The point of fundamental ignorance? (Wilber)

http://integrallife.com/member/ken-wilber/blog/ticket-athens-looking-through-lens-contemplation

Wilber tackles a question that has come up for me lately: What is the point of fundamental ignorance? That is, why are we born ignorant of our true nature? Another way to ask this that could have some theistic overtones: What is the point of creation?

Wilber's explanation: the Creator was bored and wanted someone to play with. He says he got a taste of this in his meditation: abiding in Nothingness, he felt that it was something he wanted to share. He links this feeling with the feeling that the Creator may have had.



This is a half-cocked answer for me, although it is a explanation I had arrived at as well. I thought maybe some of you may have your own thoughts, maybe from a more scientific point of view.

I have a lamentable tendency to get all meta- about things, so my response is to wonder why anyone would ask such a question. And whether its premise is true in any useful way. We are born ignorant of almost everything that will develop postnatally-- language, necessary to question anything, prominent among them. And the entire rest of whatever culture we will become a part of. Maybe I should finish waking up and have breakfast and this will make better sense.

Oh, come on. It's all speculation, of course. But it can be a bit fun to invent theories.

I also think Wilber's take on this topic is half-baked and unsupported, not to mention almost entirely useless. Not to say that I don't like some of what Wilber has to say. I do own some of his books, and refer to them occasionally.



I agree with what Chris mentioned regarding evolutionary explanations; and, I would add more about language acquisition. I don't think our ignorance is truly fundamental. Based on some pretty solid research on human language and cognition, it seems that ignorance is learn in our human social context, which is partially supported by our capacity to learn language in ways unique to our species.

To keep in simple, we are socialized by our language community to focus more on the products of language than we are the process of language. We learn to view thoughts in terms of what the thoughts themselves say they are, rather than what they are experientially.



We also tend to treat mind objects (thoughts and emotions) the way we treat objects out in the world, because we don't see the difference. For example, if there's a spider in my bathtub, there's an easy way to make it go away. I can smash it, or wash it down the drain (leaving the water on for a while, to ensure it doesn't climb back out). But thoughts don't work that way. Our learning systems work by addition, and never by subtraction. That's why (as we discussed in an earlier thread conversation) smelling your high school girlfriend's perfume instantly brings her to mind, as well associated emotions. Now, say you're in a new relationship, so having this thought brings up another thought learned during socialization: "I shouldn't think of her, I'm with ___ now." Let's say a guilty feeling arises based on the "shouldn't" thought. Now, when you smell the perfume even years later (maybe even many relationships later), you not only have thoughts and feelings for your ex, but now also the feeling of guilt and the "shouldn't" thoughts arise. Things just pile up like this.



And then we get all silly and try to push thoughts and feelings down, or do anything we can to avoid what brought them up (e.g. the perfume). But what if someone in our office starts wearing the perfume? Are we going to get a new job?



Just one example. And this doesn't even really touch on how this process socializes our learned sense of self in the world, which I think works using similar processes.



Therefore, I don't think ignorance is fundamental; though, it is pervasive, but only habitually so. Animals don't seem to suffer in the same ways that we do, for the most part. And I think it has to do with our differences in language, rather than some fundamental ignorance that spans all sentient beings.

"Oh, come on. It's all speculation, of course. But it can be a bit fun to invent theories."

That's true. Of course, Wilber didn't invent this theory any more than Christopher Columbus invented North America.

I have trouble accepting such a mechanistic, materialist explanation. I wonder what that says about me...

The other guys are right, in that ultimately it doesn't matter. But I think beliefs, views, dogmas, explanations are just hand-holds. They can be discouraging or encouraging to our practice, and in that sense they are either not useful or useful. But they all need to be let go of. The practice answers the questions in time, experience reveals the answers (or mysteries) in time. So coming up with a "reason for ignorance" can be a way to comfort oneself, provide oneself with encouragement, try to understand (intellectually) that which is being experienced or has not been experienced. They can also be ways to try to explain to others how one experiences reality, or how things seem at a certain point in practice. But it doesn't actually matter, ultimately. Any view or belief is just another thing one will eventually need to stop being attached to.

Thoughts?

Isn't Wilber just referencing "Lila"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_(Hinduism )

Wilber's approach seems crude to me, and misses an important observation that has been made repeatedly: that we have some innate capability of seeing our place in the big picture. Wordsworth, for instance wrote of children having 'intimations of immortality'-- from personal experience. An experience I'm willing to bet has been shared by many here. But in our post-theistic culture, there's no place for that story in the prevailing mythos, so it's mostly ignored/forgotten/suppressed. Most of science, at the popular level, opts for the ever-smaller, more tightly limited picture, not the big one, and brushes such analomous experience aside as 'merely subjective'. Funny, the good part of orgasm is merely subjective, too, but I think that is less likely to be dismissed as uninteresting.

It's not that I think the theistic story is a better one; it's a matter of what level of magnification you're working with: at the micro-, we live on a flat earth, around which the sun and moon and stars orbit; mid-, we live on a spinning sphere, orbiting the sun, orbited by a moon; macro-, our entire galaxy is spinning through space on an unimaginable trajectory. Beginnings and ends [and hence, purpose] are arbitrarily assigned to a moebius loop of relativity.

I was talking to a friend about this this morning. When one is teaching, for example, one has to teach something - that is, come up with a technique, explanations, encouragements, etc. that a beginner or intermediate student can take and say "aha, this is what I should do" otherwise it's just baffling. Otherwise you might just sit there in confusion, not having any orientation as to what practice is about or why or how to try. But there comes a point when techniques and explanations are not relevant - when the student starts to experience this, the gradual collapsing of effort and explanation, and the way the process begins to teach itself, then the teaching doesn't need to be like that anymore. But when someone is trying to write or teach to a general audience, they generally have to assume "beginner" and go for outlining some kind of philosophy, practice and method, otherwise what's the point? So in that regard, all teachings are encouragements and nudges and intended to be helpful, but should not become something we cling to against our own personal experience.

(And if I'm babbling, please feel free to say so.)

"I have trouble accepting such a mechanistic, materialist explanation. I wonder what that says about me..." -Jake2

Believe it or not, I'm with you this one. I recognize it's easy to assume otherwise based one what I just wrote.

I'll make one of my philosophical assumptions clear: By and large, I consider myself a contextualist; more specifically, my deliberate choice of worldview is one of functional contextualism. This means that my assumed basic criteria for "truth" is not how well a description matches reality for its own sake. Rather, I attempt to apply the term "truth" to that which "works." Dividing the world up into mechanisms and things is done arbitrarily, and has no impact on my view that reality is inherently nondual. The arbitrary categorizations I accept are only for the purpose of "successful working."

So, the reason I think Wilber's descriptions are superfluous, for the most part, is because I don't see how it applies to successful working in my life, based on my own goals. But, Wilber's philosophy may very well be "true" for his own purposes, whatever they are. Perhaps his goal is to come up with a description of reality that feels good to him; that makes sense. If that's the case, then maybe his myth is a manifestation of successful working. For me, however, it doesn't cut the mustard.

Many scientifically-based explanations are more workable, but some are not. It all depends on what we're trying to accomplish.

(I hope that wasn't too much theory. I think it's applicable to our lives, though, in that it's good to notice what our assumptions are, so we can adjust them when needed to move toward successful working.)

Ona, you're not babbling at all. I think you're right on the money!

Ona, you're not babbling at all. I think you're right on the money!


-awouldbehipster

I just write shit off the top of my head, so I'm never sure. That's what sangha is for - to give you a whack if you are spouting nonsense.

Oh, dern-- you mean sangha isn't for giving me a whack AT 'spouting nonsense?' If not here, where?

Jackson,

That's an interesting philosophy. So then what's "true" could be entirely different for each person?

Yes, but only if they have different goals. In theory, two identical people, in identical contexts, with an identical goal, may find the same truth... but that isn't likely, now is it?

But putting it in that way needlessly complicates things. One aspect of functional contextualism is the integrated goal of prediction-and-influence, in the service of a specified goal. This tends to makes things a bit more broad. For, in a practical sense, we can determine - through experimentation - that there are practical truths that have tremendous precision, scope, and depth, when applied to large populations. If our goal is to simply describe, than "truth" is radically individualistic. But, if the goal is successful working through prediction-and-influence, "truth" (as successful working) is much more broad, and applicable to many.

In other words, when there are similarities in context (e.g. the basic processes of human language), there are similarities in the way to predict and influence certain events and functions by influencing (i.e. manipulating) variables within that context. But, the only reason for dividing reality into categories and processes is for the purpose of realizing a valued end (i.e. relief from suffering). The goal is always a priori, in that to evaluate the successful working of a goal requires yet another goal (i.e. the goal to successfully evaluate a goal).

That's what puts the "functional" in functional contextualism.

Meditation and awakening can be view in this way. The Buddha's teaching is basically constructed on the same assumptions. His goal (i.e. freedom from suffering) came prior to his quest. He participated in many processes and evaluated their results based on his primary goal. And, as the stories suggest, he eventually found a way to achieve his goal. And then came the goal to teach his path to others... and it goes on and on.

And now we're here, doing the same thing - or at least something similar

Jackson, this contextualism of which you speak reminds me of how I've come to view descriptions as well-- which I've been repeating ad nauseum lately it seems, so apologies!-- which is that descriptions have pragmatic or poetic meaning, and that's that, and when we take them as having "truth"-meaning, they become dogmatic. And these two types of meanings I distinguish for explanatory purposes only, seeing them actually as more of a yin/yang continuum.

So I see Wilber's story as having poetic meaning, which may well be useful to him as you say. Making it explicit that descriptions are descriptions and not the indescribable is helpful in these kinds of conversations, because it takes the pressure off which can arise in a conversation aimed at "Truth" with a capital T.

On another note, I think there is a dogma in (at least the popular understanding of) evolutionary science that traits in currently existent organisms must have had some survival value in the past, which Chris you were using to "explain" basic ignorance. I think this is a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory though (and I'm talking about conventional biological evolutionary theory here, to be explicit). It seems to me if we think this over carefully, it's more that traits in current organisms just didn't kill their ancestors. This seems like a pretty significant difference, because it leaves open the possibility that we have lots of traits which, arising more-or-less spontaneously (purposelessly, due to mutation in other words), have absolutely no survival value (yet). They have also not had negative-survival value (yet). They are just there. As environmental contexts change, they may take on different + or - survival value, but by definition, they arise spontaneously and just stick around until some circumstance arises in combination with which they suddenly have some +/- survival value.

@Kate: I think I hear you saying something important up thread, which you seem to be touching on as well Jackson, in terms of critiquing a dogmatic belief in "basic ignorance". I would express my sense of this by saying, from a phenomenological/existential perspective, "basic ignorance" seems to make sense to me only in the context of an equi-primordial basic awareness. Yes, we seem to have a nearly bottomless pre-reflective, already-engaged understanding of openness, interdependance, and impermanence which is already operative before we've developed enough as individuals to reflectively ask questions about our nature. To me the simplist, most existentially satisfying articulation of the "Path" I've seen yet is the one that frames it in terms of unearthing this implicit wisdom and learning to actualize it more and more consciously and explicitly. Insofar as Wilber's myth helps people with theistic assumptions to give shape to this intuition, it might be quite useful to them! For me, the issue becomes moot the more explicit that implicit wisdom becomes, as there is less and less temptation to fabricate a model to 'explain' my situation in a thorough way, and the activity of description-creating becomes more playful and communicatively oriented.

Jake, great points!

On Evolution, I think I have similar views. From what I understand, the way the human brain develops is largely dependent on experience. We can't really separate biological evolution from cultural/environmental evolution. Culture is dependent on the organism, but the manifestation of the organism-in-context is dependent upon culture and experience in general. I would argue that separating the two is sometimes functional, sometimes not. But in the grand scheme of things, we can never truly say that a particular phenomenon is due to "just" one or the other.

The good news is that understanding things in this way could vastly improve our research paradigms. Rather than looking for special purpose neural mechanisms, we could look instead for those biological factors which, when functioning properly, allow such "mechanisms" to arise through experience. The capacities may be somewhat innate, but the mechanisms themselves are much more complex. That's my view, anyway.

Good talk!