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Darlene Forde's picture

Let us redefine our epistemology

I agree with you Rebecca . . . .for the most part. I think people should feel comfortable with (and appreciative of) our ways of perceiving the world. It is ideally suited to the way we live our lives. Or alternatively, we live our lives in ways that are ideally suited to the way we perceive our world.

However, this reminds me of certain questions we asked earlier in the semester. There are people out there who appear to perceive more than what is generally perceived, whose perceptions like deviations away from the mean. Psychics, individuals with synesthesia, people who see auras, or individuals with brain trauma who are capable of "seeing" what we have determined to be impossible with portion of the brain missing. This leads me to believe that humans, through culture, have learned to suppressive many ways in which we perceive our world. Acculturation has stripped humans of the ability to interpret their worlds in all the ways we are capable, rather than facilitate a more sophisticated ways of perception.

Is this why all the great spiritual leaders have sought to escape the chains of civilizations, if only temporarily, in order to develop and understanding of the world around them? Perhaps there is both truth and reality in those perceptions that like more than 1 standard deviation from the mean. If so the true 'enlightenment' may lay in developing a richer understanding of the many different methods by which we are currently capable of understanding the world, drawing readily on these different ways of seeing while recognizing them as valid. In short, let us redefine our epistemology.

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