To reduce knowledge to material reality, as some might try to do, is altogether unnecessary and unreasonable. It is enough to know that there is a kind of morally indifferent material reality that does not correspond to our needs and wishes all the time, but can be made to do so sometimes. This form of knowledge is magical in a very inspiring sense, since it makes out that reality is both inside of us and outside of us at the same time. This viewpoint is ecstatic, exciting, as well as potentially dialectical.
Typical Western thinking, by contrast, is nearly always binary -- nearly always an either-or proposition: either we believe that our destinies are totally in our hands or we deny we have any power and accept victimhood. According to intellectual shamanism, we take part in a reality larger than us, which sometimes we can influence and other times not, but in any case the participation itself is ecstatic.
Typical Western thinking, by contrast, is nearly always binary -- nearly always an either-or proposition: either we believe that our destinies are totally in our hands or we deny we have any power and accept victimhood. According to intellectual shamanism, we take part in a reality larger than us, which sometimes we can influence and other times not, but in any case the participation itself is ecstatic.
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