Some people ask me how it is possible to mix subjects as I do, even within one and the same article; how I personally can have a command of so many disparate disciplines.
Borderlines between different disciplines are abstractions existing only in the human mind and that they have no correspondence with reality. They are a creation of a mind not matching reality in capacity which has to limit itself in order not to get lost in the chaotic universe. That's why we have classification: a random system to organise material so it can be handled by the limited mind. There is only knowledge, and that encompasses all knowledge. Or say that there is one reality. Every attempt to divide or classify it or its parts is fictitious, in the sense that it takes place only within ourselves, in an imagined model of reality. But when, in our minds, the model replaces what it models, then we have gone astray.
Classifications can be a help for limited purposes, but when they block the mind's movements they have become a burden, a hindrance for understanding and for the development of knowledge. They should be seen as a tool, to be used when it is advantageous and discarded when it is not.
Split vision, the ability to see different perspectives, was common during the Renaissance. Since then it has been gradually lost. The so-called enlightenment paved the way for narrow experts whose sight today has been refined into veritable tunnel vision. This is one of the great diseases of our times.
As for myself, I long ago began trying to cease dividing reality. Except for limited and specific uses, mainly pedagogic, or for specific research, I try to banish such borderlines from my mind: between disciplines, between art and science. Everything is part of the same whole and everything is interconnected. Nothing can be fully understood from a one-disciplinary point of view.
Even if my articles are seemingly disparate, there is a connection; they are just different facets of something whole.
Another abomination, related to obsessive classification, is the compulsion to label everything and everyone. Labelling people is especially destructive and limiting, labelling yourself is the worst of all. If you label yourself, you limit and diminish yourself, because you will stay within the borderlines of that label. Indeed, crossing that borderline requires an Herculean effort, because your mind doesn't want you to cross it. Still it exists only there, only in your mind; you have just to stop believing in it, and presto, it is gone. The most powerful borders of our lives are like that, they are self-imposed in the mind without any correspondence to reality.
Most people are rigidly controlled by labels. Professional labels, for instance; if you are a lawyer, engineer, physician, or something else very clearly defined, you are that and nothing else. People expect that from you and you probably expect that from yourself as well. You know that, but nothing else.
This is pure nonsense, you can learn a lot of things about a wide variety of subjects, and you can have several professions or occupations, if you just remove the limits in your mind that tell you to stay within certain borders.
This topic is also related to what I wrote in a previous article, “The Strength of Being an Outsider (by choice) “ and how one should not let others define one's identity. Such an identity is often shaped by labels, such as belonging to this or that generation or having this or that nationality.
Finally, two quotes. First some words by Søren Kierkegaard:
“Once you label me, you negate me.”
Last, but not least, Persian poet Rumi (1207–1273):
"If you label me and define me you will starve yourself of yourself, nail me down in a box with cold words and that box will be your coffin because I don't know who I am. I am your own voice echoing off the walls of God."
Rumi was a Sufi mystic. It requires some extra time and effort to truly understand what he says with these lines.
Related articles:
Beware of Being Normal, it can Be Worse than You Think!
Acquiring Knowledge: Experience and Reading
Self-Knowledge & The Power Within
Either Health Freedom or Slavery - A Little of Each is not Possible
Nation & State, Art & Culture; How confusion serves a purpose
Old-Fashioned or Modern? Don't Care about Zeitgeist, Care about Quality
Copyright © 2012, 2021 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.
My articles about Brain, Mind & Consciousness can be found here, about Philosophy here, and about Psychology here.
You find all my articles on Read.Cash, sorted by topic, here.
Also, please join my community: Mind, Perception & Thought (c7a5).
Brilliant! This is a different view of classification talking more of personal labelling. Truth is: even if we decide to not label ourselves, others will do it for us. And the mind is tricky, it sometimes start believing things just because it is hearing it time and again.