A broken Mirror of Nature

Now I guess the question would be, how I can reconcile concepts from Rorty and Wilber, with what we are doing in our class to achieve some synthesis. Let us try and fuddle around with Stewart for a bit. Can we somehow examine his motivations for making his trip through a postmodern/holarchical lense? I would first say that the post modern paradigm is generally the paradigm of the young (or who were young at it's inception). Now I am probably making gross generalizations, but let's let it stand for a bit. Stewart would probably follow into the Rortian idea of some sort of ethical progress by creating an applied rule of pragma/kharma. Whereas if he were more under the sway of Wilber, he would be doing TM and pranayama somewhere. I'm not sure where I'm going with this right now, and it all feels like a weak premise. Maybe I should try and reimagine my angle. What about the way Rory speaks, what sort of vocabulary is he employing. Wilber, although not really interested in the linguistic-constructivist persepctive, would probably say that he has transcended the ethnocentric worldview to the worldcentric rung of the ladder. He would probably also add that Rory is at least a little unhinged/decentered in that he is now looking ahead to the next rung of the ladder, while trying not to lose his footing on the rung of the past. Does Rory himself ever bring up or discuss these ideas in any way? I think the answer is probably not, he is not much of a philosopher. While I guess if you could ascribe one particular school to him, it would probably be stoicism. He doesn't really fill the pages with emotion the way Stevenson did, which I suppose is good and bad. When Stevenson did it, it became nauseating after a short while. In Rory though, you get the sense that he is terribly guarded, and it would probably be a benefit to the story if he added more personal interior. However, it could just be that Stewart is not set up that way. Or to reimagine it post-modernly, he was simply never given the vocabulary to construct his self that way through his language. This all seems thin too, maybe I am trying to hard to reconcile them. Maybe it can't really be done in a neat, efficient way.

Maybe I should leave Rory, and try and find some generic travel principles that adhere to what I am trying to do. Hmm...maybe I can build a connection using novelty. Novelty for Rorty is the self creation of a new way of seeing the world. He is quick to argue that language itself is not a medium, like some other linguistic philosophers have stated. For him it's the actual context that we are located within, it's not simply a medium of expression, or an ability to represent the nature of reality correctly. I think I've got that right, but I'm still shaky on a lot of his ideas, so please no one take what I say too faithfully. Anyway the connection I am trying to build is that the traveler is the sibling of the poet, who is pursuing novelty in physicality. Granted I don't know how I could argue that they are constructing a new view of the cosmos, but there is at least somewhat of a parallel there. I don't know, I feel like I got nothing right now. Maybe I will try again later, if anything comes to me. Adios muchachos...