In My Beginning Is My End

There is a seamless nature to existence. We divide time into seconds, nanoseconds and the like. But these a just abstractions. All movements, all actions, all existence is one continuous moving whole.

Therefore, is Individualism and individuality of the person a fantasy? Is it just an illusion brought about by circumstances of our brains being bound to our physical bodies, our "bonelockers" as they say in Old English?

NO. Individuality is NOT an illusion. Free will within the individual does exist, as does Freedom as an intrinsic reality in each individual. To say that something is WHOLE is NOT to say that it is uniform or unchangeable. To say that our lives are affected one to another is NOT to say that each one of us has a license upon the life of any of the rest of us.

When a substance is uniform it is generally brittle and breaks easily. But the substance of reality is not uniform. It is individuated into countless entities of living and non-living matter. These individual entities are joined, they overlap, but they are still individuals. They are NOT part of some "universal mind" of cosmic whole bound to serve the "greater good."

Reality has overlaps and seams. It has places that are messy and dirty and non-uniform. That is called Freedom and free-will. Does this serve the "interests of the whole?" In the end, the "interests of the whole" are served by the "happiness" of its individual parts as those parts make up the reality of the whole as opposed to its notional reality.

As this takes us to the end of the thought process it turns us back to the beginning. As one action ends, another begins. As one thought ends, another begins. As one life ends, another begins. This is the essence of the whole and ALSO the life of the individual mind. The really interesting parts of the whole of reality are in the seams that represent our differences. It is in these seams that the mystery of individual genius lies.

It is often said that geniuses have split minds, or personalities. Their genius lies in realizing this and examining the seams or gulfs that divide their minds: living within those spaces, between love and hate, peace and war, sanity and insanity. It is the division in the wholeness of their mind that gives it strength and genius. In the same way, it is the differences in life as they exist in the totality of reality that make life worth living and links the process within our internal minds to the reality of the whole of existence. It is the divisions that individuality creates within reality that gives the wholeness of reality its natural genius, its inherent worth to us as thinking beings. (as an aside, it is also the philosophical and practical justification for a Federal system of government.)

In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.

John.