Selected Correspondence Peter

Facts

A fact has nothing to do with feelings. A fact is a fact, a tree is a tree, a coffee cup is a coffee cup. No doubt, when people discover or read a fact it could produce a feeling response in them – but that is a reaction to the fact. When we point out that, after 5,000 years, and with billions of people following the spiritual path, there is still no peace on earth that is a fact.

Now when one discovers a fact for oneself, acknowledges and realizes it, one can have a realization – a blindingly obvious flash of such intensity that a change is evidenced – one can no longer go back to believing what one believed before. What this will do is eliminate the associated feelings one has in relying on the belief and not the fact.

It is such a painful, confusing and bewildering life most people lead in relying on belief, as one is never confident, able to proceed in any activity or relating with the surety that a sensible reliance on facts can give.

No 65 to Richard: My interpretation, by the way you correspond (steamroll/verbally attack), is that peace on earth is no where to be found in your correspondence. You are just another vain ego up on your pedestal imagining your own subjective interpretation (and that is all it can ever be, verbal or otherwise) is the final arbiter, and the interpretations of your correspondents amount to jack shit.

So many of us see the same thing, and have for years. I’m sure we’ve all wondered many times whether it was just us, or whether there was really something there to see. How could we all be imagining this? This was my take on it after a particularly shitful episode back in January ‘04 ... and as far as I can see nothing has changed since then. Just another dozen or so correspondents have come and gone in apparent disgust or disillusionment. http://lists.topica.com/lists/actualfreedom/read/message.html?mid=909449957

I don’t know whether you have noticed or not but the argument that ‘many of us see the same thing, and have for years’ is a particularly weak one given that the ‘many of us’ you are apparently speaking for are, and have all along been on this mailing list, what is known as the vocal minority.

I remember being fascinated by the letters page of the local newspaper for a while in my years of investigating the human condition and wondering what motivated these people to take the time to write letters to the paper not only disparaging this idyllic speck of the planet in such grey and grim terms but also to mount vitriolic personal attacks on others who live here. I came to notice that the letter writers were indeed a vocal minority – by and large the same people reappeared regularly, those with a particular ideology to flog or those with a chip on their shoulder ready to take up the latest antagonistic cause – a vocal minority who take it upon themselves to provoke the underlying fears and resentments and reinforce the inherent prejudices of one section or other of the community against another.

The other thing I noticed was that this vocal minority often used exaggeration, misrepresentations, factoids and outright lies together with evocative language in order to convince as many readers as possible to join their cause and fight the good fight against those fellow human beings in the local community they perceived as being evil. Their passion for their cause meant that they had little to no regard at all for facts – apparently, the end justifies any means and if one passionately believes other people to be evil or to be doing evil, then there is nothing they won’t stoop to in order to try and rally others to their cause.

The way I got myself out of being a part of this perpetual cycle of antagonism and contrariness that typifies the human condition was to begin at home as it were. Whenever an issue arose between Vineeto and I that was a cause for any antagonism or disagreement, we put the issue on the table, put our personal beliefs, convictions and predilections aside and investigated the facts of the matter. Sometimes the facts revealed that one of us had got it wrong, often that both of us had got it wrong but it mattered little who was wrong, or why, for that matter – when we came to acknowledge the fact of the matter at hand, the fact stood for itself as being a fact. Simple, really – end of any confusion, end of any contradictions, end of antagonism, end of conflict and an irrevocable end of what would have been an ongoing issue that stood in the way of continuing peace and harmony.

The other thing I don’t know whether you have noticed or not is that this is what Richard does in his discussions with people who have a chip on their shoulder or an axe to grind on this mailing list. What he does when he chooses to address one of the reoccurring allegations about something they feel he has said or done or something they feel he didn’t say or didn’t do, is to refer readers to what he actually said – i.e. he simply puts the facts of the matter on the table. Of course those who passionately believe their feelings about the matter they have raised to be ‘the truth’ very often do not care a fig about the facts of the matter because, as you would know from observing others, when passion rules the roost common sense is nowhere to be found.

Now the question – for those who are interested – is how to break out of this habit if you have found yourself sucked into it, or suckered into it by following the lead of others?

As is evidenced and confirmed by a recent correspondent to this mailing list an essential first step is to take a long look at one’s own deeply-ingrained resentment at being born and having to be here. If one cares to break this habit of feeling resentful – and avoid the traditional antidotal trap of feeling gratitude to Someone or Something – the fact that one no longer feels resentful for being here disempowers the very driving force for one’s resentfulness towards one’s fellow human beings together with feelings such as anger, pity, jealousy and envy. The accompanying essential step is to stop focussing one’s attention on how you perceive, as in intuitively feel, others to be and to start paying exclusive attention to the only person whose feelings, intentions, sincerity and integrity you can know for certain – ‘me’.

Now the difficulty in actually doing either of these things is that both of them run contrary to the human condition – resentment at having to be here is par for the course within the human condition as is the ongoing obsession with intuiting or interpreting the feelings and motivations of one’s fellow human beings, and not only those human beings we actually get to meet or communicate with directly but also those we have never ever met, based on the by-and-large biased reports of yet others.

But then again that’s the challenge intrinsic to the process of actualism – to do something radically different to what everyone else has been biologically programmed to do and socially conditioned to think and feel, to be sensible in that one obeys the laws and conforms to societal protocols yet be a rebel in that one devotes one’s life to not only breaking free from the crowd but to become actually free of the human condition itself.

All of this makes sense to me, in particular the effects that chemicals such as adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine have on the brain’s function as it directly accords with my own observation and experience as to how this brain operates – the effort it takes to get new connections up and running automatically, as well as the effort it takes to break a connection once it has become so strong as to be habitual, as well as the observation and experience that once a connection is no longer utilized for a period of time it eventually ceases to function.

It is very useful to have what you have written there and it makes sense to me too. But it will be good to have the statements backed up with evidence in the form of scientific literature as it appeals to the ‘empirical discoveries’ so that the reader can judge for themselves.

I would suggest that another alternative would be that the reader do their own reading on any subjects that they find to be contentious in order that they do their own thinking on the subject so as to make up their own mind – if they want to break the habit of believing what others say.

The Net can be a good source of such information because at least it provides a forum for voices other than the fashionable/popularist spiritual/scientific theories that are currently held to be truths – for example actualism would not have a world-wide uncensored voice were it not for the Net. It is just a matter of keeping one’s wits about oneself and looking for what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense, after all what the brain does – if not impeded by emotions and passions – is make sense of the world of the senses.

Like you, Richard, Vineeto back up your statements about other’s mails using their own words from their own mails.

By and large, the reason for doing so, is to attempt to keep the conversation sensible and on track. The value of written conversations is that they can be concise and to the point whilst in verbal conversations a lot is said that is contradictory and/or vague and the tendency is generally to stay away from or steer away from uncomfortable or too close to the bone topics.

I am very interested in watching documentaries like this... so if you have any information regarding this (or any other documentaries you found useful), I would see if I can get it in the form of DVDs to watch.

There is very little I can recommend in the way of reading or watching, given that actualism draws a line through all of which humanity has regarded as being the truth with regards to the human condition (spiritual teachings, consciousness studies and the like) and the universe (Mother Earth beliefs, cosmological theories and the like).

However, I had a similar request from a local man who has become interested in actualism and I lent him two books that I found useful more for the well-researched information they contained rather than the conclusions they came to.

The first was a book entitled ‘The Myth of Male Power’ by Warren Farrell which I found interesting reading at the time I was investigating the social conditioning as well as the instinctual imperatives that caused ‘me’ as a male to feel separate from and fundamentally different to the ‘other half’ of the species. I can’t remember anything about the book, but the man who read it reported that he also found it thought-provoking so much so that he set about making some pragmatic changes in his life and particularly in his relationship to his companion.

The other book I have mentioned before on this list – ‘The Sceptical Environmentalist’ by Bjorn Lomberg – and again the man who I leant this book to found it thought-provoking, particularly in its exposé of the extent to which the eco-fanatics are prepared to use disinformation, misinformation and outright lies in order to justify their passionate causes.

Two other books that also gave me food for thought, as well as some empirical information about the human condition in action, were ‘Obedience to Authority’ from Stanley Milgram, which I mentioned in my Journal and ‘The Dark Side of Man’ from Michael Ghiglieri, which I have previously mentioned on this mailing list.

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With regard to the second aspect, the empirical evidence has been from the study of animals and the sole extent of reading that I did was LeDoux’s research on mice – as you would appreciate it is somewhat problematical to conduct such invasive investigations of the human brain in action.

Despite this, LeDoux himself has no difficulty in translating the results to the workings of the human brain and recent research has revealed that the functioning of the human brain is substantially influenced by an array of chemicals that are triggered off by the amygdala in response to the limbic region of the brain.

But he says that his results apply only to ‘fear system’ not the other emotions. In his book ‘the emotional brain’.

The inherent problem with scientists’ interpretations of empirical data is that scientists are, like everyone else, passionate human beings and as such their interpretations are biased and impaired by the beliefs and passions of the human condition.

As a question to someone who has some hands-on experience, not to mention some awareness, of the human psyche and the human condition in action – is it your experience that fear is the basic root instinctual passion and if so, don’t you find LeDoux’s conclusion somewhat dubious?

The reason I asked is that it is important to check, compare and verify what others are saying by your own experience, which is why it is so vitally important to make your own investigations of the human condition in action in the only person you can do this – ‘me’.

When I first came across Richard, I very carefully listened to what he had to say about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. While some of what he said made sense – much of it jarred with what I had been taught to be the truth. Given that I had been so gullible in my spiritual years – my faith was indeed blind, as is all faith, in that it managed to completely blind me to the glaring gulf between ‘the talk’ and ‘the walk’ of spiritual belief, both in myself and in the revered teachers and Masters – I was determined not to go down that road again, ever.

Although it took a while, I soon came to take Richard’s observation that the human condition is epitomized by malice and sorrow as a given – the global-wide evidence is overwhelming, whilst the evidence of the predominance of feelings of malice and sorrow on a personal level is somewhat disconcerting when initially acknowledged and unmistakeably observed in operation in oneself, and as one’s ‘self’. I also had a strong flash of realization when I first met Richard and he said ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – the realization that everybody, including me, had been trolling through the garbage bin of history’s tried-and-failed philosophies, beliefs and theories, dusting them off for recycling, denying their shortcomings and ignoring their failure to elicit anything remotely resembling peace on earth between human beings. This brief flash of realization was sufficient to embolden me to consider abandoning my life as-it-was and embarking on a course that no one else had trod but Richard.

The other thing I did in this initial period was to conduct my own investigation as to whether what Richard was saying about actualism being brand new in human history was a fact. I deliberately re-read many of the spiritual books I had in order to see if anywhere they were teaching the patently obvious path of doing all you can to become happy and harmless such that one can become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. Needless to say, all I found were teachings aimed at ‘self’-aggrandizement – the exact opposite to ‘self’-immolation.

I then delved into reading up on philosophy, psychology, sociology and science in general in order to see what they were busy investigating and what solutions they were offering. I was astounded to discover that all of human knowledge and investigation is predicated upon, and therefore straight-jacketed by, the conviction that it is impossible to change human nature. As I read on, the reason for this became more and more obvious – the core spiritual/religious belief that earthly life is essentially suffering so pervades all of human thinking that it is inconceivable that this ain’t necessarily so.

As part of my investigation I also delved into theoretical physics and cosmology in order to ascertain whether any evidence had emerged that contradicted Richard’s experience that the physical universe is eternal and infinite. That it had no beginning, can only be actually experienced in this moment of time and has no end, that it has no centre, no ‘holes’ or edges to it other than imaginary ones – and therefore there is no ‘outside’ to it. Reading a few books and scouting around a bit was enough for me to ascertain that, while all sorts of fanciful theories and spurious evidence abounds in theoretical physics and speculative cosmology, no empirical evidence has been found to contradict what Richard says and what everyone has directly experienced in a PCE sometime in their life – that the universe is infinite and eternal and hence peerless both in its perfection and purity.

What did amaze me at the time was how much Eastern philosophy and spiritual belief had permeated into science. As a practicing actualist I have since come to understand that the human condition is inherently awash with spiritual belief and can clearly see that the current fashion for Eastern polytheistic belief is popular only in that it offers an apparent freedom from the constraints of monotheistic dogma. So much am I out of the spiritual world, that I am now amazed that I had been amazed about how much of scientific theory is awash with spiritualism and mysticism. But, then again, the process of actualism is about becoming free of belief – all belief.

In hindsight, these investigations I conducted not only confirmed the facticity of what Richard was saying but also confirmed the fallacy of many of my own beliefs and none more so than in my understanding of the universe. Contemplating the physical nature of the universe – as distinct from investigating and contemplating the nature of ‘my’ psyche – can not only trigger memories of past PCEs, but this type of ‘me’-out-of-the-way contemplation when combined with softly-focussed wonderment of the sensual nature of the universe provides a potentiality that can evoke the onset of a PCE.

Talking about contemplating the physical nature of the universe brings me to the point of my letter, which is to post a couple of links I thought you might be interested in. I don’t want to comment specifically on the subject matter of the links, as I would not want to pre-empt you from drawing your own conclusions as to whether the explanations offered make more sense than do the currently-fashionable theories and long-held beliefs about the physical nature of the universe – so I’ll leave it at that.

http://www.holoscience.com/eu/eu.htm and http://www.electric-cosmos.org/

To quote the spiritual version of fact vs. truth from Rajneesh aka Osho –

How on earth can you have a fact that is ‘your’ fact – that would mean that you have your own versions of facts. Methinks you are talking about truths which are definitely not facts, as Mr. Rajneesh has clearly pointed out above. As I wrote to Alan, Richard has written an excellent piece on facts, if you are interested.

Well, this conversation started with you interested in Mr. Buddha and his legacy and I was the one who wanted to talk about a real flesh and blood ‘master’ and what he actually said. Given that Rajneesh has said that –

‘In India we have two different systems. One we call history, history takes note of the facts. Another we call purana, mythology; it takes note of the truth. We have written histories about Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna, no. That would have been dragging something immensely beautiful into the muddy unconsciousness of humanity. We have not written histories about these people, we have written myths. What is a myth? A myth is a parable, a parable that only points to the moon but says nothing about it – a finger pointing to the moon, an indication, an arrow, saying nothing.’ The Book of Wisdom. Chapter 9 – Watching the Watcher.

Thus, on good authority, we can dismiss all that has been written about Mr. Buddha from our factual conversation on the basis of it being ‘myth’.

No, I was simply presenting the facts of the failure of religious and spiritual pursuits to bring an end to human suffering and maliciousness on the planet. This is not about right and wrong but what works and what doesn’t work. For me, the spiritual path didn’t make me happy and harmless, it only gave me the illusion and feeling of being on the ‘right’ path with the ‘Master of Masters’. When I acknowledged that the spiritual wasn’t working for me I was ready to start looking at the facts of why it didn’t work and why Rajneesh’s ‘dream’ had failed and why it never could work.

My intention of talking to you were to report what my experiences were on the spiritual path, and what happened when I stopped believing and started to look at the facts. The discussion has been about fact and belief, not about right and wrong. Right and wrong is a moral judgement, a judgement made on what one believes to be true or feels to be right. It’s the very stuff that religious, ethnic and ethical conflicts and wars are fought over.

‘My disciplehood is an individual matter.’

If you mean it is a private, special matter between you and Rajneesh, then you are not alone in that feeling. <Snip>. And you say you don’t believe in life after death? You are the disciple of a dead Master and you don’t believe in life after death? I think you are stretching credibility to its very limits.

Ummm, you already have your own answers to your questions. There is no space to me to answer.

No, you made a statement ‘I just don’t know whether there is other life or a life after death’ immediately followed with ‘My disciplehood is an individual matter.’ I was simply responding with some factual information on the subject. You are giving one of the typical responses of spiritual devotees when faced with the facts of what their teacher said, how the teachings have been put into practice and how their particular teacher is no different at all to the thousands of others who have failed to deliver on their promises. The whole point of facts is that they give ‘no space’ for imagination, flights of fantasy, denial, duplicity, or self-deceit. A fact is a fact, open for all to see, verifiable, obvious, evident and evidenced. ‘No space to answer’ really means ‘I can’t dispute the facts so I will go on the attack’. You claim to be trying to bridge a gap whereas objecting for the sake of objecting appears your motive and forte. Sort of a ‘modern cyber-Zen warrior’. So, none of this ‘no space to answer’ ploys ... lift your game a bit. But if you really would like to talk about anything I said in the above passage I have plenty of space, time and KB’s. I’ll kick my feet up and wait for an answer ...

I see that you are interested in the idea of peace and being happy and harmless yet you are not at all interested in Actual Freedom, the practical way to achieve both.

Yes, I agree with you about the above.

Which makes me wonder what you are doing on this list. I noticed the other day you wrote on the Sannyas list that you had joined the ‘Actual Freedom (does it sound nightmare?) mailing list’.

It’s such a fascinating thing to be a human being and make sense of the Human Condition. To look at the facts of the business of being here, and compare them to the story we have been told, the script we have had written for us, the fairy-tales we have been spun, the ‘truths’ we have been told are Absolutely True... ‘just trust me, have faith, and surrender to me and, ... one day, ... there will be a Golden Future’.

I gave up waiting for Godot, the Second Coming, the New Dawn, the New Millennium, the Apocalypse, the End, or the New Bhagwan ... who I see is the latest Guru on the block.

I know it is inconceivable to you that there is now a way to get out of all this mess – as it was to me at the start. But I was curious enough to find out for myself, and it seemed eminently sensible to investigate whether the things I believed to be ‘true’ were facts or not. Did they work and had they ever worked? What was actually being said, what was being promised? Had the promise been kept?

It is late at night so I am going to respond to a point which is important for me, it may not be important for you. I *think* you do not just cause ripples, you are capable of causing shock waves. I am sure you are not aware of that.

There is nothing more shocking to one’s ‘self’ than a discussion about facts vs. beliefs given that ‘who’ one is, as a social identity, is nothing other than the beliefs, morals ethics and psittacisms one has been instilled with since birth. There is nothing more shocking than seeing the fact that that ‘who’ one feels oneself to be deep inside is nothing but an instinctual animal ‘self’ – exactly the same ‘self’ as Mr. Ape and Mr. Chimpanzee have. The challenge is to discover what one is and the process is initially a shocking one. But soon shock turns to fascination and the thrill of discovery soon takes over.

Just as an aside – is your main objection what I say or how I say it? They are two different issues and it does seem to me that the most important thing to you is not what I am saying as you continually say it is ‘not of interest’ to you. But you do keep writing.

Personally I find the wonderful thing about facts is that I am not forced to keep quiet about them – particularly in these days, in this medium and on this list. In the ‘good old days’ I would be forced to recant. Galileo was forced to recant his presenting of facts by fervent believers who felt threatened. A belief is a wobbly thing and needs continual emotional support or passionate defence and propping up. As a comedian said on television the other night if everyone stopped believing in God he wouldn’t exist. Same thing for any belief – once you stop believing it, it vanishes. Whereas a fact is a fact. The problem that everyone finds about stopping believing is that it is a painful business that causes upheaval, for one is actually changing oneself. As I’ve said before, the demolishing of my social identity meant that Peter the man, Peter the lover, Peter the Sannyasin, Peter the good, Peter the right, Peter the proud, they all had to die – bit by bit. But that is ‘who’ I am aiming to be free of, after all. You then eventually get rid of the parasitical entity that gets angry or sad and ruins this only moment that you can experience being alive.

Actual Freedom is not for everyone in that it requires a pioneering adventurous spirit to try a third alternative to the traditional, but there is a lot of beneficial results in people’s lives simply in being more sensible, being less driven, even in considering an new alternative way of living.

A ‘trickling down’ of anything new undertaken by pioneers, of any new discovery, takes years, decades or even centuries. When the new discovery is one so radical as to change human nature the resistance will be frantic and furtive. After all, the Human Condition has existed as long as humans have existed which may well be millions of years according to some research.

Those with ‘vested interests’ made Galileo recant but they couldn’t make the sun revolve around the earth. Literally hundreds and hundreds of people have tried to make Richard recant over the years by insisting that ‘you can’t change human nature’ or that a meta-physical realm complete with Gods and an afterlife does exist in fact. Mainstream society has declared that he is insane while the spiritualists insist he must be a God!

Aache Aye. (? my attempt at a bit of Scottish) It’s a strange world we find ourselves in ... but such fun, such a hoot.

Since I have begun to investigate into these tender instincts, I have been able to see what a hold they have on Humanity, indeed what a hold they have on ‘me’. ‘I’ need love in order to confirm my existence. Without love, ‘I’ am nothing – I might as well be dead. Love, if I was following the thread of these conversations, is the do-all and end-all of earthly existence. Without it, life has no meaning, no reason. So, even though I was taking one side in the discussions, the discussions themselves were reflecting back to me the deep questions and doubts that I myself have on the topic in question.

In hindsight, in similar types of conversations I see I was simply presenting the fact that the much-vaunted feeling of love didn’t work because it has always failed to bring about peace between human beings. The same is evident with the revered spiritual feeling of unconditional love-for-all – it also has failed miserably in eventuating anything remotely resembling peace on earth. I was not presenting a viewpoint nor taking a side, I was simply stating a fact ... and offering an alternative.

But like you, these discussions did serve to make me look even deeper into ‘me’ than I would have had I not discussed these matters and been challenged. What I also found was that often people liked the discussions, provided they didn’t become too offended, because they rarely if ever talked about their feelings in such a way, rarely if ever sat back and reviewed how they lived their lives, what beliefs they held, in terms of what worked and what didn’t work and why not.

You may have noticed a peculiar twist in that if the person you are talking to takes a discussion about the human condition personally then they invariably become offended. If they don’t take it personally it is a sure sign they are dissociated in some way from their own complete range of feelings and beliefs that epitomize the human condition and the discussion usually trips along as a philosophical-type conversation with no depth at all.

It reminded me of the work situation that I was in and the allegation against me that I had ‘no compassion’. I found this somewhat disturbing, but probably only because I myself regard ‘compassion’ as essential to ‘me’, and that without it, I must be a total outcast. So I think the discussion with others about the quality of love and compassion was helpful to me in the following ways: it helped me to uncover some deeper feelings and beliefs that were lurking behind my outright denial of love and compassion; it further helped me to see that I was trying to use influence to persuade others of the ‘rightness’ of my arguments, which I would only do if they represented beliefs to me and not actualities.

It’s useful to remember that a fact is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, fair or unfair, silly nor sensible – it is a fact.

A fact requires neither support nor defence and you don’t need to believe a fact for it to be so. The only thing you can do is ignore or deny a fact. I always figured that if someone else does so they are being silly, whereas if I ignore or deny a fact I am being a fool – and the last person I wanted to fool was me.

Some of the items I recall from my checklist – <snipped>

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I well remember that the whole question of whether or not the instinctual passions were indeed genetically-encoded by blind nature was crucial to my really beginning to question the ancient yet still prevalent religious/ spiritual notions of the causes of evil in human beings. It was also pivotal in my realizing that, given Richard’s experience that these passions are ‘software’ as opposed to being hardwired, I too had the opportunity to become free of the human condition in toto, should I so desire.

That’s an interesting set of considerations to ponder over but I am still able to entertain alternative postulations that are not being killed off by any sense of necessity in what you say. What you say is appealing but that’s all. I don’t hold the following theory, I’m only entertaining it (in the sense of that wonderful quote provided by Jonathan in another post ie ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ – Aristotle), amongst others but it just as plausible to me:

It’s good to keep in mind that Aristotle made his living and got his kudos from being a philosopher, hence what he is saying can be paraphrased as –

‘It is the mark of a shrewd philosopher to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’

Given his vocation, his words of wisdom can be seen as nothing more than a disclaimer clause or a ‘get out of jail’ card, one that apparently strikes a chord for those with similar motivations.

So nothing that Aristotle ever said is useful or valid?

I am not aware that Aristotle ever said anything useful or valid in regards the question of whether or not the deep-seated passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire are genetically encoded.

Soon after I came across actualism I went out and purchased a few second-hand books on philosophy and was far from impressed with what I can only label as rarefied ivory-tower thinking by men who showed few signs of being in touch with reality, let alone being in touch with their feelings.

Personally I found getting in touch with my own feelings absolutely essential in understanding the human condition and how it is manifest as ‘me’, which is precisely what I was explaining in the excerpt from my journal in my last post to you.

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Environmental conditioning may be the active factor that tips humans and animals into destructive behaviours later (or sooner!) in life. Some subsystems due to genetic coding may be present that are neutral until they encounter conditions which trigger destructive reactions. The instincts may well be hardwired. Richard may have dealt with the conditioning that triggers destructive reactions. He may well have dealt with the finger that pulls the trigger but the trigger may still be intact. Deal with the finger or the trigger and the effect would be the same – harmlessness. I fail to see how a subjective observation could deliver a definitive answer to the question though. Watching your kids and animals may be explainable by your theory but it could be explained by other theories too. Self observation cannot yield much in the way of internal physiological data. I cannot yet see the factors that make your theory necessarily true.

I see from other posts to this list that you hold it to be a fact that nothing can be known for a fact. Holding such a stance makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.

You are kidding me, right? You are shutting down conversation based on another discussion between me and Richard? You are also going to take what I said at the level of parody, as Richard did, and that’s the end of the discussion? I am amazed.

I don’t take what you have said at the level of parody, I assumed you meant to write what you wrote.

On more than a few occasions, I have spent hours in conversation with people about the human condition, only to have them bring an end to any sensible conversation by declaring that New Age theoretical scientists and mathematicians, having been seduced by Eastern Mysticism hypothesize that matter at the sub-microscopic level (as in beyond observation) doesn’t have a definitive existence and its very existence is so uncertain that we could well regard it as being illusory and that space and time are not constants but have an existence that is relative (as in relative to a human observer) thereby opening the door to all sorts of imaginative theorizing such as Big Bangs, parallel universes, black holes and so on.

Here are but two examples I have written about in the past where people have reverted to playing the no-such-thing-as-a-fact card in order to thwart the possibility of engaging in, or continuing on a sensible down-to-earth conversation about the lot we humans unwittingly have found ourselves born into.

No 32: Hi Peter, when you say ‘the world as-it-is’ what do you mean ... the actual world or the world as it is perceived by ‘me’?

I remember having a discussion with a spiritualist about this very topic soon after I abandoned spiritualism to become an actualist. He believed that the fact that everyone has a self-centred affective perception of the world meant that the physical world was a self-created illusion. We happened to be standing in front of his car at the time and I reached out and touched the glass of the headlight and asked whether or not the headlight existed in fact given that we could both see it and both touch it. He said that while we could both see it, we saw it from different perspectives, he from one angle, me from another, therefore we perceived it differently. I then realized that pursuing the matter was a waste of both his time and mine because here was a man who refused to talk sense and was determined to live, and remain living, in a world entirely of his own making.

This incident, coming as it did in my early years of investigating the human condition, highlighted the fact that in my spiritual years I had also retreated from the world as-it-is – the world of interactions with fellow flesh and blood human, of tangible palpable things and actually occurring events – into an utterly self-centred world – a world of affective interactions like-feeling souls, of ethereal non-substantial things and supposedly illusionary non-consequential events. It was then that I realized that I had in fact wasted a good many years of my life trying to be anywhere but here and anywhen but now.

But then again, it was hardly a waste of time because I know by experience the seduction of dissociation and lure of dissociative states. Peter to No 32, Re: A perception, 25.3.2005

And …

He and I chatted socially for a while, catching up on the last 12 months and he asked if I was still writing. I said I was, explaining that I was corresponding on two mailing lists at the moment, one of which was a spiritual list. He said he wasn’t into spiritual things lately but was reading a book about one of Ramana Maharshi’s devotees. He then proceeded to tell me a particular anecdote about Maharshi reported in the book that had appealed to him. A woman had evidently asked Maharshi a question about the ‘self’ and he had picked up a piece of fruit from a nearby bowl. Holding the fruit up in his hand he said

‘Here is a piece of fruit, here is my hand, I see it and it is registered in my mind as a thought. Therefore I think I see my hand with a piece of fruit in it, but it is not real as it is only a product of the mind – only the self, who is watching this thought arising is real.’

I looked at him and tapped the wooden table we were sitting at and said ‘Are you telling me that this table is not real, not actual in that I can tap it, feel it, see it?’ He said he had no trouble with that, so I pointed to a tree across the road and said that if I died tomorrow that tree would still be there unless someone chopped it down in the meantime. He started to look like he was willing to engage in an intellectual argument about my statement. I realized I had once spent an evening with this same man going around his belief-system in ever-broadening and erratic circles and I saw no sense in continuing the conversation about what is illusionary and what is actual on such a delightful afternoon. As the sun was setting behind some buildings and it was a good time to go anyway, I abandoned him in mid-objections and we paid up and left.

Later that evening, while musing about my quick departure, I saw that it simply made no sense to continue a discussion with someone who was hooked on solipsism. Of course, he wasn’t fully convinced, nor fully deluded, but he liked the appeal of a way of looking at things that made him the centre of all that was happening. So, for a little solace and respite from the real world he would indulge in a little ‘self’-ish escapist fantasy by reading spiritual books and, no doubt, a bit of going-in-and-getting-lost meditation. A few years ago I would have stayed to try and convince him of the madness of solipsism but those days of needing to convince others are long passed. The conversation did, however, remind me as to how far I have come to being seen as mad from both a real-world and spiritual-world viewpoint. I see ever more clearly how no one wants to be here and everyone is frantically and desperately trying to be ‘there’. Those who fail on the spiritual path to get so far out there that they never come back spend their lives straddling both worlds, occasionally grateful for brief moments of being ‘Present’ there but generally resentful at having to be here at all. Peter to Alan, Re: illusion vs actual, 4.6.2000

Before you go can you answer one question?

I am not going anywhere as you put it – it’s you who are playing the cards, it’s you who are steering the conversation in the way you want to (as you are doing in this post).

I am simply pointing out that playing the card you are currently playing,

‘makes a nonsense of trying to conduct a sensible conversation, let alone come to a sensible conclusion, about anything at all … let alone a subject so close to the bone as to why malice and sorrow is intrinsic to the human condition and, as archaeological evidence reveals, always has been.’

Before you go can you answer one question? Q: If an observation comes along that contradicts what you call a fact, what happens to your fact?

Given that this is your speculation, could you explain what other observation would possibly come along that would contradict the fact that human beings are instinctually-driven animals and that this instinctual program manifests itself in homo sapiens as instinctual passions mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire – given that this is the topic we are talking about. An observation that we are not of-the-earth animals, but made in the likeness of some God, perhaps? An observation that we are indeed aliens seeded here by an alien not-of-earth civilization from a yet to be discovered planet perhaps? These are amongst the common ones – or did you have something else in mind?

This is what I said – some theories are so good that they might as well be called fact ... with the proviso that a single contrary observation can render your fact into falsehood at any time. What on earth is so reprehensible about that statement that you would abort a conversation in which you were happy to engage in before you read something ... what ... offensive? ... in another conversation? Or is this all just to avoid answering my previous point? I do wonder.

As far as I can see I have answered all your points, but just to make it clear, the topic of this conversation is nurture vs. nature, specifically the question as to whether the deep seated passions such as fear, aggression, nurture and desire are caused by imperfect nurturing/ environment or are biologically inherited?

Your stance is that one can never know which is a fact in this case because a single contrary observation can render the fact into falsehood at any time – thus it is that you bring an end to the discussion by evoking the mind-numbing over-arching, all-consuming principle that one can never know anything for certain.

*

My suggestion is that, provided you are old enough to have experienced puberty, you too have sufficient life experience to be able to make up your own mind on this issue based on your own experience of how ‘you’ yourself tick and your own observations of other animals, be they non-sentient or sentient, rather than having a subjective opinion one way or the other based solely on what others believe to be true or false.

Quite right.

I am left wondering what it is you are acknowledging as being ‘quite right’ … purely because your philosophical conviction that nothing can ever be know to be a fact would inevitable prevent you from seeing a fact, let alone acknowledge that a fact is a fact even if it was staring you in the face as it were. With this as a mindset, it would obviously be impossible for you to make up your mind about anything.

You are so wrong. This must be a joke. You really don’t seem to understand my position, do you? If I didn’t work with facts I would be dead by now (eg ‘the bus is bearing down on you’).

Look, if you are now changing your position then fine – I have spent years divesting myself of so many beliefs, opinions, platitudes, opinions, truths, psittacisms and the like which I unwittingly took to be fact. T’is par for the course in the becoming free of the human condition.

If a bus is indeed a fact to you, as in being a physical object that has an independent tangible existence in its own right, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it or not, then why should not the chair be a fact and that it is blue in the electromagnetic wavelengths ranging from approximately 780 nanometer (7.80 x 10-7 m) down to 390 nanometer (3.90 x 10-7 m10-7 m) be a fact, irregardless of whether a human being is observing it. If you regard these as facts, in that a hypothetical contrary observation does not turn the big metal box on wheels into a falsehood and nor can it turn a blue chair white let alone make it invisible, then why not apply similar down-to earth evidentiary observations in the matter of determining for yourself as to wether or not the deep-seated passions of fear aggression, nurture and desire are indeed genetically encoded.

Footnote:

1.) … as in your inability to acknowledge the fact that a blue chair is indeed a blue chair –

To Richard: ‘As soon as you open your mouth to describe the experiential you are expounding theory. It’s unavoidable. A description cannot capture all the details of a situation, so it is necessarily a distillation of experience – it’s a theory that could be modified or disproved by further experience or a change in perspective. ‘The chair is blue’ is untrue at 10,000X magnification.’ 10.1.06 Nature vs. Nurture

To Richard: ‘In fact, a blue chair in green light is another colour altogether.’ (…)
Just turn the light off altogether and tell me that we’re still dealing with a blue chair. The only way we can insist that the chair is blue is to control the way we look at it. Keep the white light on and don’t use a microscope.’ 11.1.06 Nature vs. Nurture

To Richard: ‘My position is this – some theory is so good it approaches the status of fact, so close that we might as well colloquially call it fact...with the proviso that a contrary observation (yes, experience) may change the fact into falsehood at any time.’ 12.1.06 Nature vs. Nurture

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