A Profound Mistrust

I have a profound mistrust of all obligatory answers.

- Thomas Merton, Contemplation In a World of Action

The greatest irony of our time is the intense effort being exerted to come up with clear answers to neat theoretical questions. (And lest we misunderstand, yes even the newest social addictions that involve rejecting all social structures are themselves highly structured - observable, repeatable, and measurable, and therefore predictable.) When it comes to human behaviour there is always a gap between expressed aims and concrete achievements. Modern life is more highly fictionalized than ever; we grapple in vain to come to our senses. And to think that we may better come to understand it by simply pulling up the shade on our windows and looking outside, or by turning on the news, or by perusing one's social apps is to be deluded from the start. The world as a pure object is something that does not exist. No human exists for a reality that is somehow outside of themselves; life is not a firm and objective structure that has to be accepted on its own terms. The world has no terms. It dictates nothing. The world is not something fully independent of each one of us. What we perceive is always an extension and projection of our lives. It is up to us to attend to this respectfully and attentively. Measuring and observing that which is outside of us as that which is 'real' is not the question. But the way that we find the real world is profoundly grounded in our own selves and their relative social healthiness. Contemplative prayer is a great step in coming to one's senses in the midst of this and finds some of its earliest expression in the primitive Hebrew narratives in scripture.