>> but once we're outside the apartment in the alley, we can no longer perceive the pixels or the TV. why is seeing the apartment any better or more truthful than seeing the TV?
I didn't mean to imply that it's better or more truthful. I mean to imply that it was previously outside of our scope. Once we have arrived in the alley way, we're on another plain. The pixels on the TV screen are outside of our scope of perception. They are like the microscopic plain: absolutely critical to the macroscopic plain, but not readily visible without some kind of perception enhancing device like a microscope.
Things are understood in relationship to each other. In an infinite continuum, any object is understood in relationship to infinite other objects of infinitely greater and lesser scale. And that's the key: because objects can only be distinguished by their relationship with other objects, and because the continuum sustaining those objects is infinite, there are infinite other objects, and therefore no basis to make any discernment between objects at all.
The only reason that people and things appear seperate to us, the only reason that human beings are able to make discernments between objects, has entirely to do with our own limited scope on reality. At present, our basic awareness only affords us a grasp of our immediate surroundings, and our higher perceptive faculties (memory, reasoning, imagination) afford us only a vauge and blurry picture of the rest of the world, the solar system, or if you are so inclined, the known universe. It's from this narrow scope that we conceive of ourselves as a fixed point of conciousness isolated in a bag of skin, operating very much in disharmony with other skin-ecapsulated egos whom we happen to encounter.
It's important to note, I think, that our present scope is presented as an inferior one only because it causes problems for us: it is an incomplete and inaccurate view of our environment which sustains a tremendous amount of conflict. It's because we don't understand that people and things are functioning as parts of a greater whole that we continue to come into conflict with each other and develop the wish to harm each other. We think that our own needs and desires are somehow unique from those of others, and then we think that our needs and desires are the most important, because, after all, we are the centre of the universe: we believe that everything we experience happens to us, and not with us. Since it's impossible for everybody to be the most important, when we approach the world this way it is very discordant.
At present, we think of ourselves as an individual operating alone for his or her own best interests. It is much more realistic, I think, to conceive of ourselves like a cell operating among billions of others as part of a single entity undergoing it's own developmental process. When cells of the human body begin to attack and operate against eachother, we call this AIDS. When human beings begin to attack and operate against eachother, they bring plauge to their entire community. Indeed, the notion that human beings are seperate from eachother, that they operate alone and with their own unique agenda, can be regarded as a life-threatening disease. The symptoms of that diease are manifesting all around us today in the form of pollution, overcrowding, corruption, global warming, war and terrorism, and this tremendous lack of self-respect that is becoming pervasive, especially in the west.
>> I guess what I'm saying is this paradigm doesn't grab me viscerally. I understand it cerebrally and see no problems with it, it is elegant and pleasing and internally consistent---but is it relevant?
It's quite relevant, I think, if we understand it intuitively, because it has the potential to change the way we interact with people and things. It's the idea that other people and objects are outside of our self, that they are totally different than our self, which sustains the potential for conflict to arise between people and situations. If we can learn to interpret our experiences in a more accurate, unified sense, we will not be so vulnerable to frustration and dissatisfaction. When there is an understanding of the essential unity of things, there is a foundation there for a genuine and spontaneous feeling of respect for people and the environment. That is what's needed to bring this world out of it's rolling boil: a genuine and spontaneous feeling of respect for the earth and all it's participants.
It's not necessary to contemplate such existential concepts to develop that feeling of respect, either. Consider the shirt you are wearing, and how it came to you. First, a cotton farmer had to till soil and cultivate the plant. He probably said a few prayers for abundant rain and, if his prayers were answered, he harvested after months of labor a complete crop. He sold his crop to cotton refineries who, through the contributions of hundreds or perhaps thousands of employees, processed the plants into workable material. Then, hundreds of workers at clothing manufacturers painstakingly sewed the shirt together. The shirt then passed through hundreds more hands as it was delivered to it's point of sale: and establishment brought into existence through the efforts of still more thousands of people making an effort. The shirt, now sitting on your back, represents the effort of innumerable persons working to bring a comfortable, pleasing article of clothing to you.
We might argue that nothing is free: that the people who worked on the farm, at the manufacturer, and in the store which sold the shirt to you were there so that they could make a living of their own. This is true, but not entirely relevant. All of those people put effort into an object which is now providing you with comfort and warmth. It does not matter if they labored for you: it matters that you are receiving benefit from their efforts. From out point of view, this is kindness.
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