Ram Dass shares a story in which he has his wild, boundary dissolving trip and returns home to his parents as the snow is piling up on the ground outside. In a fit of elation, giving, and high spirits, he starts to shovel the walkway, picturing himself as a sort of keeper of the community. His parents wake up and look out the window at him not with pride, but as if he is some sort of bizarre animal: "What kind of idiot would be shoveling the snow in freezing temperatures in the middle of the night?" As he notices their cluelessness and puzzelement at an activity that is well without their expectations of "normal social behavior," he realizes that it is their voices that have been clammering and cluttered in his brain, that pushed him into his PhD program, that cause him to contiually shape his own action, that condition his actions. He vows to thenceforth be en garde, as he has found an unconditioned self beyond the voices of his parents.
And, indeed, we are simply flooded with a barrage of voices, even more so today. Perhaps that is one of the main problems of information overstimulation: it adds even more admonitions, advice, warnings, condemnations to the arsenal of voices that we allow to condition our behavior. Alan Watts finds that if we look at what the "ego" is and what it is telling us to do, we will simply find voices upon voices of society (i.e. others) talking to us. Indeed, "l'enfer est les autres."
This is not to say that under it all, there is a kernel of "true self" or a homonculus, as it were. Quite contrarily, we will find naught but a process of existence. There is such thing as an individual, an atman, but it is not a pure thing. It is an ongoing mixture of others and the phenomenological awareness of other. What of those who are genetically predisposed towards antisocial and even sociopathic behavior, but grow up in an environment that nurtures their more positive characteristics?
Anyway, the goal seems to be also not to wipe away these voices - polish them clean off the surface of the brain so as to be left with an unbiased man. Man will always be that mixture, just as the question of whether I'd be different if I lived in the Old West is as meaningless as the question of whether I'd be different if I lived in Lord of the Rings.
So the goal is to first be aware THAT the ego is naught but the voice of others (that voice can even be experiences or substances - I can say that the spirit of alcohol has embodied one of these voices in my own mind). The second step is to be acutely aware of what they are saying. The trick is to notice that it is merely a voice, and not onesself guiding one towards particular actions. That is, don't get it mixed up as the "true self" speaking to you. If there is no true self, there is especially no voice with which it speaks to you and guides you.
If there is no true self, then how can one act liberated from social conditioning?
What of analysis and analytical thought? It is easy to say that when one jumps out of the path of a moving bus, he does so without analysis, but what of the person who deliberates over whether to mow the lawn tonight or tomorrow and selects one of the two options. Are we supposed to constantly act spontaneously? Is that even possible?
What of intuition? These voices warn and admonish strongly, and are accompanied by nonanalytical feelings and emotions.
I guess the point is obviously not paralysis, nor is it unbridled spontaneousness. I think one has to act based on impulses that point towards the latter.
So, if you're implying that the more analysis there is, the more "other" will enter the picture to the detriment of impulse, and the worse the actions will be? Or the worse off the subject will be (more anxiety, self-doubt, etc.). If this is the case there is no basis for philosophical ethics, as one would work very hard to create for himself a set of moral values and ethical guidelines, but be required to resort to his intuition in difficult situations.
It's not necessarily analytical thought that is the enemy, but grasping at the wrong things. It is here I drop relativism, and become a social critic. Most of what society constructs for us will work against our realizing that life is merely a ride or an illusion, and has us taking it very seriously as a problem, as we are alien chess pieces facing each other with all of these rules that make the game so much harder. If we can find a mode of being that is not concerned with taking these social roles so seriously, and instead of moving with life effortlessly, with whatever it brings, we will bring more peace and understanding and joy to ourselves and to others, and the world will be a better place for it. This is why conservatism is inherently bad, because it takes as one of its principles the idea that there is such a thing as "the other" or "them" and the system should be devoted to protecting and promoting "us." Us is, after all, inherently better than them, regardless of the abhorrent behavior or unethical consequences of our actions.
{What if I grasp the principle of ahimsa?}
No comments:
Post a Comment