Like the website that hosts it, this blog is only concerned with using art and brief texts to uncover the bias and other limitations of thought conditioned by memory and tradition, thus also revealing how this largely unacknowledged tribal egotism that affects all human beings creates and sustains the systemic disorder and violence of the world in which we all live.
Without a radical awakening to the immense distance between our mental and social reality and the truth, we are condemned to continue living in the same cruel division, conflict, and sorrow to which we ourselves sustain with our personal memories, thoughts, and desires.
AN ALL-INCLUSIVE PRESENCE
I
It is no secret that humanity has lived deeply divided and at odds with itself for millennia. Anyone who cares deeply about this chronic fragmentation and its appalling effects can trace its origin and persistence to the multiple interpretations of the mystery of life and death that have forever shaped the mind and behavior of the individuals who identify with them. However, this level of interest in fundamental human issues cannot be accessed without transgressing the cultural boundaries and the rather fixed patterns of personal thought and action from which we derive our identity, and few are willing to risk that. The ideas we have of ourselves, others, and the entirety of life are so greatly determined by the limitations and biases of personal tribal and personal experience that the very notion of questioning this mental programming appears dangerous, if not outright insane. Thus, in a knee-jerk defense of the self’s false claim to a unique identity and a separate existence, we reject offhand the possibility of seeing life and death independently and directly, free of the distorting mediation of ideology and personal preference or abhorrence. Not even the most alarming evidence of the pernicious consequences of the mental, socio-economic, and territorial insularity from which we each derive a constant sense of separate existence manages to expose the self—that is, “you” and “I”— as the source of all that ails humanity. Despite the harm it causes, the global phenomenon of separate personal identification and common alienation from life persists because it infuses each of its countless social and psychological manifestations with the belief that it enjoys a distinct and relatively independent existence. This existential encapsulation of the mind also blocks any serious interest in finding out whether, beyond the superficiality of our identities and the constant clash among our respective secular and religious ideologies and our material ambitions and psychological pretensions, the human presence in life has an unthinkably different significance. A significance that lies utterly beyond the reach of the limited, fragmented, and fragmenting knowledge from which every individual derives its claim to a proprietary past, present, and future existence.
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This book reflects an ordinary person’s independent examination of the highly reactive residue of experience, cultural and biographical, accumulated in the memory of all human beings. What animates this radical questioning of the value of self-centered knowledge and thought is simply direct contact with the appalling incidence of conflict and suffering that stems from them. The decision of inviting others to access this mostly hidden aspect of reality is a natural byproduct of its mind-altering effect. As already pointed out, we generally recoil from coming face to face with how and why we think and behave the way we do and how this affects others and society at large because doing so involves setting resolutely aside patterns of thought and behavior that are inseparable from oneself. This hard-wired reluctance to break ranks with tradition and end reliance on well-trodden thought patterns is based on the paradoxical assumption that to continue living in the same old isolated and conflicted way best serves our need for physical and, primarily, psychological security. One of this book’s principal tasks is to question this assumption and suggest why contravening it is amply warranted. Before we go any farther, please rest assured that the last thing I want is to string you, or anyone else, along a predetermined path of psychological, social, or spiritual progress. You should also know that, though not an ignoramus or outright idiot, I am not an expert on anything, which is not, in this essential matter, a liability, as I will shortly attempt to show. This is not a self-help book, a vehicle for doctrinal propaganda, or an exhibit looking to please the public while looking for critical approval and permanent display in a grand museum setting. I do not represent any established authority, either secular or religious, and certainly do not intend to become one of my own accord. And, if you do not mind the informality, I would like to add to this clarification of intention and capacity that I have been programmed, restricted, and desensitized by the autocratic weight of cultural and biographical experience to the same extent you have, along with the rest of humanity. The brain is not personal. It is a generic organ shaped by the trace of the entire evolutionary and historic transit of the species through time and topped with a hardly unique register of cultural and biographic experience. Nothing human is then foreign to me, to you, or anyone else, which is why in this matter of coming directly in contact with the overarching and persistent phenomenon of mental conditioning and its self-isolating and dulling effect, any recourse to authority implies a return to a different form of the same general programming of the intellect. The old and dangerously familiar comfort we find in blind obedience to particular cultural and personal patterns of thought and action is precisely what we must abandon. Consequently, this text and the art that follows it are singularly concerned with uncovering the divisive and otherwise toxic influence of ideological boundaries and the authorities that police compliance with set behavioral precepts and values inside and outside the psyche. The ability to see the weight of cultural and biographical programming deadening the mind is a gift that no one can bestow on someone else. However, the necessity of this insight ought to be at the heart of any dialogue among caring individuals who, moved by the same concern for the fate of humanity, have come to understand the urgent need to see beyond their respective cultural barriers and psychological attachments.
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You may be already asking yourself if there is any valid reason to trust someone who makes a book public without having any specialized expertise or the backing of some respected tradition; someone who makes matters even worse by extending his skepticism of symbolic representation (thought) to his writing and art. Why go on with a book, you may think, that seems to pose an outright threat to one’s sense of being from the very beginning? Is it not an overwhelmingly accepted fact that we 3 humans base our existence and worldview on idiosyncratic aggregates of knowledge protected by ironclad loyalty to the reputation and power of their respective cultural and experiential sources? Why would that ever change, and even if it were desirable, how could it possibly do so? In an initial response to these questions, I will say first that regardless of their propensity to error and deceit, the words and images that articulate thought remain the only means we have to explore who we are and question why we are willing to continue living and dying in the rather meaningless and painful way we do. Therefore, respectful and honest communication about these fundamental and complex issues requires early and then constant acknowledgment of the limitations and risks inherent to the means we employ. In this manner, the individuals involved in this dialogue can comfortably express their particular views about what it is to be human and listen to others speak about theirs and not suffer too much from having to set them aside if, in the process, they are shown to be insufficient or wrong. What is essential is the shared understanding that what matters most is to come in direct contact with mental and social actualities that words and images can only point to because they are profoundly hidden or entirely beyond the scope of knowledge and thought. Having made that clarification, I can now assure you that the only justification I have for daring to share this work with you is an ever-renewed awareness of humanity’s experience of sorrow. This awareness includes my personal experience of frustration, loss, failure, and the never-ending dread of an accident, aging, disease, and death, but it is far more profound and extensive. The need to question the truth and value of knowledge as the existential foundation of every separate group and individual arises when the prehistoric, historical, and foreseeable torrent of human pain and grief becomes evident, and not just as an idea. There is indeed a boundless stream of sorrow that endlessly flows from the past to the future by adding to itself, day by day, the pain that everyone alive inflicts and suffers in the struggle to defend, expand, and extend the common and insane claim to a unique psycho-social identity and a permanently evolving proprietary existence. However, this immense tragedy can be fully seen and felt only when the mind is no longer ensconced within the hard shell of any form of tribalism and self-centeredness. The dysfunctional insularity created by the predominance of culturally determined and self-centered memory and desire cannot possibly fix or eradicate itself. All it knows to do is add more and more images and ideas to the pile that has already been confining, choking, distorting, and confusing the mind for thousands of years. So, it is wrong to ask what one can do to improve or transcend this painful situation. The right question is whether self-centered mental isolation and the problems it creates can be immediately and adequately seen. Knowledge and thought are essential in some vital respects, but they are not the fundamental ground of human existence. And the urge that drives us to possess and become whatever we may fancy is not a sacred right but rather the force with which countless forms of the same mental conditioning never stop protecting and 4 projecting themselves at whatever cost to others. Unquestioned cultural convention, habit, and whim may bring some of us an occasional and usually ephemeral sense of security and satisfaction. Still, a false sense of normality merely extends in time and possibly worsens our confusion and sorrow and, by extension, the tragedy of our tragically fractured and alienated species. The impersonal impulse to challenge the strictures and false certainties of tribe and self make possible the emergence of a mind that is free, whole, and sane precisely because it is nothing in itself.
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This excerpt from the 17-page essay that precedes the images is from the latest edition of An All-Inclusive Presence made public in May of 2022.