So far we have taken pains to elaborate a fourfold set of relationships that can be understood as self-other human dynamics. At the same time we established that marriage is the operative metaphor for understanding our connection to the Divine as well. But Kabbalah also enjoins us to see the multiplicity of parallels carried over into all contexts and scales. For instance, we are able to borrow from our psychological experience of linking up people and apply it to an ‘internet of things.’ Moreover, much of science is an attempt to discover how one thing relates to another. This is why mathematics is the underlying language of science. All of the operations of mathematics allow us to define these relationships and manipulate them. For the kabbalist-mathematician, there is an acknowledgment that all one ever really engages in is an elaborate scheme of matchmaking and marriage counseling. The same would be true for our most detailed internal developments. Our intrapersonal relations drive the same vehicle whose four wheels are the relationship possibilities that we have been addressing up until now.

In order to be more explicit about the abstract sense of relation, let us ‘re’ model our original quotation from Genesis (2:18): “…It is not good for man to be alone: I will make for him a helper opposite him [לא טוב היות האדם לבדו אעשה לו עזר כנגדו].” Adam, as we have pointed out, contains within his name the word damut (resemblance). In Genesis (2:7) we hear about how Adam is formed as “dust from the earth [adamah]…” where even etymologically ‘Adam’ is rooted in ‘adamah’ [earth]. With a slight alteration in the vocalization of the word adamah, we can re-read it as edameh which means ‘I will be like.’ Thus, Adam is a signifier of malleability and plasticity of resemblances.

When the verse declares that it is not good for him to be all alone, we may reinterpret it as saying that an object that bears no resemblance to anything cannot be a ‘positive’ state (nothing is ‘posited of it’ in the sense of the ‘positive’ attribution: i.e.‘we have no positive ID’ but rather our knowledge is apophatic [via negativa] and derived from negative dialectics). So when we do equate or associate one object to another (for example a ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’) we are effectively ‘marrying’ them. We have to assess the suitability of the match. In fact, saying that something doesn’t resemble anything would be the negation of all attributes–that which is completely unrelated and divorced from anything else. While ‘attributes’ are ‘related’ aspects of a thing, when shorn of all attributes, a singular object cannot produce offspring. It becomes sterile and unproductive (or un-reproductive).

In our intellectual journey, we are constantly having ideas engage with other ideas. This process follows all of the stages of courtship, marriage and familial life. One can imagine posting on the ‘internet of the mind’ the following advertisement: ‘single idea seeking mate.’ A lone idea cannot really accomplish much unless it enters into relationships with other ideas. Could part of education be a form of idea ‘dating’ where two ideas are introduced via a third idea or ‘accidentally’ bump into each other in the supermarket of ideas? Consider how a fictional interview with a well established idea pair might go: ‘How did you two ideas first meet?’ asks the interviewer. ‘Did you date for a long time?’ Some ideas take an extended period of getting acquainted before they realize that they have some affinity or natural chemistry. Sometimes, however, we attend ‘speed dating’ sessions between a multitude of ideas in a spontaneous brain storm. This occurs when we need to figure out which ones might fit together quickly. It’s a flash screening. More meticulous filtering is reversed for the call back list. Each set of well-matched ideas requires a different amount of time in order to become acquainted and confident enough to propose.

Once two ideas become engaged, the relationship between them gets serious but may still dissolve. A broken engagement could be likened to a hypothesis that sounded good and worked in preliminary tests, but then failed to measure up under extensive study. Similarly, idea-relations that were broken up may decide to get back together after new facts come to light. We often seek to rekindle an old flame whenever we ‘reconsider’ something that may have been prematurely rejected or may have only needed a slight modification of the terms of the relationship to make it work.

Excluding other relationships, the formalization of the association would be the marital bond. Once married, the intimacy of a couple of ideas may conceive and then after a period of gestation, a new concept may be born. The parent ideas will have to continue to nurture and develop the concept until it is able to live on its own. Unfortunately, many concepts get orphaned from their parental ideas too soon or else become estranged over the course of their lives. A concept that has outlived its idea-parents would be similar to a person forgetting where he or she ever got that concept from in the first place. ‘I don’t know how it was conceived.’ We lost track of the genealogy of that concept. The death of the parental ideas amounts to the loss of the conceptual roots and origins–it’s derivation.

From this quick sketch we can now exact some valuable educational principles from our ‘genesis of relationships.’ Bearing in mind the famous expression in Genesis (4:1) where the Torah says “And Adam knew [yada] his wife Chava/Eve…” where ‘knowing’ a person is a euphemism for sexual relations, we can now assert the commonality between ‘knowledge’ and ‘sexuality.’ We use the ‘logic of sexuation’ in our fertile minds. This is a very powerful analogy; it means that everywhere in the Torah we may think of ideas as people and people as the incarnation or personification of ideas. We can read all relationships between people as relationships between ideas and vice versa. This is not to suggest that each person only embodies one idea but rather everyone is a potential placeholder for a wide range of constants and variables whose algebraic manipulation reconfigures relations and constantly yields new meaning.

Our first lesson is that ideas should not exist in isolation. There is a tendency in learning to want to think of discreet ideas as something in and of themselves. Yet, when we attempt to define the idea we have to compare and situate it amongst others. No idea is self-generating, ‘self-sustaining’ or asexually reproducing (at least not in a positive light).  This ‘lo tov’ or ‘not good’ state of ‘[it] being alone’ would result in every idea remaining so ‘singular’ that it cannot enter into discourse/intercourse with other ideas. Such a supremely anti-social ideational state would seem to pass itself off as ab-solute (without relation). All the other types of ideas (oppositional/adversarial, helpful/congenial, dedicated/unified) are ‘relative’ ideas. If we are to develop in our learning, then we have to look to matching and marrying ideas and not allowing them to remain self-contained and detached in our minds. Most of the time when we are having difficulty either understanding a new idea or remembering it once we’ve learned about it, it is because we don’t see it as ‘related’ to anything. As many students are fond of saying when they are perplexed by their teachers: ‘I don’t get it; how is this relevant?’ The issue of relevance is caught up in the relatability and eligibility for marriage of any idea.

If this is the case, then why not create everything from the start in a married state? Why begin with finding an idea (like Adam) in a single pre-nuptial state? The response in light of Jewish mysticism is that first we have to contend with what is called avodat ha’berurim or the work of clarification before engaging in avodat ha’yichudim or the work of unification. Put simply, we first have to individuate ideas and attempt to identify them as much as possible in and of themselves before we can plug them into relationships. The clarification of an idea is like paring it down with an exacto knife. Then, when we have some sense of its independent personality, when it matures enough to stand on itself own and comes out from under the shadow of its parent-ideas, then it has reached the marriageable age.

In Part Sixteen we will continue to play intellectual matchmaker and work on ‘idea’ relationship counseling.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/relationship-differences-fusion-and-defusion-part-16/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/relationship-differences-fusion-and-defusion-part-14/

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