While the mathematicians and the philosophers assemble the taxonomy, the sufi, the mystic, discovers the territory.
Only through the suspension of disbelief do we exceed the parameters of our perception.
Otherwise, what is there but perception?
If the logical positivists had their way, we would simply oblige, line up like linked chatter, chattel slaves to the proud vagaries of reason.
In the end, those who defy vision are the ones who define vision.
However, the sufi mind must take us into the future, not the past.
And that is one of the dangers of mysticism sans reason.
The reasonable mind does tend towards understanding as part of acceptance, suspending disbelief in the hopes of advancing understanding. Rather than denying reality for a manufactured sentimentality.
Look at the extremists on all sides - they are clinging to a past shielded from the brutality of that world, generally by a sense of privilige, having avoided the pain and suffering of simply trying to exist, those whose existential angst consists of trying to get enough to eat for the day. Or, they function from a sense of fear on the flip side of that vulgar Marxist equation.
This is the world to avoid slipping into. Those who would fulfill armageddon out of a sense of obligation to prophecies told from age to age.
The temple being rebuilt need not consist of destruction and desolation, but a firmer acceptance of the neighbor being implicit in simply being at all.
We may not agree with one another. We may express our world views differently.
But accepting people where they are, attempting to colonize with ideas rather than exploitation or outright imperialism, or terrorism, is part of growing up human.
I think trade is one of the ways we express that deep appreciation for difference. The more transparent those markets, fully and completely transparent, so that one understands maximally both the rewards and consequences of consumption, the better. It avoids the whole issue of manufactured scarcity when you can know what there is and what value it has to you clearly.
You can't trick people then - marketing becomes persuasion, but not so blatant a pandering to parts of the brain incapable of reason.
i
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