There is an old problem. One might say it is the philosophical problem, the problem upon which all other problems find their particular forms as issues.
I’m still reading The Mirror of Nature, by Richard Rorty. What an interesting title, huh? Maybe it has something to do with this post.
Where are we starting?
or that I struggle with are not meant for me to understand and to persist trying to make sense of them often means that the meaning I will gain is incorrect, even though I might feel that I have gained something. Nonetheless, in that kind of pushing forth there is no sense to be made and likely the sense that I will make from it will make no sense. When, and if, it is time for me to have a book make sense, then it will make sense automatically usually with little effort.
A little wandering first
In somewhere posts past, I tell the stories of what could be the most significant philosophers I have come across, at least from the stand point of effect the involvement with their work had on me. These are Soren Kierkegaard and Slavoj Zizek.
They were different types of events some 10 years apart.
Kierkegaard was likely the first philosopher I ever read. I was 31 years old getting my BA in Santa Cruz, California (not in philosophy). As I said the whole story is somewhere in a back-post so I won’t do it again here. Enough to say that I didn’t know anything about philosophy except what I would call the stoner-psychedellic kind of philosophy.
If I had to characterize this kind of philosophizing it might go like this:
The first part is like an ‘awesome’ filled wondering…
“Hey, bro! what if our universe was just a little tiny universe which is like a piece or turd sitting in the buttcrack of some huge giant orc! ”
to…
“The herb is a plant, man!”
…mixed with a more serious edge of
“Hey bro, its like were All One in this big consciousness called the universe!”
Nothing necessarily wrong with these kinds of pondering in wonderment or the conclusions that we can make creatively for a living a life, of course.
For me though, probably because I was always a little anxious and could never settle on anything, always being curious into it, never really believing anything I came across (even if I felt like it was true), these first philosophies lead me deeper.
DI accidentally read Kiekegaard’s book Either/ Or one day, figuring that because I thought myself some philosopher but never had really read any books on philosophy I should probably read something. And from the very first sentences and without reading the preface or forward or anything, I completely understood what he was talking about, what he was referring to, why he was using the particular analogies and comparisons, and even how he was structuring his arguments and how they would unfold. This was so strange and upsetting to me, I was compelled to read other philosophy books to see if the same thing happened.
Ten-some years later, I thought I would buy a philosophy book and was in Barnes and Nobel store in the philosophy section. I didn’t know what I wanted to read, and I pulled out the rather large book at the bottom of the shelf. it was a brown soft back book with a painting of a chair on it (if I remember correctly) and it it said “The Parallax View”, Slavoj Zizek. At the time, his name sounded so foreign, different and exotic compared to the English, French and German authors, I bought it.
I started reading. it made Zero sense to me. I read maybe 15-20 pages at various parts of the book. Complete nonsense. So I set it aside.
About 4-5 months later looking at my book shelf I decided to give it another shot. Nope.
I did this for 4 years. Then one day, I picked it up and it read like butter. Everything made perfect sense.
It really had nothing to do with any sort of direct education I was gaining. Now a days I have an explanation which, actually, fits into the wholeness of what philosophers are really saying. But that is for some other piece.
The inside
In one way of talking about things, the reason why I understood these (and more) authors is because they showed me what is outside.
I was never really comfortable with myself, though I was really good at acting like I did. Intoxicants helped a lot with that. So I think what was exciting about philosophy was it revealed to me something that I knew existed (the outside) but I never knew how to get to or maybe I thought I was not allowed to encounter. Drugs helped a lot to make me think I was getting outside, but for the most part they were more like distractions from the shittiness that is living inside all the time. They would give me short-lived experiences of the possibility of what is outside.
Alchemy and Jungian-type talk
On a sort of side-note, the mystical knowledge form that we usually call Alchemy, made into a semi-popular though perhaps fringe idea of psychology by Karl Jung and Marie-Louise von-Franz, tells the tale of what a person goes through on the inside along their journey to the outside. Strictly speaking, the modern use of Alchemy for psychology is a kind of distortion of what actually happens, a sort of modern phenomenon which then lent itself nicely to 20th century psychology. But this is more than this post can handle. Alchemy is just one way to talk about this kind of situation; there are others.
back to nature
Nature has been argued to be a result of a particular kind of rational thinking, a sort of complimentary notion which supports the justification of the inside world. The very notion, so it goes, of a “natural world” separate from a “civilized” or “human world” is a kind of psychological stage. It becomes a purpose, in Kiekegaard’s word, a teleology that envelopes the person in a kind of knowing experience that is circular but in a way that the circularity is not noticed and often actively denied or avoided in or as the experience itself.
Kierkegaard called this repetition; Nietzsche called it recurrence (I believe). When the circularity is come upon as an experience, or creeps into experience in various kinds of ways or signs, the typical reaction is one of resentment or angst (for Nietzsche) or despair or dread (Kierkegaard).
Alchemy, (and those other more spiritual forms of the same thing), but indeed all forms of modern mental health interventions for our time, be it CBT, DBT, Gestalt, mindfulness, EMDR, or what have you, are the various way we try to help a person with their “resenting despair”, for term.
For the most part (but with some discernment) what psychology has termed the “mental disorders” are the various ways people have devised by their own creative resources for dealing with or coping with the experience of coming across, and then rejecting, the repetition of being inside.
Of course, there is way too much more to go into there than this post will hold right now.
The outside
Walking around in nature – the trees, the sand, the dirt, the lakes, the rivers, the heat, the cold, the sky – can give us indications of what it is to be outside. Being outside is more than the meaning we are making of it; so often, just being outdoors helps us to gain perspective and calm down a little, as they say, ground, center.
And…not to argue against such techniques and situating knowledge, but…
What exactly is centering and grounding?
Am I centering within myself?
I would say that while I might use various terms to define myself as “within” or “having an inner experience”, in as much as I am struggling with something, I am indeed “in myself” and I am stuck inside.
It might sound very spiritual. But, honestly, I personally am not a spiritual person, though I might use spiritual terms and refer to things of my experience as ‘spiritual’ if I need to. Nonetheless…
I have no need to ground or center when I have encountered and realized what it is to be outside. Grounding and centering, in strange sort of way, are actually connecting with something that is not me. when I am connecting, there is no inside because everything is outside such that I find myself within myself more than what is inside, but indeed everything that I am encountering in the world and as the world.
Of course, this does not mean that grounding and centering are not helpful, or that I am arguing or telling you you have to think differently than you do about what and who you are, what you are doing, or what meaning you make of things.
This is part of a description of what is actually happening when we do these things.