Do Americans Live In A False Reality Created By Orchestrated Events? -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org

Do Americans Live In A False Reality Created By Orchestrated Events? -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org

Inside-out Thinking

For starters, let me begin by noting that all of the analyses presented in this blog will stem from a deep and loving worship of the source of all human virtue and my abiding love of humanity. The primary motivation for this blog is to contribute to the alleviation of human suffering. Suffering is something of which, without exception, all of us partake. One can begin this project from, what I consider to be its most abstract level--and oftentimes its most vicious--politics. Or, begin at the most fundamental level, i.e., each of our human lives, and then work upward from the fundamental to the abstract heights of the political. We will begin with the latter method or "path," and work our way slowly upward to the political. In my humble opinion, only a thorough and abiding immersion in the fundamental can make it possible to provide a proper support for further understanding. We all share in the fundamental; we are its offspring. 

Any step beyond the fundamental necessitates thought. Thought is our distinctly (as far as we know) human method of coming to terms with the fundamental, the derivative. However, we must not fall into the trap of mistaking the derivative for the fundamental. The derivative begins with thought, in our case, analysis. The word "analysis" is derived from Greek analysis "a breaking up, a loosening, releasing," noun of action from analyein "unloose, release, set free; to loose a ship from its moorings," in Aristotle, "to analyze," from ana "up, throughout" (see ana-) + lysis "a loosening,from lyein "to unfasten". (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=analysis). What we are attempting to accomplish via thought is to release the potential analytic structures from the fundamental. In this manner or method, as Parmenides would have it, we are taking the way of thought. The way is the methodos, from Latin methodus "way of teaching or going," from Greek methodos "scientific inquiry, method of inquiry, investigation," originally "pursuit, a following after," from meta- "after" (see meta-) + hodos "a traveling, way..." (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php allowed_in_frame=0&search=method)

In sum, to think in this manner is to unleash the potential of thought/sound energy to construct ideas which in their turn, after congealment as habits, become what are often taken to be the fundamental reality. This turn is the turn towards the sensorially given elements of earth, water, fire or light, air, and space which, once and often taken as primary, become the building blocks of our universes of textured nouns, i.e., selves and things. One of our more important tasks is to reveal this becoming of universes, this becoming of experience, through the activity of what we will often refer to as "mind." We must become intimately aware of the process of becoming, the incessant manifestation and dissolution of experience. Much like a flame that arises only to become known and devour itself in its ongoing manifestation, experience arises in a ceaseless current that we may refer to as "world" or "universe." (More on this later) It is this movement that we will refer to as "time." This is living time. This is truly human and living time; this is not theoretical, clock time. 

As a prelude to fully appreciating the value of such a radical reevaluation of all values, one is necessarily brought to see the need to comprehend the source of the authentication of all realities, feelings. Feelings authenticate reality. In what is perhaps a more straightforward approach, it may be understood that the "body," in its multiple manifestations or expressions, is that which is associated with mind to grant authority to all experience. Experience is only experienced as a bodily event or movement. Even thought takes on a feeling tonality when passing through the body. This felt association of body and mind takes place in breath. Breath may be seen as the link, or hyphen, of body-mind-world. Whatever is experienced must be experienced bodily, i.e., incarnately. The hyphenation I speak of here is the union of the otherwise distinctly perceived dimensions of body, mind, self, and world. Our hyphenation is used to point to the inseparability of these four living dimensions.

The living foundation of all of life is our experience of it. The knowledge that is derived from this foundation is always late, i.e., cognition is one step behind living. It is via knowledge or cognition that the living foundation is viewed piecemeal. Body, mind, self, and world are seen as preexisting entities that are not only distinct but separate in their function. While knowledge is a necessary component of human life, it relies upon the hyphenated reality wherein the four may be distinguished but never separated. As preexisting entities or functions, body, mind, self, and world (hereafter: BMSW) are taken by knowing entities that are already the case. They do not come into existence as reality but are taken to be already divided into observed phenomena that are distinct in themselves.

The union of BMSW is non-dualistic. Nothing lives that is not experienced in BMSW. However, this experience belongs to no one. This experience is anonymous. It is this anonymity which grants us the realization of the possibility of escape from the dissatisfaction of attachment and aversion. When that which is the stage upon which all knowing occurs is glimpsed, a worm hole to freedom is made available. In fact, to call it "experience" is to lead to the mistake of placing it in the realm of knowledge.

Say, isn't it time that we got serious about looking at the interminable search for happiness through acquisition that many of us are ensnared by? We hear so much about solutions to this or that environmental, religious, political, and economic problem.

From the point of view of an authentic life practice--one aiming at an ongoing immersion in the radical, dynamic reality of human living--when experience arises--be it pleasurable, painful, or neutral--the moment wherein transformation is possible, the moment wherein our freedom may be found, is the moment before we either attach to or have aversion for the feelings that arise in conjunction with the meaning-content of experience. However, instead of looking for this freedom and hence this release from compulsion in the dynamic of human living, the overwhelming majority of human beings seek to attach to the pleasurable feelings (and hold disdain for the painful) brought about by the gratification of habitual, culturally conditioned cravings. This has led to our present-day, multidimensional crisis of universal proportions. Somehow, we must reorient ourselves to discover a source of human flourishing that will allow mutual respect and cooperation among us. Our survival demands we act on this now.

What are the primary motivating forces, those presuppositions and values at the heart of this futile search, and how can we bring into light of day their innate inadequacy?

It took all of eight years to get back to this blog. I started this blog back in 2007. Since then, I have grown to understand the obstacles that stand in the way of appreciating, in a deeper sense of that word, what we may initially refer to as our radical reality, or "root" reality. This blog will unfold some of the implications of realizing this root reality in our everyday lives. Hopefully, this understanding will be grounded, not in a conceptual or theoretical manner, but in a thoroughgoing embodied and silent fullness wherein the fundamental reality of our lives as a union of body, mind, self, world, universe that breathes is seen, felt, and known as the basis of all experience. This human union, this radical sense of what it means to be human, will humanize all of life. One may even say that this realization is, at the same time, the sacralization, of all human experience.  

One of the most simple calls to "the basic experience of the world" comes to us from Merleau-Ponty, "The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at the precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression." He speaks here of the need to return to the underlying movement of the "worlds" we live, not the worlds we theorize into existence. All of our theorization--not to mention our attachments and aversions--is grounded in this living and anonymous "experience," if we can call it that, of living. Living precedes thinking. It is what thinking presupposes. Living is prior to things, prior to separate selves, prior to the likes and dislikes of an alienated self.

The view from the inside out calls for a "reevaluation of all values." Inside out thinking, the result of reportage from the domain of the living, calls for values to be based on the realization that the world is always "my world." In effect, my life equals, in the words of Ortega y Gasset, "I plus my circumstances." Given the universality of this fact of life, values may be seen as the elements required to improve the world, the universal "my world."