WHAT LIES UNDER OUR NOSES
We see what we know. By adulthood the way we interpret what we see is fixed and static. Our brains strain to place patterns upon external stimuli. This can be fun, else why do we see faces in clouds, and recognisable shapes in the fireplace?
The downside of all this is that information exists, under our very noses, and we don't 'see' it.
We cannot recognise what we do not know, because, of course it is our first encounter. So, in order to make anything new intelligible, we look for and apply analogies, comparisons with the familiar.
We see what we know. So, too, with our other senses. We perceive the recognisable. We do not even have names or symbols in our minds for many of the fragrances we smell, or for variations of purpose and intensity of touch.
Our neural pathways are rigid by the time we attain our mid-twenties, which makes true learning problematic thereafter.
Radically novel experiences, perhaps arising from travel, are needed to bring change. Or maybe our thinking is altered by a major event, perhaps even a trauma, which expands our consciousness, and forces us away from our worldview.
We have the capacity to refuse such an outcome. Denial might prove more secure for the psyche than the pain and work of change. Our view of the Universe and ourselves is hard-won. "Life's like that," we often say, and carry on as before.
It is unpleasant to have one's equilibrium shaken and our world rocked. So we choose to stay safe, and eschew the mental and spiritual pain which change brings.
And of course, in so doing, we refuse Insight. Whether consciously or not, we often will not and do not pay the price. And I deliberately use the term 'will' in this context, in two of its meanings.
There are unpleasant realities in the world, and we avert our eyes. We make excuses. We seek to explain, to diminish. We have a particular problem with evil, the evil of man's inhumanity to man. We prefer to change the subject. Anything rather than face it.
Many of us select the comfort of illusions. And one of these is that we would never behave as others behave, we would choose to do the right thing, we would not lie or steal or kill or be greedy or cruel or manipulative.
The author Terry Pratchett devised a humorous neologism, the term 'knurd'.
He defines it as being "the opposite of being drunk, it's as sober as you can ever be. It strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they've screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again" - Terry Pratchett
Imagine being able to ingest a substance that induces such a state of being, the counterbalance and opposite of being drunk, which of course is why knurd is 'drunk' written backwards.
What is the world really like? How do we humans really behave?
The depressing list of atrocities and mass murder is as long as human history.
What lies beneath, is our lies, our malevolence. This is what is under our noses. And we don't want to admit it, because it also lies within.
But what is also under our noses is its opposite, good, goodness, love, God, call it/Him what you will.
We prefer to live in between these realities, because that way we can deny their effects upon and inside our lives.
This paper is not a rehash of the old chestnut of whether we are innately good or bad.
I want to make a simple point. We do not want to look, we do not want to know.
We want to carry on in our own little worlds, and face neither the risk of the Bad nor the demands of the Good.
We prefer delusion to reality, because it leaves us in control, or so we think.
'Imagine,' wrote John Lennon, 'no heaven'. Or hell. Or indeed any afterlife. This seems to be an idea we in the West have embraced with enthusiasm! In this way we remain unchallenged, and supreme in our own little universe. Is this the triumph of the Self?
Yet true reality is unaffected by our belief. Reality exists independently of our perception.
Relativism and post modernity has not merely got it wrong, they have fostered sloppy thinking and fuzzy logic.
We sometimes deploy the phrase, 'a blessing in disguise.'
If God's love doesn't get our attention, then maybe trauma and disaster will.
Bad times are coming for the West, indeed some harbingers are already here.
Please pay attention, and look at what lies under our noses.
If we seek, we will find. And it is not a 'what.'
As Robert M. Pirsig once challengingly wrote,' Good is a noun.'
It is not a 'what.'
It is a Who.