[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

Sounds pretty cliche at this point, but people who are innately convinced of an objectively comprehensible external reality just really haven't done enough drugs yet (or perhaps enough zazen). Cannot stress enough that this is an area that requires personal experience rather than intellection. Note that I am not asserting the existence of God; neither am I claiming "the self" or mind are not real (or that scientific laws aren't real). I'm just stating that our hold on basic ontology is a lot shakier than we'd like to believe. I'm sure something like 95% of the human race lives and dies without confronting anything like a directly experienced ontological challenge or shakeup, which means we don't really have a good way of describing it. It's sort of like experiencing an alteration of gravity - since so few humans ever do, we don't have much vocabulary to discuss it. Think this kind of thing is much more interesting than the "Priest made a deal with the Devil and now must face the consequences!" or "The serial killer didn't really die, watch out for his GHOST!" idea of 'the supernatural' that most people have.

I don't know how much this applies to me, as I certainly wouldn't call myself innately convinced of anything ('innately' is certainly wrong and 'convinced' might or might not be too strong), but for me, simply discovering the self-defeating nature of subjectivism as I had embraced it meant the realisation that there is a world to explore. That is, I didn't make the leap (as I have seen some people do): "Subjectivism is self-defeating. Therefore something is objective. Therefore I know everything."

On the contrary, it was the beginning of the real discovery of my own ignorance.

Also, "subjectivism" might be misleading here, as the existence of the subject can easily be described as objective in some sense.