Me too. I too use analogies as "a finger pointing at the moon," not at all purported to be the moon itself. — ENOAH
Analogies are like the clay of a vase, and words are its particular tall vase shape.
things can be constructed out of Matter, but as constructed "things" besides the matter they are made out of--to which their form is irrelevant; like a snowdrift wouldn't "think" itself anything apart from snow--they are empty of Reality, Being, what some want to call essence or substance. They are becoming, never present, never (contra Dasein) there. — ENOAH
I can tell you are in the same place as me. This is a deep corner of the cave where only the slightest hint of light is all you need to make a point.
But what I see here retains the presence of essence, as much and as often as it does becoming. I see both becoming and things becoming the same and only find illusion where one or the other is missing or overly reified.
We always need both to speak at all. Speaking is real, so no the becoming and essence is real.
They are becoming, incessantly and only and necessarily being constructed, not Real Being, like a beavers dam apart from the trees and grasses, fictional. — ENOAH
I see clearly that it doesn’t matter what the following words from your quote actually mean, because at the same time, they are present in every sentence we speak. You said “They” and you said “constructed” and you even said “not real being.”
These are assertions of essence, not becoming. If all essence was not real, how is it we never say even “becoming” without fixing a distinct essence that makes becoming different from “not real being”? We need a distinction to hold in order to reflect the becoming of it. Essences become so they change; but I’ve already taken “essences” and “they” just as for granted as I’ve taken the “becoming” and “change” for granted in this sentence.
though Fictional, they serve a function. In fact all of our joy and suffering is constructed out of or, at the very least, sifted through the emptiness. It exists, alright. But it is not Real. — ENOAH
See this is why I think we are in the exact same place looking in the exact same direction. You say “emptiness” and balance “suffering” against “joy”.
And you say “It exists alright.” I would say these things about becoming.
We all are talking about the idea of “self” just like the idea of “joy” and some of us are saying how because these are constructed mental things they are not thing (real being) and are illusion.
This is a broader view - not just “self” but all mental fabrications.
But I don’t see as much difference between what you call the illusion of self or “joy” all sifted through emptiness, as what I call just an idea. The idea part is where the essence is found. But the idea now exists just like wherever it came from exists.
Let me use an analogy. A squirrel finds a hole in a tree and builds a burrow. A tulip stem reaches through springtime up from the dirt and builds a first flower. A man finds wood and builds a house. The man also sees the squirrel and sees his house and builds the idea “dwelling place”. This is an idea. Like the burrow, and the flower, “dwelling place” is just what the man produces, and once produced it exists and is as real as the burrow, or the house or the flower.
though Fictional, they serve a function. — ENOAH
The only way an idea would serve a function, a use, is by being in the real world. The only use, the only being of an idea is as it exists between two people (or as it exists to oneself in reflection).
Another analogy. I say to my son, “go get me four apples at the store.” “Four apples” is as illusory as the “self” as I think you see human idea-ing, but nevertheless “four apples” can serve a function. My son goes to the store and while he is there my idea of “four apples” as it is in my head is nowhere near the store - it can remain only in my head and an illusion to the world. But then my son gives my idea “four apples” meaning while my son is at the store. He sees the essence of “four” and the essence of “apples” in his head and picks out 4 apples and buys them. When he returns and gives me what was just an idea in my head, I see that my illusion (in your vernacular), or my idea (in my more neutral vernacular) has been passed through my son, to the store and back into my hands. “Four apples” an essence, works, serves a function, not only because of the becoming of apples to my hand (the real world), but now, through my son, because of the becoming of ideas such as “four” and “apples” in my son’s head (now back in my hand and the same real world).
We can’t see becoming unless we simultaneously see essences, or beings, that come to be, that become.
Applying this to the idea of “self” and you can take out my son and do it all in your own head, for your self, to your self. It doesn’t mean it isn’t real, it just means that through our minds we produce words pointing to ideas like plants produce flowers and squirrels produce burrows. These are all things in the becoming of things.
This conversation works because of becoming AND because of the becoming of things. We need both to have either. The becoming of an idea is just the becoming of a thing that only other minds can sense, can use. The squirrel might recognize the flower just as the man might recognize the burrow, but when it comes to ideas, which like the burrow and the flower is the production of some thing, unlike the other things, ideas exist only in minds, to oneself, or to each other, so though the squirrel might see my house or the flower produced, it will never see the “dwelling place” or other ideas like “real being” or “illusion”. Just because the squirrel can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t really exist.
None of that need be essentially illusion. We can just see ideas for how they are - human tools, but real as they are useful. We can have ideas that are illusions. Just like we can be hallucinating a squirrel. But while we have an idea, be it of real being or of nothing real, the idea itself still exists - the function of thinking is itself still real. And this is an essential quality to all thinking. This makes it difficult to talk about the idea of “self”. But the idea is not rendered indistinguishable from all else. It has essential differences that keep it distinct. “Four apples” is not “tulip flower” is not “joy” and they remain distinct to the extent they can be distinguished from “illusion”.
because it is functional--our joy and our suffering (empty signifiers coding unnamable feelings, really)--we have adapted this powerful real feeling which is triggered by the code, and which the Signifier world knows as "attachment," to the Signifier world, the beaver's dam! The Fiction. That's the "illusion" — ENOAH
“Signifier world” must be fixed and posited for you to say “attachment” and then join these two by an act of signifying, of becoming. You have to keep positing worlds to draw any distinctions between illusory worlds and real worlds.
In the end, if all we are doing and saying is trading in illusions, we never say anything, we never communicate, we never connect with another mind, two minds joined by an idea, like two squirrels burrowing in the same tree.
The idea that because our ideas as mere copies of the world, constructions superimposed by minding “things”, just like my sense impression of the squirrel is never the squirrel-in-itself I still sense something real that I call a “squirrel; none of this makes those ideas and impressions not exist, not real, not something in-itself too.
We need essences in the becoming to have becoming of essences. (But this can lead to the facade where only the fixed idea is real). Just like we need becoming of essences to call essence illusion and have only the facade of becoming as real.
If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? — Patterner
Cuts both ways, for and against becoming (no essence) only, or essence (illusion /no becoming) only. If it functions, like a squirrel burrowing, like a conversation exchanging essences in minds, then call it real being or illusion, what difference is that to the fact of the conversation? I see this as a demonstration or experience of both becoming and fixed essences. At every turn, in every sentence we speak or experience we have or in every becoming moment.
A virtual reality headset is the same thing as eyes and ears. Sense perception builds a world for us just the same. That’s why we need ideas and essences to connect minds through this world.
In an odd way, it is easier to see the whole “real world” as an illusion before seeing the self that perceives this world as an illusion.