Friday, August 1, 2008

from emptiness to everything

The Preamble: Coryn told me that she really likes running errands with me. She said it reminds her of when we were dating and we did everything together. And today we were running errands together while listening to John Mayer's Continuum album. I know John Mayer is a musically polarizing artist - you either like him or you think he sucks. I hope you readers can appreciate the kind of risk I took alienating you all by telling you that I was listening to his music!

In any case, we were driving around and a song of his called "Belief" spun up and, through the course of listening to his lyrics, Coryn and I began to realize that John was kind of singing about one of the major themes I've been trying to talk about with this blog: everyone believes something, at some level they're trying to fight for that belief, and the dogmatic division this willingness to fight for our beliefs is causing a pretty substantial amount of the conflict we have in this world... from little conflicts between two people and large conflicts between two nations.

Just so we're all on the same page, I'm going to post the lyrics of this song so you can follow along:

Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing their mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time

Everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Everyone believes
And they're not going easily

Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for

Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside

Everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Everyone believes
And no ones going quietly

We're never gonna win the world
We're never gonna stop the war
We're never gonna beat this
If belief is what we're fighting for

What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand
Belief can
Belief can

The Case:
Whether you like John's music or not, agree with his political ideologies or not, or find him credible in commenting on "the human condition" or not, it can scarcely be argued that everyone believes in something. As Dallas Willard said once at a conference:

"Whether someone is a Christian or not, they are going to live according to certain assumptions about what is real. They are very likely to accept the popular notion that they live in a world where there really is no God, and that right and wrong are determined by what you want, as long as it doesn't conflict with someone else's freedom.


We have to start by helping people see that they cannot escape the fact that, no matter what they do, they are in fact choosing one version of what is real, true, and good. In that choice they need to be responsible. Not believing in something has exactly the same consequences as believing.


I'm saying that [we all have] a belief. This is absolutely crucial for [us] to understand. Otherwise [we are] under the illusion that [we are] in a safe place simply because [we haven't] explicitly committed [ourselves] to something."


On the question of "God" - everyone believes in something. By saying they don't believe in "God", most people mean that they don't accept a Christian's interpretation of reality. But the so-called "atheist" is a theoretical impossibility. There is, to everyone, an assumption or belief about the cosmic reality that exists outside of ourselves. To the Hindus it is called "the Brahman", to the Jews that cosmic reality is called "Yahveh" or "Elohim", to the Christian it is called "Y'shua HaMasshiach" or "Jesus Christ" and so on. Some will tell you that a Zen Buddhist has no "divinity" to emulate or achieve, but their cosmic reality is the attainment of "enlightenment" which stops the cycle of life. I don't mean to equate these perceptions of reality as though they are somehow really the same... they're not. Each of these perceptions of reality is an ideology of its own. They all have very intrinsically different and unequal "ideas" that they are trying to convey and, as I said before, to try to say they are the same thing is to diminish all of them.

What I mean to say is that there is no truly "neutral" position when it comes to reality. And, like Dallas explained, being non-committal about reality is still the same as choosing. Like the song says, "everyone believes, from emptiness to everything." When you say that you believe in something or stand for something you are intrinsically saying at the same time that you believe against something else and stand against something else... even if that "something else" seems senseless and obvious. But it is important to examine your values and your assumptions about reality in order to see just where and what those assumptions place you in regards to the opposite. Performing that kind of a "values inventory" may lead you to learn quite a bit about yourself, how you see the world, and - most importantly - why!

The asking of "why" is also a critical element of learning anything. Surely none of us are so educated and full of truth that there's no need to continue asking questions and continue learning. It may surprise you to learn that, in one way or another, we've all gotten to a place where we believe that there is nothing more to be learned - we've "figured it out". Think about it. There is something in your mind or heart that you have such a conviction about that you do not believe you could ever actually be wrong about it. I know that I've had to confront my own on many occasions and continue to find more every time I go to look. I've come to believe that this is simply an element of "experience". Through the course of events all of us begin to detect patterns about our existence in reality, those patterns lead us to assumptions, those assumptions lead us to convictions. Those convictions lead us to construct dogmatic brick-wall "beliefs" and "values" which, eventually, come together in the form of an ideology that dominates our worldview and keeps us insulated from the (sometimes frighteningly) dynamic nature of reality. Asking "why", like an infuriatingly curious two-year-old, helps keep those assumptions to a minimum, undermining the "mortar effect" that hardens those assumptions into rigid worldviews.

The Question: What do you call the cosmic, universal, objective reality? Do you remember how you originally came to this understanding? What are the most significant assumptions that you have about reality? Have you allowed those assumptions to crystalize into a rigid belief system or worldview? If you have any kind of rigid belief system or worldview, have you experimented with "why"? If so, how far down the rabbit hole did it take you? Blow up the comments section - I can't wait to see what you all were able to get from this.

Leave the light on.

2 comments:

Bill said...

What do you call the cosmic, universal, objective reality?
This will sound corny of course, but I see it as Balance. You can go so far as calling it the Force.
The balance of good and evil, light and dark. You cannot have one without the other no matter how much you try.
The light can clear the darkness, but without the darkness what is the need for the light?

Do you remember how you originally came to this understanding?
Religion classes while in public school, then Catholic school and then Confirmation classes and CYO group. Yes, I did tow the party line for a while. Not willingly mind you. Religion classes interfered with the Thursday episode of GI Joe and Transformers and that REALLY pissed me off.

But the dogma of it all turned me off. The we can be friends with them, but ultimately the cannot join us in the end.
When I heard a nun tell me that, I think it was then that I decided it was all BS.


What are the most significant assumptions that you have about reality?
You know that scene at the end of MiB? With our universe inside a marble? That is my assumption about reality


Have you allowed those assumptions to crystalize into a rigid belief system or worldview?
Yes.


If you have any kind of rigid belief system or worldview, have you experimented with "why"?
Yeah. Nothing else makes any sense to me. And IMHO, nothing else seems to be working.


If so, how far down the rabbit hole did it take you?
Still falling. I catch the occasional branch to take a break, but eventually I let go.

/rant on
Regarding John Mayer:
I am one of those folks that does not like his music and politics.

What set me off the most was an interview he did on NPR regarding his Continuum album and the song 'Waiting on the World to Change'. He basically stated that he and the younger generation are tired of fighting to change the world and they're just gonna sit back and wait for the world to change around them. Nice cop out there chief.

What, is carrying that guitar and bag full of money too much for you to handle princess?

Does this moron realize that without the music to move the ideals of the young, the only
thing that will change in this world are the shackles that bind us all. While Captain Lazy tells the already spoiled American Masses that we should just wait it out, the entire world is going down the tubes!
But I guess (and this is where I anger the religious) if the place doesn't go to the dogs first, The J man cannot come and save the chosen ones....On this I call BULLSHIT. No one is gonna save us besides ourselves!
Everyone needs to stop hoping for the magic man in the sky to make everything better for everyone and
START WORKING TOGETHER AS HUMANS TO MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER FOR EVERYONE!! /rant off

Jeremy M. Prince said...

Hey Bill - thanks for commenting. As always I appreciate your perspective and your thoughts. I worry, however, that even in such an ideal setting of balanced "light and dark" or "good and evil" that there is no indicator of how to "serve light" and how to "clear the darkness". Is such a thing as you see it even desirable? Should one attempt to not be "too good" for fear that there would be an imbalance? While I can see the theoretical of your vision of reality, I cannot see the practical.

In the end, for me, your vision doesn't quite address the real problem of human existence: unchecked self-orientation... a.k.a. "selfishness". When I try to break it down all of human "darkness" (including ideology - in all its forms) is the result of someone insisting on the satisfaction of his self. And I don't just mean physically either such as in "hedonism", but spiritually (that cosmic energy field which binds all living things together) as well.

Not that I've asked you before, but how does your worldview address this fundamental issue? Does it even consider this a fundamental issue to be addressed?

For my part, I view "balance" as a very natural part of existence. We can, empirically, see it everywhere. But when it comes to existing in it as humans I get concerned because balance - all too often - expresses itself inter-personally as "compromise". Two people give up 50% and they "meet in the middle". The problem is that compromise can't be kept up. Someone will, inevitably, fall short of their limited responsibility to meet in the middle and place a burden on the other to make up the difference.

It has become my understanding that "compromise" is a broken system and "balance" is unattainable in its current form. Rather, as I was told by a wise man of marriage, it is required of each person to give 100% and, in such times of failure, there is still "slack" to be had without a breakage or burden.

I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on that.