Every conclusion is a gross simplification of the truth, of the reality. Most of life involves simplification. The mind cannot compute reality “as it is. “
The first layer of simplification happens with our senses, when it only selects certain parts of reality and then represents those as if its the whole picture. Both the selection is limiting, and the eventual representation or interpretation is limiting of “what is.”
The whole idea of conceptualizing, the whole mind’s effort is a limiting thing. It’s a little bit like the World Cup Rugby which just finished. And any of those tournaments, the Olympics, any competition, even in business, there are rules. And this defines a playing field in a game where there’s winners and losers.
Now you crown the “World Cup rugby champion” at the end of it. But there’s really no such thing because that was just a game. No matter how complicated the rules are, at the end of the day, you won one game. And now you claim that you are champion. You simplify the rules. You simplify the rules of life.
Because the truth is if the same game happened the next day or a week later, the result could be different. And in the case of two teams tightly matched, it’s almost certainly going to be different. So now we walk around saying “this is the winner.” But that is just a way of framing reality to make it easy.
And so that exact thing is absolutely true with every thought you think. And every idea you have. Every conclusion is a gross simplification of the truth, of the reality. So that it’s navigable. So that it is at least approachable. And it’s a rough approximation of what is really going on.
And what do we do with all this? We can say “so what?” You can do that with it.
But we can also recognize that there’s something we can know about the damn thing (reality): It’s not in any way pointing to what is true. It isn’t. And the absolute arrogance or the… I don’t really want to call it arrogance although it can be seen as arrogance. The delusion, the huge, gargantuan, epic, consequential mistake made by the thinking mind is to… In itself we hear it say, “I am it. I am this reality that I can only at best represent.” “You think therefore you are,” said Descartes.
Now you have a problem. Actually now you have hell, to be perfectly blunt about it. Because now there’s this thing that thinks it knows that it has the knowledge between good and evil. And it has no such abilities. It has knowledge of good and evil the way it chooses to see the world. The way it has reduced it, it can come up with ideas and concepts of right and wrong stories, if you like. But none of them are actually true. None of them plumb to the depths.
So that’s the simple story here, isn’t it?