the church of reason

i talked about phaedrus' lateral drift, which ended with entry into the discipline of philosophy. he saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge. among philosophers this is so widely believed it's almost a platitude, but for him it's a revelation. he discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. the questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions. science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of it's answers. the questions he'd asked were at a higher level than science goes. and so phaedrus found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place, what does it all mean? what's the purpose of all this?

i have recently revisted zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. i love this book. it's not easy reading and i don't understand it. but i love the train of thought. and it contains numerous little isolated pearls of wisdom.

anyway i've been a bit of a mental mess recently. i've been all over the show. last friday evening i was killing time in a coffeeshop trying to decipher the zen text when the above paragraph in italics popped up. it suddenly occurred to me that i needed to sort my shit out. i needed a plan. a blueprint for life. something that would get to the source of my current disharmony.

i’ve often thought "there must be something more than this" and have looked to science and basic philosophy and religion and enlightened people for advice...

one of my mates has the most fantastic analytical mind. he has a theory for everything and anything. ask him for advice on a problem and he will mentally refer back to a book he read or something he heard. relationship problems. money problems. work problems. anything. yet if you ask him about his biggest passion, the thing that drives his life: christianity - he can't explain it. it's just faith. blind faith. and yet it's more real to him than anything his theories can explain.

this bothered me as i looked to him for answers and being a child of western society i needed an explanation. i didn't want to rely on a feeling. to many people, religion and the concept of god and fate and destiny don't make sense. according to zen however, it's not the religion or faith or feeling that is bad, it's the "sense" that is bad. it is “sense” that needs reworking.

apparently a logic based system of thinking was fine when the primary objective in life was surviving. food. housing. protection. now that surviving is not our primary objective, this logic based system has become inadequate. or hollow. people are starting to wonder how long they are going to have to exist in this system that is spiritually shallow. people have become disillusioned and don't really know why. technology and industry is often blamed for this disillusionment, but it is the structure of our system of thought that has us trapped.

have you ever heard of someone refering to "the system"? or someone who's trying to get away from "it all"? ever wondered what "it all" is? "it all" is reason. or logic. or rhetoric. the building blocks of western society. the tool that has been handed down from generation to generation over thousands of years, eliminating almost every predator known to man, and enabling mankind (no... not the wwf wrestling dude) to rule the planet. the only problem is that reason has become so entrenched in our thinking that it has come to dominate the human race itself. to think outside of the system is to be insane.

zen attempts to rework the current western system of thought to incorporate more "feeling". to bridge the gap between classical and romantic thinking. reconcile square and hip. to understand the gateway to the soul. and it sure is interesting. although i have no idea what he is on about most of the time. in fact i don’t even know what i am on about most of the time. i don’t even know why i wrote this. oh well, whatever, nevermind.

i love this song - the video doesn't make much sense, but it sure does have some romantic appeal.