Blottisham: It's celebrating civilisation's astonishing patience with it.
Quillibrace: Beautifully put.
Stray: Which means civilisation doesn't consist in finally becoming certain.
It consists in discovering increasingly subtle ways of continuing despite uncertainty.
(Quillibrace closes the manuscript.)
Quillibrace: Yes.
And perhaps that is why civilisation appears simultaneously so fragile...
and so remarkably durable.
(The room remains quiet for some time.)
Blottisham: I must confess...
I thought this manuscript was about certainty.
Quillibrace: So did I.
For approximately the first three chapters.
The discussion concluded after an inconclusive attempt to determine whether the College's oldest traditions had survived because they were ancient or because they continued to solve problems no one had yet noticed had changed.
Tea was served according to a procedure whose origins remained obscure.
No comments:
Post a Comment