Premature Explanations

by Michael Grosso

In my last post, I used the expression “premature explanations.” I was referring to the habit of some people who try to explain things away too quickly -- especially if it’s something too weird or at odds with their worldview.  I notice the affliction is popular with diehard rationalists and with people who lack the ability to listen.

As for me, I want the full story about something before I try to arrest and place it inside the cage of my explanations.  For example, I would describe and try to understand the extraterrestrial visitor that lands on my lawn.  But we know that the instinct of many would be to shoot first and ask questions later.  It takes a kind of courage to question the unknown.  To blast it down on sight is the mark of unreasoning fear.

What I’m objecting to is a certain impatience when confronting strange or unexplained matters.  The imperial instinct is always to explain, reduce, utilize, and in the end, colonize.  In short, explanation may become a form of anticipatory control, a gearing up for exploitation.

Ah yes!  This strange, different, other fact, event, person!  Explainers, come on over here and bring your sledgehammers!  Get that ontological imp of the perverse!  Give him the sledgehammer treatment, boys!  Hammer the bugger into shape so that he fits into our worldview, looks like us, and quits giving us insomnia!   

I’m not saying we bow down before the enigmatic for the thrill of it.  But I am opposed to false clarity and misleading uniformity.  If we look closely around us, we’re surrounded by deviants, irregularities, incompatibles – impossibles.

Premature explanation is the enemy of my aim in this blog: which -- without scientific or religious prejudice -- is to see how far we can go in the liberation of consciousness.