Appearances

The Preliminary - Established

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. - Arthur Schopenhauer

• One need not delve deeper than the apparent. What appears is what the phenomenon is. To seek out an underlying secret or a hidden core, is to project a hope on what exposes essence directly and completely; it is to expose one’s own dissatisfaction with what is shown. The thing-in-itself no less than Gods are such symptoms of dissatisfaction with the apparent.

• It is reasonable to conclude that the apparent does not hide its true essence or that it is not duplicitous and conniving. To believe otherwise is to ascribe to it a motive or to presuppose a consciousness within it where none is evident and none is necessary. Therefore the phenomenon is pure and undeviating and it is only the observer that interprets it erroneously or is incapable of fully grasping or perceiving its nature. As such only a consciousness is able to fool us by controlling its appearance and masking it behind falsity. To believe that one is tricked by the apparent or that it hides from us is to assume that it is consciously in control of its own appearance or that it has evolved to use deception to misdirect.

• To seek out what there is no evidence for is to project a personal need unto the unknown, hoping you will find there exactly what you wish for; it is also an endeavor that presupposes a dichotomy because it separates appearance from essence which can result in such buffoonery as the mind/body division or the delusion of uniformity.

• Appearance is more than a superficial aesthetic experience, it is the way nature communicates its reality to as mind that must decipher. Our senses evolved to apprehend the apparent, in the form of knowledge and experience, and to use it by finding patterns in it. The degree to which they apprehend it is determined by the organism’s preferred strategies, along the path-of-least-resistance, and by the organism’s sensual acuity and other biological traits.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The function of consciousness is that of discrimination. The differentiations of ‘same as’ and ‘different than’ establish a binary system for comparison which results in understanding but also results in the erroneous mind/body dichotomy. This division is not an illusion; it is a blueprint for stability which necessitates a separation as one piece attempts to partition itself from the whole so as to attain what is missing in it. Identity and self-consciousness is the product of such distinguishing and discriminating tastes.

• This first level of discrimination produces multiplicity and the necessary conditions for understanding. It is the first step towards any striving towards the absolute – that of absolute freedom included. As the level of consciousness increases so does the level of discrimination as an identity is established on the grounds of what the observing consciousness is not. The more refined and detailed this discrimination becomes, the more of the sense of self it acquires. For this is reason it is always those with a far less sense of self, of personal identity as it is produced by a discriminating consciousness, which are more ready to sacrifice it so as to lose themselves within a totality. This they call their salvation.

• A consciousness represents a focused effort to establish a partition (autopoiesis), where none exists completely. Just as matter represents different states of temporality or different degrees of stability, where the absolute is approached but never reached, so does living matter represent this approaching of completion or separation from the whole, but this time focused and directed by an ordering, stabilizing tool we call a brain. In this striving towards selfness, or the absolute, we find the tendency towards indifference, distancing, going beyond or above, and independence.

• Beauty, as an aesthetic phenomenon, is not irrelevant nor is it superficial. It is the apparent displaying its quality as it was shaped by conditions which affected the past and forced a reaction to the environment, establishing a heritage. An organism’s symmetry of mind and body displays its resistance to environmental challenges and its legacy.

• Every characteristic, every individual physical detail exposes something about the organism’s past, whether it is the immediate experiential past or the historical inherited past. It is a sensual diary.

• We make judgment calls based on appearances constantly. In fact the only way to judge is by using our sensual awareness. That we are taught to feel ashamed or to find these judgments destructive or false within certain social contexts has more to do with cultural factors.

• The past cannot be escaped through denial. The determining effects of every decision made before one’s birth cannot be erased by ignoring the consequences. The only way to escape them is to change them, by first becoming aware of them, accepting them, learning to control their negative aspects and then making new choices that will gradually alter their effects.

Next to the power of judgment the rarest things in the world are diamonds and pearls. – La Bruyere

The Subsequent – Denied

Our greatest strength as a human race is our ability to acknowledge our differences; our greatest weakness is our failure to embrace them. - Judith Henderson

• Any idea that forces man to reconsider his delusions and his culturally defined biases is considered ‘harmful’ and at times ‘evil’ by those who cannot tolerate reality, having become accustomed to a selective and partial exposure to it. The sheltering effects of culture and society produce minds incapable of dealing with the cruelties and viciousness of a world they want to change or escape.

• In all cases what is considered ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ are perspectives that threaten the status quo and our safety and complacency within it. It is then reasonable to find men fighting against any hypothesis that points to individual inequalities and inheritances that establish potential, because these disharmonize coexistence and they remind the unfortunate mind that there are aspects of its becoming that it cannot alter but only improve upon.

• Any mention of the effect of heritage upon individual potentials is referred to as racism or sexism by those that wish to censor the idea or who desire to escape the determinations of their own past upon their present. Racism, if my racism we mean any idea that acknowledges the existence of human sub-groupings, does not entice violence or mistreatment, but it can be used from those purposes as well as can any other idea, but it is a reasonable admission that the environment causes diversity and that genetic isolation can result in biological splintering where a family tree shoots off a new branch given enough time.

• It is unavoidable that if we are to discredit race as a relevant category, determined by past environments and genetic isolation over a period of time, then we cannot the logical conclusion that all categories based on physical characteristics should be similarly discredited. Including that of species.

• In modern times the idea of social harmony and humanism has produced this mindset that sacrifices truth on the altar of political-correctness and civility. The modern man has been trained to find any ideas that expose an uncomfortable fact or that lead to an unflattering conclusion unnecessary. He uses labels of bias or prejudice to exclude any conceptions that do not adhere to his moralistic upbringing and, in so doing, becomes itself guilty of the very thing it accuses dissenters of.

• That sex and race are not merely superficial physical characteristics is based on the realization that there are no superficial characteristics. Every trait reveals a part of the organism’s past and its essence. To assume that the body is affected by environmental conditions but the mind remains untouched is to firstly presuppose a mind/body dichotomy when it suits us, where we deny it in every other area, and it is to assume that all diversity, no matter how great or subtle, in nature is merely cosmetic.

• The current practice of labeling as ‘ill’ or ‘dysfunctional’ or of possessing ‘bad intentions’ anyone that dares to utter the possibility that physical characteristics might be evidence of potential, as it has been shaped and passed down from generation to generation, is an underhanded method of channeling thought using shame and peer pressures.

• It is obvious that under conditions of social pressure and cultural ideals, science is unlikely to produce any hypothesis that might go against popular sentiments or systemic values and that all scientists and thinkers, if they escape indoctrination themselves, might be reluctant to risk public wrath and social isolation by speaking freely and openly on such matters as gender and race. In the rare occasion that someone would dare his fate becomes a warning to all.

• If we are to say that color, for instance, is not a trait that when coupled with others which are shared within a given population group speaks of a common heritage and of a past genetic isolation, then we should also say that form or sound or any other bit of information gathered using our sense is no less important. We should be lead to the absurd conclusion that not even the words we use should be considered indicative of what leis in our minds since all information are equally superficial and duplicitous. We should make a mockery of empiricism.

• What is often used to discredit any idea that mentions that diversity in physical type might be accompanied by diversity in potentials or mental type is the standardization of behaviors cultural integration and social necessity produces. When all are forced either through training or through pressure to adhere to a common way of behaving and into culturally defined common ways of thinking the error is made that the potentials are identical, as well. It is necessary that social structures should aim at integration and that coexistence would force the different into homogeneity, creating this illusion of equality or similarity where only diversity exists.

• To interpret gender differences and racial differences as superficial is to think of nature as superfluous, and not as frugal as it most likely is; it is to reinterpret reality so as to save ourselves from the discomforts of natural selection and evolution. The environment becomes a cosmetician, possessing the talent to change appearances but inept in causing any other alteration. Therefore the difference between man and beast is but an illusion created by a talented cosmetician where the core, our common ancestry, is left untouched.

• The idea that the environmental conditions of the present (nurturing) can overcome the combined effects of all the environmental conditions of the past (nature) depends on an overestimation of the human will. That nurturing can help develop a larger percentage of potential is often mistaken as evidence that all have the same potential, as if taking a pygmy out of his environment, offering him western nutrition, medical care and comforts will make him grow to the height of a an average Swede.

Anatomy is destiny. – Sigmund Freud

• 
  The idea that our biology would determine our psychological outlooks, our sensual awareness and our pre-programmed reaction to reality is not a radical one. It becomes so when it is applied to human nature and it is seen as an affront to a presupposed free-will and as a recipe for mistreating people.

• Gender is the form sexual roles take within a social framework. They aren’t invented by man but they are given symbols, habits and a restricted expression in accordance with cultural ideals and necessities.

• That sex would be an important aspect of the human condition is proven by the fact that the species had to be divided into males and females so as to continue on. Some would have us believe that such a division was merely cosmetic, even if Jung urges us to accept the fact that a slight organic deficiency can result in a psychological type.

• The instinct for survival is so powerful that all is sacrificed for it: identity, sexuality, potential, truth. In a world of growing dependence and pampered human beings the desire to bolster the environments that support this sheltering behind which all distinction becomes obsolete, trumps all other considerations. The masses gather to defend what they have grown accustomed to and find solace in. All dissent is labelled ill or dysfunctional or senile, when it dares contradict. Do they think philosophy and science would escape such powerful psychological motives?

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. - Carl Jung

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We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. - Carl Jung

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That sex and race are not merely superficial physical characteristics is based on the realization that there are no superficial characteristics. Every trait reveals a part of the organism’s past and its essence. To assume that the body is affected by environmental conditions but the mind remains untouched is to firstly presuppose a mind/body dichotomy when it suits us, where we deny it in every other area, and it is to assume that all diversity, no matter how great or subtle, in nature is merely cosmetic.

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