Hermeneutic Circle

November 4, 2026 7:38am

My evolution due in part to the hermeneutic circle of Heidegger and Gadamer? The shirt from the hope of meaning to the understanding that hope is mostly futile in a mechanistic universe. The awareness that belief in stability and continuity is an illusion and we are subject to the same forces that led to the current moment although we wish to believe this time is somehow different.

The Spiral of Understanding

November 9, 2026 7:33am

I am writing much less – hasn’t everything already been said?

Mornings, lying awake in the predawn darkness, I contemplate the earth from the blackness of space. The light inching across longitudes at 1,000 miles per hour, the ancient planet creaking on its grinding axis – spinning, spiraling to its certain destiny.

Understanding coming also in its own hermeneutic spiral. I think about the minor epiphanies when I was ready to question, then discard my own cherished beliefs. Each revelation building on the ruined foundation of previous certainty. The spiral leading down to some subterranean layer – the bedrock of our reality upon which the entirety of our myths and misconceptions were built.

The spiral throwing off all the unnecessary baggage accumulated during a lifetime of wishful thinking and blatant self-deception. Descending, spiraling down toward that event horizon across which nothing returns – and into that final black hole, there to remain for a thousand, million, billion years.

9:38am

And then after this entry, I stumble upon Ernest Becker and the Vital Lie and into a whole tangled forest of like minds. The hermeneutic spiral, a potter’s wheel of creation and destruction. The clay is shaped, reformed, and destroyed. In the end, I know it leads to nowhere.