I pulled this quote from my big book o’ positive quotations this morning and I’m curious: What do you think it means? To what “something” or somethings do you think Chesterton is referring? Do you agree with him?
FYI, I found this page on G.K. Chesterton: http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/ He lived in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and was a religious man.
I see it as something akin to the opposite of
In other words, I read it as suggesting that retaining appreciation for things that one appreciated as a child is not to be derided. I must be missing something, because it seems a bit overblown to suggest that doing so saves one’s life.
Do I agree? I think that both positions falsely dichotomize the experience of experience, maturation and our sense of a coherent self. It would be foolish to reject things just because we appreciated them as children (as if we were two separate people, our young self and old self). Likewise, it would be foolish not to evaluate our understanding of things based on our current beliefs of the world.
G.K. Chesterton was in many ways an ardent traditionalist in terms of his religious beliefs and felt, as perhaps we all do from time to time, that they were ‘under attack’ from contemporary culture. (Another quote: *“The word ‘orthodoxy’ not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.” *).
This quotation seems to me to be espousing the value of holding onto one’s core beliefs despite new facts or reasoning which might cast doubt upon them. (The very definition of the word “ignorance”?)
I don’t think the something refers to anything specific; the quote seems to be talking about constancy and the idea of retaining a spark of childlike wonder or interest in [something, but nothing specific].
Um, actually, it is not the case that moral beliefs have anything to do with empirical facts. The senses can blind the soul, as it were. It is, in my opinion, ignorant to conflate one epistemology into another.
I think Hentor’s got it; keeping true to the values we learn early in life bring continuity to our lives, and that continuity keeps us on an even keel.
Gazelle? Where the heck you been, girl? The kids miss you!
Well, I’d have to let old Gilbert speak for himself regarding which particular beliefs, moral or not, he was referring to. However, I seem to recall that he did believe in some funny empirically investigable things, such as literal transsubstantiation.
I think he did speak for himself, didn’t he? Something about things loved…
Aye, it was just an opinion. For all their wit and charm, some of his quotes are a little cryptic and sometimes rub me up the wrong way.
I still like Batman.
It would help to know the context from whence the quote came. I tried Googling it, and found the quote itself on several sites, but nothing about its source.
My best guess as to what he was trying to say is that, if there’s something (whatever it is) that you’ve loved all your life, this gives your life a certain consistency and integrity/wholeness. If there’s something you loved in childhood (a teddy bear, Disney cartoons, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—or, yes pravnik, Batman) that you still take delight in, that can help keep you grounded and sane and help you hold on to the innocence and wonder of childhood.
Or something like that.
Thanks for opining, my dear Dopers. Hmm… What SentientMeat wrote is closest to how I feel about it. Like Chesterton was saying that we shouldn’t let the world or other people or fashion influence us to the point that we forget from where we came. We should hold on to our true selves.
Hiya Ethy! Tell them brats that if they’ll agree to stop hanging on me, I’ll come back.
If he’s- oh, never mind :rolleyes:
Your life/soul/existance is a collection of memories and emotions, right.
If the powerful memory/emotion of love threads through this collection of life experiences it acts as a thread of continuity, like a chain through a necklace of beads, binding our existince into a whole, rather than fragmented by time. An existance bound into a whole in this manner is a fuller existence than one fragmented, since the bound memories work together to created a more complete soul.
I love Ernie and Bert still.