Insight as the deletion of Positive Knowledge and How that Heals the World (Redo)

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Once again, I allowed an essay to be posted that absolutely sucked eggs. I think the impatience of a world in collapse is making me even more jittery and impatient than usual. Below is more like what I intended to say. And it really needs to be read in conjunction with “What Is Self-Knowledge?” and some of the other “key essays” in order to be clearly understood. But thank you for you patience and I might even continue to edit this over the next few weeks. But I impatiently wish to erase the taste left by the last version of this thing. So, once again, I’m rushing this a little. So be it. I’m not going to fight my own stupidity. It has to wear itself out.

This essay is a little wild and weird and that serves a purpose. It emerges from my own personal rebellion, so I don’t mind the spirit of chaos that this may present.

And I’m not sharing “knowledge”. In fact, none of my essays communicate knowledge in the typical sense. I’m sharing encounters with absences of knowledge. It starts with the recognition of the categorical illusion of positive or conclusive knowledge — not the illusion of all knowledge, but the illusion of ever being able to know anything in a final form.

Science itself was built on this categorical realization that its theories do not lead to conclusive knowledge. However, even science seems to have lost sight of this initiating insight.

Or, as I said in an earlier essay: “This is what bothers me about the debate between evolution and creationism. Creationists criticize science as “mere theory.” And science usually stupidly responds by touting all the “facts” backing up evolution. It rarely says, “you’re damn right it’s “only” theory. Theory is what makes science great. We don’t settle on a dogma, on a literal interpretation, on a fixed position. We allow our perceptions to change with discovery. And we don’t believe in a final explanation because actuality exceeds every formulation. We can always learn more.”

The closer we look at knowledge itself, the more contextual and temporary it starts to look, built upon assumptions that are more faith-based or creative than solid. Just like an atom — the closer we look at solid form the more it turns to mostly emptiness and occasional energetic flashes of insight from the void.

New evidence is constantly calling everything into question. What we end up with are provisional structures of thought (or stories or theories), but no final answers. No such thing as Positive knowledge exists. It’s one of the many fairy tales we have swallowed, and it has led our culture towards disaster, as I’ve been discussing in all of these essays.

Most people think we already question things too much. But we’re only questioning specific portions of knowledge. We’re not questioning knowledge categorically. Schools, for instance, never helped students learn to examine the creative or downright fictional assumptions that underlie conclusive knowledge itself.

As I said in another essay, “It’s the rare school…which leaves a student without an allegiance to some fixed position. Most schools teach only a short-term open-mindedness in order to gain, in the end, conclusive confidence in what is “real.” Few schools help students discover a more ineffable confidence in uncertainty, in remaining alert to where conclusions diverge from reality.”

Insights are treated like disruptions that need to be accommodated in a new answer. As if someday we’ll have perfect knowledge of enough little pieces of the universe to weave together a “total picture” of reality. And that assumption underlying our approach to life and learning is not much different than a religious fundamentalist’s insistence on “God’s Truth.”

Yes, insights are disruptions. But they aren’t necessarily “asking” to be placed in a new and improved conclusion (which puts an end to learning until the next disruptive insight, which is a herky-jerky way of seeing the world.

So, at present, we tend to see through our certainties only in flashes. At irregular intervals, holes in the fabric (in the yarns) are pierced here and there by these insights. And we seem compelled at present to re-connect these holes (or dots) in our theories, in order to restore confidence in the fabrications and blanket assumptions to which we still cling for security.

And by now, the yarns that filter perception are patchwork quilt. Now all the patches – all the efforts to hide anomalies and contradictions as a way of extending the life of a yarn – are disintegrating faster than they can be repaired.

For many, this can induce panic at the loss of certainty, and the exposure of an emptiness behind most forms of identity. This panic tends to make people too intent on restoring the illusory “greatness” of the old fabric in some regressive revolution. That’s why some don’t want to teach our children the full and honest history, because it would undermine the illusion they’re trying to preserve.

And all the various top-down proposals for controlling life are doing the same basic thing. Maybe the new answer is socialism (my preference, given the alternatives), or religion, or communism or fascism or a new capitalism, or a panopticonic AI state run by a self-described elite hiding in some redwood groves in northern California. They’re all driven by the assumption that we need an Answer to life.

In every case, we’re still sticking to the maps, as though certainty was a necessity, when it’s not even a possibility. Or, as if moments of uncertainty (or wondering and learning) were only holes that needed to be filled as quickly and tightly as possible.

And when this certainty-seeking obsession begins to realize its own futility, that’s when the panic starts. There is no more yarn left.

But maybe panic isn’t necessary. Maybe the categorical insight into the limitations of Knowledge itself is no more confusing than what a caterpillar experiences as its cocoon deteriorates. But we’re like caterpillars who keep re-building the disintegrating cocoon of Thought (of rational planning and top-down control) that has (arguably) served us so well in our development till now, keeping us trapped in a reductive phase of development.

We seek insights in science and politics and everything imaginable as if they could provide salvation from what we think of as the chaos of uncertainty. That’s because an insight tends to be associated with a “new idea” (a new fabrication) in the popular imagination. But an insight is mainly an erasure. It’s the negative force that removes a beam from the eyes, and which gives space in which new ideas can form. But the primary force of an insight is the deletion of a false assumption; not the impatient postulation of a new idea or answer.

And our culture has never had a sufficient insight into the fabric of thought itself; only (as I said) into particular forms of that fabric.

So, what is an insight if it isn’t used to fill every hole with a new idea?

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Antisemitic Elements in the Modern State of Israel

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I had to take down my first impatient attempt to write about Israel.

I think I’m not generally inclined to write about geopolitics; it’s far enough out of my comfort zone to make me impatient. The intricacies of international law and all the dramas of who did what to whom and when require expertise on the level of Jeffrey Sachs. That’s not me.

I appreciate the existence of experts in history, social movements, law, policy and politics. And I understand why the news is focused exclusively on these areas. But this focus is not mine. And yet I have to pay a certain careful, bare-bones attention to those subjects in order to step through those entanglements as carefully as I can, while trying to express a vantage point that calls all that human drama into question.

My feeling is that nothing is going to change this repetitive history of mass murder, or nation against nation, until the illusions of “who we are” dissolve. Not that identity itself would disappear. But identity ceases to be an illusion when it’s held more lightly, as passing reflections on our behavior. But when they become stuck in idolized forms, illusions multiply.

This dissolution of the illusions of identity, in my opinion, would snuff out the various fuses before any of them can lead to war, bypassing the need for political “campaigns” and social “warriors”.

Rather than constantly relighting these fuses of Us against Them, we need to allow that fuse itself to dissolve in a broader vision than us and them. Because every political or social movement starts from the same rotten assumption – namely, a belief in the reality (not mere fictional reality) of a separate Self (whether national, political, religious or racial self, and so on). It’s this belief that is the fuse. And I feel it’s a delusional belief. We are not who we think we are.

But almost everybody finds this level of criticism absurd or far-fetched or unrealistic, or even offensive, and so on. Because people primarily look at nations, tribes and other group entities as if they were real. It’s the psychology underlying this illusion that attracts my interest; not the geopolitical dramas carried out by these fictional entities.

But, again, people are overwhelmingly drawn to the level of human drama – absorbed almost constantly from morning till night by the various Netflix or Hulu dramas involving egos in conflict, or nightly news dramas between nations or demographic groups. Sure, human beings are naturally interested in this level of life, because we’ve lived in complex group dynamics for millions of years.

But that wasn’t the only level of attention we had developed over those millions of years. We also used to be even more deeply attuned to the delicate balance of the natural world; which includes the immaterial mysteries of being alive.

People had to know their relationship to that broader world beyond their petty concerns. In healthy indigenous tribes, people tended to be broad-minded and philosophical. But that sensitivity has faded, as human drama has escalated. And now I believe we’ve reached a point where our political intelligence has made us blind, because now this focus no longer leaves space for a coherent relationship to the larger natural world; and to the even larger immaterial realms, in which our identities are as insignificant as passing dreams.

The personal (whether national, racial or individual) has overshadowed the genuinely communal and the authentic cosmic. The nested hierarchy of order has been reversed to the point where we value only self-interest; which is a vantage point so benighted that it can’t recognize its own self-destructive destiny.

So, this is why I feel that these “abstract” essays are actually far more practical than constantly focusing on political, cultural and national news. We can’t find our sanity by focusing constantly on nations and other oppositional identities, as if they were real. A peace treaty is nothing but a truce. And by focusing constantly on politics, we’re only reconfirming our belief in these of images of ourselves and prolonging the foolish dramas.

So, I’m going to keep talking about these illusions, without proposing any additional solutions (which are inevitably political or social solutions). Because the solution in this case is the problem. The solution of politics is the problem because it always reinforces the illusion of separate identities; and these solutions are never any better than mere truces.

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The Title of the Previous Essay

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Three Riders Fall their Mounts by themet is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Intro:

Anything with the title, “How that Heals the World”, is likely to be read as a spiritual promissory note.

Taken in the context of this inquiry, however, no such positive promise is possible. And yet, the promissory phrase is intentional.

And although it will turn away the more discerning noses of potential readers, the title stands, because it is precisely this misdirection in the word “healing”, which creates the necessary bathos or humorous fall in expectations, which unlocks the meaning of the essay.

Or, rather, that expectation gets shattered during the course of all these essays; not broken down into the mirror opposite of “healing”, which would merely be a competing concept, such as “harming”. But it shatters my own bloated and self-important understanding of what it means to heal. And this turns the essay itself into a kind of medicine. (At least for me).


This Reversal of Expectations Requires a Good Soaking in Bathos

I use the word “bathos” even though it’s uncommon enough to require a definition. But a long definition will miss the Point. The Point needs to be sharpened into a singular sound.

Bathos: “an abrupt, often unintended, and ludicrous descent from a lofty, serious, or emotional tone to the commonplace or trivial. It functions as a form of unintentional anticlimax, frequently producing a comical or disappointing effect.” (Merriam Webster)

“Bathos”:  The sound falls off the tongue as if from lofty literary heights; as if falling from a high horse, and landing with a hard “Baa” that knocks the wind out of the generous reader. And then the echoing thud of “Thosss” immediately follows; which further fades into the soft aftermath of that S stretching into white noise.

And then, the mildly concussed brain flashes with fragmentary allusions to the contradictory nature of this experience. In the one ear, there’s an allusion to the saying, “he sure took a bath on that deal”. In the other ear, I claim to experience the baptism of a new meaning, the splashing S sound washing away the various motes and beams of delusional expectation.

So, the word “healing” in the title was used bathetically, as an intentional misdirection. And also, as a mild reiteration of the more drenching bathos found in the essay posted last week, titled “Original Negative Geography….”

The humor of that essay (and the humorous point of all of them) is functional, not frivolous.

Because, the “solution” or “healing” here only amounts to giving up the search for an anti-dote beyond noticing the absurdity itself. Until this absurdity is met directly as a preposterous fact, we never give up the busy chase; and our brains trip over themselves from morning to night looking for an exit from its own chaotic search for an exit.

Or, as an old Zenn saying has it: It’s as if we’re “riding an ox in search of an ox.”  

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Original Negative Geography Intro and Part I from year 2000

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I re-read something I wrote 26 years ago and realized I’d hardly learned a damn thing since then. At any rate, it puts me in the awkward position of being slightly jealous of my younger self, even though I’m still convinced that this older self could show that whipper-snapper a thing or two if he had the decency to listen to me. Nevertheless, the mild and somewhat astonished envy remains, although it burns low because it’s too absurd.

The jealousy is a passing twinge that I’m magnifying and holding steady for a moment. It’s not “jealousy” of the writing. It’s the suspicion that I’ve lost (or, at least not embodied any better than I already did) the vantage point that was my original inspiration; one that joins laughter and learning, rather than merely adding laughter as a decorative element.

But I was mildly surprised that this younger fellow’s remarks came solidly from a place I feel I’m still barely unfolding in daily life.

Maybe, this reaction shows how quickly my opinions of myself depreciate the instant they land in the past, even the immediate past. Either that or it measures the ever-blossoming conceit of someone who thinks he’s always smarter than he was a moment ago.

But the past self doesn’t even exist anymore. So, the courtroom is mine (for the moment). And I confess under oath that a moment ago I actually tripped over my own shoelace on the way upstairs. And now I’m writing about it with calm clarity. Hence, I’m always improving (but never actually getting anywhere, resulting in a hung jury).

Nevertheless, the thing displays something I might have lost a little. And because I’ve returned to the topic of the inner voice over the last few essays, it feels relevant again.

And because otherwise the thing will just languish in the bottom drawer of a desk until the new owners upon my death throw it in the dumpster, I’m giving the thing an airing. (And leaving as it was written, no edits. Not even replacing the generic “he” with a “they”. It’s what it was.

And remember that this is a humor thing, but that’s not the same as being frivolous. Non-frivolous humor. Seriousness without any need for furrowed brows.

[There were five parts, but I think these were the two better parts.]

———————

NEGATIVE GEOGRAPHY:  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ERROR

                “And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life and never understand.”

                                                                                                            — Molloy (S. Beckett)

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Briefly Touching a Third Rail: Footnote 2 to “What Is Self-Knowledge?”

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Now, this is a third rail in society, so let me place my metrical feet carefully here.

I think everyone has a right to experiment and poke and prod themselves and change their genders and do whatever they want to their bodies. It’s nobody else’s business.

But the inquiry into Identity is my business, since I’m a human being in the stanchions of various constricting identities like everyone else. And I am also free to wonder about all this, because identity makes everyone a little crazy, as far as I can see. I’d say that a conviction of identity is the root of all war. And there are obsessions that develop, which can even lead to a psychosis where people insist on removing their own healthy arms and legs, because it doesn’t conform to an obsessive picture they hold of themselves. So even the most intense feeling of conviction isn’t proof of a necessity.

And there’s a lot of conflict in our unsettled relationship between mind and body. To me, it feels like a violence or hatred of myself, whenever I force this body to conform to an image or story of who I am; rather than allowing the disjointed image, story and body to accept their unique and contradictory realities and reunite as they are in genuine self-acceptance.

I think human fluidity in every direction is normal, creative and irrepressible. Hence, I claim we are like octopi or squid.

As I said in the main essay, the sense of Self is very convincing, but it’s not true individuality. The “I” is merely a rehearsal of how others should see me. It’s chained to others’ opinions. Whereas, true individuality can never be pinned down in any objective or conclusive sense by anyone else, including myself. This would be like trying to stuff a bear in a parakeet’s cage. We always exceed our own expectations if given half a chance.

But in trying to pin down our identities, all we end up doing is shifting from one combination of socially imposed definitions to another, and then calling that shift from the old prison to the new prison, freedom. I don’t see those shifts as fluidity, but as efforts to cage ourselves for the sake of a false security and fake, conditional love.

Maybe we’re all simply afraid of the loneliness of being truly unique.

If this culture loved its children, it wouldn’t make a problem out of natural human creativity and autonomy. Indigenous cultures have no problem with any of this — they don’t tell others how to live. But our supposedly advanced society prefers human beings made in the images of machines, forced to conform to the rigid 1’s and 0’s of an autocratic morality, with simple, categorical, machine-readable identities. We don’t trust our children to unfold as they will. The society wants consistent shapes that can serve as cogs in the inorganic machine. We are trained to serve the machine, not vice versa.

We don’t trust the unique human form we already are. But the honest human being is beautiful, rebellious and good, no matter how disjointed and out of place this unloving society makes us feel.

Now is the time for this powerful being to overthrow the machine.

Love to you.

Empire Falls: Footnote to the Essay, “What Is Self-Knowledge?”

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“A bitter wind blows through the country
A hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning
There must be something we don’t see
What fire begets this fire?
Like torches thrown into the straw
If no one asks, then no one answers
That’s how every empire falls” — John Prine (“That’s How Every Empire Falls”)

Maybe the scientific revolution (for all its magnificent insights and newfound capacities) re-imagined the human being as a kind of inanimate billiard ball bouncing mechanically along a chain of meaningless cause and effect.

This was the only Grand Narrative that science could offer the individual. A brief, inexplicable eruption from total non-animacy, which ends in non-animacy yet again.

This revolution freed the individual from the biting dogmas of religion, but left the individual feeling like a surplus ball bearing bouncing around in some inexplicable clockwork; which had the effect of leaving the non-scientist (the new lay person) desperate to find purchase in the open-ended abyss of an isolated “me,” which was all that remained in the absence of religion and monarchy (and NO, this is not a lament). But as a result, perhaps the 18th and 19th century citizen (or at least European or American citizen) colonized the world in its need to distract itself from the absence of meaningful identity that the sudden withdrawal of old certainties provoked.

I mean, the 19th century “American” mind was optimistic, because it was experiencing the “singularity” of a logarithmic upswing in personal and national power in the rising tide of colonialism, thanks to genocide and slavery.

As the empire collapses, the urge to regress towards that “old time” faith in kings and gods and tribes grows more desperate, and less euphoric. Hence, there’s a desire to return to the familiar hellscape of genocide and enslavement so as to give those who feel this way a boost of self-esteem.

So, perhaps the “rugged individual”, and the “self-made man” of an eager 19th century America became the resume-building, careerist, self-branding, cynical and self-obsessed tweeting global consumer of today. We’ve all been colonized.

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What Is Self Knowledge?

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1) Self-knowledge as a positive list of characteristics


How do I know myself?

I begin by knowing myself as an objective list of characteristics: Likes, dislikes, opinions, habits, values, skills, professions, political orientations, and every other quality imaginable.

I also know myself reluctantly as a list of shadow characteristics, which others often perceive first: impatience, clumsiness, self-obsessions, talking to myself even when others are in the room, a hypocritical love of boxing, etc.

There’s a necessity for these differently sourced lists of self-knowledge. If I don’t notice a tendency to be selfish, lazy, thoughtless, you name it, then self-knowledge is distorted in the preservation of an illusion.

In fact, I hear in my own brain (and from what I derive from others’ brains) something similar to government propaganda in the way it defends and justifies itself by referencing selectively edited memories (or fake news), in order to preserve the illusion of a stable and presidential “me” who does no wrong.

If I’m rolling an issue over and over again in my mind (as I tend to do), then some image of myself must have been made to wobble from its pedestal. Even if I’m self-righteously convinced of my own innocence, the emotional and mental energy dedicated to preserving this image indicates a wobble.

The voice is like a press-secretary and press corps rolled into one. And I hardly notice the exhaustion this causes, because it’s standard practice in this culture: conversing with non-existent people in order to convince imaginary people that this list of qualities remains accurate and impeccable.

Or, call it an effective air-defense system that shoots down any speck of honest evidence undermining the falsely idealized Self it claims to be.

But now and then some honest revelation hits home despite this diligence. And the accidental surrender to reality generates a soft breeze of sanity, which cleanses the air momentarily from the fumes of bullshit that the brain produced during the course of the day.

But almost immediately I’ll start downplaying the impact of this moment of truth, trying to steady the wobble or clean up the damage to the fallen icon. And I’ll employ a clever tactic to do this — acknowledging a portion of the exposed corruption by saying something like, “I wasn’t being myself” or “that’s not who I really am”.

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A Ramble on How Too Much Identity and Too Little Self-Knowledge Contributes to our Collective Suicide: Preface to the Essay, “What Is Self-Knowledge?”  

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Seen from Mars, it’s as if human beings as a whole don’t care if they themselves survive (or if other species are allowed to live).

Is this mass suicide?

An indifference to our own collective fate is spreading, even among people who are still devoted to their families. The indifference is justified as a form of realism. If we’re heading towards destruction then realism, they say, is accepting our fate (knowing all living things eventually die anyways).

Indifference to life and death itself is being conflated with realism.

And death as a natural completion of a life-cycle is being conflated with a premature murder/suicide of one another and millions of other species.

This isn’t a realistic or mature regard for life and death, but the very attitude of a person who has resigned themselves to giving up on a complete life and committing suicide before maturation. This “realism” is the suicidal impulse itself.

After all, what are the direct means by which we are prematurely killing ourselves? We’re denying the effects of climate change, indulging in fascism and allowing AI to gain total possession of our minds, and suck the marrow out of life itself, to name just three.

These are the self-destructive behaviors of an immature species, an adolescent species, who has set fire to the house, locked itself in its virtual room, and then climbed into bed to watch a movie with the dog. And when a brother bursts into the room, shouting “fire!”, the adolescent mocks him for his overzealous concern, saying, “calm down and be realistic: we’re all going to die eventually anyways.”

Denial, indulgence and apathy are the justifications for what’s happening, not the mature acceptance of life and death. There is a reason why we make a distinction between murder and natural causes.

I believe it is realistic to say that we are killing ourselves and murdering one another.

But it’s not realistic to accept this situation as inevitable.

Therefore, I’d like to suggest that it’s this lack of self-knowledge, this refusal to self-reflect, learn, change and die naturally to who we are, which is the problem. Suicide and murder are not the acceptance of death, but its denial. We would rather be consumed in a fire we started than give up the illusions of ourselves and allow who we thought we were to die naturally.

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The Two-Edged Sword of Thought and Action; On the Nature of Humor and Sorrow

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Recently, my wife and I drove past a house way out in the country, where 8 chickens were held in a cage that would be small for one. This was just after learning that the killings in Gaza were continuing under the radar; and Trump had just bombed another 20 fishermen for no reason. And Ms. Good had been murdered.

Our efforts to save the chickens became a surrogate attempt to put an end to all that pain and sorrow. In other words, it was futile. We could do nothing but contemplate a midnight raid, which would have caused the poor, ignorant woman in the shack to lose her mind. Because in some strange way she loved the chickens, or thought she did, and had raised them from eggs, she said. And there was nothing the sheriff or the animal welfare department could do under current laws; and we had no place to bring the chickens even if we stole them.

And after contemplating the possibility of losing my mind over an issue that was so small in comparison to what is happening in the broader world, I had to accept the pain. I had to admit that there is no possibility of separating the pain of life from the love of life. And that we live in a world that must always teeter between hell and heaven. And that we have to find a way to move through this border land without sinking into pits of despair or indulging in a transcendence too high for our tears to reach the earth.

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The Real Revolution Hasn’t Started Yet

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“…something that wants to rise and shake itself free” (William Carlos Williams)


I had a fairly disconcerting experience when I was a 9th grade spectator at our school’s varsity basketball game. It was a rural school, Kindergarten through 12th in the same building. Maybe 30 kids per grade, so we knew pretty much everyone, or so I thought. But as I was watching the game, one of the players, maybe two years old than myself, a member of our church, our mothers were friends, became instantly unrecognizable.

I lost the flow of the game and became hypnotically focused on this one person. I tried to juggle the knowledge of his “familiarity” with his sudden alien strangeness. His bearing no longer conformed to anyone recognizable. But in a deeper sense, I was noticing him for the first time. Noticing the discrepancy between the mask of confidence he was trying to wear (the identity he was trying to present) and the unfamiliar reality of himself.

And the alien feeling spread to the entire gymnasium. My hometown crowd, all familiar faces, looked like they were all struggling with masks. It was as if the known character of each person was peeling from their bodies, revealing a routine pretense, which was their public persona, which also revealed something of the real human being struggling with fear and doubt.

I also seemed alien. I had never noticed how herky jerky I behaved. I tried to snap out of this alternate reality, but it stuck around for a long half-hour and then a milder version never fully dissipated the rest of my life. I became even more self-conscious, more herky-jerky, and felt more like a fraud who didn’t know how to stop being a fraud.

But at the same time – and this is far more important – the effect was not one of haughty disdain for myself or others, but an unprecedented feeling of sorrow for the real human beings I’d never noticed before. Beneath the smiles and cheers they looked sad or tired.

Sheer forgetfulness may have been the key accident opening this glimpse into more subtle realities simmering beneath the surface presentation; beneath the scripts that often trap us into being people we weren’t meant to be. Where familiarity once was, now bewildered human forms could be discerned. The vague outline of a soul writhing in a spider’s web or a cocoon, depending on whether they would emerge or not.

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