AS GALILEO SAID, "...AND YET IT MOVES".
People around the world and around me as well accuse philosophers, theorists, problem conceptualizers as for emphasizing on the bad and not acknowledging the good. People who know me, know me as one who sees only the negative and cannot speak anything non-nuanced. They say, I have a bad habit of philosophizing everything or rather theorizing everything. This, I see as the same accusation as Noam Chomsky once did of Slavoj Zizek. He said, "What he does is theory! Theory means nothing today!"
I feel a weird analogy between these accusations and the accusations of the Catholic church on Galileo when he gave the heliocentric model. Isn't this the same line of story? The church said," NO FACT CHECKING PLEASE!" and People say to theorists, "No theory please!" People somewhat think that they are otherwise living a happy life and then a theorist comes and creates a fiction of problems that don't really exist. But the fact remains, Galileo begs pardon and says,"...and yet, indeed it moves!" The fact is a fact. The reality is reality. You have to face it whether you want to theorize it or not.
Why are people so reluctant to theory? What is it that theory provides or creates which is so much of a nuisance? and A weird phenomena occurs when a theorist gets a critical acclaim, people start going overboard to fetishize it.
RELUCTANCE TO THEORY IS THE REAL FICTION YOU DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE
When Gautam Buddha said," Life is suffering!" There were two kinds of people. One who made him God, fetishized him, and one who disagreed with him, said that he is a negativist. One profound thing about theoretic conclusions is that you cannot disagree with it. Life is what it is. You cannot disagree with it. If someone ever finds a profound truth like this, there is no scope of disagreement with it even on grounds of debate. You might debate it and you might even win the debate, yet Buddha will go saying, "...and yet, Life is suffering!" The problem with us is that we have relativized truth too much. to the extent that we do not even now wish to find the truth. Truth is the easiest available thing in the market. And when something goes so cheap in market, it means it is 1st copy of the truth and not the truth itself.
People like fiction because reality is nothing, a sort of understood presupposition and yet when the fictions start controlling us, we cannot escape the fictions now. We feel, how are we locked in the stories we created for ourselves? The truth remains, one who doesn't embrace reality is bound to live in fictions even if it is self-created.
WHAT DOES THEORY PROVIDE TO MAN?
Theory, any conceptualization, give births to numerous notions and concepts. These notions and concepts form a plane of reality which maps the whole reality on itself. Each notion and concept work like a set of coordinates in the plane to describe different locations of phenomena from the central fixed origin of the theory. This is a weird parallel between theory and coordinate geometry.
It provides man, reality a bit deconstructed, one which is easily understandable to him. Why do we need theorized reality in the first place? Do you know the inherent discrepancy between our eyes seeing and our mind comprehending? We think in linear fashion and yet our eyes perceive things logarithmically. We listen one thing at a time and yet the loudness we measure in a log scale. Our senses have an inherent incompatibility with each other. It is roughly accurate to see and acknowledge something. Moreover, we see a very narrow reality as it is. Rest everything is fictionalized, limited by senses etc. and hence extrapolated and interpolated just for convenience. This extrapolated and interpolated dimension of reality often creates problems, barring our vision to see things as it is. We can say, since many things we do not know, we try to interpret, and we interpret wrong and hence create hells for ourselves. Theory, or rather interpretation is necessary in a proper manner because subconsciously, in order to live, you are interpolating and extrapolating reality already. Zizek, by the way, calls this extrapolation and interpolation, Ideology. So, since you are already doing that, you might consider doing it properly and get out of it. So, theory is necessary to eventually come out of it. Going to Lanka was important to eventually come out of it for Rama. Sorry for the mythical reference but if I am allowed to continue, it is also necessary to burn the already existing edifice of theory (Lanka), and for that It is necessary to fly and most certainly to build your own theory (A Bridge).
PEOPLE FEAR THEORY BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE A STAKE IN THEIR MISERY.
People enjoy being sad, even being depressed and even committing suicides. No wonder attempt to kill yourself is a crime. Of course, these crimes are highly philosophical. People like their problems because they might hate the solution, because the solution is painful. In fear of medicine, People start loving their symptoms. Love thy symptom as thyself, but then don't complain. If you ask Buddha, he will say, truth as it is. You don't like it? Then might as well don't cry. Love thy symptom as thyself, as Zizek would say. Do not wish to come out of it. But we do, because we fetishize even that. We are perverts. We are perverts of life and its fictions. A theorist is your therapist, but you do not want therapy. You want to enjoy your mental illness. Fair enough, but then don't pretend. Stop fooling. Get up. Enjoy your mental asylum.
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