If you and I were to sit down for a serious and extended conversation about the problems of the world and our own personal problems we would certainly note that they are not new; that they are, fundamentally, the same ones that afflicted all preceding generations.

We would, no doubt, come to see how individual members of the species have, throughout history, suffered from the fear, the hostility, and the insecurity created by the general ruthlessness with which the satisfaction of particular personal and tribal desires is sought after.

It would become obvious to us how this unbridled and separative ambition for which we are all responsible, is obviously at the root of suffering in the species as a whole through the scourges of hunger, exploitation, war, mental illness, and—what is uniquely critical today—an extraordinarily dangerous technological capacity in the hands of a still extremely primitive human being.

A human being—that is, you and I—primitive enough to be still invested in the systematic destruction of the social and natural fabric of the world through scandalous excesses in production and consumption.

Being concerned about the future of the species and the impact of our own actions on the quality or even the feasibility of this future, we would surely take our dialogue very seriously. But this seriousness would also stem from the realization that true friendship can only flower in a radical willingness to question every tradition and habit so that we may see what is it that fixed thought patterns and mechanical emotions contrive to ward off and hide.

Talking with ever increasing depth about fundamental issues we would discover that we are at a loss; that we really don't know how to disassemble the vise of personal and collective self-destruction in which we find ourselves caught.

Awareness of this ignorance and confused impotence would certainly lead us to review the failure of past efforts designed to alleviate human suffering, and this would help us arrive at and confront our general incapacity to radically change ourselves ending the destructive ways in which we relate with one another and with the world at large.

You and I have certainly participated in some of the political and cultural plans constantly created and implemented everywhere with the intention of solving collective problems; but today, by simply looking together at steadily worsening local, national, and international conditions, it has become obvious to us, not only that the human psyche cannot (conditioned as it is) possibly solve the problems it has created, but also that the solutions posited are usually the cause of new problems; problems often worse than those they originally were intended to solve.

To carefully look at history as a whole has been, and continues to be an important part of our conversations. And we now perceive the historical account of our presence on the planet as a long sequence of mostly conflicting pseudo-solutions to particular problems; a long series of gradual and partial reforms and revolutions leading to new reforms and revolutions, all adding up to what is today a chaotic and painfully fragmented (and still rapidly fragmenting) world.

And because we see ourselves inextricably within human society besieged by conflict, anxiety, and contradiction, we no longer delude ourselves with the pretense of being different from what we observe.

It is evident that what we see in society as a whole has its roots in our particular minds and lives, and because we suffer you and I have also attempted different solutions to our own psychological and relational problems. Since our friendship is now as strong and honest as it is deep, we have been able to reveal to one another that although we may have been occasionally able to attain some improvement in certain areas of personal character and behavior, nothing we do seems to radically eliminate the frequency and intensity of the psychological pain we irrationaly inflict and receive in our day to day relationships.

Despite all our efforts, we have not been able to uproot the destructive emotions, thought patterns, and habits that continue to circumscribe our existence to the claustrophobic personal realm of ephemeral pleasure and seemingly endless sorrow and pain.

Consequently, we are now capable of acknowledging that, although particular symptoms of specific personal and collective problems may be temporarily alleviated to some degree, their root causes remain fundamentally undetected and untouched by even our best efforts.

As a species we have tried for thousands of years to solve our psychological and social problems and on this path—presumably the path of "civilized progress"—we have only arrived to new forms of resistance, corruption, strife, and increased self-deception. It seems reasonable to us, then, to stop imagining wonderful outlets to the same old dead end street and to seriously consider the possibility that our entire understanding of the human condition is deeply flawed and, consequently, that any further attempt to diminish or transcend our plight is condemned to fail.

Again, because we see that the failure of ideological and technological solutions to chronic social problems is, at the collective level, a mirror image of the failure of all the psychological solutions posed by different educational, economic, therapeutic, and "spiritual" alternatives, we no longer deal with the social and the psychological as though they were different and independent from one another.

And consequently we no longer believe, either, that the human being is liable to change, either through modifications of its social environment, or through willful attempts at partial and grdual self-improvement.

Eending our involvement in any of the many available ideological options promising social progress, personal liberation, and religious salvation, has allowed us to turn our eyes to see ourselves as cause and effect of the totality of human suffering.

Without succumbing to either cynicism or despair, at this point we have come to see that it is essential to discard the falsely generous retributions of conformity and, for this reason, lend a deaf ear to the propaganda issued by opposing groups (old and new) in their fierce struggle for the control of our minds and hearts.

We understand that our dialogue cannot move further and deeper without us gaining immunity to pre-established claims and theoretical solutions of any sort. We realize that without freeing ourselves from the ideological propaganda consumed and digested in the past, it will continue to determine most of what we perceive, think, feel, and do.

It is obvious to us now that only this liberation from previously gathered knowledge and belief might naturally and effortlessly gather our energy and focus our attention on the urgent task of seeing, by ourselves and for the first time the true nature of the the human problem as a whole.

Whatever freedom we have already managed to gain from the interference posed by pre-established dogmas and opinions, gives a different scope to our perception and a different character and urgency to our dialogue.

Increasingly we are able to look directly and independently at all the issues involved in suffering. Aware now that the root causes of all human grief are right within us as individuals, they become apparent directly—that is, not through the particular optics and "methodologies" given to us by our respective backgrounds: our nationality, religion, social and economic class, gender, race, ethnia, and profession.

In other words, we realize that the love and care invested in our joint exploration is only made viable by a form of psychological undressing: that only if we are entirely free of previous knowledge and opinion—especially in matters of definition of ourselves, others, and of the human condition as a whole—will the totality of the problem be revealed and seen for what it is.

Having thus put our respective cultural and psychological horses out to pasture, we stand now on level ground and confront our common and naked humanity free of everything that would distort accurate perception and corrupt our friendship and our dialogue.

And this radical but simple willingness to be free of pre-informed reaction is what reveals, in ourselves, the destructive quality of everything we do to overcome our deeply rooted psychological insecurity.

As we move along in this intensive and in-depth inventory of who we have become over the years, we are shocked to see how the myopic traditions, ideas, and habits we embody alienate us from others and necessarily create enmity and strife as we all compete for limited material resources and the absurd spoils of a presumed or desired psychological and cultural superiority.

And, yes, as anyone who might have gone this far with us may suspect, it is only when we grant ourselves the freedom to see ourselves as we really are and the world as a mere reflection of who we are, that we realize that the change needed to safeguard the future of the species must be radical and in the individual psyche.

Since mere improvement of our obedience to old ethical standards and refurbished systems of economic distribution will never do, what is required is nothing short of a veritable mutation of the brain itself involving an emptying of the dead weight of the psychological past.

To abandon social tradition and psychological habit implies standing alone and without a future, and this is a frightening proposition. But the more we look at the chronic problem of human suffering and the accelerated rate at which the delicate balance of the ecosphere is being disrupted; it is obvious to us that there is no other alternative.

Our exploratory dialogue has confronted us with the responsibility of finding an action that is a totally adequate response, not just to the problems we face as individuals, but to the entire tragedy of humanity. Consequently, we are here today asking again seemingly impossible questions; questions such as:

—Is it possible to live free of the ballast of the past and the yoke of the projected future and, hence, be free to look at things as they really are?

—Is it possible for our thinking process to restrict itself to technical and logistical matters and, thus, to liberate the dynamics of relationship from the confusion and agitation created by its self-centered memories and egotistical desires?

—Do we stand a chance of ever coming in touch with something sacred; something not reducible to the limited categories of experience and knowledge?

—Is there a love untouched by jealousy, fear, hate, and selfishness and, therefore, operating beyond the exclusive and contradictory attachments we now describe with that word?

This book is made public as a result of this dialogue and as a further contribution to it, for it represents the desire to extend to you and others the vital urgency and the rare blessing of the uncharted affection on which it must feed.

When one is no longer being led by others (or by previous versions of oneself) down old dead-end roads, it is a truly extraordinary blessing to simply stop and see our own blindness, because only in this seeing rests the possibility of light.

There is a reason why this book is a collection of mostly brief, independent texts, and not a set of long, sequential, chapters. The issues we need to confront, the essential ones, are few and difficult, and sometimes it helps to approach them repeatedly and from different angles.

I urge the reader to flesh out the often dry and bare bones of the text, with real facts from his or her own life. This will give the reading experience the incisiveness and the dialogic, participatory, character that would certainly be present if you and I were to sit down for a serious and extended dialogue about our own personal problems and the plight of the world as a whole.

I want to express my gratitude to Kim Schrag, my main accomplice in this endeavor, and to those other good friends who were willing to engage in lengthy and often difficult conversations trying to find out what is it to be a good, responsible human being. I can only hope that "Seeing Blindness" reflects the affectionate nature, content, and passion of those dialogues.