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Postponism After taking a dip in the current marketplace of ideas, I
realized that many viewpoints are being offered to explain the world as we
see it. Most of these viewpoints are competing and cannot co-exist. However,
most of them are equally convincing and credible. Therefore I thought of
introducing a new intellectual practice. I like to call it postponism. I am
sure that is a new word and cannot be found in the regular dictionaries.
Postponism suggest that you learn and comprehend the worldviews at your
disposal. However, subscribing or not subscribing to any of the worldviews is
postponed! Note that this is different from refusing to subscribe to any of
the worldviews. Postponism is slightly different from the stance “I neither
accept nor refuse…” because theoretically you keep the options open for
either accepting or refusing. However, practically you may keep your options
open lifelong. I think my notion of postponism itself is tainted by certain
worldviews. For example it suggests, “I cannot come to a conclusion today,
because I don’t know today, but tomorrow I might know”. Figuratively speaking
“I” here means the human civilization as a whole. I believe that as a
civilization we have only just started creating knowledge. To ‘believe’ in
such a thing, I have to first subscribe to some sort of a worldview. I don’t
know what exactly I have subscribed to. I postpone knowing that for tomorrow! If I am to approach postponism in another angle; all I am
saying here is that we don’t know today and I don’t know if we will ever
know. Note the subtle but important difference between postponism and the
attitude “we will never know”. I am not agreeable to that. How do we know
that we will never know? If you know that, then you know something. It
contradicts your original stance. Note that as of May
14, 2004 the word postponism has only one hit on google and that hit is this
RTSL website. Anyone is free to borrow this term and use it preserving its
original meaning. |