Spencer’s Reviews > Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense: An Inquiry into Science, Philosophy, and Perception > Status Update

We have thus far defined this division of Reality primarily in terms of space—as in “I am over here and you are over there.” Consciousness splits the Whole, immediately creating an ego—an identity—that then sees all other things in opposition to it.

To put it simply: we know (and can see) what’s going on; we just can’t conceptualize it. We need to learn to be at ease with inconceivability.

We want a Real World, to be sure, but we’d prefer to have it with handles on it. We think that there’s no other possible way we can “get it,” in fact. Yet, as we can see, if only we’d look, whatever we “get” is never It. It’s never the Real Thing we long to have.

Clear-cut lines, though necessary for our conceptual packaging, are simply not the way Reality is drawn.

Most of us live out our lives with little awareness of the blatant contradictions that abound within our “knowledge” and beliefs (i.e., our concepts). Because we omit the what aspect, we make absolutes out of what would otherwise be understood as relative. Then we reify our concepts and sink ever deeper into contradictions.

if we put the world into concepts, we’ve necessarily got paradox. Our problem is that we’re neither very good at seeing how we box up Reality, nor very good at getting down to the contradictions that our packages—our concepts—necessarily hold.