truthloop

Disclaimer: I am not a lifelong student of philosophy. In fact, I'm very new to its study. I don't think the term "discipline" fits into the landscape of my philosophical knowledge at all.

That being said, I was surprised the other day to stumble over what I think is an interesting trend, and I made an observation: Humanity is in a loop.

Long before humanity grew exponentially in knowledge through many amazing technological steps (fire, tools, the wheel, steam and combustion engines, flight, supercomputing -- you know, the usual discoveries) faith was the foundation for life. Societies were built around religions, some so complex that many gods were believed to touch a person's life several times daily. Rituals honoring and placating the different deities permeated life. Rarely did people question faith in their gods. After Christianity overtook Rome with monotheism, gods were ousted in favor of God. Still, faith remained unquestioned.

Even in Descartes' day, faith in God remained (for the most part) unchallenged. When people were increasingly turning to reason from superstition to explain life's ups and downs, God remained, by and large, unquestioned. While some of his (unnamed) contemporaries said that God did not exist based upon our uncertain existence, Descartes refused to agree. In other words, God's existence would go unquestioned, but he would use reason to explain that God does, indeed, exist and is involved in daily life.

As we advanced along an intellectual and inventive timeline, our once unflappable faith began flinching. Today doubt is more common than faith, and logic dictates we start our exploration of reality outside of God. After all, if humanity can split the atom and travel to the moon and back, we no longer need to rely on religion to explain daily phenomena. Yet thinkers throughout generations -- from Plato until present-day philosophers -- have searched for truth beyond what we can see or do on our own.

The goal of our search has remained truth for as long as we could put two words together in an intelligible sentence. I noticed the other day that it seems, in our search for hidden truth, we've been digging around the perimeter of the same mountain. I say this because many of the ideas expressed by different generations, cultures, and disciplines -- be it philosophy or science -- are reworkings of the same ideas. The following is by no means an exhaustive collection of ideas, but a general chronology of thought that I've looked at and have found remarkably similar in content.

• Plato taught that reality lies beyond the sensory information we receive from our eyes, hands, ears, etc. Thus, he uncovered a spiritual realm -- a different dimension from that in which we live our daily lives.
• Hinduism teaches that there is the One that is greater than individual self, and that all life is interconnected within this Brahman, or the One. Hinduism goes on to explain that humanity's highest goal is enlightenment -- Moksha -- which is unity with Brahman, and freedom of consciousness from limitations of our physical reality.
• A Jewish prophet had a vision, recorded in the Old Testament, of God's relationship with the world as a "wheel within a wheel." God is in everything, and everything is in God. The Bible also teaches, "In Him we live, move, and have our being." In other words, God is everywhere always and at every point in time, all at the same time, rather than leading a sedentary life seated on a throne deciding who gets into Heaven, and who gets punished while on Earth. When one believes in God and the teachings of the Bible, it follows, since God made humanity in His image, humanity exists in the same way -- across dimensions, so to speak -- only we haven't escaped our limited physical senses in order to realize or experience this multifaceted existence.
• String Theory, while still not agreed on as an empirically-sound theory by physicists, describes a reality split into different dimensions from what we can physically sense or observe. (It's interesting to note that several contemporary Christian teachers are beginning to link the Bible's teachings about God to quantum physics.)

I find this a remarkable thread of commonality running through all of these thoughts, which were conceived of in different cultures, different times, different disciplines. If, in fact, thoughts are essentially reframed across generations and geography, could it be that the truth that has always been sought hasn't changed, and our need for this truth is, also, unchanged? That, in fact, the questions all thinkers of all cultures and generations have asked have already been answered?

Governments and authorities have orchestrated favorable evolutions of religions, philosophies, and even histories to serve their purposes. Despite these rewritings, people seem to come back to at least similar thoughts of a multifaceted reality, existence after our physical lives end, the nature of Deity, and other big concepts. Humanity's capacity for confusing the truth is pretty amazing -- but then, so is our diligence to continually uncover it.

Descartes and pms

Approximately two weeks into my reproductive month I find myself losing patience with life much quicker than usual. Things that are normally only small annoyances are unacceptably enraging to me. During this time, my otherwise adorable children are atrocious little beasts, my lovingly attentive husband is insensitive to the point of rudeness and neglect, and it seems that every outside energy force is conspiring against me and my unmanageable schedule (which is, at every other hormonally-harmonious time, quite in hand.)

I spent about two hours reading two of Rene Descartes' Meditations during my most recent week of chemical chaos. Naturally I was perturbed. Nevermind that perturbance is is my mental address during that week -- I was justifiably perturbed at Descartes for what I would label a supreme waste of time and mental energy, both mine and his. Only a man would spend so much of his waking time contemplating whether or not he was dreaming. Only a man would need to ask himself whether or not his hands were really there at the end of his arms, instead of making sure those hands were busy earning a living, or creating, or coddling a child, or loving a wife.

He starts by telling his readers that he has "opportunely freed my mind from all cares [and am happily disturbed by no passions], and since I am in the secure possession of leisure in a peaceable retirement" ... oh, boy. To this hormone-addled, overstretched mother, wife, and full-time student, he may as well be saying that he's stoned out of his mind and is either too old or too wasted to be distracted from his urgent mental undertaking by the cute little maid that brings him his breakfast -- or maybe she brought him something else besides breakfast before he started his mental cleanse, therefore he's drained himself of all 'passions'.

I had to leave Descartes alone with his musings on several occasions to stand over my 7-year-old, ensuring his silly antics stopped before he disturbed his brother enough to get him pummeled. When I was satisfied that said 7-year-old really would finish his 40 minutes worth of homework after three hours of stall tactics and that the brother would indeed not pile-drive him into the living room floor, I returned to Descartes, who wasn't any closer to a conclusion than when I left him.

So, if all that we know is a dream -- an illusion -- what, then, is pms?? One can only pray that it, too, is a deception. Oh, but what a cruel deception, and to what end? That women everywhere would be tortured by those she loves, and in turn torment them with fits of rage and outrageous accusations of mistreatment? That we would have to, in a week's time, return grovelling and embarrassed, to repent of our words and actions? What sort of malignant demon would do that to us?!

Eve Browning Cole countered Descartes' deconstruction of reality and concrete evidence of existence is his consciousness, with feminist philosphy: the relational self is the bedrock of existence. We know we exist because we are involved with others, they recognize that we exist, and we recognize their existence and their intertwining effects on our own being. For Cole and other feminist philosophers (who have, undoubtedly viewed the world through premenstrual fog) interconnectivism -- not solipsism -- should be the starting point of thought.

So I'm not the only woman that thought this Frenchman's musing is off-based and ridiculous.

In that frame of mind, it's not just my senses, my emotions, or my body contriving to deceive me; this truly is my existence. I know nothing beyond the pent-up, uncontrollable rush of chaos, the overwhelming load of life, and the constant questioning, "What's wrong with me?!" If the foundation of existence truly is as Descartes established -- "I think, therefore, I am" -- then I am a world of trouble at least once monthly, because I think all kinds of irrational thoughts.

If nothing else, pms proves that the mind is completely interconnected with the body. I believe that I exist of three co-equal components: mind, spirit, and body. I cannot prioritize one over the other. I live in my body; this is my vehicle in this life, and right now -- while I breathe and walk the earth -- I cannot separate my mind or my spirit from it. My body is not a second-class citizen to my mind or my spirit. My mind is not supreme to my spirit, nor is my spirit limited by the imperfect understanding of my mind. While my mind strives to understand proven points of science, my spirit soars to heights and levels of vivid imaginings that are unique and exciting and heretofore unseen! But for now -- while I inhabit my space on Earth and in the lives of those around me -- my body, mind, and spirit are as entwined into one being as I am entwined with my family, friends, and others in my life and around it. And if it takes something as twisted, confusing and wrenching as monthly hormonal upheaval to prove that to me or anyone else -- so be it!