Moments 3: The Great Divide 1

Introduction

The freedom to do what you want with your life, with your body or speech, has gained much attention, especially in this new era of global debates centered on corrupt leaders, corporations, pandemics, global warming, and biological and economic warfare. Science too is losing ground in giving us an objective view into things like our bodies, since the objective mechanical science of previous generations—i.e. the “modern science” that began with the scientific revolution of Descartes, Newton, and the like—is being challenged by the subjective worldview of the newer sciences of post-modernism. This is why looking around us, as much as we like to hold onto ‘facts’, pure objective facts have become far more fluid and a matter of belief. No matter our persistence to adhere to ‘facts’, they slip through our fingers, since the world is at once much smaller as a global village, and far more diverse and humbling due to its many shades of gray and colorful hues. This means our belief in any sort of fixed reality is falling apart and becoming more fluid. This is also why even science is becoming more of an art, and the new sciences, philosophies, and interdisciplinary studies, embrace greater measures of pragmatism, humanity, and leniency; somewhat like the teachings of the great Siddhartha Buddha that all our knowing is in a constant state of flux, and like a Daoist belief that may liken knowledge itself to a fluid like water.

    At first glance it might appear that I am leaning towards a more subjective and pragmatic approach. However, in fact, I am actually suggesting that as we witness the changes in society, while all these diverse expressions are colliding in an ever smaller humanity, we must accept both extremes of objectivity and subjectivity, and all shades in between. This means, for instance, yes you could do whatever you wish with your body on the one hand; while on the other, you absolutely cannot do whatever you wish with your body unless you’re delusional. There are both very objective and subjective ramifications, and one could say there are also intersubjective and inter-objective implications.

In other words, there are laws, which are of the pure modern-western sciences, and others which are of the ancient sciences. Then there are both physical and metaphysical or universal laws. So another thing we must learn to do or undo, learn or unlearn, interpreter or re-interpret and such, is a reevaluation and understanding of what constitutes science, physical or metaphysical, what are the pure empirical modern western sciences, and what are the sciences which are accepted by other traditions as ancient sciences, like Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine. Furthermore, we must also better appreciate the contrast and or distinction between what is and what ought to be, or what philosophers refer to as the is/ought distinction or the is/ought paradigm. I raise this, because many scientists, especially of the modern western approach, are not familiar with this paradigm.

In general, modern western scientists and philosophers begin their definitions of knowledge with a kind of empiricism of the senses; in other words, they rely specifically on observable sensory data, underline sensory, and sensory in the very limited sense of the so-called primary senses (which are not primary), in order to acknowledge 'what is' the case. So 'it is the case' that the chemical known as Floride, for instance, whitens the teeth, but whether it 'ought to be the case' or whether it is good for you to use that chemical or not—could not be decided by the purely empirical sciences because as we enter the domain of qualitative measures there are many other factors to consider when it comes to the 'ought' question.

While western philosophy itself makes such distinction, one wonders why this consideration is not taken more seriously when it comes to the question of 'what is'—in other words, 'what is' on what level, and why is 'what is' a matter of purely empirical sensory data in its very limited sense of the so-called five primary senses, which as we know are not primary? So that ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’ is only examined at face value. In other words, there are many layers of ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’ to consider from many vantage points given a myriad laws (sciences) and the practitioners of those laws (ontology, being) or the knowers of that knowledge (epistemology). But sometimes one wonders if this escaped the attention of the very philosophers that recognized this distinction!

Why, for instance, would one of the last and greatest geniuses of modern philosophy—who summarized and conclusively synthesized much of what we call “modern philosophy,” and a scientist and mathematician in his own right—say, “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason" (Kant, p. 89)?1 But now it seems this sort of reason is bound by the senses! Contrast the aforementioned with a statement made by one of the greatest philosopher mystics of Eastern Asiatic (Persian) origins, whose textbooks were standardized for centuries, and whose name was accepted by all—religions and cultures—as one of the founding fathers of Western medicine; philosopher, scientist—logician, botanist, (herbalist), biologist, and a medical doctor who wrote an encyclopedia of western medicine at around the age of 18: Ibn Sina or Avicenna states, “The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence" (On Medicine, p 90).2

It is clear that while "the senses" are a starting point for Kant, "causes" and "one essence" is the underlying ground that Ibn Sina has stressed. Furthermore, in Ibn Sina "acquired knowledge" proper, which is also of the senses ("also" because it has other more complex meanings than the five senses) is informed and "known by its causes." So that even knowledge acquired by the senses does not begin with the senses. This was just one example of the contrast between this strange mechanical and modern divide between empiricism and spiritualism espoused by most modern canonical philosophers, however, this schism goes far beyond ancient/modern or East/West distinctions. Rather, it is a matter of how human nature and thus cognition is essentially cultivated.3

Now, aside from making this a debate between rationalists and empiricists, or a kind of spiritual empiricism versus material empiricism, there is something more sinister and simple going on here. Why do we suppose the kind of material empiricism that overtook much of modern western thought gained such momentum? There are many reasons for this, the most obvious of which taught at the academic level is, that at some point in our human evolution, we began asking questions that challenged the status quo, "the status quo" which in ancient times would be the religious superstition that dominated societies, best exemplified during the times of the Greco Roman empires and the dark ages of medieval Europe that gave birth to the likes of Newton and Descartes, and prior to that similar events took place in ancient philosophy when Thales of Miletus was recognized as one of the first scientists to challenge the gods of air and thunder by making weather predictions based on simple factual observations.

But the illusive and sinister nature in all this is not often touched upon. It is the kind of human laziness that is part of human nature, which has not learned to inquire more deeply into knowledge and what things actually are beyond surface level, whether it is the consideration of what is or what ought to be. This is something a number of existentialist philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard attempted to do in their ideas of introducing a new man or person, the über-mensch (superman, or the ideal superior person), or the latter by introducing pseudonyms of renewed and contradictory characters. However, I am not sure they reached their desired conclusions. Nietzsche especially often pointed to human laziness, and more importantly, spiritual laziness that brought about the temperament of "God is dead"—he of course was not saying God is literally dead, rather that the god they often speak of, the god of lazy spirituality, is dead.

But it’s not only existentialists who touched on this, rather it is the objective of many great traditions and sages to overcome and transcend their base desires. Meanwhile, there’s a better way to characterize this sinister nature of humans. More than just settling for their base desires and mediocrity, while humans often practice virtue, or claim to, they do so at the mercy of their vices. Somehow the good has come to serve evil, because in a world of duality light and darkness are often at odds, and more than that—the world of humans (not nature) is run by a kind of extreme duality that has come to embrace malevolence, even celebrate and entertain extreme negativity, addiction, victim-hood, and suffering, more than making the effort to transform it. In fact, often mistakenly, we pay our victims well—with better monetary gain than an average salary, or we celebrate our addictions as “normal.” Why would we give them up?

So it’s a question of human nature, its state of being, and who assesses that state, which in turn results in how cognition is cultivated and how the overall culture and environment of cognition is nurtured.4 It is crucial to understand both 'what' and 'who,' the objective and subjective world-views, and 'how' they are assessed. To do so, first we must address this drive for a materialistic empiricism, and why it divorced itself from empirical and evidenced based spirituality in general, or rather more specifically in the West, why did this form of empiricism limit itself to the five so-called 'primary senses' alone (which are not primary), a spiritual philosophy that looks more like atheistic materialism than spirituality? This, in part addresses 'what is' materialism, or what constitutes matter and thus spirit or energy. Those are two essential points; the former has to do with what we have so far called, the laziness and atrophied state of humans and lazy spirituality or our base natures, and more specifically, the base nature of humans (these determine all our subjective states); and the latter has to do with our failure to better understand what spirituality has meant throughout the ages (what matter and spirit is objectively). Accordingly, if we better understand our failure or rather our basic errors as spiritual beings, we may realize why our base natures have come to dominate us.

Part I

When I first elected “Philosophy and Religion” as my major in my undergraduate studies, I truly and passionately loved attending every class. Sometimes I stayed in school till late nights, literally camping out on the lawns. That was because I was driven by a series of spiritually awakening experiences. But soon I realized my attitude toward school was not as welcomed as those who are heading steadfast for successful careers. What I was passionate for, not only was it not rewarded, it was backwards to many, and often respectfully ridiculed without a word. The awkwardness of the silence was enough.5

As the years went by I realized I had chosen a lonely path, or shall we say a lone path, meaning alone. Sometimes in my poetic moments, I say, 'alone' spells out 'all-one'. There’s something about the all that is one that only comes in such moments. Then comes the sorrow of loneliness that sometimes follows aloneness. That has to do with the integration of the person within and through the experience of ‘all one’—and the integration of the person also means the integrity of the person.

To be continued...

Footnotes and References

1. Kant, I. (1999) Critique of Pure Reason. (P. Guyer Ed.). Cambridge: UK. Cambridge University Press Publishing.

2. Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, (New York: Parker, Austin, & Lipscomb, 1917), Vol. VI: Medieval Arabia, pp. 90-91.

3. My graduate thesis—The Heart Faculty, Intuition, and Theophanies: Philosophers who get out of their heads for love's sake.)—partly introduces this idea and begins to address this divide, and it can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ps9idEWKL19FYxTdlEHRwV2w-e9UrEp/view?usp=sharing

4. I have written a paper addressing this very subject in part from the perspective of social ontology and social categories, which examines how one's knowledge is perceived and received in varying environments. Full paper here: "People and Places; A Social Ontology of a Kind"

5. I have written more extensively on this in my undergraduate thesis, which can be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nb_s_OUCaAwIH2p544n5XF4oP02ROV2M6aIYXKriTeo/view?usp=sharing

(C) Houman Z. Emami

Site: Transformative.me/