Reason to Believe

The line between knowing and believing

Is in degrees of assumed certainty and not in point of fact

They lie equidistant from existence as fruits of the intellect

The knowing that is being

Is not believing.

Bad is Pushed, Evil is Pulled

Truth and Being

If we succeed in securing the precipice at which human understanding falls away we discover for ourselves that Being exceeds the reach of knowing. All that is possible is such narrative as tells the story of being as it appears to us. And this is Truth.

Social Thinking

In my reading the other day I encountered the thought: “societies don’t think, people think”. Well, that’s an interesting thought, but coming from the other direction it is rather like saying “cells don’t have a life, people have a life”. It’s all how you look at it. And a thought the phrase stirred in my mind was of the weight of society in most every human thought.

If we were to make note of our thoughts in the passing of a day, in most cases there would not be a single thought that was not colored by societal elements. What to wear, what to eat, on the job, in the home: every thought is a juggling of societal elements by the mysterious pressure of human existence. It is just about impossible to have a thought that is free from any societal consideration. And if one should retire to a monastery to dodge the societal bullet, one is out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Societies are myriad, and the legitimacy of their demands upon the thought patterns of their constituents is generally accepted without consideration. These “societal demands upon thought patterns” make up the bulk of what passes as thinking.

That’s the way it looks to me, what do you think?

A Personal Note

This blog is not about my personal life, but today is a good day for a personal note. When I moved to the woods after returning from the war, I committed myself to the cultivation of a sustainable life style. I hoped to find a way of life as close to nature as made sense. Well, its 32 degrees in the house right now and comfortable as can be. Its around 20 degrees outside, but the earth floor always keeps the house a bit warmer than ambient. The forest is covered in ice and it is quite beautiful. I have no waterpipes to freeze, and if it gets into the thirties today I'll open the windows. Of course I'm dressed like an eskimo, but that's why they dress that way. Its not for everyone, but I like it. I like taking it as it comes and being in it and of it.

Loss of services can have tragic implications for the service dependent, but every service we avail ourselves asks something of the earth.

Living Words and Dead Words

Early Chan Buddhists made a distinction between living words and dead words. Living words were those rooted in the soil of fact. Dead words were those rooted only in the fevered imagination of dreamers.

‘Twere ever thus.

Principles of Wealth

All wealth comes from the Earth. There is no wealth of any kind that will not lead back to the earth if followed to its ultimate source. People who at labor remove what-ever from the soil receive modest compensation. Captains of industry deciding the fate of these resources receive maximum compensation. It seems natural that it should be so, and perhaps it is: but not for the seemingly obvious reasons. 

A ship must have a captain. A ship must have seamen. The responsibility of stewardship that lies upon the captain deserves just compensation, but the fact remains that without a crew the ship goes nowhere, and without a ship they are all just beach bums; so it is with the ship of state. Compensation rises with proximity to the pool of wealth accumulated by value added to fruits of the earth: wealth is inversely proportional to closeness to the earth. Compensation amounting to millions and millions of dollars a year for chief executives cannot be considered value for value: it is profiteering. 

The pools of wealth accumulated by successful industry could not exist without the complex social fabric of which any one industry is but a part. Profit as a motive is always an element of human endeavor even if it is planting a flower garden, but when does the legitimate right to profit become avarice? How many millions of dollars ought one to be able to squeak by on? And what is the responsibility of those bathing in the pool of wealth to those who labor at the headwaters?

Thy Fearful Symmetry

Blake’s use of the word “symmetry” in “The Tiger” exactly conforms to the mental structures I am referring to when I use the word. I find it very annoying when philosophic discourse resorts to convoluted, complex, private, jargonic use of words. The difficulty is that unfamiliar conceptualizations must be conveyed in familiar terms. This necessitates a bending of words and phrases in and as the attempt to make the symmetry of the conceptualization apparent to the intended recipient. 

The emergence of any faculty whatsoever, whether fiddling with calculus or raising a spoon to ones mouth, is wholly dependent upon the assimilation and recognition of symmetries. These symmetries are an inner library of correlations of elements perceived as outer world: even psyche is external to pure awareness. The lamb jumps and gambols minutes after birth because of symmetries coeval with its very existence. Men love women in the characteristic way that they do because of mental symmetries coeval with their very existence. The moth flies to the flame because moth existence is coeval with the certainty of the moon. It is so simple that it may be difficult to grasp, but the capacity to recognize symmetries is coeval with the emergence of an Albert Einstein as progeny of the first replicating molecule. 

There is only one way we know or recognize anything at all. The newborn brain recognizes a basic set of symmetries and this is called instinct. The newborn brain also comes with a primitive capacity for knowledge, and what we call knowledge is an accumulation of awareness symmetries. And it is like stacking blocks: if symmetries necessary to the concept or behavior are not in our mental library then we will not be able to add one and one, or to pole-vault, or to understand the meaning of life: hence the inestimable value of education. 

Tiger, tiger burning bright In the forests of the night 

What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry

And did he smile his work to see

Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

 excerpt from William Blake 1757-1827 “The Tiger”