Wisdom Needed

There’s a wholeness in life, in matter, in space and time, that, while perceptible,  is not dissectable.  There is no analytical framework which may provide holism.  The term “framework” self-evidently declares that this is so.

Nevertheless, we are capable of perceiving not only wholeness, but patterns and energy flows within a wholeness.  These patterns and flows aren’t analytical, they are as harmonic participants in a whole.  These holistic patterns influence and even to some extent determine our actions in order to preserve the whole, whether within the political, ecological, geological, or cosmological spheres, and whether or not we’re aware of it.  Again, these analytical terms (vis. politics, etc.) are merely approximate references to perceived patterns that are not at all separable from the whole matrix with which they constitute an integrated totality.

It is an error in thought and judgment, a sure sign of lack of awareness, to treat any analytical conclusion as final or unconditional.  Action based on analytical fundamentalism will lead to disaster.  Wisdom must temper all action.  Wisdom provides the wholeness within the sphere of perception and action.  Action without wisdom creates or perpetuates separation, division, pain, and grief.

These are simple, most basic, and profound principles, but in our rush to control life, to secure various temporary pleasures and victories, we overlook the simple and profound in favor of an apparently gratifying domination of the moment.  The problem is that, just because we act in ignorance, this doesn’t mean we will not have to pay a price — it doesn’t mean that the wholeness “takes a vacation” and allows our petty behavior to transpire apart from the “system of being.”  Balances must occur to make sure that the wholeness of everything remains and persists.  There is no compromise because, obviously, there is nothing but wholeness.  There is clearly no separation anywhere.  All things co-exist, whether we talk of the mental and emotional personal sphere, or the sphere of matter, energy, space and time.

Wisdom must be the focus of any individual and of any society that truly wishes to succeed, if we define success as actions and results leading in a self-feeding cycle through continually evolving harmony and fulfillment.  Holistic awareness is another term for wisdom, for how can one be aware of the whole in its continually interacting nature and not temper actions accordingly?  Wisdom, once experienced, cannot be denied.

Lucius Seneca Advises the Earnest

“…the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind..”

-On the Shortness of Life; Life Is Long If You Know How to Use It by Lucius Seneca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD)

[ with credit to Jeff VanderMeer and his 60 books in 60 days project]

Rebellion

Rebellion is nothing but a forceful reassertion of the self, or the present concept of the self.

Spinoza Was/Is Great

If men’s minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. However,… no man’s mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. All these questions fall within a man’s natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent.

–Baruch de Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus, ch. xx (1670)