If we describe our individual immersion in the world as evidence of one member
of a clever species, one that exhibits a complex conceptual relationship between
an imaginative biochemical reality and a deterministic physics, it would allow us
to understand experience in such a way that we each interpret it differently and
with varying degrees of satisfaction regarding the outcome that can only be
understood as a specific identity. The identity of the individual and the world that must
ineluctably be part of that specific identity has to be understood as mundane, lacking in
anything more specific than its existence, since the interpretation of the
individual is the one which transforms that which is
existing into what is no longer mundane but unambiguous and unequivocal. These transformations that individuals perform
on what is mundane can only alter the arrangements into some
transcendental symbolism required by a special relationship to individuals by providing a means
by which that transcendental symbolism can be sustained, as if by accident or
design in the daily practices of individuals, individually sustaining themselves in
existence. Consciousness of this effect emerging out of existence can be understood as a
truly social phenomenon, since it is created by the combination of individuals, by
accident or design, as a tradition. The tradition in this sense is a dynamic interaction
of people and phenomena that is kept alive as a set of rules and behaviors.
We need to understand that these traditions are known by the
arrangements made in a mundane existence based upon a transformation of the mundane
into unambiguous and unequivocal relationships that rely upon the individuals and
their conscious knowledge of those transformations, and the underlying
commonplace reality that is transformed by the existence of a species capable of performing
those transformations, and also the conscious knowledge that provides the trajectory
of meaning which sustains them. Sadly, it seems that it is not necessary to
understand what we do in order to do it. It takes some time to fathom what we do, so that
we know that we are in a better position to understand the material practices that
we can actually control. We remain surrounded by large numbers of our species
who have transformed much of the planet on which we live into a special place or
rather into special places each of which seeks to grow exponentially at the cost of all
the others. The idea of humanity as a whole seeking permission to exist is on
hold, whilst several competitive versions of an answer to that quest fight it out
amongst themselves. |
