The Reconciliation of Ideologies

(Up to: Philosophy The Self Vs The Truth )

I need to take a step back, pull myself out of the quagmire of conflicting mindsets that I currently seem to occupy in an almost doublethink-style exposee. I need to reassess my foundations and command a firm grip on why I am who I am.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I am sure, I find myself surrounded by a series of parallel and conflicting, at some degree, viewpoints, waving their philosophical banners at me like the gaudy, flourescent signs facing me and blinking in my direction as I walk along the modern day high street, trying to lure me into their soothing grasp.

I picture it in my mind as a web of rope, all centred upon me, but at the same time all twisted around each other, forming a dense entanglement of romantic yarn so matted that it becomes unclear as to who is pulling which rope, or indeed that they are who they claim to be in the first place. Each side seems attached to the other, so in the end to attempt to unravel what each stands for is simply a waste of time.

So I feel like I must make some attempt to escape. A Descartesian desparation to return to a point from which a solid structure can be built, a belief in my own beliefs.

I want to abstract my thinking away from my direction, to understand why I want what I want, and what that truly means. I need a way of deciphering the world, my senses, and the various tracts that dispersed intellectual journeys have taken me down. It is no longer enough to simply try and connect the dots once the lines are in place; it is now a quest of picking a path between the labyrinthine plains and trenches disguising themselves as the true light, the way, the one.

I've a feeling this is going to be a duality process. On one hand, I need to work out which parts of the stuff I already adhere to make sense to me - I still feel that my gut instinct works best on these things, so it's essential that the things I believe in sit comfortably, and for good reason. Perhaps a list is in order. On the other hand, I need a strategy to go forward with, a way of looking at the world that incorporates new experiences and fresh outlooks in a consistent and sustainable way.

Dividing this place up according to words, and trying to work out which of those words works best, is useless. Over-simplified taxonomy is a danger to discovering the grey bits in between what people want you to think. Classifications have been built up over time, but who's to say that what's been agreed upon is necessarily the correct way to slice things up? Isn't there so much shared ground between everything that the generalisation becomes meaningless?

I suspect that the process may be very much like trying to walk out of a desert, having no knowledge of which way you should be going in the first place. You know that the desert ends at some point (or that you will), whichever way you go, but at any particular moment, you only have the immediate landscape around you and your fleeting memories of the past to guide you onwards. And in the end, where you are right now matters more than where you ultimately end up.