Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Just as the most interesting house on a street is eventually discovered to be the one you did't notice for the longest time, the one you have walked past countless times without gracing it with a second look, the one that still refuses to solicit your gaze, so the most interesting of mental states is ordinary mind, the state you are apparently in most of the time and to which you pay no attention at all. This is the state when attention flows away towards its objects with no backwash, no handhold (or hand-holding) for an epoché. It is not strictly a state but a family of states, perhaps unlimited in extent. The natural attitude, in which subject is the protagonist whose interests and preoccupations effortlessly predominate whatever the current emotional weather, and where reflection is simply an ancillary capability and the past, all the way to the horizon and beyond, is a mere entitlement. The well-worn office of a self in the driver's seat, taken for granted. It is the very taking of it for granted, a transcendental sanity which synthesises the contributions of a host of sub-personalities, and is able to add the frame "I think" without any felt need to question just what this "I" and this "think" might be. You think about these things and part of your thought is that in the half-moment just before you said to yourself, "Now is a time to think about these things."
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