Home « CHRISTMAS AGAIN? SO WHAT?
With Christmas and New Year approaching I can’t avoid trying once again to offer a gift to all who read this article. I say “trying” because it takes two to make a gift: the one giving and the one receiving, and the latter often is not able or simply does not want to receive it.
I am only a modest philosopher and therefore my offering is not of the material kind. It is just a small piece of wisdom extracted from the nature of earth and the heavens using the tools of “significant” cognitive capacity, the skills of higher consciousness that come from processes of cognitive perception at an increased level of vigilance.
Irreverently, my perception in this case was not inspired by the great philosophers, but instead by two well-known magicians, or more accurately “illusionists”: the celebrated Harry Houdini, who died in 1926, and the North American Chris Angel, who levitates at will and constantly eludes death.
It all started when I comprehended how simple it is in this world to make things appear or disappear at will: to change black to white and white to red or green.
I wondered how I could make a rabbit disappear right before everyone’s eyes without them understanding how I did it, and I suddenly realized it wasn’t a problem of illusion but of semantics, that is, of the meaning of the linguistic signals. It’s simply a matter of modifying the identity of the rabbit by assigning its name to an exotic fish or a giant tortoise, and then inserting the new meaning into the standard or popular dictionary, which would lead in a few years to the rabbit itself disappearing and being forgotten. Pay attention: by changing or manipulating the semantic identity of X, the original object or situation irretrievably disappears.
It is thus possible to understand how a lax or self-interested use of semantics is constantly robbing “rabbits” from us in order to kidnap our minds and transport us to a virtual reality that is given the name of truth. In this world we will accept many things without discrimination or comprehension, since the strongest messages circulating about will easily penetrate our minds, “making us want what perhaps we do not desire,” or else reject what we truly enjoy.
And what could be the purpose of this manipulation?
Simply, to convert us into submissive consumers of the material or conceptual merchandise that self-interested purveyors want to force on us, so that at a certain point our brains will belong to the entities that are interested in controlling our behavior, allowing them to persuade us to consume submissively ideologies, merchandise, people, music, films, life-styles, etc., firmly convinced that we are choosing freely.
Matrix Today? Perhaps.
I believe Mr. José Ortega y Gasset had it right when he maintained that only when we have experienced the shipwreck of our illusions and fantasies do we become able to know a deeper reality—the delight of the true philosophers of antiquity, whose lost truths still survive hidden within ancient myths that we never bother to unravel because we suppose them to be simple fantasy stories invented by people with overactive imaginations.
Couldn’t the opposite be true, in the sense that right now, in the workaday present, our most treasured beliefs constitute mere myths? And contrary to ancient mythology, which had a higher and deeper meaning, today’s mythology is nothing more than a virtual “matrix”?
Could ancient philosophy contain the master key that can deactivate the current “matrix” and lead us to real happiness?
The spurious nature of modern currents of thought is in any event a bit suspicious, in that unlike the ancient ones, they lead to be mired in fantasies that are custom-fitted to the interests that have been created for us; and they are focused on appearances, since they know nothing of a deeper reality.
Is Sophia (Wisdom) dead?
It would seem so, unless she has hidden herself very deeply to avoid being destroyed by the exorbitant quantity of meaningless information that circulates profusely throughout the world spreading all kinds of fallacies, probably with evil intent.
One example among many such fallacies: the IHD or Index of Human Development put out by the UNPD, or United Nations Program for Development
Upon analysis it is clear that this index is based on a semantic trap that amounts to a cruel joke, defining “human development” as mere economic development, which implies that the poor are incapable of developing themselves. Let’s look, for example, at the article on page 12 of the newspaper La Tercera of Thursday November 29, 2007, headlined, “The Dramatic Differences Between Life in Countries With a Better or Worse Human Development Index.” Among other things, it says here that according to a U.N. report the country with the best quality of life is Iceland, and the worst is Sierra Leone.
The report shows that the GDP [gross domestic product] per capita in Iceland is US$36,510.00, while the GDP of Sierra Leone is US$806.00 per capita, which certainly is shocking. Further down, there is a text box indicating that “Of every thousand Icelanders 869 are internet users,” while in Sierra Leone, “only two people of every thousand have access to the internet.”
In this text box, which is the most prominent one (pictures and red-lettered captions), quality of life is erroneously confused with money, material goods, and internet access. I wonder, however, if these high-GDP people are happier or if the “matrix system” makes them believe in an à la carte model of happiness. Do they really possess a higher level of human development? If we take material wealth as the reference point the answer is YES, but if we comprehend that true human development is identified with spiritual wealth and the evolution of consciousness the answer is, without any doubt, NO.
We cannot maintain that happiness depends on material wellbeing, since this would be like asserting that we “see with our eyes,” when in fact we see with our brain, which is what decodes the signals of the “eye-sensors”; this is why a Hindu beggar who has deep faith in his gods may be quite happy without any great need for material goods.
I believe that pleasure has become subtly confused with happiness, which is like putting the body and the soul on the same level, forgetting the religious creed and popular legends that hold that the Devil is only interested in carrying off the souls, and not the bodies, of the unfortunates who lose their way (he must have a reason). Although many may believe that we have no soul, this could be due to the vagueness of this expression; the mere fact that its existence has not been scientifically demonstrated proves nothing, since the subtlety of its composition is perhaps beyond the analytical reach of conventional instruments. I would like to know if people who have more televisions, computers, cell phones, MP3 players, and all the other electronic baloney that exists, are happier than those who are deprived of material possessions but are rich in spiritual possessions.
Authentic happiness is not experienced by the body; it is an experience of the inner world that comes from the fact of knowing oneself, discovering oneself, and owning oneself (the true self of one’s being, and not the personality.)
It emanates from real human development, which refers to the level of humanization of the Homo Sapiens. We cannot deny that we are animals in the process of humanization, which can only be achieved through the evolution of our consciousness. To explain this requires the exposure of another semantic trap: consciousness is not “consciousness” as the dictionary describes it, as “the property of the human spirit of self-recognition in its essential attributes and all the modifications that it experiences within itself,” and also “internal knowledge of good and evil.”
In turn, “spirit” is defined as “an immaterial being possessing reason.” At this point the density of the semantic foliage makes it difficult to move forward because the definition of the spirit as “an immaterial being possessing reason” leads us to conclude that if we have a spirit we possess reason, which should enable us to see reality as it is, which is a belief that has been demonstrated to be false by, among others, Humberto Maturana.
The fact is that the world will not be developed or sustainable so long as Man does not considerably increase his superior consciousness, which is almost impossible because of the very high level of mental alienation resulting from the saturation of the brain with information. In reality, there are times when “abundance leads to scarcity,” and this is one of them, given that the immense magnitude of the information that we receive daily fragments our minds so as to cause incoherence among all of their parts, and as a consequence “enlightened cognitive misery.”
We are a society based on information and not on wisdom, and this is the true reason for the problems in the world: we have no idea how to convert information into wisdom, and this situation causes the most intelligent people to do the stupidest things. I really do not think that this explanation helps much, since the word “wisdom” is one of the many “rabbits” that mysterious hands have made to disappear, being converted in practice into a synonym for “abundance of information” and therefore it will not be possible to understand its real meaning and importance.
Our daily level of mental perception is shockingly deficient with regard to the perception of reality because we live in a twilight state of diminished vigilance that has also been called a “waking dream” (between asleep and awake), which, without any doubt, represents a generalized pathological condition that inclines us toward cognitive misery, as bad or worse than economic misery.
Speaking in a more transcendental sense, it constitutes an obstacle that prevents us from evolving in harmony with life, which surely is the reason for our existence.
This is perhaps a good time to ask ourselves what is the essence of the human condition, in order to clarify whether we are embodying it or avoiding it—to ask ourselves whether we are the same as a chicken or a bird that is born a bird and dies a bird and if we also, like them, are born complete and are human simply because we have the bodies of such.
Is it not more realistic to accept that the creator makes us incomplete and puts us on this world as rough sketches so that each of us can complete himself? If such is the case we can conclude that our personal and worldly problems emanate from the fact that we exist only in the form of “human projects”, unaware of the happiness and wisdom that awaits us as a result of completing ourselves and reaching a truly human stature and condition.
What percentage of humanity lies within a person? Is it the body that determines his human condition? Or some other, more subtle thing? Is it perhaps intelligence or reason? Observation of real life demonstrates that in the course of history Man has not evolved with regard to his internal world, since his passions, vices and shortcomings are the same or worse than they were in antiquity. Greater capacity for destruction, corruption, betrayal, dishonesty, arrogance, cruelty, physical or psychological torture, etc. The salvation of our planet, troubled as it is with global warming and other ills caused by Man, depends without any doubt on the true development of the human being, which is not achieved by stuffing ourselves with memorized information or accumulating riches.
Excess information leads inexorably to enlightened ignorance, that is, to the possession of a lot of “meaningless” information, that is, information the meaning of which we do not comprehend deeply. In our current state of evolution we lack the capacity for meaning, which unlike informational skill is not inborn; we possess it only as a latent ability that must be developed by each individual.
So long as this does not take place education will continue to be a failure, and it will hide its failure by manipulating its semantic content, claiming educational qualities for systems that ignore the most important things in life: knowing onself, understanding the difference between animal and human consciousness (animals have a primitive state of consciousness), understanding that nature is not to be dominated and plundered of her goods, but rather we are obliged to live in harmony with her if we want the world to be sustainable.
Education is ignorant when it comes to teaching us to live consciously; it does not know the difference between wisdom and information; it knows nothing at all about what we should do to really “humanize” ourselves, that is, to become completely human.
Semantic illusionism constantly fools us, because we are merely animals that have achieved a certain percentage of human attributes. How much is this percentage? 20%, 30%, or 40%?
Personally, I would say it’s a more modest percentage, based just on reading the newspapers and asking myself if the reality they reflect is more consistent with a rapacious and violent animal or with a wise and conscious real human being. By the smoke and mirrors of semantic illusionism “quality of life” is not quality of life; “education” is simply the mastering of memorization; “liberty” is not liberty; “happiness” is not happiness; “justice” is not justice; “love” is not love, and so on to infinity. Matrix has colonized our minds in such a way that “we are not able to distinguish between a virtual hamburger and a real one” (reference to the movie “Matrix.”)
I believe that today (any day can be today) is the best moment to comprehend the measureless magnitude of the gift we can give to ourselves and to the world if we manage to evolve. The salvation of the planet depends on true human development, the transcendental meaning of which was known in ancient Greece, and the level of quality of life that we can reach through the evolution of our consciousness exceeds all known parameters.
You, who are reading this, own the decision whether you will live as a “rough sketch” or will try to complete yourself. You decide your own future: to break the chains of illusion by developing your superior consciousness to gain access to a deeper reality or to remain asleep, dreaming of a better future.
You own the decision whether to accept or reject this small gift.
In any case, I wish you a merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year 2008 so that you may find peace, wisdom and happiness.
.
Darío Salas Sommer
December, 2007
I am only a modest philosopher and therefore my offering is not of the material kind. It is just a small piece of wisdom extracted from the nature of earth and the heavens using the tools of “significant” cognitive capacity, the skills of higher consciousness that come from processes of cognitive perception at an increased level of vigilance.
Irreverently, my perception in this case was not inspired by the great philosophers, but instead by two well-known magicians, or more accurately “illusionists”: the celebrated Harry Houdini, who died in 1926, and the North American Chris Angel, who levitates at will and constantly eludes death.
It all started when I comprehended how simple it is in this world to make things appear or disappear at will: to change black to white and white to red or green.
I wondered how I could make a rabbit disappear right before everyone’s eyes without them understanding how I did it, and I suddenly realized it wasn’t a problem of illusion but of semantics, that is, of the meaning of the linguistic signals. It’s simply a matter of modifying the identity of the rabbit by assigning its name to an exotic fish or a giant tortoise, and then inserting the new meaning into the standard or popular dictionary, which would lead in a few years to the rabbit itself disappearing and being forgotten. Pay attention: by changing or manipulating the semantic identity of X, the original object or situation irretrievably disappears.
It is thus possible to understand how a lax or self-interested use of semantics is constantly robbing “rabbits” from us in order to kidnap our minds and transport us to a virtual reality that is given the name of truth. In this world we will accept many things without discrimination or comprehension, since the strongest messages circulating about will easily penetrate our minds, “making us want what perhaps we do not desire,” or else reject what we truly enjoy.
And what could be the purpose of this manipulation?
Simply, to convert us into submissive consumers of the material or conceptual merchandise that self-interested purveyors want to force on us, so that at a certain point our brains will belong to the entities that are interested in controlling our behavior, allowing them to persuade us to consume submissively ideologies, merchandise, people, music, films, life-styles, etc., firmly convinced that we are choosing freely.
Matrix Today? Perhaps.
I believe Mr. José Ortega y Gasset had it right when he maintained that only when we have experienced the shipwreck of our illusions and fantasies do we become able to know a deeper reality—the delight of the true philosophers of antiquity, whose lost truths still survive hidden within ancient myths that we never bother to unravel because we suppose them to be simple fantasy stories invented by people with overactive imaginations.
Couldn’t the opposite be true, in the sense that right now, in the workaday present, our most treasured beliefs constitute mere myths? And contrary to ancient mythology, which had a higher and deeper meaning, today’s mythology is nothing more than a virtual “matrix”?
Could ancient philosophy contain the master key that can deactivate the current “matrix” and lead us to real happiness?
The spurious nature of modern currents of thought is in any event a bit suspicious, in that unlike the ancient ones, they lead to be mired in fantasies that are custom-fitted to the interests that have been created for us; and they are focused on appearances, since they know nothing of a deeper reality.
Is Sophia (Wisdom) dead?
It would seem so, unless she has hidden herself very deeply to avoid being destroyed by the exorbitant quantity of meaningless information that circulates profusely throughout the world spreading all kinds of fallacies, probably with evil intent.
One example among many such fallacies: the IHD or Index of Human Development put out by the UNPD, or United Nations Program for Development
Upon analysis it is clear that this index is based on a semantic trap that amounts to a cruel joke, defining “human development” as mere economic development, which implies that the poor are incapable of developing themselves. Let’s look, for example, at the article on page 12 of the newspaper La Tercera of Thursday November 29, 2007, headlined, “The Dramatic Differences Between Life in Countries With a Better or Worse Human Development Index.” Among other things, it says here that according to a U.N. report the country with the best quality of life is Iceland, and the worst is Sierra Leone.
The report shows that the GDP [gross domestic product] per capita in Iceland is US$36,510.00, while the GDP of Sierra Leone is US$806.00 per capita, which certainly is shocking. Further down, there is a text box indicating that “Of every thousand Icelanders 869 are internet users,” while in Sierra Leone, “only two people of every thousand have access to the internet.”
In this text box, which is the most prominent one (pictures and red-lettered captions), quality of life is erroneously confused with money, material goods, and internet access. I wonder, however, if these high-GDP people are happier or if the “matrix system” makes them believe in an à la carte model of happiness. Do they really possess a higher level of human development? If we take material wealth as the reference point the answer is YES, but if we comprehend that true human development is identified with spiritual wealth and the evolution of consciousness the answer is, without any doubt, NO.
We cannot maintain that happiness depends on material wellbeing, since this would be like asserting that we “see with our eyes,” when in fact we see with our brain, which is what decodes the signals of the “eye-sensors”; this is why a Hindu beggar who has deep faith in his gods may be quite happy without any great need for material goods.
I believe that pleasure has become subtly confused with happiness, which is like putting the body and the soul on the same level, forgetting the religious creed and popular legends that hold that the Devil is only interested in carrying off the souls, and not the bodies, of the unfortunates who lose their way (he must have a reason). Although many may believe that we have no soul, this could be due to the vagueness of this expression; the mere fact that its existence has not been scientifically demonstrated proves nothing, since the subtlety of its composition is perhaps beyond the analytical reach of conventional instruments. I would like to know if people who have more televisions, computers, cell phones, MP3 players, and all the other electronic baloney that exists, are happier than those who are deprived of material possessions but are rich in spiritual possessions.
Authentic happiness is not experienced by the body; it is an experience of the inner world that comes from the fact of knowing oneself, discovering oneself, and owning oneself (the true self of one’s being, and not the personality.)
It emanates from real human development, which refers to the level of humanization of the Homo Sapiens. We cannot deny that we are animals in the process of humanization, which can only be achieved through the evolution of our consciousness. To explain this requires the exposure of another semantic trap: consciousness is not “consciousness” as the dictionary describes it, as “the property of the human spirit of self-recognition in its essential attributes and all the modifications that it experiences within itself,” and also “internal knowledge of good and evil.”
In turn, “spirit” is defined as “an immaterial being possessing reason.” At this point the density of the semantic foliage makes it difficult to move forward because the definition of the spirit as “an immaterial being possessing reason” leads us to conclude that if we have a spirit we possess reason, which should enable us to see reality as it is, which is a belief that has been demonstrated to be false by, among others, Humberto Maturana.
The fact is that the world will not be developed or sustainable so long as Man does not considerably increase his superior consciousness, which is almost impossible because of the very high level of mental alienation resulting from the saturation of the brain with information. In reality, there are times when “abundance leads to scarcity,” and this is one of them, given that the immense magnitude of the information that we receive daily fragments our minds so as to cause incoherence among all of their parts, and as a consequence “enlightened cognitive misery.”
We are a society based on information and not on wisdom, and this is the true reason for the problems in the world: we have no idea how to convert information into wisdom, and this situation causes the most intelligent people to do the stupidest things. I really do not think that this explanation helps much, since the word “wisdom” is one of the many “rabbits” that mysterious hands have made to disappear, being converted in practice into a synonym for “abundance of information” and therefore it will not be possible to understand its real meaning and importance.
Our daily level of mental perception is shockingly deficient with regard to the perception of reality because we live in a twilight state of diminished vigilance that has also been called a “waking dream” (between asleep and awake), which, without any doubt, represents a generalized pathological condition that inclines us toward cognitive misery, as bad or worse than economic misery.
Speaking in a more transcendental sense, it constitutes an obstacle that prevents us from evolving in harmony with life, which surely is the reason for our existence.
This is perhaps a good time to ask ourselves what is the essence of the human condition, in order to clarify whether we are embodying it or avoiding it—to ask ourselves whether we are the same as a chicken or a bird that is born a bird and dies a bird and if we also, like them, are born complete and are human simply because we have the bodies of such.
Is it not more realistic to accept that the creator makes us incomplete and puts us on this world as rough sketches so that each of us can complete himself? If such is the case we can conclude that our personal and worldly problems emanate from the fact that we exist only in the form of “human projects”, unaware of the happiness and wisdom that awaits us as a result of completing ourselves and reaching a truly human stature and condition.
What percentage of humanity lies within a person? Is it the body that determines his human condition? Or some other, more subtle thing? Is it perhaps intelligence or reason? Observation of real life demonstrates that in the course of history Man has not evolved with regard to his internal world, since his passions, vices and shortcomings are the same or worse than they were in antiquity. Greater capacity for destruction, corruption, betrayal, dishonesty, arrogance, cruelty, physical or psychological torture, etc. The salvation of our planet, troubled as it is with global warming and other ills caused by Man, depends without any doubt on the true development of the human being, which is not achieved by stuffing ourselves with memorized information or accumulating riches.
Excess information leads inexorably to enlightened ignorance, that is, to the possession of a lot of “meaningless” information, that is, information the meaning of which we do not comprehend deeply. In our current state of evolution we lack the capacity for meaning, which unlike informational skill is not inborn; we possess it only as a latent ability that must be developed by each individual.
So long as this does not take place education will continue to be a failure, and it will hide its failure by manipulating its semantic content, claiming educational qualities for systems that ignore the most important things in life: knowing onself, understanding the difference between animal and human consciousness (animals have a primitive state of consciousness), understanding that nature is not to be dominated and plundered of her goods, but rather we are obliged to live in harmony with her if we want the world to be sustainable.
Education is ignorant when it comes to teaching us to live consciously; it does not know the difference between wisdom and information; it knows nothing at all about what we should do to really “humanize” ourselves, that is, to become completely human.
Semantic illusionism constantly fools us, because we are merely animals that have achieved a certain percentage of human attributes. How much is this percentage? 20%, 30%, or 40%?
Personally, I would say it’s a more modest percentage, based just on reading the newspapers and asking myself if the reality they reflect is more consistent with a rapacious and violent animal or with a wise and conscious real human being. By the smoke and mirrors of semantic illusionism “quality of life” is not quality of life; “education” is simply the mastering of memorization; “liberty” is not liberty; “happiness” is not happiness; “justice” is not justice; “love” is not love, and so on to infinity. Matrix has colonized our minds in such a way that “we are not able to distinguish between a virtual hamburger and a real one” (reference to the movie “Matrix.”)
I believe that today (any day can be today) is the best moment to comprehend the measureless magnitude of the gift we can give to ourselves and to the world if we manage to evolve. The salvation of the planet depends on true human development, the transcendental meaning of which was known in ancient Greece, and the level of quality of life that we can reach through the evolution of our consciousness exceeds all known parameters.
You, who are reading this, own the decision whether you will live as a “rough sketch” or will try to complete yourself. You decide your own future: to break the chains of illusion by developing your superior consciousness to gain access to a deeper reality or to remain asleep, dreaming of a better future.
You own the decision whether to accept or reject this small gift.
In any case, I wish you a merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year 2008 so that you may find peace, wisdom and happiness.
.
Darío Salas Sommer
December, 2007
March 26th, 2010 at 13:22 I have already decided such weeks ago, And I am greatly thankful for your glorious contributions of information from your books and posts and I, at this particular moment am now serving my spiriting in my constant endeavor to elevate myself spiritually and reach the ultimate goal of harmony with Nature.
I have a strong desire to meet one who is walking along the road to awakening or meet one who is conscious.