The Way Things Are The way things are in the world is what it is.

That there are many beings alive in the world, each with a unique perspective of the way things are, is simply one characteristic of the way things are, and neither nullifies the fact that the way things are is what it is, nor does it render nugatory the effort to apprehend the way things are for what they are. For not only is each being in the world to the endowed general with perceptual capacities, of power, specifically and to the tuned configurations

fluctuations of energy that are unique to its place in the world, these are also a kind of discipline by which the way things are is made apparent. There will therefore be moments when individual beings grasp the way things are, for what they are, and there will be moments when individual beings are able to articulate this in such a way that other beings are then also able to grasp it. It also follows that general ideas held by a large number, or by a majority of individuals within a group of beings, about how the way things are, are not necessarily any kind of reflection, representation or simulation of the way things are, but will more substantially articulate the way things should be, on the basis of local assumptions, values, conventions, interests and so forth, to that group of beings. The perspective of a group is, and remains, a perspective - irrespective of the number of beings who share it. Sometimes the way things are is quite straightforward, blindingly obvious and easy to articulate, but sometimes things are complicated and can only be described with reference to complex ideas and principles - like the thought expressed in this short paragraph of text and no amount of simplistic morality or reductive rationality will ever change this. Expecting that the way things are will be always and everywhere understandable using reductive rationality appropriate and this simplistic may seem morality to be will however always pragmatically

already leave something beyond the scope of knowledge. It will never contribute in any way to a general understanding of the way things are, but will rather lay down the foundations of a social apparatus, a collection of habitual practices, ways of

Duncan Spence 2012

experiencing and patterns of thinking, that will systematically obscure the truth in favour of what is acceptable to those powers whose interests are served by requiring that everything - complex or straightforward be understood by using only simplistic morality and reductive rationality. Such powers will tend moreover to regard as deviant any kind of intelligence that works to make the way things are apparent for what they are - for whatever reason. Consequently, they will not be able to learn that they employ a morality that is simplistic, nor a rationality that is reductive. infinite They will not come from to understand limits that their by own the perspective is one of many, but will remain trapped inside an dialectic formed the created particular simplistic and reductive forces at work. And they will undoubtedly make efforts to impose this dialectic on the infinite diversity of things, completely reckless to the actual stuff of creation and refusing to participate in the way things are. That there are, within the infinite diversity of things, things called living beings, each with a unique perspective on the way things are, means neither that the perspective of beings is in any way fundamental, nor that beings, or being as such, are the primary categories of the way things are. The stuff of creation is not in any case a plurality of things whether these be inanimate objects or living beings - but an absolute infinitude of powers and energies, by means of which the worlds of things and beings are created, produced and made apparent, and the fluctuations and configurations catastrophe processes and of which move eternally returning that within to must any be cycles of equilibrium, and never previously examined,

existing state, place, point or event. In general therefore it is of creation production analysed and dismantled in order for the way things are to be made apparent. Not arrangements of objects, not the perspectives or characteristics of beings, not any general set of principles either moral or rational - but the actual events and activities that have taken place in order for the way things are to have become as it is. There is absolutely nothing mysterious about this. It is just the way things are. Duncan Spence 2012