What occurs to me, though, is that the need to find any sort of stable, unchanging structure or form is in principle a disengagement with experience. It is a tacit recognition of an inability to digest change and confusion.
One of my many little sort of side projects was to address the most recent expression of an old need for control, John Gray’s book “Silence of the Animals”. In it, he posits an ontology:
In a strictly naturalistic view — one in which the world is taken on
its own terms, without reference to a creator or any spiritual realm —
there is no hierarchy of value with humans somewhere near the top. There
are simply multifarious animals, each with its own needs. Human
uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have
recycled into science.(excerpted from here)
Has he not used the word “is” with regard to human experience, understood as an object? Has he not made a foundational truth claim–a claim he generalizes to all of life, here and on other worlds–based upon his OPINION? How can one speak objectively when one is not an object, when one is a subject? And how can one speak at all AS an object? We participate in our experience, both psychologically, and if we trust von Neuman’s logical extrapolation from quantum theory, quite literally. We interact with the universe directly.
The Buddha posited Four Noble Truths, all of which related to what is IN HERE, in our experience. The solecism of Western science has been to speak of truths OUT THERE, which can be brought IN HERE. We can be thought of as machines, and treated as machines, but we are not machines. Life is different than death.
The truth is we know very little. If one looks at the outliers of science–biophons, NDE’s inexplicable by neuroscience, apparitions, the measurement of psi–then it is clear that if we are ever to do a strong ontology, it will need wait a LONG time, until all actually measurable human experience has been brought within normative scientific practice; until people calling themselves scientists allow all data which contradicts their cherished paradigms to enter their labs.
People who need to find a final conclusion are to the realm of possible experience what the Final Solution was to the Jews in Europe. It is a crime against humanity, in my view.
This, to my mind, is the liberating aspect of the skepticism and emotional detachment that is supposed to characterize the scientific method.
But clearly we need a cultural and psychological complement to this mindset. We need either somewhere to rest, or better ways of moving. To my mind, the obvious answer is to rest in direct experience, which is what meditative practices like Kum Nye teach. Rest in work. Rest in the love of others.
Minds like John Gray are made mediocre by a lifetime of cultural insularity. They are twisted by fear. None of this is necessary.