BEYOND RIGHT AND WRONG
A good friend sent me a “Ted talk” video from a woman named Shultz who did a fascinating talk on our fear of being wrong. My take on it, was that she was pointing out how we all are trained to fear being wrong and that fear keeps us from exploring and expanding our understanding of things. I think she is pretty accurate in that. She points out how we feel we are on “solid ground” when we are right and how good that feels to us. Then that moment comes of “realizing” that we are wrong. Yuck! The video is worth the look, but lets go beyond that.
Now, I wonder if you are thinking that I am saying she is wrong. I am not at all, but building on her premise to make a similar, but different point. You see, I see that our fear of being wrong is one step behind our desire to be right. They go together you see. We all want to be right and fear being wrong and we do not know how to get out of that little dance. As a matter of fact, I would propose that we do not even know that we are in the dance, and we do not wish to get out of it. We want to be right and we fear being wrong. And, I am neither right nor wrong about that. So what am I saying?
Can I write something that can neither be right nor wrong? Most of us think that is just impossible, since all of the intellectual meanderings of this world must fall into this right/wrong paradigm or at least in the middle of being a little bit right and little bit wrong. What I am saying, is that there is a whole other place. Neither right nor wrong nor in the middle. This should hurt your thinking mind about now.
So here is the dilemma, all thought is an either/or deal, and when someone presents something that is not that, it does not register. To see beyond that right/wrong world is to go beyond thought. In the world beyond thought, there is no right and wrong or good and evil or yes and no. ( I was going to reference Neitzche, but I won’t) And of course, most will immediately say that there is no world beyond thought. Is that where you went? If you did, I would ask you, in a most serious tone, “do you think that the world you live in is only here because you thought it”?
The big question always is, is there a world beyond the thought about one. I was listening to an interview with some astrophysicists, and they were talking about how the universe is expanding. A listener asked a good question about “where was it expanding to”? The very intelligent expert tried to answer in what I thought was weak explanation of a balloon expanding and how things are moving apart. You see, this expert can not conceive of a world beyond conception. Now that is a great paradox!!
We all are stuck in our conceived world of right and wrong, good and evil, and expanding universes. I wish I could “conceptually” tell you that life is not a thought. Aah, another paradox arises. Tlane 1/16/12
“( I was going to reference Neitzche, but I won’t)” said Tom.
Please do make your reference and explain a bit about your rationale. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is interested in hearing more.
I think you may be the only one Rita!! Neitzche wrote “Beyond good and evil” and I read it years ago, but the theme of transcendence of the the common framework, is how I took it. Some people claimed that Hitler used his logic to form the “super race” notion. I think he missed the point.