Raining now.  Prospect of rain for the rest of the day.  Well and good for the trees and shrubs.  A good drink is needed before the frost of Fall arrives.

Today these words from Ludwig Wittgenstein captured my imagination.

94. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.
95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules.
96. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid.
97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.

On Certainty (Uber Gewissheit) By Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, Translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe

A friend of mine anticipates living in Hawaii in the near future.  Six months of the year will be spent in the Fox River Valley, and the remaining six months on the big island in Hawaii.  He has many friends, deep roots in the communities here in Illinois.  Certainly “roots” mean to feel indigenous, at home, one’s consciousness formed by the minds and the behaviors of others, “members” all participating in the social fabric of a geographic area.  My friend is contemplating the meaning of initiating a similar rootedness in the fabric of another society, an island community, in the mid-Pacific.  Could the world-picture of Mid-West river towns and that of Hawaii be more different…

And yet, and yet the matter is not whether one is more correct, more true than the other, each is simply an inherited background.  How does one begin to feel that one belongs, that one has mastered the “rules of the game?”  We learn simply by playing the game, as best as we can.  Not unlike that of any child, presented with a new playground, or neighborhood.  The child plunges in.  Every child goes straight ahead, chasing the ball without concern at all of correctness…  We learn by doing, no exceptions.

As for the communities, aggregations of long term residents, as well as individuals and groups more transient, all participate in the story-making behaviors of past generations who have lived in those places.  Every action and behavior makes a difference, adding a new veneer, a slight patina to the great myth, to the living (never finished) story of the area.  Some aspects of the story are hardened as if the limestone riverbed of the Fox River.  And some compose part of the flow.

Wittgenstein says there’s no sharp division between “the rules” and play.

Why not lose oneself in playing the game?  Never mind taking a tumble…