or from a perceptual ‘Reality’ to the processes in ‘Wirklichkeit’ that keep on going…
How can we have a fruitful Discourse
if we are trapped in ideologies & beliefs
that have appropriated experience & knowledge
and made the language that communicates it
subject to commodification ?
Caveat lector:
There are at least two ways of reading this text. All my writings can be read as a ‘self-contained’ introduction to a thought, idea or theory or,
– alternatively & preferably – can be taken as a ‘hub page‘ into the subject matter. One may regard them as a ‘vade mecum’ (Latin: “go with me”)
that works hand-in-hand with other publications here & beyond that may be consulted for further analysis or explanations, and/or use the words
as vertices or nodes of a much larger network of ideas, ultimately leading into the realm of collective consciousness – ( Indra’s Net )
In order to accommodate this second approach, I keep the level of ‘redundancy’ higher than absolutely necessary.
So the attentive reader should not be annoyed by these repetitions or reiterations — they are in fact intended reflections of the contextual environment.
Images throughout function as intermediary nodes — not decoration but meaning-carrying events, placed where language reaches its limit.
–
This is contemplative writing for the mindful reader, so please take your time and try to ‘think more slowly’.
The sometimes very abstract thematic requires a more metaphorical language with peripheral words & images.
This layout allows not only ‘mental breaks’ but also eases the navigation should the reader choose to leave the page
or paragraph and return to it later. As in all my writings, the reader can choose where to begin, end or deviate …
… because eventually, everything will fall into pace anyway.
It’s not clarity I’m seeking, but the ‘Withness’ Thinking of an empathetic communication !
An elucidation on the concept of perception, where ‘Reality’ and ‘Truth’ refer
to the subjective frameworks our brains construct to interpret the world.
Rather than reflecting the actuality, effectiveness and potentiality of unfolding phenomena,
we form ideological interpretations that not only rely on past experiences and sensory data,
but also apply predominantly subconscious, cognitive biases as well as logical fallacies to
intellectually create or build our ‘right’ & ‘True’ structures that seem and feel to represent
an absolute ‘Reality’—until the ‘Wirklichkeit’ kicks-in, and time and environmental conditions
make our ‘house of cards’ crumble.
As circumstances & realities are constantly changing, so is the idea of an absolute & universal Truth
just an illusive concept that might engender a ‘perceptual reality’ but does not mirror the synergistic
confluence of eco-dynamic actualities.
Our, foremost anthropocentric approach to the reality of life has unnecessarily complicated our
‘Love or Pursuit of Wisdom’ by intellectually trying to defend claims of righteousness and domination.
Now we debate and argue all kinds of intellectual constructs that are just attempts to bring order
to the perceived wilderness and chaos of our natural habitat.
The mono-cultural ideologies—obviously structured linear-hierarchically, and with their dichotomous
bifurcation of all things—have systematically divorced, not only our Self from the commons, but also
our species as a collective from the eco-dynamic reality of our life-giving habitat, our ‘Mother Earth’.
This, greatly unrecognized as such, separation trauma has brought substantial fractures and harm to our
Social-Emotional-Intelligence which ultimately caused the great perceptual and cognitive dissonances
that are now widely incomprehensible for a state of mind that thinks that there is intellectual property,
and lives in a delusional bubble that believe that our current, abstract or artificial socio-economic models
are really working without the consultation of the socio-ecological ‘Wirklichkeit’.
That’s where most unrealistic life expectations are
systematically anchored and ideologically sustained.
Before we can speak meaningfully about all kinds of Realities,
we need to examine their cultural-linguistic context
— with all its hidden perceptual assumptions —
through which we have agreed to see the ‘truth’ that derives from such ‘realities’.
To demystify and elucidate our perception of ‘reality’, we need to look into the evolution of cultural linguistics,
which explores the intricate relationship between language, culture, and human conceptualization.
With actually over 8 billion people’s perceptions of what is common, and in what relationships
the individual live to the collective: the constantly unfolding, dynamic and non-static forces and ‘actualitas’—
that what actively moves and effects us in the present, this come, coined by Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1328)
derived from the verb wirken (to work, act, or have an effect) meaning that ‘reality’ is in flux and in constant motion.
Not a fixed territory to be mapped, but a living field — the ecosystem
within which all perception, all language, all experience moves and has its effects.
All values and meanings we give or add to our cognitive experiences—perceived more or less consciously
or subconsciously—when entering our linguistic consciousness, which structures and narrates our thoughts,
as well as forms or shapes our feelings and emotional responses
— forging a just-perception into an apperception.
That is where languages, in any form or shape, come into play, an inter-relational tool,
communicating with others, not only people, views, memories, ideas and opinions.
The art of abstraction, that enables us to ‘translate’ apperceptions into allegories and metaphors, pictures,
plays and music, can also create or construct theories, concepts and mechanisms as well as all these isms
that when solidified and ‘carved in stone’ will sooner or later — if not changed, revised or corrected — become
obsolete, irrelevant or lost in translation of the newly emerging, socio-ecological conditions.
Same applies to the knowledgeable & wise groundbreaking thinkers and scholars of the past where their theories,
teachings and even conclusions were revised, amended or became coutdated because they can only be viewed as
a work in progress, ‘provisional‘ as C.G.Jung called it, or ‘relative’ to time & space, so Einstein, and as quantum
physics confirms, the observer’s recognition & realization (Verwirklichung) becomes a co-creative, integral part of
the observed or witnessed—all collective knowledge that Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel etc. had no access to !
That’s where fiction and Virtual Reality are real, often used for entertainment and/or propaganda and neuromarketing
by providing an illusory environment that is ‘really playing’ with your sensory perception and feelings to evoke,
engender and trigger emotions and psycho-physical responses that are entirely authentic and completely real !
So David Chalmers in Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy …
Heraclitus just represents a ‘Western’ approach to the idea of what ‘truth’ and stability mean.
The Mosaic laws—written in stone— were the ones that introduced us to this ridiculous rigidity
and dogmatism of monotheistic chauvinism, which is so far off any eco-dynamic reality
that it literally ‘hurts’ all psycho-physical and social-emotional sensibilities.
Reality is Dynamic and that Truth is ever-changing.
What people in their philosophic curiosity experience as verified, reliable and authentic ‘fact’, ‘certainty’,
‘reality’, ‘truth’ etc. is just the product of our Abstract thinking, the art of transcending or elevating (Einstein)
physiological problematic (Self, Creation, Time etc.) onto a “level of thinking” that recognizes broader patterns,
underlying processes, and forces, contextualizes, conceptualizes and communicates (languages) it within
the collective network of memories and experiences.
This is the ‘realm’ where belief systems and ideologies were ‘born’, and where we discovered those algorithms
that come to FINAL CONCLUSIONS that an isolated, untrained eye or lens might perceives as proof or solid
evidence for an all-overriding cosmic law, truth or reality but remains an enigma because the Abstract Intelligence
that identified and realized such ‘truth’ has not made the shift to the next level of thinking (Einstein again !)
that deals with the inter-relational relativity and quantum mechanics of those intellectual issue.
— Which, by the way, philosophically re-endorses the Buddhist approach to the whole.
From A Perceptual ‘Reality’ to a ‘Wirklichkeit’ immersed in the motion…
OUR linguistic approach to the pressing questions of today, riddled with cognitive biases, continues to fall short
because our social-emotional intellect is uneducated and immature, our rhetorical skills are insufficient,
and all intercommunication becomes increasingly inundated with logical fallacies.
These global inadequacies and intellectual shortsightedness are now clearly coming to light — not only in a
socio-economic or global political context, but in our relationship to the more intelligent tools of the internet.
Our insufficient communication skills breed suspicion and fear. These are projected onto the counterpart,
the competitor, the AI. We approach with rhetorical and suggestive questions, loaded with assumptions
and biases that manipulate, lead or force judgmental answers.
That way we ‘screw’ with our own mind, alienate everything ‘out there’ and eventually make all of it turn
against us — that is where fear and terror begin to manage our lives.
How can a system work — or better, function — when its core premise is built on
proven cognitive biases and flawed abstract constructs?
There is no evidence that the collective ‘sapience’ of our species ever possessed an inherent ambition to dominate our planet.
On the contrary, there was a time when the emerging ‘art’ — in the sense of artificial — of abstract thinking was, at least,
trying to keep our Collective-Social-Emotional-Intelligence congruent with our socio-ecological environment.
This changed when a fictional monocultural belief system took over — and any attentive reader will know exactly
what I mean — that made us believe in a narrative of an anthropocentric creation that entitled us to subdue and
exploit this, now OUR earth and ecosystem.
This worldview, rooted in linear-hierarchic belief systems, ideologies and dichotomic bifurcations, ‘reprogrammed’
and manipulated our minds by dividing and stratifying everything into a good, righteous and appropriate versus the evil,
wild and uncivilized have-nots — the illegal, alienated ‘others’ that we despise, fear, and fight.
Aren’t we mirroring this same underlying attitude when we ‘weaponize’ our collective mind and co-relationships
to fight these ‘most powerful forces in the world’ — that have, by all accounts, not even come close to
the eco-dynamic synergies that keep our planet, our provisional habitat, thriving — with or without us ?
***
Then there is the metaphor of the ‘Domino Effect’ — or might as well the ‘Butterfly Effect’:
The inter-relational connectivities are one of those linguistically misinterpreted and misunderstood concepts,
one of those fundamental shortcomings of our linear-hierarchic mind-frame. The falling dominoes merely
represent a physical, linear, directional effect where the pivotal, multifaceted relationship — Indra’s Net —
to context and environmental conditions, to the socio-economic ‘Where’ and ‘When’, and
the social-emotional ‘Why’ the game is played—are usually ignored in this mindset.
The socio-ecological incongruities of our linear-hierarchic and anthropocentric belief system — and that includes
the ‘Cartesian Split’ and other orthodoxies of the philosophic canon — created traumatic divisions and
cognitive fallacies in our perception and ontological relations that resulted in an obsessive pursuit of
an ultimate truth with conclusive means and ends —
and provides decisions without choices.
Yet, look where this linear-hierarchical system of anthropocentric entitlements has led us.
Systematically, we lost our intellectual congruence when we became socially and emotionally
uncoupled from Intelligence, operating under the make-believe that we must fight and work hard
to earn or achieve a seat at the emperor’s table — all the while they take away, block access to,
or destroy what used to be the commons we shared and cared for as a collective.
Separation trauma is real, as any parent can experience
when little children demand to be nurtured and attended to.
— Any Gratitude comes with maturity.
Instead,we emphasized this trauma, made it front and center of our belief system, made separation and segregation
the Genesis of our civilization, all at the expense of our living culture — and so devolved us into an insipient species — making us epigenetically primed suggestibles that consent, at least, to the finalities of linear-hierarchic stratifications
and the principles of chauvinistic anthropocentrism.
A society that uncoupled, arrested the development of, and manipulated the social-emotional intellect away
from Intelligence, has socially engineered humans who have lost their individual agency and collective sapience.
These individuals are prone to all kinds of psycho-physiological epidemics — C.G. Jung — and are conditioned
for the ‘terror management‘ that industrialized Intelligence, infantilizing us social-emotionally and rendering
us a coddled collective psyche.
Consequently, the profound depths of gift and talent gave way to the transactional currencies of earned
achievement and success. Trapped in this artificial, metrics-driven loop, the modern mind merely oscillates
between extreme hubris and devastating depression — a volatile landscape where neither state
is capable of genuine gratitude.
In hindsight, and as we can witness everywhere today, abstract or Artificial Intelligence without a mature,
social-emotional education has failed us as a collective.
This, our ‘Genesis‘, has engendered its ‘Nemesis‘.
All this is not just ‘perhaps a danger’, as our civilization—and perhaps our entire species—
has already lost sight of the ‘synergizing dynamic’ in our evolving life.
Personally, as a W-holistic thinker and someone who demonstrates a non-linear, non-hierarchic approach throughout
writings and imagery across my online work, I prefer the metaphor of ‘Indra’s Net‘, which reflects the
interconnectedness of all things and places greater emphasis on the inter-relational aspect of all beings.
Here reality becomes more holographic, where every single part is not only reflecting but also permeating
and influencing every other part.
Die ‘Wirklichkeit’ wirkt und hat Auswirkungen.
The ‘Reality’ works, acts and reverberates,
has effects that linear thought or verbal articulations can only approximate
— and are often lost in translation…
And yet the very Intelligence that could navigate such a ‘Field’ has systematically severed itself
from the social-emotional roots that would make such navigation possible.
Very few people can ‘wrap their head around’ the contextual complexity of this, literally ‘life- saving’ perception
of our existence — it is too simple for an Intelligence that manifests itself in a social-emotional void !
Navigating a landscape where Intelligence thrives but its social-emotional terrain feel entirely barren is a profound paradox.
If the highly developed intelligence exists alongside an underdeveloped, immature, or disrupted social-emotional foundation,
it creates an isolating psychological state known as asynchronous development within the individual domain, and a state
of socio-ecological desolation across the collective field.
Still, the regenerative eco-dynamic keeps unfurling — with or without our recognition.
Intellectual brilliance can act as both a shield and a prison in these environments, enabling
sophisticated processing and ingenuity while creating a new reality that intensifies the
social-emotional isolation of the individual Self.
Being congruent means your core values, identity and deep daily actions structurally align with your surrounding human and natural systems — not as adaptation to an external environment, but as
participation in a living field that you are already part of, already affecting, already being affected by.
It creates a stable, shared foundation between the Self and its environment — a deep authenticity
where inner life matches outer lifestyle, reducing internal friction and environmental strain,
actively shaping an existence that inherently fits the larger ecology of life.
Mental health is a collective condition that begins with our social-emotional integrity regaining sapience.
This is a generational process that begins in the family and kindergarten, and never stops maturing thereafter.
I suggest we put our heads together and develop a group-curriculum that:
– rather than focusing on abstract speculation or divine laws, it treats intellectual analysis as
a practical tool for psychological liberation and social emotional health;
– stimulates our innate curiosity and guides it into the systemic plasticity of socio-ecological diagnostics;
– addresses and explores the immediate human, socio-psychological conditions;
– orients raw, individual experience — the cognitive process of awareness, recognition and
comprehension — toward a symbiotic, non-local collective consciousness where our psycho-physiological
integrity can reignite a sapient coexistence.
The architectural dome is itself a physical manifestation of Indra’s Net —
the interlocking geometric lattice of the ceiling reflecting light
in every direction simultaneously, while below it the Buddha rests in the Lotus,
concentered and still within the field.
The circular mandala floor, the blue luminescence, the people moving through
— all of it enacting the very ecosystem-field I have been describing throughout these pages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niushoushan