Cloudiness

Think about this:

     The Scientific Method. Purely bred out of a need to explain, a bastion of rationality and truth, justice, blah blah blah, infallible… right? But what is the purpose of the scientific method? To find and test hypotheses that will eventually whittle down all causality for a given phenomenon to a few possible explanations that could, if done correctly, predict future behavior of said phenomenon. Or at least, it is what we think. In science class, I didn't think about what the creation of a hypothesis would do to the order of the scientific method. In Zen, Pirsig states that he himself began to become confused when he realized that out of every scientific experiment, multiple hypotheses could arise out of a simple experiment. If the desired effect was not achieved by testing a hypothesis, then you would go back and create new hypotheses to test. New hypotheses could be created out of any situation. So many, in fact, that the original problem could eventually become obfuscated by questions. One could end up with an infinitude of possible explanations to test before they even attempted to answer why something was the way it was! Which, is what I would assume, could be the opposite of the desired intent of the method itself.

     Which got me to thinking about my own experiencing. What is the point of even knowing what is  in the first place? Why is it that I myself have a need to explain the "is"? Why can't I just become a cog in the system and go where I am supposed to go, do what I am supposed to do? Our rationality, expectations and thought process have reached such a defined point that even criminals, the ones "outside the laws of man" have predesigned systems of thought and action. Our expectations for behavior and actions are so finite that it defies the human potential in all of us for something new, for something extraordinary. If you are gifted intellectually, society and others expect you to go to college and get a prestigious degree qualifying you for work that is very complex, but still, only fitted towards the means of society's needs. If you are gifted physically, people expect you will take up some type of sport that will display your athleticism, and many people can live vicariously through your own exploits and experiences. Be you male, female, young, old, straight, gay, bisexual, black, white, asian, latino, religious, atheist, intelligent, idiotic, rich, poor (the list goes on and on)… the world has expectations for you and what they expect you will do - the saddest part about this being that a lot of people make the mistake of falling into the trap of expectations, even if it happens unknowingly.

     I remember hearing a man say that the difference between the average human being and someone like Nietzsche or Einstein was larger than that of the difference between the average human and a chimp.  It seems a cruel comparison, and the author seems cynical, but in reality, the satire does bear shades of truth. Most people go about their business and their expected behaviors without stopping to even think for a passing second about something outside of their given "box." Just as a Zoologist can begin to predict animal behavior, if one studies the greater part of the human species long enough, they might find that our own behavior has become predictable as well.

     Let me just say here that I do not advocate chaos, nor have I ever been or will be a nihilist, believing that nothing is special or has any meaning. I do, however, advocate a little thought about the nature of the "is" every once in a while. No, not that "hey, wouldn't it be weird if we were just some particles in a giant's fingernail?" kind of pseudo-intellectual prattling on, but a more focused, inside-and-outside-of-rationality approach. Even putting words to thought sometimes can create discord between what you achieve and what you can really do. What really seems to be the fact of the matter is how many people I've met that think about things like this. Either most are very good at hiding it, or don't bother with it. My understanding tends to make me lean toward the latter. The more I think about it, the more cloudy the search becomes, so it makes it easy to understand why it would not be on top of someone's "to-think-about list." I suppose I have a long way before I get to the top of the mountain.

I

...walking through the desert, sand gritty underneath my shoes. Wind drying and ripping into any exposed skin. The horse I ride begs for any kind of rest by pulling on his bit, but I press on. Through sagebrush and exhaustion, mesas and dehydration, I keep pace. To where? To what purpose?

     Around every corner, a place I feel I've been before, abandoned and left behind. I attempt to grab at fuzzy memories, and they slip away like loose pages in a notebook, one at a time until the original intent and message is lost completely. Where did my life go? So many different ways I had kept my individual identity - people I knew, places I've been, things I believed in - all seem to melt when I try to bring them back. Am I shedding my former life to start anew? Am I simply disseminating into different parts of myself in order to fade into the background like a once-great entertainer who has seen the best and brightest of his years? So much of youth is spent attempting to understand what is, but once a youth gains understanding, what becomes of youth? It seems as though the reality that I have clawed and scraped together to find my place in the world is not what it seems, and I am once again at a loss as to what it all really means.

      We all have an identity. But what is it that creates and sustains the identity that we have? Is it how we look? Our jobs? The need to discriminate the "I" from "you" is one that needs fulfilling in the worst way; yet many never truly understand the self. The self is a construct from our self-perception, thoughts, and feelings toward our life experience in being… well, just being. The self is an ongoing entity, impermanent and not fixed to place, fluid and alive. What we may consider the self can change from day to day dependent on the events that take place (creating our experiences) and our resulting understanding of ourselves shifts as an extension of these events. From my limited understanding of the world, this effect seems to occur more early in life and less later on as the self becomes more of a permanent object, solidifying slightly. Any changes later on in life seem to come with more resistance, as the self becomes more fixed.

     The “I” is the most elusive character in our lives. By understanding the self, we create a scaffold for how we understand the rest of the world. Nosce te ipsum, or “know thyself,” is a popular saying philosophers ponder upon in relation to this construct. It seems with the formula that most Americans have for themselves (get an education, get a good job, get married, have kids), the “I” is rather easy to find. If we have these things, the self is rather easily constructed. For instance, when two strangers meet each other for the first time in conversation, the first two things usually mentioned are 1.) names and 2.) professions. Our parents give us our names without our choosing, and yet, this becomes the very first thing mentioned in communicating who we are to another person. This certainly does not have a whole lot to do with our construction of “I.” It merely represents our place in both society and familial relations. The second part mentioned could be a bit closer to the mark, but does this really describe our definition of who we are?

     Sure, I am a teacher. What does this have to do with me? It is my chosen profession, and there are certainly many different conceptions of what teachers are and do. However, there are many different types of teachers, and most individuals would say that they differ from the average teacher. What does this mean, anyway? It means that even though we have introduced our “self” to another, we have not come any closer to getting them to understand our own construction of the self. We all have an above-the-surface common understanding of how the world works, and for the most part, this does us fairly well. We all have to learn the cooperative shared understanding of the world. Once we get underneath this, though, from individual to individual it varies greatly. From our birth to our current version of us, everyone is different. How many of us really have a firm understanding of this, though? How many of us have a firm understanding of the “I” in our lives?

Patience...