In the driver’s seat but parked on the beach front, watching the human traffic go by with their wheels, what am I thinking about? That I am safe from those who require an opinion of me but don’t want my opinion.
Opinions are everywhere, and knowledge is rarely found.
Why?
Something has happened to the general human cognition. It now considered impolite to challenge prejudice. One is judged on one’s attitudes, as to be expected, but now there is no room for explaining attitudes, the force of one’s beliefs. The only improvement required is to admit that I am wrong whether I believe that or not. I am merely asked to bow my head to a particular set of values but I’m expected to speak my opinion as long as it is in the appropriate deferring manner. Nothing controversial. My mind is expected to exclude informed opinions via education and include societal expectations but only interpreted by the governing class.
And I cannot become a member of the governing class because the state of affairs begins at the first sentence of the above paragraph. And thus a return to dysfunctional loop in cognition.
From Dr Neil Peach:
Please consider the Plane of Immanence [a metaphysical concept in the work of Deleuze and Guattari]. It’s not a place, but an image of thought—a pre-philosophical field of concepts that establishes what counts as real, thinkable, and relevant…………Imagine the Plane of Immanence as the unwritten contract or conceptual landscape upon which all thinking occurs. It is the space of all possible creations, the virtual field that all concepts must cut out and occupy. It is Immanent because everything on it is on the same single level of existence; there is no transcendent God or ultimate authority above it judging its content. It determines what problems are worth posing and what concepts are needed to solve them.
If/when you are confronted with the “dysfunctional loop in cognition,” it’s because your Plane of Immanence has been colonized by doxa (opinion/common sense) and the “governing class” (State Science). I have come to use the Plane of Immanence as a strategic way to avoid the “conflict” by changing the entire conceptual landscape of a debate or an event.
I find at times that it feels like I am being forced [by circumstances] to argue based on the rules and prejudices of the Other’s Plane. I then try to focus on my own values and informed beliefs so as to cut out my own plane. This is my zone of creation, where the common opinions of the other are simply irrelevant. I try to keep in mind that opinion is shallow, seeking mutual agreement (consensus). Philosophy’s work [our work] is not representing the world but creating concepts that run through it.
For me this is the ultimate expression of “thoughtful care”—caring for the integrity and complexity of one’s thought by building a protected conceptual environment in which it can flourish. This comes from Bernard Stiegler.
My resilience depends on this process.
This may [or may not ] strike a chord with your way.
Neville: Yes, it does.
Featured Image: Having conversations…
Neville Buch
Latest posts by Neville Buch (see all)
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