Overthrowing Eastern and Western Economics: Economics by Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán (Chapter 11)

2006/8/10 9:56:37

Through the discussion above, we can see that apart from the most fundamental logic of human existence and differentiation, everything that can be realized by human reality, thought by human thought, theorized by human theory, practiced by human practice, idealized by human ideals, scientized by human science, logicized by human logic, and so on—all of it is externally imposed, dependent upon human existence and differentiation. Please note, and this must be repeatedly emphasized: the "human" here is not an abstract concept but an ever-expanding set. A set without elements and elements without a set are both beyond what we can differentiate. The class of the set and the individuality of its elements are two inseparable aspects of being human.

In truth, all of humanity's everything has been spinning around on these externally imposed logical relations. For instance: whether matter comes first or consciousness comes first, how theory and practice are unified, the principles of pragmatism, skepticism, scientism, art supremacy, God, mission, laws, unity of opposites, economic agents, society, and so on—they're all the same. But humans always love these things, and moreover will draw swords and shed blood over them, painting history's curtain red. When history's crimson curtain rises and falls, what takes its final bow is nothing more than soap-bubble logic tricks played upon these added-on logical constructs.

However, when you live inside a soap bubble, the logic of that soap bubble is your destiny. Even your desire to escape the soap bubble cannot depart from the bubble's logic, let alone your actions. Steel is actually also a soap bubble; for those inside the soap bubble, the soap bubble is steel. Both steel and soap bubbles are inseparable from human existence and differentiation, yet both soap bubbles and steel are merely externally imposed logic. And the suffering and hope that soap bubbles and steel provoke in humans are equally externally imposed—even the "externally imposed" itself is externally imposed.

But soap bubbles contain infinite possibilities. Within soap bubbles there are also magnificent worlds, and these magnificent worlds are built upon externally imposed logic as ephemeral as soap bubbles. For those within the soap bubble, the externally imposed is the internal, is the law, is destiny, is necessity, is truth, is the ideal, is practice, is theory, is logic, is God, is salvation, is history, is resonance, is mythology, is economics, is society, is humanity, is the world, is spacetime, is the Dao, is the infinite, is mind, is soul, is gods and ghosts, is wind, flowers, snow and moonlight, is love, is sex, is everything, is non-everything, is birth, is extinction, is emptiness, is being, is illusion, is existence, is non-existence, is heaven, is hell, is human existence and differentiation, is human non-existence and non-differentiation, is the one, is the many, is the beginning, is the ultimate, is "is."