But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost)
This is a bit like "Being John Malkovich", but it's not a movie, and I'm not John. It's more like being Kate Storm on a day off with lots of time to read, and the world on my mind.
First, some quotes on the nature of the human condition, perception and reality...
We are always getting ready to live
but never living.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re-examine all you have been told at school
or in church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
--Walt Whitman
For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances,
as though they were realities, and are more often influenced
by things that seem than by things that are.
--Niccolo Machiavelli
To raise new questions, new possibilities,
to regard old questions from a new angle,
requires creative imagination and marks real advances...
--Albert Einstein
By changing the way we're seeing the world.
You see, you're still searching for the right piece to fix first.
You don't see that all the problems simply are fragments
of one single crisis—a crisis of perception.
--from the movie, "Mindwalk", based on the work of the physicist, Fritjof Capra
On the Crisis of Perception
I hope the reasons to write about perception and reality on a progressive political blog are self-evident. We three at ASZ mention daily our astonishment at the apparent inability of Joe and Joetta Citizen to perceive as we do, and exercise their "franchise" accordingly. With frequency we're aghast and confuddled .
It comes as no surprise to me (you?) that this human problem is the stuff that occupies my mind along with mindless computer games in the wee hours. Before Richard invited me to ASZ I was thinking about the problem of human beings and perception.
"Physicist Fritjof Capra (1996) observes that "ultimately these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world" (p. 4). The pervasive Cartesian worldview of scientific materialism, which views the cosmos as a vast machine composed of independent, externally related pieces (Capra, 1982), promotes fragmentation in our thinking and perception."
It's just worse now because ... it's worse. So I set about hours ago to compile good stuff to support my thoughts about how human beings can address some of their little problems of faulty perceptions ... one of which is what Alfred North Whitehead called the "error of misplaced concreteness". I'm just going to give you some starting places beginning with Whitehead ... things I grabbed fast because I've read them before... some of the reasons for my middle of the night wakings.
Misplaced Concreteness = Delusion
The habit of estimating things as worthless (such as ecological diversity) is potentially perilous because it often goes hand-in-hand with what the eminent philosopher Alfred North Whitehead termed the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. This fallacy involves thinking something is a 'concrete' reality when in fact it is merely a belief, opinion or concept about the way things are. And a false belief in something is a delusion - and delusions can be dangerous. Our society is riddled with deluded beliefs about the value and singular reality of the conventional wisdom (e.g. the dominant belief in the pursuit of economic growth), whilst at the same time it devalues alternatives ideas and ways of living.
Floccinaucinihilipilification
The longest non-technical word in the English language
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of esteeming or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by said means.
Next, leaping to my bail-out, no conclusion place (in a single bound), comes my cheerleading to read, read, read (preaching to the choir, I know) everything you can about whole systems, general semantics and epistemology. (Fritjof Capra, Alfred Korzybski, and Gregory Bateson are some of my favorites for research on-line and while sitting among the stacks in the public library) I guarantee them to be perspective-jogging subjects, albeit strenuous readings.
A little something to help you after...
Whole Systems
Ghost in the Machine
Institute of General Sematics
And finally from the stories of Alfred Korzybski, The Girl and the Match
Who's got the spare paddle?
