https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wfjV5vL8bkE
I’ll start with the definition of this word, this word, phainisthai, is the root word of phenomena, phenomenon. And phenomena are the things that appear to you, and phainisthai means to shine forth. And the phenomenologists who were interested in the shining forth of things made the presumption that the things that manifested themselves to you as most meaningful were the most real things. And I think you can make a strong case that that’s actually how your brain is wired, because your brain is wired to react to things that have meaning before they construct the perceptions that you think of as objects. And the reason for that is because the meaning of things is more real, in some sense, but more important than the view of things as objects. And so, for example, a famous philosopher, psychologist of vision, said that when you approach a cliff, you don’t see a cliff, you see a falling-off place. It isn’t that it’s an object, cliff, to which you attribute the meaning of falling-off place to. It’s the falling-off-place perception comes first, and the abstraction of the objective cliff, if it ever happens at all, comes much later, much later conceptually, because even babies can detect cliffs, and much later historically. Poets have noticed this phenomena, shining forth reality, and they’ve often associated it with childhood, and I think there’s good reasons for that. I think your brain is not so much of an inhibitory structure when you’re a child, before it’s fully developed. And so there’s neurological reasons for noting it, but there’s also reasons that stem from the level of lived experience. You can tell when you’re around children that they’re open to things in a way that adults aren’t. They’re wide-eyed with wonder. And adults like being around children for that reason, because although the child takes an awful lot of care, and is a terrifying object in some ways to behold if you have a relationship with the child, because they’re so vulnerable, part of the way they pay you back is they open up your eyes, your eyes that have been closed by your experience, and that have learned to shield out the things that shine forth. And when you have a child, you can look through the child’s eyes again, and to me it’s like they’re on fire, in a sense. They’re like a candle or something that’s burning brightly. And I think that’s also partly because we actually don’t screen out fire. We actually see fire, and that’s why we can’t not look at it when it’s around. I think the same thing happens when you’re in love with someone, if it’s genuine love, because genuine love gives you a hint of what could be in the future if you could just set yourself right. You get a glimpse of what could be in the future if you fall in love with someone. You don’t get that without work, but you get a glimpse of it, and I think it’s because when you fall in love, and I believe this is likely a biochemical transformation, is the perceptual structures that normally stop you from seeing people, because you really don’t see people, you just see shadows, the barriers are lifted temporarily, and what’s really there shines through, and it’s overwhelming. But to stay in that state, well, it requires a tremendous amount of moral effort, is really the right way of thinking about it. Wordsworth said about children, There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth, and every common sight, to me did seem apparelled in celestial light. The glory and the freshness of a dream, it is not now as it hath been of yore, turn where soever I may, by night or day, the things which I have seen, I now can see no more. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own, yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, and even with something of a mother’s mind, and no unworthy aim, the homely nurse doth all she can to make her foster child her inmate, man forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he came. And what Wordsworth means by this is that as you develop as a competent adult, which is precisely the direction towards which you should develop, much of what you’re doing is actually closing in and narrowing. You’re closing in and narrowing towards a particular goal and a particular way of being. And that’s necessary because as you develop, you have to develop towards a particular way of being, or you don’t develop at all, and you can’t stay a child forever. That goes sour of its own accord. And so human beings are destined to close their perceptions in, to sharpen themselves and to focus on very little, so that they can at least do that. But the price we pay for that is that we start to replace the relationship we have with untrammeled reality with the shadows that are only complex enough to let us do what we need to do and no more. And in some sense, although we become more competent, in other ways we become more blind. And we kind of know how this happens. It happens from the bottom up. Now, this is a Magritte painting, and the painting has an obvious meaning in a sense, which is that we’re blinded even to what’s right in front of us by the objects that we see. And we think that seeing is letting in the light, but it’s only letting in a very small fraction of the light because we’re only capable of contemplating a small fraction of everything whenever we’re doing any particular thing. And so very much of what we’re doing is screening things out. Very much of your cortex is inhibitory. And Magritte is trying to get at that with that idea. It’s like there’s a businessman there. He’s dressed in his uniform. He can’t see beyond the immediate, the immediate thing that’s in front of his eyes. How does that happen? Well, let’s say you’re a baby, the first thing you learn. You learn, you build your body from the bottom up. You build your perceptual and action structures from the bottom up. You learn to move your arm. You learn to close your hand. Then you learn to do things that are practical with those abilities. You lift a spoon while you have to do that to feed yourself. You learn to move a plate. You learn to set the table. That’s starting to become social now because you can set the table for you and for other people. You learn to make a meal. That’s a more complex sequencing of motor activities and perceptual abilities that’s very focused. As you continue to develop, the things you chain together become more and more complex. But also more specific. You have to care for your family, which means there’s all sorts of other things you’re not doing. You have to find a good job, which almost everyone, when they’re young, experiences as the contemplation of a limitation. Well, not everyone, but many people think, oh no, you know, I’m going to have to settle for this role. I don’t want to only be that role, but it’s better to be that role than no role at all. And maybe the way through the role to the other side is through the role, not around it. There’s no avoiding the responsibility of narrowing and shaping and specializing. Be a good parent. Well, that’s a sacrifice you make for the next generation. Be a good partner. The same thing. Be a good citizen. It’s easy for young people in particular to be skeptical of that The old society is always corrupt and archaic and blind. And to become a member of that seems to be in part to allow yourself to adopt that same aged blindness. But that thing also educates you. It shapes every word you speak. It’s something that you have to be grateful to, even in its aged and archaic form. And it’s part of the necessities of human responsibility that you become a good citizen. And that means in some sense giving up more of what could be. At least to sustain what is. There’s a satirical song from the late 1890s, English. I am the very model of a modern major general. I have information, vegetable, animal and mineral. I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical. And the satirical is, well, he has the knowledge, he’s an official functionary. And it’s very difficult to do that, but in the same way it’s very limited and categorical. And of course an artist would object to that. But it’s better than nothing at all and that’s the alternative. Well above that, maybe what’s above good citizen? Because sometimes good citizen is not so good. If you were a good citizen of Nazi Germany or a good citizen of the Soviet Union or of Mao’s China. You know, you were narrowed in a particular way. And maybe in a necessary way, but also in a very pathological way. And so it seems to be that there has to be something, even though adopting that restricted viewpoint is necessary. There has to be something above it. And I think that’s also the thing that can restore the sense you have of a true entanglement with the deepest and most meaningful realities of life. And that’s the issue of being a good person. It’s above being a citizen. It’s something else. It has something to do with the development of individuality. And I think we’re also wired for that. So it looks like we’re wired to lose what we had to specialize. But then once we’re specialized to reopen, once we’ve got the skills built into our body and then can handle reality, because we’re more adapted and more fluid and more flexible, then we can start opening the doors again. And I believe that your nervous system is set up to help you do that if you don’t interfere with it, if you notice. And you notice that by paying attention to the things that manifest themselves to you that shine forth as interesting. They grab you. And where you’re grabbed is where the obscuring map you live in isn’t obscuring the reality that’s underneath. It’s like there’s a hole in the map. And the light shines through that, and you’re attracted to that, and that will pull you along. And that’s when your interest is seized by something. That’s your nervous system doing that. You don’t do that. It’s an unconscious force. You could even say it was the world itself talking to you.