The philosophical relativist is the knower of the Absolute

But what is relativism?

Relativism is the intellectual ability to step out of one’s present situation in time and space and recognise alternative viewpoints – from other times and from other points of space. This ‘stepping out’ of the present situation is often made easier if the alternative temporal-spatial view is imagined to be that of another person.

We are all relativists to a greater or lesser extent. Most of us are able to recognise that the mug in front of me might look different to our friend sat opposite us at the table. We would have relatively little difficulty in imagining how the handle on the right-hand side might appear on the left-hand side to our friend. However humble this skill might seem – these are our early majestic intimations of our knowledge of the Absolute.

Yes, humble as it seems, we should not forget that the autistic person, whose capacity for relativism is so low that they struggle in society, would not find it so easy to ‘step out’ of their present moment mindset. The experts called this a failure of ‘theory of mind’ – by that they mean other people’s minds; actually, it is a broader deficit than that – it is the inability to access the higher vantage of the Absolute.

The capacity for relativism lies on a spectrum. At one end is the autistic person entirely trapped in the idiosyncratic viewpoint (and the etymology of the word autistic ((as well as idiot)) suggests precisely this). As we move along we find people who would struggle to understand how the joke they laugh at might leave the next person cold. Rather than realise that funniness might depend on one’s socio-cultural history, one’s experiences etc., this person seems adamant that they alone know what’s funny and that the next person does not have a sense of humour. The best brands of coffee, the most attractive flower, and other matters of perceptual taste are all matters that the person with the underdeveloped relativistic faculty would argue about, working on the assumption that there are absolutely correct understandings on these things and that they themselves understand them correctly.

As we move along the spectrum we pass the peak of the bell curve and start to encounter issues that fewer people are able to view relatively. Political views and systems, matters of law and order, the interpretation of historical events, high and low art are all arenas where the rarer relativist’s voice might be heard – and increasingly opposed.

As we go beyond this and the conventions of popular opinion get left behind, the ‘stepping out’ of the relativist gets harder to do, and recriminations for doing so start to build. While many might have moments of insight into how the good act might also sometimes be viewed as evil, few would have the courage to express their opinions except to sympathetic ears.

But those who do so are the philosophers, and they pride themselves of their love of wisdom. And wisdom they have - in abundance – but of this elite there are few who are able to ‘step out’ to the extent that goodness is indistinguishable from evil, that matter is equivalent to idea, that freedom and determination are just two perspectives on the very same coin.

Yet the philosopher is not at the farthest end of the relativistic spectrum, for there is one question that even the philosopher cannot entertain. The philosopher cannot divest themselves of the belief that they are a subject trying to acquire knowledge of an objective world ‘out there’. Were they to see that that subject and object split is a quite one-sided, and therefore untenable interpretation of experience then the whole notion of knowledge and understanding would be voided (for a thread on this see:

Beyond the philosopher, the person at the far end of the spectrum is the mystic – the person who, through patient and systematic enquiry, has come to understand that alongside the world and the self it is also valid to say that there is no world and no self. Their understanding of the Absolute started when they saw, in their ‘mind’s eye’ that the mug’s handle might also be viewed as being on the left-hand side. That mind’s eye, was the Absolute eye – the eye of God if your terms of expression are religious. That mind’s eye grew and grew with discernment and insight as it transcended the illusion of the individual in the present, and expanded into absolute knowledge.

We all have a great deal of this wisdom, this absolute knowledge – but we all have our limitations. Our limitations are where we find ourselves unable to accept the relativistic viewpoint. Limitation means that we cannot imagine alternatives – imagination, of course, being the ability to access the Absolute perspective. The term mystic is often associated with religious figures – this is only because most Western mystics have lived in times when religious narratives were the conventional narratives to employ. Yes we have religions mystics (Jesus, Meister Eckhart, St John of the Cross); but we also have scientific mystics (Einstein, Newton) and philosophical mystics (Socrates, Plotinus, Buddha).

Relativism is a dirty word to many, and yet we define ourselves as being in a post-modern age – an age of perspective and narrative plurality. Iris Murdoch famously wondered what word we would use for the time after post-modernism. The answer is the Age of Mysticism. In the age to come, the pre-eminent thinkers shall have gone beyond mere philosophy, beyond the nonsense theology of Christianity and the rest, and will have plunged themselves directly into the Absolute.

Thank you for reading this far.

On black swans - that old canard!

All swans are white.

If we think this is a falsehood then this depends on how we define the swan. Once, swans were defined as large, white birds with long, S-shaped necks. Their whiteness was a defining feature of the swan, and if the bird wasn’t white then it wasn’t a swan.

Later, fashions for defining swans changed. We became more interested in their musculoskeletal characteristics then their plumage. If we encountered a bird with the S-shaped neck and the musculoskeletal characteristics then we started calling it a swan, even if the bird was black.

In the future, when the genotype of the swan is mapped we might, for reasons of heredity, find ourselves calling a bird a swan, even if it doesn’t have the S-shaped neck and comes in all manner of colours.

So, which is the better, truer definition of the swan? The plumage-based definition, the musculoskeletal definition, or the genetic definition? Or indeed any of the infinite ways in which we might define a swan? Call? Colour of eye or bill? Etc?

This is important to know because unless we know the best way to define a swan our opening statement ‘all swans are white’ is in a terrible logical limbo:

To the plumage-definer the statement is true; to the musculoskeletal-definer it is false.

This means that the statement is both true and false, depending on your perspective of what a swan is. In other words, all swans seem to be both P and not-P.

To resolve this intolerable contradiction it is necessary for us to explain what a swan really is – what is the definition of the true swan? How do you know?

If you can manage this then you may, with justification, go on to resolve the contradiction. If you cannot manage this then we are not logically permitted to step beyond the contradiction:

So, ‘swans are both P and not-P’ becomes the most illogical, and at the same time, logical viewpoint to hold.

I wonder where this leaves logic?

On Pestles and Mortars

If we try to crack a pepper with the pestle without the hard surface of the mortar we wouldn't get very far. Though the pestle is the tool we hold in our hand, and direct it where we wish, it is only effective in conjunction with the mortar - which provides the passive but rock-solid surface to press. Though we might be apt to view the pestle as the active indispensable tool, we forget that the pestle is useless without the passive backdrop of the mortar. When asked what crushed the pepper, we would be correct to view the crushing as achieved by the pestle and mortar equally and in conjunction - despite our sense that that pestle is doing more of the crushing.

Conceptual thought works in the same way. We cannot think about any aspect of reality unless we also have the concept of what it is not. We would gain nothing by calling the grass green if we did not have the concept of 'things that are not green'. Without this second concept 'green' would be a meaningless synonym of grass. So every time a feature of reality needs to be conceptualised, two concepts are invoked: that pertaining to what it is and that pertaining to what it isn't. Like the pestle, we are rather prone to placing the positive signifier higher than the negative one. We are rather prone to thinking that the positive signifier is doing more of the work, of being somehow more characteristic of that feature of reality than the negative. This is an error. For everything we perceive we must conceptualise it in terms of what it isn't in conjunction with what it is. Every blade of grass that gives rise to the concept green is also giving rise to the concept not-green - it can be no other way. If something is green then that something is also not-green.

Often we only become aware of this when asked to actually pinpoint the difference between green and not-green. What we take to be very clear and obvious we find to be much more complicated. We find that our green segues naturally into something that isn't green, and furthermore, we can never seem to agree with others whether something is or isn't green. We find ourselevs thinking of the strength of the pestle, and then get frustrated when someone reminds us that it is nothing without the mortar.

P and not-P are distinct only in logic. Try and apply the concept P to reality and you will find yourself applying not-P at the same time, every time. Like a boy trying to escape his shadow, we must learn that he and his shadow are the same. We must learn that Reality is as whole as the peppercorn - and we break it up only in our imaginations.

Where philosophy and religion meet

The following is taken form the Wikipedia article Eastern Epistemology: "The world abounds with a myriad of conflicting ideologies; each claiming the truth; each refuting the others. Dialectical materialism and Protestant theism, Roman Catholicism and pagan polytheism, spiritualism and atheism, Freudianism and Vedanta; the list is virtually endless.One approach which the 'seeker of truth can and must use in his investigation of each philosophical system is to ask the question: "How do you know?" or otherwise stated: "Why do you believe? What is the evidence? How can you be sure? Is there possibly another explanation?" This is the study known as epistemology, the study of the acquisition and verification of knowledge.Human beings are much too credulous. The vast majority of us believe either what, we want to believe or what we have been told to believe. It is a rare person who thoroughly and honestly explores the question: "How do I know?"One of the greatest appeals of Buddhism for the Western mind is that the Buddha repeatedly told his followers to base their convictions neither on faith nor on scripture. 'Investigate, analyze and see for yourself ' he told them; then you can believe. However the unfortunate paradox is that most Buddhists unquestioningly accept the writings of the Tipitaka for no other reason than the alleged authority of the Buddha." The Buddhism we understand in the West is too often that simple credulity which prostrates itself before the 'divine Buddha'. But properly seen, Buddhism is not a religion at all but a philosophical method identical to the ancient western tradition of scepticism. At heart, everything we think we know is groundless. All the knowledge we attain through patient rational thought is based on beliefs and assumption - nothing more. What we think we know is indistinguishable from those assumptions that remain unknown. We get out only what we put in - and these are castles in the air and nothing more. Then why has Eastern scepticism (Buddhism) attracted this label of Religion? Because when the wise see through the illusion of knowledge once and for all, something remarkable happens. Notions that preoccupy the mind are seen as being no more substantial than dreamstuff. The Self, the world, life and death, happiness, sadness, good and evil are seen for what they really are. Just fantsaies of the human mind that exist only in the mind and have nothing to do with the reality we experience.And so these wise sages find themselves no longer spellbound by the illusions that preoccupy the many. And with these illusions absent there is no sense of needing to rush around doing this and that - the motivation to chase dreams has completely withered away in them. And so they sit still for there is nothing else to do. That is how they behave. They sit still and just see reality for what it is. This freedom from passion, this clarity of mind feels blissful - it is salvation from the constant hurried feeling. The eastern sceptics call it Enlightenment, the western variety call it ataraxia. It is nothing special, it is the feeling of joy, expansiveness and well being that all people experience on occasions. But only those philosophers who have the insight and tenacity to expunge their illusions in a thoroughgoing fashion can hope to achieve it as a dominant experience. The Buddha was one, Phyrrus was one, Meister Eckhart was one, Teresa of Avila was another. So this is why Buddhism attracted the label of Religion. People wanted the bliss for themselves and saw that these sages spent much time sitting and watching (whether in meditation or prayer). But these people mistook the effect for a cause. They saw what they did and turned iit nto so many doctines and rituals. But these sages are not divine. They are merely thinkers who have realised the limits of thought and managed to see beyond. Those who think they can achieve the same state through mere imitation of their behaviour are mistaken. The philosophical tendency is a calling confined to the few. And of the philosophical few a still smaller figure have the sceptical tenacity to reject their precious beliefs over and over again. Socrates saw that there was nothing to know. It is surprising how many of us are afraid to reach that intolerable conclusion. Western epistemology is presently at that high water mark that the sages of Ancient Greece, and of India and China also reached. Since Nietzsche showed us that without God there is no way of arbitrating between the multitude of equal and opposite beliefs, we have been floundering in post-modern quicksand. But this is an opportunity to go beyond, however daunting it might seem. The decisive intellect sees that there is no way of knowing and nothing to know. So it sits still and sees reality directly and as it is.

The delusion of function

One of our most entrenched of intellectual habits is to seek the function of phenomena. The sage is as much a part of nature as the fool – yet the sage sits and does nothing and the fool works aimlessly to no higher purpose. But abandon the concepts of higher and lower and you will find that everyone just occurs as it does and there is no function behind anything that we can discern. The moment we see things in terms of their function we start moving on to seeing things as intrinsically better than others and thus fall into delusion.

From complexity to simplicity

Man’s intellect transcended the physical world when he started to pose himself questions that couldn’t be settled empirically. That was then he became preoccupied by the infinite questions to be asked within the imaginary world. How many angels can stand on a pinhead? Many people have lived and died honourable lives devoted to ideas and products whose root is imaginary. All this is as it should be. But once you have seen through it you cannot help but to return to the simple ideas that are provided by the senses. From complexity back to simplicity.

Finding the limits of thought

What we all aim to do is to move to an understanding that is beyond our powers of contradiction. These understandings can be sought in a variety of ways and for most the explanations of the common herd suffice. To the intelligent ones they must move into philosophy or theology to come up with explanations beyond which they themselves cannot think.

I believe in nothing (in particular)

What does the man do who believes in nothing? Well firstly he carries on living regardless, for he cannot help but do that. If he wants to feel happy and to get away from all his negative nay-saying he has to stop all the mental analysis. He must learn to simply accept the world as it is and act spontaneously. He must live carelessly, and it must be a matter of little importance whether he does this thing or that. He must learn to act without analysis, for he sees that the analysis leads only to conclusions that he cannot believe in.

The disapperance of the will

Those whose wills are in tune with circumstances experience the sense that their will has disappeared. This is rather like how two adjacent trains moving at the same speed will appear stationary to each other. Such people do not strive, actually or symbolically. This is why meditation stills the urge for action, and being amongst people enhance it. The person whose will drives them to action has no interest in meditation. All this is necessary.

The sage is a personality type

The sage is a type of personality – he is no more nor less then anyone else. When the sages describe their enlightened lifestyle it would sound to most people insufferably boring – they would not want it at all. The sage is said to avoid interfering in the world, not because he thinks it is harmful to interfere, but because he has no interest in doing so. It would bore him, and he wouldn’t know what to do. If you are drawn to the literature of the sage, always remember that there is plenty of the opposite type of literature where the man of action is described in glowing terms and the sage is seen as unworldly and irrelevant. Men of action read this literature, and like the sages, probably think they are reading about the ultimate modus operandi of life.

The unimportance of doing nothing

It’s no use saying that nothing is important. Everything is important. If nothing is important then doing nothing is important. Important is just another word for what we do. If we believe nothing is important enough to do then that also means that doing nothing is important to us.

There is a time for serenity, a time for anger

Can the will still itself? Yes, but not at will. There is a time for serenity and a time for anger. Some individuals experience much serenity, some much anger. This is the mystery of Zen.

The cessation of thought

Just as software is written with the capability to uninstall itself; so is thought necessary for the cessation of thought.

The desire to meditate

In order to meditate you must first have the desire to meditate, and very few people in the West ever develop that desire. All this is correct and as it should be.

Zen and worldly success

The chief question is: although people experience the tumult of emotions and feelings and motivations, are they necessary for their action in the world? Is the strong drive, the inner emptiness, the love of fame and success that motivates the entrepreneur all necessary? Or is it possible to be calm and tranquil and still build and maintain an empire. I think not. Therefore, do not recommend inner peace for all. Let the Bill Gateses speak to the Gateses and the sages to the sages. Society and the universe are in need of both types.

Our desires are necessary action in the pattern of life

If we had no desire we would be happy. We would therefore just sit in a chair because there would be no incentive to do anything else. When we have desire we also go out and buy a wine. That wine changes us spiritually and so we achieve certain actions like seduce women or get into fights or write poetry. We also provide the wine seller with the means to raise his family. Our desires are a necessary action in a whole pattern of life. When the bee goes to gather honey he does so out of desire. He does not want to stay at home in his hive. It is necessary for him to have the desire. He may not be conscious of the desire but will gather the honey anyway. Likewise, the man may not be conscious of desiring the wine but may go out and buy it anyway. It is generally not in the man’s nature to buy wine without first having the conscious desire but possible anyway. This would be called spontaneous action and is well described by the sages. But often sages are happy and so don’t buy wine. People think that not buying wine causes them to be happy but that is the wrong way round. You will therefore not make yourself happy by not drinking wine. Much ethical talk makes you think you can achieve a certain state by acting a certain way. This is not true for the talk, has no bearing on the action.