Ricardo Morin The Mirage of Exceptionalism (Template Series) 1st out of six Each 30″x 22″ = 66″h x 66″ overall Watercolor on paper 2005
To the paradox that divides in the very act of seeking unity.
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By Ricardo Morin August 18, 2025, Bala Cynwyd, PA
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Across traditions, faith has sought to articulate humanity’s highest aspirations. Scriptures, rituals, and doctrines were meant to give form to gratitude, humility, and reverence for creation. Yet time and again, these same legacies have been drawn into the service of division. The paradox lies in how beliefs that profess universal truth harden into claims of exceptional status and turn revelation into rivalry.
The Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—rooted themselves in texts anchored in antiquity. This permanence can inspire continuity, but when transposed into political life, belief risks becoming dogma, and dogma exclusion. What began as a celebration of humanity and its creator becomes instead an engine of contention.
Exceptionalism is not confined to any single tradition. It arises wherever uniqueness is mistaken for superiority, wherever the memory of a chosen people or a sacred covenant becomes a license to deny the dignity of others. Creationism, visions of Heaven, doctrines of righteousness—all contain the seeds of inspiration, but also of antagonism when set against rival paths.
In this sense, exceptionalism is less about the divine than about the human need to define boundaries. By exalting one path as singular, communities cast shadows on others. They forget that the multiplicity of belief might reveal instead the vastness of what humanity seeks to comprehend. The question is not whether one tradition is more luminous than another, but whether clarity itself can be hoarded without dimming the shared horizon of human dignity.
The tragedy of conflating exceptionalism with uniqueness is that it mistakes a gift for a weapon. To be unique is not to be superior; to inherit a tradition is not to monopolize truth. Religions, when true to their essence, point toward a mystery larger than themselves. When they lapse into rivalry, they obscure it.
The challenge before us is whether humanity can learn to let religions serve as languages of gratitude rather than banners of conquest. If belief is to celebrate creation, it must embrace the unity of humanity rather than sabotage it. Otherwise, the promise of transcendence is reduced to a struggle for dominance, and what was meant to honor the creator becomes instead a mirror of our most destructive instincts.
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Annotated Bibliography
Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. New York: Ballantine Books, 2001. (Armstrong explores how traditions across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have produced militant forms of fundamentalism. She shows how claims of absolute truth often distort original spiritual intent and feed conflict instead of unity.)
Girard, René: Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. (Girard argues that societies often channel violence into ritualized sacrifice. His insights illuminate how religious exceptionalism, rather than reducing violence, can redirect it toward outsiders deemed threatening to communal “uniqueness.”)
Küng, Hans: Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. New York: Doubleday, 1986. (Küng advocates for dialogue across faiths, stressing that no single religion can claim monopoly on truth. His work directly challenges exceptionalist claims and encourages the search for shared ethical ground.)
Said, Edward W.: Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage, 1997. (Said critiques the portrayal of Islam as uniquely threatening, showing how narratives of exceptionalism become entrenched in political and cultural discourse. His analysis highlights how external perceptions reinforce divisions.)
Taylor, Charles: A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. (Taylor examines how modernity has shifted the role of religion and has complicated claims of universality. He shows how belief persists in pluralist societies, while exceptionalist frameworks struggle to adapt within a diverse human landscape.)
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Edited by Billy Bussell Thompson, August 18, 2025, NY, NY.
Untitled 012by Ricardo Morín 22″ x 30″ Watercolors, charcoal, oil, white-out and ink on paper 2006
There exists a threshold beyond which suffering ceases to be endurance and becomes something else—something raw, incommunicable. It is not simply a matter of pain, nor even of despair, but of a silent depletion where the self finds itself at the precipice of its own dissolution. Yet, how does one define this limit?
It is tempting to believe suffering has purpose, that it can be transmuted into wisdom or resilience. This belief sustains us through its early stages. We endure in the name of meaning, in the hope that suffering refines rather than annihilates. But there comes a point where suffering becomes a force unto itself, severed from justification. It no longer instructs, no longer dignifies—only persists.
The problem of suffering is not only how much one can bear, but how much one should reveal. Silence often protects both the sufferer and the witness. There are pains too intimate, too profound to translate into language without reducing them to spectacle. To expose suffering in its entirety risks transforming it into something unrecognizable, stripping it of the dignity that private endurance affords. Yet, concealment can create its own form of exile, a loneliness where pain festers unseen.
Some attempt to navigate this tension by offering fragments—enough to acknowledge suffering’s presence without inviting intrusion. Others say nothing at all. This is not cowardice but a final assertion of control, a refusal to be defined by pain. To impose the expectation of disclosure upon those who suffer is to misunderstand the nature of their burden. The gravity of suffering is not only in the experience itself but in the impossible task of making it understood.
We live under the illusion that the mind and body will hold, that endurance is limitless. But suffering reminds us otherwise. There is a breaking point, whether visible or silent, sudden or drawn out.
It is not the same for everyone. Some withstand more than others—not through superior strength, but through a different alchemy of circumstance, temperament, and sheer chance. What remains constant is that all thresholds, eventually, are met. There is no single way to live with suffering.Sometimes, what brings relief is not endurance, but the quiet act of self-recognition.To speak, when one can.To remain silent, when one must.In the space between what cannot be said and what must be accepted, a simple truth may emerge: even uncertainty can sustain us, if we meet it with honesty.
And when that release is impossible, when suffering stretches beyond its own limits, only the silent acknowledgment of its presence remains—a weight that, sooner or later, must either be laid down or consume what is left.
Sometimes sudden, sometimes creeping in with the years, there comes a moment when mortality ceases to be an abstraction. It is no longer a distant eventuality, an idea tucked away in the folds of daily existence, softened by distractions and routine. Instead, it steps forward, undeniable and weighty, as certain as breath and just as fleeting.
Perhaps it arrives with the quiet betrayal of the body—a stiffness upon waking that does not pass, the faltering of memory, the slight hesitation before a step once taken with ease. Or maybe it comes with loss: a friend, a sibling, a parent, a spouse, whose absence feels like a rehearsal for one’s own. The awareness sharpens and turns time into something both more precious and more fragile. We begin to measure life in what remains rather than what has passed.
And yet, even with this awareness, there is resistance. The mind flits away and grasps at plans, distractions, the comfortable illusion of continuity. We fear death, but we also refuse to fully look at it, as if acknowledgment alone might hasten its approach. We craft rituals around it, philosophies to explain it, but we rarely sit with it, silent and unadorned. It is not death itself that terrifies—it is the knowing, the certainty that it will come, whether with warning or in a moment unguarded.
But what if, instead of turning away, we let the awareness settle? Not as a burden, but as a quiet companion. If we could bear to see loss not as a theft but as an inevitable passage, one that has always been woven into the fabric of living, then death itself might lose its urgency. To know we are mortal is not to despair, but to understand the shape of what we are given. The question is not whether death will come, but whether we can carry that knowledge without fear—whether we can, at last, learn to live with it.
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II. The Decline: Mind and Body
The body does not falter all at once. Its undoing is slow, measured in the smallest betrayals—steps that once felt effortless but now require consideration, a name that lingers just out of reach, the gradual dimming of senses that once shaped the world in sharp relief. At first, these changes seem like passing inconveniences, momentary lapses rather than the steady drift toward an inescapable fate. But the truth settles in with time: this is not a phase, not something to be recovered from, but the quiet unraveling of what once felt permanent.
The mind, too, shows its wear. Thought slows; memories surface in fragments, elusive and unreliable. There is irony in the awareness that remains—sharp enough to perceive the very faculties now fading. It is one thing to lose oneself unknowingly, another to watch the process unfold with lucid understanding. Here lies the deepest struggle: not merely the failing of body or mind, but the tension between resisting the inevitable and surrendering to it.
Some fight against this decline with a desperate energy and will themselves to retain what is slipping away. They train the body, challenge the mind, cling to routines as though discipline alone can hold back time. Others yield more readily and see in each loss a reminder that life is not meant to be held onto with clenched fists. Acceptance, however, does not come easily—it is not passive resignation, nor is it defeat. It is an uneasy balance between effort and surrender, between maintaining what can be kept and releasing what must go.
Suffering wears many faces. For some, it arrives as a single, catastrophic moment—a diagnosis, an accident, an unforeseen unraveling of the body’s delicate order. For others, it creeps in gradually, its presence felt in the weight of each passing year. The pain may be physical, unrelenting in its demands, or it may be the subtler ache of losing one’s sense of self, of becoming unrecognizable to one’s own reflection. Yet suffering, no matter its form, is universal. It does not measure its presence by fairness or logic. It simply is.
Against this backdrop, medicine intervenes—an effort to slow, to repair, to resist the natural course of deterioration. And yet, there is a discord in this. The body is finite, its functions destined to wane, yet we press forward with treatments, procedures, and endless prescriptions, each promising to forestall the inevitable. The line between care and prolongation blurs. To fight for life is instinctive, but at what point does the fight itself become suffering?
In the quiet moments, away from doctors and treatments, the question lingers: is decline something to battle, or is there dignity in allowing nature to take its course? And if the answer is neither absolute resistance nor passive surrender, then where, exactly, does one find the balance?
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III. The Distractions That Delay Acceptance
To accept death fully would require a stillness that few can bear. The mind, restless and cunning, finds ways to avoid such stillness, to weave a life so full of movement and intention that mortality remains a distant, theoretical concern. And so, we fill our days with efforts to prolong them.
Longevity itself becomes a pursuit, an industry built on the promise that decline can be postponed, perhaps even avoided altogether. Diets, regimens, supplements, and treatments—all aimed at fortifying the body against its inevitable unraveling. Science, too, lends its hand, in offering new ways to repair, replace, and sustain. Medicine intervenes not only to heal but to extend, technology whispers of futures in which aging is optional, and ritual grants the comfort of structure to what cannot be controlled. Each of these offers something real—time, ease, a semblance of mastery over the body’s betrayals. But beneath them all is the same unspoken hope: that death, if not conquerable, might at least be postponed long enough to be forgotten.
Yet it is not only the fear of death itself that keeps us tethered to life but the weight of what remains unfinished. The obligations we have not yet fulfilled, the words left unsaid, the people who still need us—all of these create a sense that departure is premature, that to leave now would be to abandon something essential. Even in old age, when life has been long and full, there lingers the feeling that there is more to do, more to settle, more to understand. The past tugs at us with its unresolved questions; the future, though narrowing, still holds the illusion of possibility.
And so, we resist stillness. We resist the quiet where truth is most easily heard. The mind, unoccupied, might begin to accept what the body already knows. And so, we fill the hours, surround ourselves with routine, distraction, movement. Even suffering, in its strange way, can serve as a tether—something to focus on, something to endure, rather than a void to surrender to.
But what if we let the distractions fall away? If we stopped grasping for more time, more purpose, more noise? What would remain? The fear, yes—but also the possibility of peace. For all our striving, death will not be bargained with. It comes when it will, unmoved by the measures taken against it. Perhaps the final act of wisdom is not to resist, but to release—to allow the quiet to settle, to let the mind and body, at last, align in their understanding.
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IV. The Weight of Suffering and Endurance
Suffering is the one certainty all sentient beings share. It is neither rare nor exceptional; it is the undercurrent of existence, woven into the fabric of life from its first breath to its last. And yet, for all its universality, suffering is deeply personal—felt in ways no other can fully understand, borne in ways that cannot be measured.
Pain takes many forms. It may be the slow tightening of the body against itself, the ache of illness, the heaviness of fatigue that never fully lifts. Or it may be the quieter pains—the loss of self as the mind falters, the loneliness of watching the world move on without you, the grief of knowing that, no matter how much one has endured, there is still more to bear. Some suffer in the open, their pain visible and acknowledged. Others carry it in silence, as though to admit its weight would be to surrender to it.
Yet suffering alone does not mark the end. There is something beyond it, something deeper: endurance. The threshold of what one can bear is not fixed; it shifts, expands, contracts. A pain once unthinkable becomes routine; a burden that seemed insurmountable is carried, day after day. And yet, there is always a limit, a moment—often unspoken, often known only in the quiet of one’s own thoughts—when endurance is no longer enough.
This is the reckoning, the moment when staying alive is no longer an act of living but of mere persistence. For some, it comes as a sudden recognition, as clear as a breaking dawn. For others, it arrives gradually, the body whispers before the mind dares to listen. It is not simply about pain, nor is it about age. It is the moment when the will to remain no longer outweighs the cost of doing so.
There is no universal measure for when this moment arrives; it is known only to the one who bears it. To endure is an instinct, a habit built into the core of existence. But to know when endurance has reached its end—that is something else entirely. It is not weakness, nor is it surrender. It is a quiet knowing, a recognition that every life carries within it the right to determine when it has been enough.
And so the question lingers: is suffering the price of life, or is there a point at which one is justified in setting the burden down? The answer is not written in doctrine, nor in medicine, nor in the opinions of those who do not bear the weight themselves. It is written in the individual, in the silent moment when one understands—this is enough.
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V. The Unseen Threshold
Life does not depart all at once. It recedes, quietly at first, almost imperceptible in its withdrawal. The breath grows shallower, not in gasps but in a gradual easing, as though the body has decided to take up less space in the world. Weight diminishes, not only in flesh but in presence—the self becomes lighter, less tethered to the demands of existence. A once-restless mind drifts, thoughts untangle, as if loosening its grip on the past, the future, even the urgency of the present.
These are not signs of failure, nor of defeat. They are the body’s way of whispering that it is time. Time to ease away from effort, from the relentless task of sustaining itself. Time to let go of the struggle to remain. For all the fear that surrounds death, the body itself does not fear it. It knows when to surrender long before the mind is ready to accept.
And so comes the moment of knowing—not a grand realization, not an epiphany, but a quiet certainty. It is not measured in days or dictated by diagnosis. It is something deeper, something felt. Some fight against it and grasp at every last breath as though sheer will alone can anchor it. Others meet it as one meets sleep—reluctant at first, then trust, then finally yield to its pull.
There is dignity in this release. Not the dignity others impose, the kind measured in stoicism or restraint, but the simple dignity of relinquishing control. Of allowing the body to do what it was always meant to do: to reach its end not as a tragedy, but as a completion. To fight against this moment is to resist the natural rhythm of life itself. But to accept it—to welcome the stillness, to let breath slow without fear—that is its own kind of grace.
In the end, death is not something that must be conquered, nor something that must be endured beyond what one can bear. It is simply the last threshold, unseen until it is reached, known only to the one who crosses it. And when the time comes, there is nothing left to do but step forward—light, unburdened, and without regret.
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VI. The Quiet Acceptance
To think of death without fear—to sit with it, unguarded, and allow it to be what it is—this is a rare and difficult peace. For so long, the mind has recoiled from its certainty and wrapped it in distractions, explanations, and resistance. But there comes a point when all of that falls away, when death is no longer something to be argued with or postponed, but simply recognized as the inevitable conclusion to a life that has been lived.
Fear untangles itself when death is no longer treated as an interruption, no longer seen as a theft, but rather as something as natural as breath itself. The body, in its wisdom, has already begun to let go. It is the mind that lingers and clings to meaning, to unfinished things, to the illusion that one more day, one more hour, might change something essential. But in the end, no justification is needed. One does not have to prove that it is the right time. The right time comes, whether welcomed or not, and acceptance is simply the act of ceasing to resist.
Stillness is not the same as resignation. Resignation carries a sense of defeat, of something being taken against one’s will. But true stillness—true acceptance—is something else entirely. It is an arrival, a settling into the inevitable without fear or regret. It is the moment when the mind and body, long at odds, finally move in the same direction. No more effort. No more bargaining. Only the quiet understanding that what was given has been enough.
To embrace the end is not to let go of life’s value, but to affirm it fully—by allowing it to complete itself with grace. There is nothing left to do, no more debts to settle, no more battles to fight. There is only the quiet, and the quiet is enough.
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VII, In Closing
No life is lived in solitude, and no journey—especially the one toward acceptance—is walked alone. Along the way, we are shaped, guided, and held by those who have touched our hearts and left their presence within us even after they are gone. In facing mortality, we recognize not only our own, but also those who have come before us, whose lives continue to echo in memory, in love, in the quiet places where absence becomes something enduring.
Their presence lingers—not as shadows, but as light. They have taught us, challenged us, consoled us, and, in their own ways, prepared us for the path we all must take.
Death, in its harshness, strips us bare and confronts us with what is essential. Yet, it also unites us, for the love we have given and received does not fade with physical absence.
Our loved ones remain until the end; they sustain us through their memory and the love they have left within us.
To them, we offer our deepest gratitude. They are not gone. They remain, in the heart, in the soul, in the quiet acceptance of all that has been and all that will be.
First, I would like to share with my readers my utmost gratitude to Billy Bussell Thompson (b. November 23, 1942), Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Hofstra University, for his generosity in being a mentor and editor. His scholarly trajectory goes from 1963 to 1993. Among his most salient publications in English, we have: Relic and Literature . . .; Bilingualism in Moorish Spain; The Myth of the Magdalen . . .; etc. . . .
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Since 1989, our friendship has extended over more than three decades. We have worked in close proximity on at least a dozen articles and short stories (published in WordPress). I have been fortunate to count on his frankness and support. He has never minced words. He has been blunt, when any of my drafts seemed without merit. When that was the case, the articles went into a shredder, and I was satisfied by the integrity of his prose, as well as by my understanding of my own limitations as a writer. Prof. Bussell Thompson (B.B.T.) usually compares the skill of prose writing with that of a narrowing cone of vision. This selective cone of vision is akin to the aesthetic integrity of a visual work of art. With the present endeavor, Prof. B.B.T. believed, from the very beginning, in the possibility of bringing forth this story as a team. Even though we live in different regions – geographically far apart – of the USA, we have had no trouble communicating via phone and email.
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This narrative seeks to explain the confusion found in society and politics, and even their seeming lack of purpose. For this reason, I dedicate my narrative to the readers.
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Initially, I knew not where this would lead. I submitted a five-paragraph draft to professor B.B.T. As he began to read, he paused and asked if I was alluding to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Surprised, I asked him to stop. I replied that his reference to Plato placed me in a different perspective. Gratefully, I added that his question was most welcome; at that point, I wanted to read more before continuing.
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He encouraged me to reread Plato’s dialogues. To this he added that I take into account any ambiguity associated with Plato’s conception of the ideal authority of the State (politeia) or Nation. He referred to the Platonic ideas controversial in current discussions. He also recommended reading José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). He included The Revolt of the Masses[1929]and The Dehumanization of Art[1925]. He suggested that I be aware of Ortega’s meritocratic liberal perspective (though we believed that Ortega had not been known for openly endorsing any political ideology) and to heed the relevance Ortega gives to the man who is aware of his limitations – opposed to the man who is unaware: both the bourgeoisie and the mass man (who exemplify, for him la razón sinrazón [the reason for unreason]) – as explained in The Revolt of the Masses. And finally, I focus on the distinction between “content” and “form,” to explain the break by the avant-garde from the bourgeoisie.
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Professor B.B.T. and I also had an exchange of ideas over the parallels between the Platonic and Orteguian thought. He advised me then to read anew Meditations on Quixote[1914] both in Spanish and in English. There, B.B.T. thought that I could find a significant or productive landscape of ideas on which to reflect and, thus, be able to develop my own interpretations about the nature of knowledge, its limits, and how to find the meaning of the ideal of truth.
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In writing my last short story, entitled In Darkness, Professor B.B.T. had already urged me to note the meaning for circunstancia1 (“circumstance”) as defined by Ortega in Meditations on Quixote. It was clear to us that both Ortega’s phenomenological approach to “circumstance” and Plato’s thesis on the transformation of the individual (through knowledge) shared commonalities, which nurtured my own narrative.
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But, the narrative journey proved to be just as challenging as Professor B.B.T. had pointed out. His criticism, even then, never ceased being constructive and energetic. His compassion was present as long as I was mindful of the necessity for clarity and precision. Often, he would cite Ernest Hemingway’s authenticity and precision.
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Time and time again, I experienced enormous pain in trying to comprehend what I wished to express. Freeing my prose from superficiality was like taking a deep breath to exhale the vagueness of my anxieties. Sometimes I was unable to get away from the obvious. Other times, either I hid behind the complex, or I would cling to abstract and cryptic thinking: the reductive jargon of the social sciences. Professor B.B.T. repeatedly suggested succinctness: I needed to respect the simplicity of language and find a way to its accessibility. Bringing Plato and Ortega to the reader was my responsibility. I was not to imitate them nor to think like them, but to represent them authentically. My first obligation was to the reader. For this I had to avoid euphemisms, randomness, and diversion. The affirmation of effective communication is an objective worth the effort. I would only understand myself, if I were to understand the reader.
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B.B.T.’s exhortations and criticisms, I welcomed enthusiastically. His challenge became mine. He has been exorcising my limitations for two decades: Every time we have worked together, I have discovered something new in myself. I have become more attuned to both English and Spanish. I have had to be my own translator. In these instances, I have grown more respectful of the two languages. I have had to capture their essence by comparing them: the one informs the other.
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Prologue
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus[circa 369 B.C.E.], Socrates proposes that the extraordinary extraction of ideas is like bringing forth a new life and purging what is unnecessary. Likewise, the aim here is to produce and discuss what enlightenment is, and the obstacles to its achievement. Socrates has helped me in my definition of knowledge: Is morality universal, or is objective morality even possible? For these ideas I am indebted both to Plato and to Ortega y Gasset.
Ricardo F Morin, December 19, 2022
Editor Billy Bussell Thompson
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Plato, Roman marble bust copied from Greek original, 4th century B.C.E., Capitoline Museums, Rome.
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Socrates, Roman marble bust copied from Greek original, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C.E., Capitoline Museums, Rome.
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José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), detail of photograph of his impersonation of Honoré de Balzac, circa 1900.
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One way to objectivity is to recognize one’s own subjectivity. Metaphors for understanding reality are rare. One sees the world primarily through one’s own experience. It is difficult (though not impossible) to understand what one has not experienced. Truth never rests: It is not singular, but always plural.
Anonymous
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Index
1. Awareness of the Transformation of One’s Self:
The highest principle of inquiry is consciousness of one’s self. In inquiry lie the beginnings of change.
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Index
2. The Absence of Trust:
In our age of disbelief, the stories we tell each other about the past and the present seem to be in a state of collapse. There is a lack of continuity in the social order, increasingly suffocated by misinformation and distrust. We challenge each other over what is real and what is not.
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Index
3. The Unassailable Truth:
For most of us an ultimate truth remains unattainable and the stories we share from the past and the present no longer seem useful. Along with the disappearance of our past stories, both the person who seeks truth and the act of giving a person his due are in crisis. Our society finds itself defined by a decline in trust both in government and its institutions. Despairingly, the challenge is that the creation of new stories has become an act of preservation. Likewise, autocracy is on the ascendance. A lack of faith has sown aimlessness. What can change this course of despair? What will bring enlightenment to us?
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Index
4. Consciousness:
Knowledge is constantly changing and the result of this destabilization carries us into greater disorder. For this reason clarity is more necessary than ever to understand ourselves. Even if clarity is not always possible, to know oneself is imperative. Thus arises the tension between continuity and change. Here lies the quest for survival.
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Index
5. Not Knowing:
Not knowing is the essential condition of existence, despite one’s apparent desire for knowledge or for authority. To know is to inquire. Reality, though fleeting, inspires reflection. Change begins with the recognition that one is not in isolation. Not even the one (who seeks self-sacrifice for his spiritual advancement) by absolute cloister could get rid of his entanglement with the world. It is by relating to other people and his environment that this person comes to know who he is. Not even he (who despises the symbols of fear) is capable of freeing himself from his anguish. The fear of not knowing hangs over all of us. It is possible that striving without measure (in the aspiration for rationality) only leads us to end up being irrational: Here lies the origin of complexity given the absence of innocence.
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Index
6. The Energy of Life:
In his theory of cultural attributes (Meditaciones del Quijote, Meditaciónpreliminar; Índice8, Lapantera o del sensualismo, pág. 21), José Ortega y Gasset gives us his concept of razón vital2, which means reason is expressed through life itself. Ortega parses the European mind into two archetypes: the Germanic and the Mediterranean. The former is meditative and the latter sensuous. Of the sensuous he says: The predominance of the senses usually implies a deficiency in inner powers. What is meditating as compared with seeing? As soon as the retina is hit by the arrow from without, our inner personal energy hastens and stops the intrusion. The impression is registered, subjected to civilized order; it is thought, and in this way it is integrated in the building up of our personality, and cooperates within it – Evelyn Rugg and Diego Martín’s translation – Notes and Introduction by Julián Marías – pp. 85-86. The Orteguian admonition here is to find the balance between extremes: between the excesses and deficiencies of these two archetypes.
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Index
7. Human Agency and Its History:
A second source for my understanding of the mind and the senses is found in Plato’s Republic (politeia) – Socrates’s dialogue of the allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book Seven. There have been many interpretations. Mine differs. My purpose is to rid suffering from the mind of the freed slave. Once freed from shackles, the mind of the freed slave (who ascends to the mouth of the cave) discovers its own vision of the world. Despite the sun’s glare, the uneducated mind is transformed by the newly found ideal of truth. But the awareness by the prisoner (who has remained behind) is inseparable from the condition of the freed man: The slave (remaining in shadows of suffering) is not entirely separable from the memory of the freed man. Because of suffering, the freed man’s mind is aware of its inability to know. At the same time, the freed mind learns how its own transformation may be dependent on the new course of its history. This mind’s actions allow participation in change, and change is possible through self examination. The mind examines itself through meditating. Meditation is not an obligation, but a necessity. Meditation is the result of the mind’s freedom and it is the means to understanding its own choices in its approach to truth: But this effort is only an approximation to the infinity of truth. The freed mind (facing the visible world) is lacking here. Thus, the freed mind recognizes that neither its actions nor the course of its history is predictable. They (i.e. the mind’s actions and the course of its history) come from multiple possibilities about belief.
The freed mind realizes that time is an illusion: Time is fleeting, false, and deceitful. The mind, habitually trapped in its past, remains mired in pain. Anger (which comes from the past in search for justice) has for its sole purpose the manifestation of resentment. But anger only manages to put its existence on hold, awaiting compensation. Just as time is an illusion for the mind, the quest for emotional reparation is also an illusion. For the mind, there is no vindication by being trapped in the labyrinth of illusion. Only the rationality of active love can compensate for anger. If the mind of the lover of truth can project itself lovingly in the direction that it resents, then a liberating sense of bravery arises towards itself. Anger and sentimentality are one and the same. As the force of love sheds sentimentality, one’s desires dissipate and with them anger as well. Thereby, violence ceases to exist. Socrates’s allegory of the mind (freed from suffering) carries all these implications and comparisons towards a goal of Ideal Truth.
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Index
8. Alertness:
In an effort to understand Ortega’s concept of circumstancia (“circumstance”), his Meditación preliminar, Indice 6,Culturamediterránea, explains to us that when he goes through the landscape of ideas he has to meditate with alertnesson the influence of his experiences. Needless to say, this includes all his past and present relations, the geographies he has occupied, and everything he has done in life. Ortega forewarns us of the risks in this act of meditation: We are accompanied by a keen suspicion that, at the slightest hesitation on our part, the whole world could collapse, and we with it. When we meditate, our mind has to be kept at full tension; it is a painful and integral effort – Index 6, Mediterranean Culture, translated by Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín (Introduction and notes by Julián Marías [a favorite student of Ortega y Gasset]), p. 34. In Plato’s dialogues, the same “effort” is found: Through the act of meditation, Socrates’s freed man draws transformation and redemption from the narrow crevices among ideas. Meditation helps the lover of truth get closer to his existential condition; it offers him the possibility of reacting differently, and sustains him with the very energy that life provides.
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Index
9. Faith:
For the one who fears meditation, having faith in one’s own actions and changes are not sufficient for inquiry. History is not alive for him: It is at a point of no return; it is dead. This person is in a world of despair and surrounded by the proverbial dancing of shadows. This person is bound in his own chains, is overwhelmed by a lack of confidence, and is, without trust, unable to make a leap of faith. Neither the notion of individuality nor the concept of free will seems satisfactory any longer. This person relinquishes personal power and is unaware of the forces influencing his mind and his senses. His refusal to face reality becomes a conscious decision for the suppression of truth. This refusal is antithetical to life itself. For him, life becomes enslavement and stands in opposition to the freed man, who fearlessly ponders the reality of the visible world, and passionately delves into the exploration of the unknown. The mind of the freed man represents Ortega’s concept of razón vital, desirous to be absorbed by it.
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10.Deliverance:
Distractions can be multiple. In Ortega’s playful analysis, he implies that if meditation is extraneous to the fears of the mind, it can succumb to obsession, and even fall despairingly into manias. Ortega values the relevance of every influence. He understands that a human being and his landscape are not separate. The unity of the two means his salvation by circunstancia (“circumstance”): Thus his appreciation of circunstancia: Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo – Al Lector, Índice, pág. 41 (which I translate as “I am myself [in a world of perceptions] and also the material world that surrounds me; if I don’t save them, I don’t save myself”). Incidentally, here Ortega preempts his conclusion with what he has read in the Bible: Benefac loco illi quo notus es3 (loosely translated into English as “do good in the place where you are known”). With these remarks, Ortega reinforces the idea that he is unable to disassociate himself from his surroundings. If he is to flourish and to find salvation, it will be necessary for him to understand and protect what he shares with his environment.
Parallel to Ortega’s analysis is Plato’s Socratic allegory, which teaches us the effect that the visible world has on our mind. From these two perspectives, the mind tends to be discouraged by what it does not understand. Awareness of the visible world’s influence is for both thinkers an instinct for survival. To be aware, therefore, means to be silent, away from the deafening sound of fear. As long as there is fear, promoted by the progress of civilization, there will be no movement or separation from distractions. Confronting fear means dispersing it, making it disappear. Dispersal of fear is fundamental to the understanding of self. Releasing oneself from fear is confronting one’s not-knowing. Enslavement (at the depth of the cave) is equivalent to accepting the impositions of fear. Both, for Ortega and Plato, the opposition to indifference is found through meditation; thereby one is able to be alert and know oneself.
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11. Perception and Storytelling:
True confidence is living in uncertainty. An overriding fact is that human beings organize themselves around the making of stories. Every story we create is an act of piety that consoles the mind. Yet new stories and old ones are provisional tools that fill the gap of our faith, filling in the void of our ignorance. Whether the story be true or not, storytelling rescues us from ourselves. Storytelling is our razón vital. It seeks to expose us to the best possible meaning of ourselves: Meaning in storytelling is found by investing oneself with the willpower to exceed adversity. Meaning is found by creating something new within oneself. Meaning is found in one’s vulnerability and in the constant pain to overcome it. The process of finding meaning reveals that one cannot control Truth. Happiness depends on how one accepts the absence of control, and how we can stop disliking our limitations.
Storytelling persuades us to think that one’s actions will spread deeply into one’s consciousness. One may not always be able to defeat the element of preconception, for bias is always with us. As long as suffering, uncertainty, and the effort to overcome them exist, bias will persist. Bias lurks behind our thoughts, quiet and insidious, yet it is there for a reason in spite of its harmful effects. The irony is that if one banished preconceptions, there would be no further progress. In any story, if the hero overcomes the villainy of bias, it is because he is able to change: If one does not overcome bias, one does not grow and there is no transformation. Success is not as important as the struggle to overcome bias. Every time adversity comes to us, it is an opportunity for the recognition of those preconceptions that still reside in ourselves. Success does not provide happiness. Happiness is only possible through self discovery. As such, one becomes symbolically the whole of humanity. This is its highest expression: The creation of something new as we face adversity, and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.
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12. Reasoning (sentience vs sapience):
Awareness of fiction is the appreciation of the paradox between what is and what is not. Knowledge expresses not only the awareness of one’s own intuitions and senses, but also the reasoning about those intuitions, senses, and impressions. That is, every time we examine the perception of our memory, we are editing our understanding. Thus, the way we organize and observe ourselves comes from our desires and senses at that moment, and this comes from our memories. For instance, it is difficult for us to agree on a common origin or a common thread uniting us as a species, even if that may be true. Whether we wish it or not, we define ourselves by the histories we create either in groups or in countries. In doing so, we are actually imagining separate and fragmented believes that we belong to separate locales, cultures, and races. Yet, there is an unavoidable thread that connects us as a species. Such composition is found in our common and preponderant origin, though our perception may resist being part of it. We endow ourselves with differences dictated by the conditioning of our perceptions. InThe Revolt of the Masses, Ortega refers to this condition as la razón de sinrazón (“reason without reason”), which explains our deeply rooted irrationality and fragmentation. Knowledge implies greater content than what is gained through the form of our perceptions. Our minds tend to abbreviate history, even believing that it does not exist. Yet the more expansive the “circumstance” or condition of apprehending truth, the greater the maturity our existence demands from us.
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13. Maturing Emotional Intelligence:
If a human being is the measure of all things, then also one comes to appreciate that knowledge is always inconclusive. Thus, meditation strengthens our mind, our memory, our learning, our attention, and our self awareness. Meditation on the past, the present, or the future depends on emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is based on capturing the import of influences from all areas of a man’s life, from one’s behavior to one’s relationship with others and one’s environment. Ultimate reality depends on the level of maturity of a person, and it is through meditation that one matures. Hence, how a person chooses to act depends on meditation and his level of emotional intelligence. For the fanatic (obsessed with fear) meditation seems impossible. For the fanatic, doubt is not the issue. The fanatic seeks to reiterate cycles. The fanatic fails to understand that fear of change is irrational because it is inevitable that the world is constantly evolving. The fanatic seeks to change what is beyond his control. From the Orteguian point of view, this person,within a closed valuation system, does not find consolation because his mind fears what it does not understand.
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14. Our Connection to the Universe:
From Ortega’s perspective of Cervantes’s Don Quixote[1605-15], we learn that the courage granted by Love – not hate – impels us towards understanding …the useless remains of a shipwreck that life, in its perpetual surge, throws at our feet. – To The Reader, p. 31. Loveis a divine architect who, according to Plato came down to the world – ὥστε τὀ πᾶν αὐτῶ ξυνδέδέσθα – so that every thing in the universe might be linked together: Separation means extinction. Hatred, which separates, isolates, and pulls apart, dismembers the world, and destroys individuality – To the Reader, p. 33.
Hence, Ortega explains that the imperative for the individual is to reflect on one’s circunstancia (in medias res), … to arouse the desire of understanding the universal in its particulars. – To the Reader, p. 31: To ignore the fact that each thing has a character of its own, and not that we wish to demand of it, is, in my opinion, the true capital sin, which I call a sin of the heart because it derives its nature from lack of love. There is nothing so illicit as to dwarf the world by means of our manias and blindness, to minimize reality, to suppress mentally fragments of what exists. This happens when one demands that what is deep should appear in the same way as what is superficial. No, there are things that present only that part of themselves which is strictly necessary to enable us to realize that they lie concealed behind it. – p. 62.
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15. A Heroic Perspective:
Knowledge comes before fanaticism. Fanaticism is, for Ortega, the rejection of the perspectives of others. Ortega points to reasoning as an act of charity, which uncovers differences, and suggests that understanding is akin to the circling of an eagle in flight. To be oneself, for Ortega, is the same as it is for Cervantes. The act of being a hero takes place through a sensitive exploration of the nature of reality. In Ortega’s view, as well as for Cervantes’s, the will of the hero belongs only to the persona of Don Quixote: Because to be a hero means to be one out of many, to be oneself if we refuse to have our actions determined by heredity or environment, it is because we seek to base the origin of our actions on ourselves and only on ourselves. The hero’s will is not that of his ancestors, nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism. – First Meditation, 15, The Hero, p. 149. … I do not think that there is a more profound originality than this practical, active originality of the hero. His life is a perpetual resistance to the habitual and customary. Each movement that he has to make has first had to overcome custom and invent a new kind of gesture. Such a life is a perpetual suffering, a constant tearing oneself away from the part of oneself, which is given over to habit and is a prisoner of matter. – First Meditation, 15, The Hero – p. 149.
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16. The Fear of fate:
A Socratic life is heroic, but if unexamined, of no value. In the pain of living, one has to embrace the fact that the examination of fear is part of life. Alongside this examination, fate is never artificial. Fate does not deceive, even in our misfortunes. Fate is not illusive, though our perception of time may be. Instead, fate challenges us to change. In change, fate protects us from stagnation. What appears to be random is, in fact, an opportunity for learning. Consequently, fate exists not for attacking, but for stimulating our transformation. Fate does not move against us, but challenges us to change by confronting obstacles. Fate attacks fear, because one’s fear takes away one’s ability to make choices. Narratives of fear turn out to be self-fulfilling prophesies. Fear deceives and defines us. It hampers survival. Fear prevents our evolving, it paralices us: We resist giving up habits because of fear. Thus one languishes and fails to overcome disbelief.
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17. Boundlessness and Humility:
The shadow of shame represents one’s flaws. The shadow is what one wishes not to be, though its shadow be part of oneself. Only, when the shadow is accepted with humility, do its flaws dissolve in the act of loving oneself with compassion. Ultimately, the fanatic will recognize his incompleteness and become aware of his own insignificance: The incapacity for completeness looms over all of us. Only through risk does one learn the extent of one’s bounds and how much further one may go. We advance through humility and humility appreciates neither truth nor falsehood. Humility is the acknowledgment of one’s inexorable estrangement from an infinite truth. Only the humble voice recognizes the struggle for understanding and change. Both depend on a flight from despair. For Ortega and for Plato, the mark of the highest values is found in our vulnerability. If we surrender absolutely, then we find redemption.
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18. Epilogue:
My perspective treats Plato and Ortega outside of any theistic justification. I leave aside any application of Plato to theological thought. Likewise, I ignore any attempt to ascribe religious respects to Ortega’s theory of values. For me their notions, when applied to theology, are not credible. I understand Plato and Ortega in their search for the limits of human perception and rationality. Efforts to apply their philosophies as religious foundations are outside of my purpose.
The depth of Plato and Ortega’s thought is not to be found in a method for objective morality. Nor is it ethical relativism, nor even is it found in a claim of universality. Ideologies on morality are derived from norms dictated by theologians, seemingly unwilling to relinquish authority. The role of the lovers of truth is not to dictate virtue nor to define the godhead. Their teachings are centered on rationalism. Their humanism is based on a concept of justice that is antithetical to fixed norms. The paradigm of true knowledge – according to Plato and Ortega – is derived from love based on the originality of heroism. This love does not reside outside of the individual. This love is not found in the promise of a transcendental world. This love finds man’s salvation in the present. This love calls for self examination. And above all, this love is a liberation from the numbness of the mind.
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Endnotes:
1 For Ortega circunstancia, is a representation of the sum total of influences in the consciousness of a man, thus expressing the reason for his existence.
2Razón vital stands as Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy which views that reason is, in of itself, an expression of life.
Ortega y Gasset, José, Meditaciones del Quijote: Meditación Preliminar y Meditación Primera, (Madrid: PUBLICACIONES DE LA RESIDENCIA DE ESTUDIANTES, SERIE II.—VOL. I, Universidad Central de Madrid, 1914)
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha[1605–1615] (Cambridge: Harvard Publishing Company, 1893. Translated by John Ormsby. 4 vols. in 8 books. Limited Edition No. 71/320. 1st edition.
Platón. Teeteto. Introducción, traducción y notas de Marcelo Boeri. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 2006.
Ortega y Gasset, José, La rebelión de las masas (Madrid: Editorial Revista de Occidente, 1928). Fue publicado inicialmente en 1927 como una serie de artículos en el diario El Sol, antes de ser recopilado en formato de libro en 1928 por Editorial Revista de Occidente en Madrid.
Observations On Perception 