Academia vs. Life

What I am pointing to here is the difference between ‘academia’ and ‘life’. From the moment we are born we are ‘thrust’ into the subject/object world. Our parents, their parents, their parents, and their parents have expressed their be-ing as if who they are is a subject over against an object. As we go through school, teachers reinforce the subject/object dichotomy and add enough mass to it that it becomes an unmovable object which is over against us (the subject). Which succeeds in further convincing us that the subject/object dichotomy is a ‘fact’. Me, you, my physicality over against your different physicality, over against the physicality of cars, buses, trucks, and planes. We define ourselves with ‘measurability’. Measurability is a ‘fact’ and a ‘fact’ is something that is hardly ever questioned.

I say that who we are is the ‘conversation’ we have from the beginning to the end of our lives and that this is the conversation Heidegger is having. As he says “be-ing is an issue” for us. We live our life ‘having an inkling’ of who we are yet there is this ‘other dialog’ we are having that is supported by the world we live in. We use the world’s measurability to define who we are because people have convinced themselves that they need some ‘thing’ to hold on to.

We ‘distract’ ourselves from Heidegger’s conversation (which is attempting to dis-entangle us from the ‘world’). We distract ourselves because like Heidegger said “be-ing is an issue for us” and that is the conversation we want to have. Except as part of our be-ing we get anxious in the face of be-ing and we scamper back to the safety of the measurable world.

The 'abyss' lies between the inauthentic expression of be-ing as a 'thing' (subject/object world) and the authentic expression of be-ing. It requires a 'leap' of faith from the subject/objectness into 'be-ing' who you are. Who you are resides in the 'measurable world' but who you are is not measurable and who you are shouldn't be held to the measurable world's standard.

When you say “My finger” you are making 2 clear distinctions 1) “My” and 2) “finger” the “finger” is capable of being measured and the “My” isn’t. The “My” is who you are and the “finger” isn’t. The interesting thing about the ‘leap’ is this. You can’t make it happen and you can’t will it to happen. I read “Being & Time” 70+ times trying to make it happen not knowing what it was that I was trying to make happen. You can see the difficulty of trying to explain. Anyhow, one day I woke up and I just knew that I had made the ‘leap’. Everything I have read in the past comes to me in little snippets and I understand now because I am not trying to “fit’ it into the subject/object world.

Once you have made the ‘leap’ you know if the person you are listening to has made the leap and if they know what they are talking about. Having made the ‘leap’ I can tell you that there is no more speculation about all of this. Funny thing I just noticed is that telling someone who hasn’t made the leap all this just adds a whole lot of not understanding to their ‘fire’. It took 15 years and 70 readings of “Being and Time” and “History of the Concept of Time” for something inside of me to ‘click’. It wasn’t what I was reading; it wasn’t Martin Heidegger’s ‘philosophy” or Kant’s, or Descartes’, or anybody else’s. Just in an instant I knew. What’s more important is that I knew I knew.
Anything short of the ‘leap’ is inaccurate speculation, it is not knowing, no matter how good you are at sprucing it up and selling it. Please don’t ask me to try and prove this to you. I couldn’t do that If I had another 62 years on the planet.

One last little thing I found interesting. Look up ‘confusion’ in the dictionary. Go the extra step and look up ‘con’ and then look up ‘fusion’. “Con” adj. is the argument against something. “Fusion” is the act or process of fusing, becoming one. So, isn’t ‘confusion’ the argument against you becoming one with your self?