Winder Berry 'Between the Known Essay

The key to utilizing such principles of faith and of imagination is to use them together with the known, the concrete sights and smells that can be touched and detected by the body. Doing so brings about a state of balance in perception that can help people tremendously throughout the course of their lives. This state of balance is implied in de Button's preceding quote in which the reader should be aware that von Humboldt left his "boring daily life" in Berlin to find a "marvelous" place in South America -- which is all a matter of perspective, and one which may be considered more stiff and rigid than De Maistre's imaginative conception of exploring his couch as though it were something new. Yet the reconciliation of both of these viewpoints indicates the balance that we have been looking for throughout this paper. Humboldt's viewpoint is not exchanged for De Maistre's; De Maistre's viewpoint is added to the former's which present a balance between the two, which is more than likely the best way for people to consider each viewpoint.

Instead of looking to overturn the imaginative ideology for the fundamentalist ideology or vice versa, people are better off trying to temper or dilute one of those viewpoints with the other. According to de Button in the preceding quote, that is what De Maistre would have done, and he was one of the pioneers of this imaginative way of thinking that Berry used to illustrate concepts of faith.By using both of these ideologies together, it is possible for people to not only keep a balanced perspective of the world around them, but also to react in real-life situations involving ecological destruction (such as that implied by Berry's earlier quotation), as well as those involving equally real-life situations regarding questions of government (such as what Berry described in the Declaration of Independence). Additionally, the occasional employment of a traveling mindset (as advised by both De Maistre and de Button) can enable people to enhance their lives and make the most of the opportunities that exist around them. A possibility also exists that by doing so, and maximizing the value and understanding of everyday life that exists around people, that it would be possible to cut back on some of the pollutions and ecological disasters related to travel and waste that Berry showed concern for in the final stages of his essay. By achieving a balance between the fundamentalist and imaginative ideologies, neither one appears as extreme as it actually might be, and therefore is not as harmful as it might be otherwise......