the way things are not
TRANSCRIPT
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Duncan Spence 2013
The Way Things Are Not
The short piece The Way Things Are has absolutely nothing to
say about the way things are in the world, only that given
that there is world of existing things, words and beings -
within which of course also the writer and all possible
readers of the words - this is what follows logically. In
fact, it forms part of a demonstration that the things and
beings of the world are not fundamental to or constitutive of
it, but products, and that words are temporary tools of
communication. There are two major obstacles in the way of
coming to terms with these insights, which are, at the same
time, two of the most persistent prejudices of society. The
first, that individual human beings have a power that
transcends the material events within which they live, that
they are an external or first cause. The second, that in orderto know anything at all we must also know why and how we know,
that the manner by which we have come to know something must
also be known before we can be sure that what we think we know
counts as authentic knowledge. The use of natural reason in
the face of the prejudices of society results more often in
heat than light. Suffice it to affirm though that although
individual beings are complete participants in material
events, they are not the external cause of events.
Furthermore, questions about the properties and qualities of
knowledge are properly of exactly the same order as questionsof knowledge. Where the knowledge under production is of the
way things are, questions will follow on from one another
organically, and arise during the process in a way that is
entirely determined by the parameters of the process itself.
Any methodological principles associated with coming to know
the way things are will meld into a general ethics of being
alive, of participating in material events, and becoming
conscious of the diversity and complexity of things - a simple
matter of organising curiosity and keeping careful records so
as to be able to see a bigger picture and arrive at a more
general understanding. Apart from this there is not much that
can be said specifically in advance, no explicit set of
procedures or rules that will anticipate every configuration
of events, or of the way things might become - only a
willingness to engage honestly with the way things are. If, on
the other hand, the knowledge under production is technical,
dedicated to the construction and design of specific objects
or things - whether these be commodities, services, products,
moral injunctions, social policy documents, state legislation,
financial instruments - there is a greater need for
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Duncan Spence 2013
methodological consistency. Here though the knowledge in
question is in fact congruent with social reality. Which means
that if it be demanded that there ought to be a distinction
between knowledge and meta-knowledge, and that questions about
the properties of knowledge be determined in advance by
abstract protocols, then this is a reflection of the
predominant methodological foresight employed by governments,
academic institutions and other recognised research
facilities, whereby the validity, legitimacy and authenticity
of knowledge is controlled by professional and methodological
procedures, specifically designed to exclude both non-
hierarchical ways of understanding, or of coming to know the
way things are, and also all knowledge that falls outside its
criteria of authenticity, justification and truth. Apart from
its crucial function in the processes of production of objects
and beings, the knowledge hereby reproduced is intended to beable reliably to represent to society as a whole a general
depiction of the way things are, and furthermore, by dint of
the authenticating powers of meta-knowledge, to provide a
general method by which it is possible to weigh up evidence in
such a way as to outline what the most likely state of affairs
might be. For society it is to this extent useful, but this is
a knowledge that is disconnected from reality in two ways:
firstly it says only that under certain circumstances
particular outcomes have certain probabilities of taking
place. Observations are not made of the actual turn of events,rather calculations are made on the basis of measurements of
acceptable variables which represent the assumed processes
under investigation, predictions are based not on the actual
processes at work at any particular moment, but on what is
statistically likely given that this event can be assumed to
be the same as others like it; secondly, it places itself at a
great distance from events and does not participate in the way
things are - quite explicitly and deliberately- according to
the presumption, true knowledge can only be assured by
objectively observing rather than by becoming involved.
Ordinary, natural, common sense knowledge, on the other hand,
unimpeded by the hierarchies and exclusions of formalism,
reductionism and the exigencies of societys prejudices, can
only exist by virtue of becoming involved in events, by
complete immersion in the way things are. It might be tempting
then to conclude that society is simply a reflection of the
way things are not. From which it perhaps follows that in
order to find out what is going on, it might be best to pay
attention not to what is going on in society, but what it
portrays to be not going on, on the way things are not.