Thinking outside the box gives you double vision - Try it. You'll Like It!
Not so long ago my brother and I had a row. It was one of those spats between two very determined males that often ends up in blows being struck - but for the fact of course that we are brothers and share a very strong fraternal bond.
The subject of the row is not important but what is important is how we very quickly became reconciled again. I went away and thought about it. He went away and pondered on it. He didn’t quite admit that he was completely in the wrong but never mind...
Humour aside, my point is that we both reflected and apologised for our behaviour. For digging our heels in as deep as Australia.
This, on the face of it, very simple human transaction has implications for the whole of mankind.
Now, given what I have just said, I can hear a lot of you saying -
Larkin has finally flipped. His megalomanic "Allboutme.com" attitude has finally gone to his head. But think about it.
In fact you have no choice to think about it because you are human and therefore more than the sum of your physical parts. It’s the reason why you are reading this blog. Your bodily functions are telling you to go and lie under a tree (on an indoors sofa if you are in Ireland), shut your eyes and relax but your mind, your spirit, wants to engage, find out what I am thinking and, by extension, a bit more of what you yourself believe.
Now don’t get side-tracked by the fact that academics call this dualism. Forget about Plato's forms that really are just screenplays for a set of films he didn’t have the technology to make. At the same time, Descarte's dualism chart (see above) just looks to me more like a Joe Pesci pingpong game with bullets zinging around PING PANG PONG between objects and sensory organs in a desperate Goodfellas type search for consciousness - futile because it isn't physically there. We cant see it. We just "know" it.
No. Concentrate on your own experience.
You decide to make a cup of tea and already your is mind reflecting on all the other times you have made tea (OK coffee for God's sake if you don’t like tea - yes yes it can be decaff as well! Move on at the back!).
Crucially, you are standing at the kettle and you are saying - "this is me standing at the kettle". You rise above yourself and you study your own behaviour. You empathise with yourself (if your mind is in equilibrium - if not you are having a crisis so watch you don’t spill that boiling water).
Now here is the most amazing thing - not only are you aware that you rise above yourself and look at your own behaviour, you are also aware that all other humans do that as well. How did you know that? You are a genius! It took decades for Wittgenstein to work that one out.
To put it another way, when you look at another person you literally see/perceive double - the body and invisible consciousness of your fellow wo/man. Yes of course, you do all the accepted physical things like shaking hands, or perhaps crossing the road if he is a bit of a bollix, but you also wonder what he is thinking. Or as the German rescue services asked a trawler captain in distress = Vat are you sinking about?!
Thinking outside the box means that we see things that are not allegedly visible. This makes us superhuman - or, if you like, more than a human animal.
I never saw a cat yet that approached a mouse and said - "Look, I've thought and reflected deeply about it and I want to say that I am really sorry for eating your brother the other day".
So the fact that myself and my brother made up has world significance, as does every reconciliation no matter how petty. For this simple act of empathy takes us beyond our physical humanity and into the realm of the Great Karma - the Holy Spirit - the infinite soul.
Human empathy - It's there all around you.
Peace.