Return to the One (sections 1-2)

I've started reading Brian Hines's Return to the One. Here are a few short notes on his first two sections, "God is the Goal," and "One is Overall."

He starts by making the point that Plotinus is an ascetic, but not because he wanted to be a joyless curmudgeon. He says that Plotinus is an ascetic because he wants to get at what is truly good, and not be distracted by lesser goods which are unsatisfying. That remark sounds a little like my thoughts about asceticism here. Then he says that we all desire the One, that we should therefore channel all our desires towards it, and that when we finally achieve the One (if we ever do) all our desires will cease. 

How does it make any sense to say that we all desire the One? Don't we desire a lot of different things? Food, shelter, love and companionship, money and nice things, admiration and respect, … and on and on? Well yes, of course. But Plotinus says that these are only distractions from the One, or at best they are reflections of it; whereas if we had the One Itself, we wouldn't need all the other things.

At first hearing, this sounds bizarre. It comes from Plato defining the Good as that which we all seek, and that definition comes in turn from saying, "I want food because it is good; I want shelter because it is good; I want companionship because it is good," and so on. But to jump from saying all these things separately to saying that there is one single thing called "the Good" that we can somehow acquire and that will satisfy all our desires at once … that sounds like a joke. It sounds like Plato (or Plotinus) is playing with words to charm us or mystify us or confuse us, and in any event to get us to follow along. Of course Plato and Plotinus would deny that the Good (or the One) is a "thing" that we can "acquire." Also, they are both very smart; so if I can see that the jump from adjective to noun looks like a stretch, odds are that they see it too. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye. Keep this question in mind as we go on.

Notice by the way that Robert Pirsig does something similar in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he introduces the term Quality but refuses to define it beyond saying "Quality is what you like." [p. 232] There are some words in there about Quality as an immediate felt experience, but nothing very exact. If the comparison helps, I think it is fair to use it. 

When Plotinus says that all desires will cease he sounds for a minute like a Buddhist (I've remarked before that the Buddha dharma and the Πλατωνικός λόγος sound awfully similar) but his path doesn't sound especially Buddhist. Hines writes that, "Plotinus does not espouse the extinction of desire, but the channeling of desire. Within us is a spiritual engine, longing, that is always running strong.... [But] In truth, that hunger can only be satisfied by the One." [p. 40]

Is the difference real, or only apparent? I'm not sure yet. This is another question to keep in mind as we go, to see if it is answered later. I admit that when I hear that the way to the One involves using all our power of longing and desire but simply channeling it, the first thing I think of is William Blake's remark in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "at the end of six thousand years …. the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment." [plate 14] But I'm probably wrong: at any rate I make no claims here that Blake and Plotinus are saying anything like the same thing. 

So if we all want the One, where do we find it? Plotinus says that the One is everywhere, that it is the source (but not the creator) of all existence, and that the only way to see it is to look back on ourselves in contemplation, screening out all the other distractions that occupy our attention. Here again, the advice sounds quasi-Buddhist: meditate quietly in order to understand the true nature of reality. Right now my working hypothesis is that the methods and experience which Plotinus is teaching may turn out to be very similar to the methods and experience taught by the Buddha, but that the language and conceptual structure in which he describes them are rather different. Let's see if this hypothesis holds up.       

Chemicals in the brain

My recent discussions of nature and ethics with a couple of friends (see also the three posts before this one) brought up one other interesting topic. One of them introduced it like this.

He began by saying, "You are probably aware that there are psychologists who claim to have proved that free will is an illusion because all our choices are ultimately determined by a preponderance of electrochemical activity, or whatever.  Others have claimed to know the origin of religious belief in brain activity, in one version due to certain interrelationship between the lobes of the brain.  They say that you can produce a religious experience by the right stimulation of the brain with electrodes or drugs; therefore, the inference that God is the cause of these experiences is invalidated." And he asked, if these results were confirmed in a reliable way, wouldn't that have huge consequences for us?

As a piece of rhetoric, of course they might. But the deduction that starts from the experimental results and ends by explaining away God is logically invalid.

Suppose a few of us were sitting in a room talking over a cup of coffee or a mug of beer. And suppose some psychologist were busy studying my brain, all the while. What's he going to see? Well, the optic nerve will transmit electrical impulses into my brain, which will respond with electrical charges here and a production of certain brain chemicals there. The auditory nerves will bring in more electrical impulses, as will the nerves that run from my fingers as they feel the mug or my mouth as it tastes the drink. All in all there will be a veritable symphony of electrical impulses and neurological chemicals. And if we hypothesize that for some reason all this man can see is my brain, he might therefore conclude, "You see? Those so-called friends don't really exist. This whole experience that Hosea thinks he's having is caused by the electrical impulses and the brain chemistry." What's more, the second half of his statement is actually true! It really is true that the reason I think the others exist is (in this hypothetical case where we are all sitting around a table together) that the electrical impulses in my brain give me the sensation of seeing and hearing them. But to jump from that correct observation to the conclusion that none of them really exists is absurd.

Why can't it be the same with God, or the gods? Just because the brain is reacting this way and that is no proof that what it thinks it sees is unreal ... because the only way we can see anything is for our brains to react this way and that. It's an erroneous inference.

The only difference between the example I just gave and the case of someone experiencing theophany is that in real life the psychologist can probably see my friends around the table but he might not be able to detect the divinity because his equipment isn't designed for it. But that's hardly my problem.

My friend then went on to ask, "Could we go on talking about will, habit, virtue, etc. as Aristotle did if we believed that our minds, souls, emotions, beliefs, decisions, etc. were constituted as these modern scientists say they are?  Could we say, 'It doesn’t matter what modern science discovers about the human mind, will, decision-making, emotions, etc. – Aristotelian moral theory will remain a permanently true analysis of human nature'?"

Yes, I think we could. To argue this brings we have to give a little consideration to scale.

The thing is, at a microscopic scale it might turn out that our thoughts and feelings are made out of chemicals and electrical impulses, but that is different from saying that they are meaningless. It's easiest to see this with examples, so let me talk briefly about romantic love. We all know what it feels like to be in love, right? What Joni Mitchell called "the dizzy, dancing way you feel"? It's a physical sensation that interacts in complex ways with our thoughts and feelings and hopes and longings. And I am certain that, at a physiological level, this feeling can be explained in chemical terms: certain hormones are activated and they cause certain reactions in our brains' limbic systems, etc., etc., etc. So what? That doesn't mean love is unreal. It doesn't mean people will stop reading novels about lovers, or stop seeing tear-jerker movies. And it doesn't mean that, when your heart is broken, you go ask a doctor or a pharmacist to make it all better. Because while yes, at a microscopic scale the sensation is made of chemicals and electricity, we don't live at that scale! The only avenue we have for interacting with the phenomenon of romantic love is at a human scale. And at a human scale, romantic love can't be approached by studying chemicals and electricity in the brain; it's approached through novels and movies and poetry and long conversations. And honestly, when it is a question of falling in love or of feeling your heart break, all the electricity and chemicals in the world can just go hang because they won't do you a bit of good.

I had a couple other examples, but they sound flat and pedestrian after this one so I'm going to let them go for now.

A little farther on he put the question another way by asking, "What kind of moral theory would flow from a view of human beings as basically automata?" And really I don't think such an account changes anything, because even if someone thinks he's proven it, nobody really believes it ... I mean, not "seriously" as the Straussians are fond of saying. Nobody lives their life in accordance with this teaching, because it is impossible.

My first argument is just to quote the impish remark I ran across recently, "Even people who think that everything in life is predetermined look both ways before they cross the street."

My second argument is almost as flippant: on the scale of philosophical seriousness, arguing that human beings are automata is no different from arguing that none of this is really happening because I'm just dreaming it. (Or because you are, I guess.) The answer to such a claim has to be, "OK, now what?" If this is a dream it's a pretty lifelike dream. So after I check whether I can fly (because sometimes in my dreams I can fly) -- nope, just tried, that didn't work -- all I can do is to act as if it's all real. Likewise even if you believe you are an automaton, that doesn't mean you can stop paying your bills or ignore traffic signs. You have to go right on living the way you lived before ... which means acting as if you are a moral agent with free will. Like with my earlier remarks about why the Human Good is compulsory, you really don't have a choice about it. And when you need guidance about how to live as a moral agent with free will, ... well it's like what I said about love: the only useful advice is what's written at a human scale, not a microscopic one. And what advice do we find at a human scale? That's where Aristotle and Plato and Cicero and all the others come into their own.

We are stuck at this level. Pretending that the norms of this level -- this scale -- don't apply to us because it's all just meaningless chemicals is a great way to spend undergraduate bull sessions. But if you try to live that way, you get Leopold and Loeb. Or, to say it differently, nobody can live that way. Not really, and not in the long term. No matter what the guys in the laboratory tell us they have proven.

  

What is "reality"?

I was reading an article this afternoon, a piece written 37 years ago by Robert Pirsig called "Cruising Blues and Their Cure".  He writes about people who love sailing – on weekends, at any rate – who plan for years to spend their whole retirement sailing and then give it up after a few months because it's not what they thought it would be.  The complaints vary, of course, but most say that they just want to "get back to reality."  And Pirsig asks, reasonably enough, what that means.  He answers:

As best I can make out, reality for them is the mode of daily living they followed before taking to the water; unlike cruise sailing, it is the one shared by the majority of the members of our culture. It usually means gainful employment in a stable economic network of some sort without too much variance from what are considered the norms and mores of society. In other words, back to the common herd.

Plato characterized exactly the same way of life – making allowances for the differences of time and place – by using his famous image of the Cave:

Imagine men [says Socrates] to be living in an underground cave-like dwelling place, which has a way up to the light along its whole width, but the entrance is a long way up. The men have been there from childhood, with their neck and legs in fetters, so that they remain in the same place and can only see ahead of them ….  Between [the light] and the prisoners … a low wall has been built … [where] performers … show their puppets above it…. Do you think, in the first place, that such men could see anything of themselves and each other except the shadows which the fire casts upon the wall of the cave in front of them? – How could they?

And is not the same true of the objects [puppets and other things] carried along the wall? – Quite.

If they could converse with one another, do you not think that they would consider these shadows to be the real things? – Necessarily.

Pirsig goes on to discuss how odd it is to think that jobs and bank accounts and keeping up with the Joneses are all real, while sun and wind and waves and storms are unreal; and he has some valuable things to say about how to handle the blues.  But what interests me is this very word real itself, and the remarkable fact that these depressed weekend sailors and Plato use exactly the same word to describe exactly opposite things.  Pirsig's depressed sailors want to "get back to reality" by returning the the very world of social conventions and familiar opinions that Plato says is most strikingly unreal.  What gives?

The first thing to clear out of the way – because it's a red herring – is the notion that real means "physical" or "solid" while unreal means "insubstantial" or "dreamlike".  Pirsig's depressed weekend sailors don't think the seafaring life is a dream.  They know perfectly well that the ocean is physical, and that if they fail to keep their boats in good repair they could drown in a storm.  In the same way, Plato might call our conventional lives "unreal" in some sense; but even Plato would admit that if two thoroughly conventional guys get into a fist fight in a bar, they'll both come out of it with bruises and maybe broken bones.  So much for "unreal".

But if the distinction between real and unreal isn't about physical perceptibility, what's it about?  Consider the example of a mirage in the desert.  You look at the horizon and see it shimmering in a way that you normally associate with pools of open water.  You're thirsty so you are about to run towards it, but your experienced guide puts a hand on your shoulder and tells you, "Stop. It's not real."

What's not real?  The water?  If there's no water there, then how can he be talking about it?  Or does he mean the shimmering isn't real?  But of course it is – you can see it!  You know for a fact that the shimmering is there!

No, what he means is a third thing.  What your guide is trying to tell you, in fact, is:

I know you see a shimmering on the horizon. So do I. But it doesn't mean what you think it means. You are used to thinking that shimmering on the horizon means 'water' … that the value of shimmering on the horizon is that it is a sign for where you can find water. But I tell you now that in the desert things are different. In the desert, that shimmering has a different value from what you expected. It doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not important as a sign of water. It's not real.

And that's what is going on here.  When Pirsig's weekend sailors talk about "reality" what they mean is "the stuff that matters, the stuff that's important, the stuff that has value."  So does Plato.  Pirsig's sailors don't want to get away from the conventional lives of their neighbors for too long, because they are afraid they'll lose touch and never be able to go back.  They are afraid they will become permanently unable to play the subtle social games that they mastered long ago, that they now play unconsciously.  And they have no idea what life could look like outside those games.  All they see is an Abyss opening beneath their feet – an Abyss of bickering or misery or hardship or loneliness or destitution or any other nightmare they could care to name.  Whatever it is that they see stretch out before them, it's not the familiar game of chasing the shadows on the cave wall, and so to their way of thinking it's not important.  It's not valuable.  It's not real.  And they want no part of it.

Ironically, Plato and Pirsig agree with these people exactly about what they are facing, only they don't think it's all that bad.  In the rest of his article, Pirsig talks about the changes you go through if you just face up to the depression and live through it.  You come out the other side as a different person.  Your whole frame of reference changes.  You don't see things the way you used to.  And that means that if you ever do decide to go back to living on land, it won't be the same as it was before: you won't relate to your friends the same way, you won't relate to yourself the same way … you won't have the same life.  You can't go back.

Plato says the same thing more graphically.  When one of the captives in his picture gets free from the Cave and climbs out into the sun, he's dazzled at first by the bright light.  But gradually his eyes adjust, and he can see for the first time what the world truly looks like.  Then when he tries to go back into the Cave, he's almost totally blind.  The Cave is dark, all there is to see is a series of shadows flitting on the wall, and he stumbles around uselessly.  Even the village idiot sees the shadows more subtly than the fellow who escaped, because the idiot's eyes have never adjusted to regular daylight and therefore are attuned to the cavernous dark.

So Plato agrees completely with the weekend sailors that getting away from their conventional lives means losing touch with that way of life – probably for good.  The only place he differs is that for Plato it is the conventional lives that are unreal, because for him that way of life is the one that is unimportant and valueless.  And for Plato it is the life of deep insight – into your own nature and that of the world around you – that is important, that matters, that is of value.  For Plato, it is the life of insightful contemplation that is real.

Plato never spent his retirement sailing alone across the sea, but he and Pirsig would clearly have plenty to talk about.