If you must read

Part of the vocabulary of modern spiritual paths, and pseudo paths, is the conjunction of "essence and personality." The phrase refers to what a man authentically is, a genetic matter he is born with, and the addition necessary for a civilized man to exist in a social world, an automatic cerebral mask that Gurdjieff, and after him Jan Cox, might label "personality".

This must be a continuum, a balance between these two aspects that varies from person to person, and, civilization to civilization.

None of this is mentioned in a book that caught my attention yesterday. 

The book is a biography of a Japanese man born around 1915. I would recommend this book to anyone: Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain (2008). The author, Martha Sherrill, is not a great writer, but she knows what to include, and lets the reader draw their own conclusions. Sherrill has an unusual talent. And Dog Man tells the story of the realization of a certain kind of essence, and the manner of its manifestation in war time Japan. Morie Sawataishi is the human subject. Others are modern life, dogs, and what is important. And possible. Did I mention I like the book.

The headline here is the point

Fantastically Wrong: Europe's Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them

Even so I will link to the article

But my point is really the headline starting off the article and this post.

Because the headline illustrates the total unwillingness to understand the people we were before we became modern science-loving folk. Insane is a term that pushes the topic into the rubbish so we do not need to examine reality to find out about ourselves. How could people do such things? how did such people become modern at all? Why do such acts seem so unthinkable now? The point of the article is we do not need to even ask these questions.

And yet, let me guess something. As strong as the taboo against self-knowledge in our culture is,-- as illustrated by the use of the word insane, above, -- until science includes self-knowledge, at least inspired by the work of great philosophers like Jan Cox, until then, we are not going to have the skill and knowledge, to get off the planet. 

Counters and the counted

When words, -- the coins, counters, playing pieces,  of rational, binary thought, -- cannot even countenance the constant change which is a salient feature of the world we participate in, words are assuming a kind of divinity to themselves. An idolatry, actually, since this change defies linguistic categorization, and yet, includes and carries along, all.

It is not hard to flick over this presumptuous king chess piece. The click it makes falling over is hardly even audible. What is the difference between king and pawn game pieces. How could there be any. Without the game piece in your eye, other vistas are possible.

Most people just do not know how to do it, nor how it might involve a consistent flicking. The game piece, barely even resembling anything it is the name of, does have this advantage -- it can bobble back up. 

Knocking it over again is no more difficult than it was the first time. You have to remember to do it. Thus the religious literature of this planet. 

What all wobbles

Words are wobbly. By that I mean, that they do not fit perfectly upon that to which they refer. Take any flower, just as a point in case  a point is needed. You cannot describe one flower in a meadowful, so as to lead another person TO THAT EXACT FLOWER, by means of your description. 

Words do not know this, because of course words don't know anything. They are part of people's thinking. People though rarely know this,-- that words wobble -- and I have to wonder if this is not a sign of their insecurity, their reluctance to face the limits of their own knowledge. And by people, I mean published, academic, philosopher, and everybody else. 

And why the defensive fencing off of part of reality as irrelevant? At least you might say, well the underlying reality, whatever that means, in the words of Prince Charles, you might say the underlying reality, the flower itself in all its glorious individuality, that does not wobble. 

At least the bloom does not wobble more than you could calculate from a mathematical analysis of the air currents surrounding it. 

You can say that, you can say anything. But you would be wrong if you think the underlying reality does not wobble. You would, let me rephrase this -- you would be wrong not to consider that the underlying reality, words and all they specify and all they cannot specify, all that can be apprehended, and all that maybe cannot even be apprehended, with any talents, -- ALL of that, may be wobbly. At least sometimes wobbly. Some philosophers knew this. Baruch Spinoza, Jan Cox. 

House of Pards

The words Jesus is reported to have spoken to his disciples, "be ye therefore as gentle as doves, as cunning as serpents," always struck me as something Jan might have said, though he did not. Another picture might be, of a person as a house, which is a trope Jan used. The goal then might be to become, a house of pards.
You, you as a habitat, would then have no right angles. Well, enough so you could fake it.

The mark-up of goods in the market place

The mark-up of goods in the market place 

just shadows the smirk-up of words when they are put into dialogues

Timely Responses

The headlines are full of panicked stories about how people are getting dumber. I wonder if this is related, less directly to the web, than to a changing sense of time. No longer do wives wait for their husbands to return from sea voyages. When you can skype and email, the sailor has not really gone, in the sense he once did. This is an example of what I mean by a changing sense of time. 

So everything is more jumbled together, nowadays, without these gaps in which to consider, breathe, wonder, wander; can fruit for the next season. And, mainly, crucially, responses are demanded. And if demanded, human beings are that species which will answer. That is part of the motion of speaking. There are responses when something is said. There is no such thing as--- one person speaking. That first speech is an incomplete action til there is a reply. Part of a definition of warfare is that there are times when speech is NOT allowed. So one reason people seem dumber may be as simple as that they do not have time to come up with a considered response. 

These thoughts do not address the question of humans getting dumber. That is both true and not true, and not the purpose of this post.