mccordreport1

Author's Note	Labor Day
Author's Note: Intellectual and moral subtlety is required to arrest the current war of fundamentalists versus fundamentalists. A condensed synopsis follows of Platonic foundations for realizing a brave new civilization at peace.

SCIENTIFIC SYNOPSIS

I have discovered practical applications for Plato's Riddle of the Cave (Book 7 REPUBLIC). Obviously we humans are stuck in that basement--of the mind--by preoccupation with the definition of words. They very roughly approximate reality "outside" the cave: encompassing universal truths which can actually be seen, felt and lived out.

These truths are (archetypally) obvious--beyond the screen of choppy words used in attempts to define them--as a matter of simple common sense. Yet more dramatically, thinking about reality tends to dissolve as a distinct activity and merge into enlightened experience of reality.

Diagram of Plato's Scenario Copyright JimMcCord.com
Diagram of Plato's Scenario
Author's Art: © Jim McCord

The verbal distraction keeping folks confined evidently deploys our "lower" mental faculties. These are identified in Plato's accompanying Riddle of the Line (introduced at the close of Book 6). He called them "conjecture and belief."

All our verbal speculations about external reality tend to drown out the natural functions of "higher" mental faculties. Plato called these "reason and understanding:" inborn common sense in short.

This natural savvy potentially enables aspiring humans to look right-at reality--a "neglected beauty of the obvious"--in order to expand upon our eons-old verbal education. It has shown us what to look for outside the cave of definitions; once we learn to live the unfolding panorama.

That in gist is one lesson from Plato's symbolic story (Book 7) about the escape of any "fugitive" from the cave of childhood. Natural growth toward the intuitions of adulthood is tempered though by harsh experience.

This lesson was introduced in my youth by vanished thinkers of the Ozarks. They had retained from robust frontier days--in relative isolation among backwood hills--a tough-minded style of thinking realistically (for sheer survival in accordance with harsh demands of nature).

To date the lesson is developing that too many words talk modern Americans into general confusion about reality. We have consequently lost our roots; as books and rhetoric sweep our attention into "trees" of verbal preoccupation obscuring the primeval "forest" all around.

Waiting for the Seventh Man
(Recurring dream of a peaceful warrior friend)
Author's Art: © Jim McCord

Of course frontier folks were more or less confused too by definitions: notably of overloaded words like "God" and "evil." Yet more earthy human brethren--mainly native Americans--are helping me transcend such verbal confusion. This whole website records accordingly a personal effort to de-verbalize cognition sufficiently for activating natural sources of common sense latent in the human mind.

The effort is beginning to accommodate holistic thought. It entails usage of all our nervous equipment--including the senses--operating in "gestault" tandem to generate those promised intuitions of adulthood. (Combining a hard head and soft heart.)

Previous human preoccupation with the portion of inborn mental equipment that talks too much--to oneself and others--has kept us imprisoned in the "basement" of the mind which is Plato's Cave. (We student-captives have gotten addicted to the vociferous "left-brain.")

When one deliberately suspends the verbalizing habit though--with natural meditation--a rather magical transformation transpires: the rest of the mind kicks in with surprising new insights. As advised by the ancient Book of Psalms: "Be still and know . . ."