You are text.
I am text.
Who is the interpreter ?
Text interpreting text ?
Information interpreting information ?
Does the text come to you ?
Or, do you go to the text ?
Our brains are continually sorting through the
assorted stimuli which impinge upon them via
our senses, sifting and interpreting the
information, seeking and assigning meaning
and significance.
' Reality ' is only accessible to us in terms of
how we understand and interpret it. Thus,
if there is no ' objective reality ' to be
independently compared with our knowledge,
all we can do is oppose one interpretation to
another.
And each of these is ultimately going to be
as well motivated by the ' facts' as any other.
There are no foundational pieces of knowledge
to which reason can cling. There is no solid
ground upon which to erect an edifice
called reality, using rational truths, which
cannot be disputed !
What does all this amount to ?
We live in, occupy, survey existence, from a
cultural, or psychological ' reality '. Even the
scientists, who lay claim to their shared
understanding of a ' scientific reality ', an
' objective reality ', which is really just an
explanation, a description, which is forever
being changed and updated, and which, as
far as anyone can judge, may never reach
finality.
( I find that the notion of ' objective science '
is unsatisfactory and absurd. Instrumentalist
science pretends to an absence of human
subjectivity, as if somehow the practice of
science was being performed upon this planet
without people involved at all.... so who
actually chooses the experiments to fund, who
decides what to research, and how to go about
it ? Who makes the discoveries and decides
how to apply them ? Every experiment is the
proxy of someone's mind, a human mind, and
so far, no means has been found yet to
standardise that item... science is about as
' objective ' as is party politics. The decision to
' be objective ' which the scientist makes, is
itself not objective. It is merely an attempt
to repress or ignore some aspects of being
human whilst exhibiting others. It's a sham,
of the kind we are asked to make in the
theatre, a suspension of the normal rules of
the street and the market place, for another
set. That's not objectivity, in my estimation.
The poet is permitted to indulge in the
personal, as a vehicle for illuminating the
universal truths of the human condition.
At the opposite pole, scientists favour the
exclusion of the personal, as they attempt
to elucidate truths about ' reality '. We are
humans. The only position available to us,
is a human position. Sit a poet on one
side, a scientist on the other, and compare
their insights, their descriptions, from an
' objective ' stance....to privilege science is
political, not objective. )
All that we have, each one, is our own and
personal interpretation, the unique ' reality '
which we weave, project, create, impose, infer,
imagine, learn and invent.
Mostly, it seems to be whatever is drummed
into us in childhood, as in the Jesuitic
' give us a child until age seven, and they'll be
ours for life'.
Reality is not what you think it is.
Reality is never what you think it is.
What you call reality, is merely the particular
interpretation which you entertain, and which,
to a greater or lesser degree, overlaps with
other interpretations in your locality, the
interpretations of your friends, family, peers,
neighbours, who are, to an extent, similarly
entrained. Your reality is just the particular
illusion that you have chosen, inherited, or
accidentally bought into.
It's just ' what everybody thinks '.
In other words, your ' reality ' is every bit as
illusory, as deluded, as subjective, as false, as
misconceived, as absurd, as much a fantasy
- in so much as you confuse it with the Real,
and judge it true - as this ' reality ' here
described by W. B. Yeats :
" But the Irish peasant believes that the utmost
that he can dream was once or still is a
reality by his own door. He will point to
some mountain and tell you that some famous
hero or beauty lived and sorrowed there, or
he will tell you that Tir-na-nog, the Country of
the Young, the old Celtic paradise - the Land
of the Living Heart, as it used to be called -
is all about him ".
This is not to say that there is anything
' wrong ' with your ' illusory reality ' or that
of Yeats's 19th.C. Irish peasants.
I'm not making any value judgements here.
Indeed, that is the crux of our dilemma. For,
if there can be no ' objective reality ', only a
great multiplicity of interpretations, and no
overall consensus, then what decides what
or which ' illusory reality ' will rule ?
Politics and power ?
Is that what is going on in the world today ?
A battle of competing, but essentially illusory,
' realities ' ?
How could one make a value judgement,
that one interpretation of reality is superior,
another inferior ?
Against what yardstick could they possibly
be measured ?
Yours ? Mine ? Hitler's ? Buddha's ?
By how closely a ' reality ' corresponds with
ecological nescessities for a sustainable soceity ?
Or, by correspondence to scientific ' truth '
( whatever that is ) or coincidence with the
popular desire, expressed statistically as
wanting ' half-a-motor-car more than
your neighbour ' or biblically, as coveting
your neighbour's ox ?
I know that we make our own, all the time,
but if you try to justify your judgements,
intelligently, it gets kinda tricky ...
As Plato has Protagoras say, " The way things
appear to me, in that way do they exist for
me. The way things appear to you, in that way
do they exist for you. "
Plato did not like Protagoras's doctrine. Plato
responded, " If the way that things appear to
me, in that way do they exist for me, and the
way that things appear to you, in that way do
they exist for you, it appears to me that your
whole doctrine is false ".
So Plato wins ?
But Plato could only avoid Protagoras's
relativism by appealing to an absolute as a
foundation for his philosophy, which he
called ' the Good '. Which is really just another
way of saying the ' God ', - be it any one of
the range of those Absolutes or Noumena on
choice ( all of which only differ by name,
cultural context, or other human idiosyncrasy )
- and, seeing that nobody can agree what the
Good, or the God, actually is, ( not even the
philosophers, theologians, gurus, or other great
minds, let alone the common people, let some
2,500 years of history be my witness on that )
nor does there seem to be any likelihood of
such agreement, ever, then, the way that it
appears to me, is that the victory stands with
dear old Protagoras, bless him.
However, I hope it is plain that I do indeed
posit a version of ' the Good ', under the
nomen ' Tao '.....
So, I suppose, I must take Plato's side, even
though I think that he got it all wrong...
So who was right ? Plato ? or Protagoras ?
I'd say both....myself. How about you ?
Yes ? No ? Don't know ? Other ?
Still undecided ?
Taoism is a Way of the Heart. There is no
need to argue over it, or even to discuss it, with
anyone. Just turn all your attention inwards,
and find the secret entrances concealed in that
inner world which lead to understanding. Then
you know. Then you have the great power of
certainty, from your own direct experience. Just
as, if you know you can swim, it is pointless
to get into debate with someone who insists
that swimming is impossible, so no purpose is
served by using words to argue about Tao.
TOP. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEXT.
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