Chapter 8.                     Part C 

All basic concepts are illusions in the sense that they morph constantly into and out of one another. Even trees aren't trees; some are giant bamboo, some are bushes grown big, some are former trees in various stages of decay, and some are potential trees (e.g. acorns). 

                    

                                                Dingo (wild dog of Australia) 

     

Dingoes that kill human children are vicious brutes; dingoes being killed by human children are pathetic victims. Nature is beautiful or horrible depending on what angle it is perceived from. Light is a particle, not a wave; light is a wave, not a particle. Criminals aren't always criminals; if they make war on another ethnic group and lose, they are terrorists, the worst of criminals; if they win, they are freedom fighters, the best of heroes.

Justices mete out injustice. Teachers stupefy.  Scientists tell lies. Physicians sicken. Not always, of course. Not even mostly. But too often for us ever to get smug about our terms. Life is complex and constantly changing. The distinctions that we draw to try to justify our versions of reality get subtler and subtler, but they are never subtle enough to be considered complete. Real life keeps cropping up with situations that leave us and our thinking systems stranded in bafflement and ambivalence. Therefore, we learn, we improvise, we evolve.

There is a reality, material, sustained, and independent of whether I am perceiving it or not. It will go on after I am gone. I am confident of that – at the 99.99 percent level. But it is too fluid and dynamic for our minds ever to get a 100% reliable handle on it, i.e. a perfect program for responding effectively to it. Individuals, families, gurus, philosophers, businessmen, and politicians, in varying ways, appear to get handles on reality for a while, but they all prove inadequate over the long haul. Things, especially humanly-made systems of ideas, fall apart.