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Either Good Nor Bad But Thinking Makes It So
December 1st, 2008 by Gary Hipworth
This little gem of a quote from Hamlet is worth some pondering and reflection. If it is raining,
then we might say that the weather is bad today. But the farmer who lives in the country will say that it is
good weather. We have invented a world of conceptual opposites – man and woman, night and day, black and
white, good and evil…the list goes on to infinity. Are these opposites real in some absolute sense? Obviously
not. They are convenient labels that help us describe our view of reality at that particular moment. Then why
do we get so hung up on opinions and beliefs?
Do we know the moon any more by sticking the label, “yellow” on it?
The name can get in the way of seeing what is. When one looks at a tree, we see it as a tree
belonging to a particular group. If we have studied Botany or another branch of science that involves
knowledge about trees, we see the tree against the background of all that knowledge.
I get very amused at the Art world and the discussions that take place about the particular intent of the artist
and his latest creation. Or a wine connoisseur trying to figure out where the grapes came from! We fail to see life
in its pure, alive and wholesome form, but through the image that we have stored in memory.
When I look at somebody that has done some bad things to me in the past, I cannot look at that person with “fresh”
eyes. I look at that person with a name that immediately also brings with it all my memories that are associated
with that name.
Perhaps the person today is a new man, or a new woman.
Human beings are conceptual beings, and so to understand humans, we need to understand what concepts are. This is a complex subject, but if we get to the essence of it, a concept is a convenient and time-saving way to identify a person, object or idea, but it is not the actual thing described. The actual thing described is not fixed or permanent or able to be ‘pinned down’ with a name (especially its inside world), and remains unknowable and in a state of flux and change and in constant interaction and energy exchange with its environment.
Are you a noun or a
living dynamic process?
So what?
Without words we could not think or use knowledge to communicate with each other. When we look
carefully at how words are invented, we find that they are simply noises in the air or marks on paper. They
have no objective quality whatsoever, unless we choose to give them meaning. Unfortunately in the minds of
people the name can become the real thing in itself, and we then become prisoners of our own language.
Look around you at this very moment. No thing could exist without its reliance on every other thing.
And everything is moving.
Nothing is ever static for very long.
The human brain is not capable of grasping the totality of life at any moment, and so it does the next best thing –
it invents a symbol for each thing and holds that symbol in memory where it can manipulate it and have it play with
other symbols for as long as it is alive. But this memory is not the real thing. The real thing cannot be described
without making it into something it is not. The real thing is beyond concepts (ideas).
Knowledge is limited and fallible. It has been given too high a value in our lives. The tragic cost is that it
separates us psychologically from each other.
We literally live in our own inner private universe.
Nothing is what it appears to be. Change is the real constant. People can and do change every
moment, but our peculiar way of naming everything, including ourselves, gives us a false sense of security,
thinking we have it under control, and we know what that person or object is all about.
Life is insecurity and constant change, which is freedom. Can we live with ‘not knowing' when it comes to the true
nature of who we are at our deepest level?
