“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.” (Luke 5:37).
When trying to portray what is real, the advice of Jesus is often neglected – we try to put new wine in old wineskins; that is, we try to express new experiences through old, outdated paradigms. This is not to say that old paradigms are without merit; whatever merit they had, that can be discerned and adapted without having to stick with a failed paradigm. Paradigms are the lenses by which people experience the world, and they form the means by which people find meaning for their otherwise confusing lives.
Therefore, there is something of value behind the task of paradigm-making, and paradigms cannot be dismissed out of hand. Paradigms are systematic constructs placed over and above reality in order to provide meaning to reality itself. But, because of their origin, because of the fact they are mere constructions, they must not be confused with reality itself. They provide a means by which we can grasp reality, and so are to be respected on that level. Ontologically, they are merely images of reality: images which, when compared to reality itself, must be judged as far less, and therefore different from, reality itself. Delusion or illusion, depending upon the kind of error, prevails when a paradigm is reified; that which it is meant to portray is lost and the construct takes the place of reality itself. Sadly, this is the level of reality most people live under: they live an unreal life, with unreal expectations. Society itself provides a paradigmatic lens which covers reality well enough that most people are unable to discern the fact they are living in a false representation of reality instead of reality itself. Those who are able to discern the difference between the image of reality with reality do not have to be stuck with the image, but they do not have to ignore it either. They can live under the simulation of reality without being ruled by it.
If we look at the situation carefully, we will begin to see the fact that most people live with and under many paradigms at one time. Society socializes them under one, religion teaches them another, and individual experiences provide a third. They are harmonized together so as to appear as one, even if, in truth, they are actually many layers used to cover what is real from the person trying to experience that real. This explains why society can work together under one paradigm, but different people will still discern reality differently despite that common paradigm. It also explains why some people, more than others, will be able to discern conflicts within a given societal paradigm: their individual experiences will demonstrate the errors of the societal level of this paradigmatic lens. Such an individual, unless prepared for such a conflict, will not know what to do and will, as a result, will blindly struggle with society as a whole to fix the communal construct society lives under. If there is no reaction, no correction, by society, is it surprising that the response of the confused individual will often end in violence? No. It is often for the love of what is real that violence is done in the name of the real; the kind of violence will differ, but violence in the name of the real is often the way by which modern society ever encounters the real, that is, violence reveals that societal paradigms are false and need to be expelled for the sake of truth. Slavoj Žižek has explained this well: “The ultimate and defining moment of the twentieth century was the direct experience of the Real as opposed to everyday social reality – the Real in its extreme violence as the price paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality.”[1] Shocking acts are done in the name of reality so that people will wake up and see the lie they have been living under. Nonetheless, through such acts, reality is not truly established; “…the fundamental paradox of the ‘passion for the Real’: it culminates in the apparent opposite, in a theatrical spectacle -from the Stalinist show trials to spectacular terrorist acts.“[2] Can we not see how “civilized society” at war with “terrorists,” and “terrorists” at war with “civilized society” both aim to destroy “false beliefs” and both, then, fight each other in the name of reality (truth), but neither can provide it?
What is it that makes us believe that our version of reality is worth fighting for? Truth, if it is what is, does not have to reveal itself by conflict; it is there, ready for us to experience it when we open ourselves up to it. If we “die to our selves“,[3] and give up our individualistic, selfish egoism, the barrier which divides us from the truth can be overcome, and reality can be experienced as communion with the God who provides us truth, consciousness of that truth, and bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda). The problem is that instead of dying to the self, we prop it up; when society is found in conflict with the self, we criticize and attack society but neglect the need to modify and reform the self. Nonetheless, the ego didn’t come to exist by itself. Society helped form our ego, but in doing so, it forms an entity which can ultimately harm that society as a whole, because that ego will try to live above the norms of society; when one uses violence to deconstruct a given societal paradigm, they do so to increase and reinforcement that individual ego. The only way to overcome the societal construct is to overcome the ego at the same time, and that can never be the way of violence, but of self-giving love; it is a journey to be had within first, and then demonstrated by loving action, not hateful destruction. If one is not able to grasp this fact, then they merely deconstruct the exterior societal norm through the means of the ego; and of course, when put in that light, society needs to be overcome until it meets the needs of the ego – by any and all means necessary. The ego is the ultimate self-affirming illusion, the ultimate “old wineskin.” Even if its foundation is outside itself, it is implanted by society as the foundation for all socialization; it is the original layer of the paradigmatic-onion-like-lens which a person has to uncover if they want experience reality as it truly is; it has to go for the illusion to be removed. If only the outer societal paradigm is removed, this makes room for something to take its place to hide the truth, while the ego which worked for this transformation finds itself strengthened, having had its muscles flexed in the process of exorcising an exterior layer of that hermeneutical lens:
Appearing as objects, sentient beings, the self
And awareness, consciousness arises.
Its objects do not exist
Therefore, it does not exist either.
Thus the false imagination is established.
This is not how it is,
Yet it is not absolutely nothing either.
Liberation is held to follow its exhaustion.[4]
The ego, with its objectification of the world, must always be seen for what it is: an illusionary construct which reifies the person into an individual. But in truth, this reified entity does not exist, because nothing exists as an individual: no man, no woman, no creature, is an island. Everything which exists, exists in communion with all else that exists, and they are united in the fact that they are established by the grace of God. But the ego tries to stress itself as real, it tries to force the world, and all that is within it, to follow what it establishes, and to call that illusionary reality – real. This false imagination is established and placed over reality; it is experienced as real, even if it is not. But because a relational, contingent person truly exists, that which the ego uses to justify itself is real, and so it must not be said that the relational person, because its egoistical projection is false, is not real. And from this it also must be said that exterior to the person, reality also exists, even if, until the ego is eliminated, all that the person knows of that reality is mediated through that ego. Once that ego is overcome, reality can be what it is without constructs. But the liberated person does not then have to abandon constructs, either; they can re-engage them, but now, with the insight to their limitations, they will not be controlled by them. In this way they are then capable of engaging others, within those constructs, to help them find in themselves the means to overcome them.
Thus, truth must not be contained by the old wineskin of the ego. Instead, the wine of truth must be put in the new person, where the expansive nature of truth can be met with the ever-expanding person as they grow in theosis. Only then will there be no confusion, no violence, when a new truth is discerned.
Footnotes
[1] Slavoj Žižek, The Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), 5-6.
[2] Ibid., 9.
[3] Matthew 16:25.
[4] Maitreya, Middle Beyond Extremes. trans. The Dharmachakra Translation Committee (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2006), 28.
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