The Ontological War

I’m not much of a fan of devoting one’s life to changing “the world,” for several reasons.

First of all, focusing mainly on the world can be an easy out. It’s much easier to think “My life would be great if only the world would change into what I think it should be” or “My life would be great if only everyone else would change into the kind of person I think they should be.” Complaining with all of one’s friends about how much trouble those other people cause is much easier than tossing and turning alone in bed at 3 AM, struggling to become a better person by confronting who one truly is or who one fears one might truly be.

The world unquestionably has many, many problems, but it is a mistake to think the world is THE problem and not A problem. The world is big, it’s noisy, and it can be amusing, and so for too many people the world receives their full and life-long attention, to the exclusion of almost everything internal ontologically. The main mistake with doing this is that one starts to think about the world in the same way the residents in Munchkin Land thought about the Wizard of Oz. The world/Wizard are both big, they can be thunderous, and they can seem all-powerful, but in both cases it is actually the hidden person behind the curtain—ontologically, it is our innermost self that we all conceal within us—who is pulling the levers that control the world. But by devoting all of our time outward to the world, we make ourselves incapable of seeing the part of the world that is an illusion, and by doing this we end up living our lives tinkering with illusion.

The world does of course need to be changed. Many people complain about it more than I do, but I’m fairly certain that I have a lower opinion of it than most people. Most of the statements critical of the world are mostly if not entirely concerned with the content of the world, but it is the structure of the world that is the real source of problems. By focusing just on the world, we inevitably limit ourselves to focusing on its content, thereby blinding ourselves to what really needs to be changed.

Still another problem with concentrating on the world is that even if we do change it, by looking outside of ourselves for the answer, we will end up making a new world that will be in keeping with our present self’s understanding of life and existence. This means that for those few who are aware of or are conscious of their innermost self, the newly changed world will have a strong “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” component to it. The changed world will be better, but it will have few of the qualities that those who are insightful or sensitive ontologically know are the most important.

BTW, just so that I’m not misunderstood: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to change the world. All I’m saying is that the most obvious and easiest ways of achieving a fundamental change are not the best strategy for bringing that change about.