When I look at a text like this one I cannot help to wonder whether in the process of "materialization" that Western man has experienced, the separation between "reason" and "being" came to be.
I find that the greatness of Gurdjieff's presentation of The System, lies in that he clearly delineated the realms of the "centers" and "being" and of course, with the addition of the higher intellectual and higher emotional centers it is also clear that the separation between being and knowledge is hardly distinguishable but in looking at our practical lives and how they've "crystalized" in social institutions and how the separation between state and religion has given rise to the laissez faire mentality, the fact that "being" has been equated with "authority" and "reason" and "knowledge" as the knowledge aimed at the justification of "authoritarism", it seems obvious that the whole structure of life and knowledge that has led to today's state of affairs is upside down and backwards mainly because what is running the show is "power" without "consciousness" or "force" without "being".
One could almost make a triad out of these forces in which authority power and knowledge interact and when power and being act without knowledge, destruction ensues, when authority and knowledge are present without power, there is impediment and when knowledge, power and being are balanced, the equilibrium results in creation and regeneration.
One of the aspects that seems important to understand is that there is construction whether there is “being” or “authoritarism” but that while there might be “construction” in terms of external phenomenon, in terms of human life, there is crime or regeneration. We can apply this to realities such as Fascism in Germany or the Israeli State today: Although there is apparently a great “constructive” impulse
that rises from a group of people towards their own people, in terms of human development and equality there is atrocious destruction.
This CONFLICT between what is good for a group of people vs what is good for all people is the same conflict that we are experiencing in relation to what is “good” for an individual and what to society. What freedoms are allowed an individual or a group of individuals vs the well being of the community or humanity at large.
These conflicts arise clearly with globalization because even if markets pretend to invade the world with products without regard for the human cost of the enterprise, what becomes obvious is that without the HUMAN considerations, whatever the enterprise, it is simply inhuman.
More specifically we would need to look at the production processes that globalization is imposing, how and why because it is in the conditions of labour that the inhumanity of the process continues to reveal itself and even if the solutions we are looking for today are not in the authoritarian regime of the German Fascists or Soviet Communist states, it also doesn’t mean that the Capitalist American formula is the solution. It should be interesting to study what actually fails in each formula. In all of them what primarily fails is the inhumanity but in practical terms, while in the authoritarian states the individual conforms to authority in the Capitalist state, the individual conforms to the market which is no less authoritarian from a practical perspective. They all submit the people to their economic agenda.
Who could assess today who is better off? If we take a Russian national after the communist experience and the knowledge and being that has come from that and we take an American after the market crash, and the knowledge and being that comes from that, who can we say, has a greater understanding of the human question in conflict? Is either one of them better off? Weren’t both experiences necessary to understand that without balance between power, knowledge and being and a clear humanistic aim before them, all activity tends to descend into inhuman behavior rather than ascend towards human progress?
Is it not yet clear that as long as one “nationality” or “individual” continues to believe that it can act solely for its own interests, they will inevitably infringe upon the interests, rights and freedoms of other people?
The great irony of “power” is that “power” without “being”, without “consciousness is as destructive to the individual or nation using it as to those it destroys. Power is its own force, like fire and if one doesn’t know how to “use” it, one will inevitably get burnt. “Burnt” is what we are seeing in the European and American Nations, I do not know the Soviet Union enough to speak about it but the levels of suicide there should be enough to tell us of the rampant current inhumanity. But “burnt” is a good word for any society in which the children and the old people are alienated from society or from a society in which only those in a “productive” cycle matter. That alone is a good measure of the current inhumanity or the degree in which “power” has “burnt” the people who hold it.
Do you not find it ironic that in Europe and the United States they do not have enough people to “serve” them? That they have to allow nurses from other countries to go and take care for their ill, although in their racism, they hate them overtly like in Germany and less overtly in other countries?
But what could be more ironic than the State of Israel today? Did the Jews of Israel learn fascism so well that they could do nothing but repeat its inhumanity towards the Palestinians? Who do they expect to fool in trying to convince anyone that their invasive techniques are in any way legitimate?
Perhaps the only compensation to understanding reality is the knowledge that processes are under their own laws and that we are constantly changing and changing reality. In that process, (what IS, so that we go back to Parmenides), re-actualizes itself forever anew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides
The Way of Truth
The Way of Truth discusses that which is real, which contrasts in some way with the argument of theWay of Opinion, which discusses that which is illusory. Under the Way of Truth, Parmenides stated that there are two ways of inquiry: that it is, that it is not.[12] He said that the latter argument is never feasible because nothing can not be:
- For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are. (B 7.1)
There are extremely delicate issues here. In the original Greek the two ways are simply named "that Is" (ὅπως ἐστίν) and "that Not-Is" (ὡς οὐκ ἐστίν) (B 2.3 and 2.5) without the "it" inserted in our English translation. In ancient Greek, which, like many languages in the world, does not always require the presence of a subject for a verb, "is" functions as a grammatically complete sentence. A lot of debate has been focused on where and what the subject is. The simplest explanation as to why there is no subject here is that Parmenides wishes to express the simple, bare fact of existence in his mystical experience without the ordinary distinctions, just as the Latin "pluit" and the Greek huei (ὕει "rains") mean "it rains"; there is no subject for these impersonal verbs because they express the simple fact of raining without specifying what is doing the raining. This is, for instance, Hermann Fraenkel's thesis.[13]Many scholars still reject this explanation and have produced more complex metaphysical explanations. Since existence is an immediately intuited fact, non-existence is the wrong path because a thing cannot disappear, just as something cannot originate from nothing. In such mystical experience (unio mystica), however, the distinction between subject and object disappears along with the distinctions between objects, in addition to the fact that if nothing cannot be, it cannot be the object of thought either:
- Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thought apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. (B 8.34-36)
- For thought and being are the same. (B 3)
- It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. (B 6.1-2)
- Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one. (B 6.5-9)
Thus, he concluded that "Is" could not have "come into being" because "nothing comes from nothing". Existence is necessarily eternal. That which truly is [x], has always been [x], and was never becoming [x]; that which is becoming [x] was never nothing (Not-[x]), but will never actually be. Parmenides was not struggling to formulate the conservation of mass-energy; he was struggling with the metaphysics of change, which is still a relevant philosophical topic today.
Moreover he argued that movement was impossible because it requires moving into "the void", and Parmenides identified "the void" with nothing, and therefore (by definition) it does not exist. That which does exist is The Parmenidean One, which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging:
- How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown. (B 8.20-22)
- Nor was [it] once, nor will [it] be, since [it] is, now, all together, / One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? / In what way, whence, did [it] grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow / You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought / That [it] is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow / Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus [it] must either be completely or not at all. (B 8.5-11)
- [What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is. (B 8.5-6, 8.22-24)
- And it is all one to me / Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. (B 5)
[edit]Perception vs. Logos
Parmenides claimed that the truth cannot be known through sensory perception. Only pure reason (Logos) will result in the understanding of the truth of the world. This is because the perception of things or appearances (the doxa) is deceptive. We may see, for example, tables being made from wood and destroyed, and speak of birth and demise; this belongs to the superficial world of movement and change. But this genesis-and-destruction, as Parmenides emphasizes, is illusory, because the underlying material of which the table is made will still exist after its destruction. What exists must always exist. And we arrive at the knowledge of this underlying, static, and eternal reality (aletheia) through reasoning, not through sense-perception.
- For this view, that That Which Is Not exists, can never predominate. You must debar your thought from this way of search, nor let ordinary experience in its variety force you along this way, (namely, that of allowing) the eye, sightless as it is, and the ear, full of sound, and the tongue, to rule; but (you must) judge by means of the Reason (Logos) the much-contested proof which is expounded by me. (B 7.1-8.2)
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