The Way Things Are Not The short piece The Way Things Are has absolutely nothing

to say about the way things are in the world, only that given that there is world of existing things, words and beings within which of course also the writer and all possible readers of the words - this is what follows logically. In fact, it forms part of a demonstration that the things and beings of the world are not fundamental to or constitutive of it, but products, and that words are temporary tools of communication. There are two major obstacles in the way of coming to terms with these insights, which are, at the same time, two of the most persistent prejudices of society. The first, that individual human beings have a power that transcends the material events within which they live, that they are an external or first cause. The second, that in order to know anything at all we must also know why and how we know, that the manner by which we have come to know something must also be known before we can be sure that what we think we know counts as authentic knowledge. The use of natural reason in the face of the prejudices of society results more often in heat than light. Suffice it to affirm though that although individual beings are complete participants in material events, they are not the external cause of events. Furthermore, questions about the properties and qualities of knowledge are properly of exactly the same order as questions of knowledge. Where the knowledge under production is of the way things are, questions will follow on from one another organically, and arise during the process in a way that is entirely determined by the parameters of the process itself. Any methodological principles associated with coming to know the way things are will meld into a general ethics of being alive, of participating in material events, and becoming conscious of the diversity and complexity of things - a simple matter of organising curiosity and keeping careful records so as to be able to see a bigger picture and arrive at a more general understanding. Apart from this there is not much that can be said specifically in advance, no explicit set of procedures or rules that will anticipate every configuration of events, or of the way things might become - only a willingness to engage honestly with the way things are. If, on the other hand, the knowledge under production is technical, dedicated to the construction and design of specific objects or things - whether these be commodities, services, products, moral injunctions, social policy documents, state legislation, financial instruments - there is a greater need for

Duncan Spence 2013

methodological consistency. Here though the knowledge in question is in fact congruent with social reality. Which means that if it be demanded that there ought to be a distinction between knowledge and meta-knowledge, and that questions about the properties of knowledge be determined in advance by abstract protocols, then this is a reflection of the predominant methodological foresight employed by governments, academic institutions and other recognised research facilities, whereby the validity, legitimacy and authenticity of knowledge is controlled by professional and methodological procedures, specifically designed to exclude both nonhierarchical ways of understanding, or of coming to know the way things are, and also all knowledge that falls outside its criteria of authenticity, justification and truth. Apart from its crucial function in the processes of production of objects and beings, the knowledge hereby reproduced is intended to be able reliably to represent to society as a whole a general depiction of the way things are, and furthermore, by dint of the authenticating powers of meta-knowledge, to provide a general method by which it is possible to weigh up evidence in such a way as to outline what the most likely state of affairs might be. For society it is to this extent useful, but this is a knowledge that is disconnected from reality in two ways: firstly it says only that under certain circumstances particular outcomes have certain probabilities of taking place. Observations are not made of the actual turn of events, rather calculations are made on the basis of measurements of acceptable variables which represent the assumed processes under investigation, predictions are based not on the actual processes at work at any particular moment, but on what is statistically likely given that this event can be assumed to be the same as others like it; secondly, it places itself at a great distance from events and does not participate in the way things are - quite explicitly and deliberately - according to the presumption, true knowledge can only be assured by objectively observing rather than by becoming involved. Ordinary, natural, common sense knowledge, on the other hand, unimpeded by the hierarchies and exclusions of formalism, reductionism and the exigencies of societys prejudices, can only exist by virtue of becoming involved in events, by complete immersion in the way things are. It might be tempting then to conclude that society is simply a reflection of the way things are not. From which it perhaps follows that in order to find out what is going on, it might be best to pay attention not to what is going on in society, but what it portrays to be not going on, on the way things are not.

Duncan Spence 2013