MY ANARCHIST SENSIBILITY

Is not our temperament the coloration of events? Do we not encounter everything in the mirror of our personality? -- Emerson

We are interpreting beings.  Information comes in through the senses and then ultimately we invest it with meaning What meaning we give grows out of our experience and the ideas we've absorbed from our culture.  These meanings are ephemeral, not written in stone, and can change over time, do change as new experience comes. 
     Our beliefs are interpretations which is why the same event is often seen in some many different ways. Religion, ideology, any system of belief fits new information into old structures, aligns new information with prior beliefs. We choose our perspective, our means of interpreting, and become certain that we are right.
     The belief that we are right makes us feel safe. If we already know what we think, if we hold on to it hard enough, it gives the illusion that we are standing on solid, unchanging ground. It appears that most people need this sense of solid ground, of an anchor, so that they won't go spinning into the void.
     Other people - like me - find liberation in the belief that there is no solid ground. All things are contingent, mutable; we ourselves have only our interpretations of reality; we don't have direct access to "reality" itself.
     I see the world from what I like to call my anarchist sensibility. Anarchism is against making institutions of ideas.  Spontaneous structures are created to deal with whatever arises and then they are meant to pass away as new situations arise. I see myself as if playing against a tennis ball machine - I have faith that spontaneously I can hit whatever comes. I face the world with confidence - bring it on, I say, bring it on.
     My anarchist sensibility is an ideal that animates my imagination. But it's just one possible interpretation. There is no Truth with a capital T, only perspective. Is every perspective equally valid? How then are we to justify calling something bad or good? These are the kinds of questions that keep philosophers very busy. But more about that later...
     
     

CLOSED CONTEXT: OPEN CONTEXT

There are "frameworks" and "contexts" which are the opposite of what interests me.  Many contexts grow out of rigid ideas - the orthodoxies of organized religion, political ideologies, conspiracy theories.  These are closed systems and their main characteristic - and failing - is that they don't allow for new information and ideas.  Everything that might be "new" is made to fit a locked world view, interpreted as further evidence of the rightness of the particular set of beliefs.  These systems constrict rather than expand, limit rather than increase.

All beliefs - those that constrict and those that expand - are just that, beliefs. For a long time, I believed every negative thought the voices in my head shouted at me, believed that I wasn't good enough and was doomed to frustration and unhappiness.  I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me, some flaw I couldn't see.  And because it's hard to act against that tidal wave of fear and doubt, the facts of my life lived out those thoughts.  I was frustrated and unhappy, felt alien and isolated; I censored myself over and over again because, since I was doomed to failure, what was the point of even trying to achieve and connect?  These self-loathing, self-lacerating beliefs ruled me and turned me into an emotional anorexic; I was starving for connection and purpose but I couldn't feed myself. I was living in a closed system of negative beliefs and everything that happened was proof of the rightness of those beliefs.  How could it be otherwise when I myself was the main witness for the prosecution?

Then something inside me began to shift, and the closed narrow ideology of my self-loathing and fear slowly, very slowly showed enough cracks so that the light of hope, at first a despairing kind of hope, could come in.  A flicker of possibility, the merest shadow and I grabbed on to it.  I didn't know it then, but I had come a great distance in order to begin, to climb out of the bushes and step on to the path.

Questions worth asking:

If belief, meaning and value are conferred by us through our interpreting consciousness, how do we know what's True with a capital T?  Does Truth even exist?

How can we create a new context through which to judge our experience, transform a context that constricts into one that expands?

How do we move toward freedom?