All men have a foot in both camps. You must have in the first to be alive, and you need be in the second, (to some degree), to be fully human. The two overlap everywhere and are complimentary, or at least ordinarily not incompatible, the radical purpose of the second reality being to make the physical one more amenable to man’s survival and comfort. Men’s brains are not normally programmed for an abiding recognition of their two different imprints and the two distinct realities they serve. For normal lives, no such awareness is needed. Like all of life’s constructions, things run quite smoothly in the overwhelming majority of instances.
A few people however, are born with brains which are not imprinted with the fully integrated version of the two realities blueprint. A situation which causes them to sense a fissure in what those around them accept as a seamless reality wherein things intangible, (words, ideas), are taken to have a reality that is qualitatively comparable to things with a physical existence. Thus a man’s reputation can be as meaningful to him as is his land, and the word, God as important as life itself.
Ordinary consciousness is not programmed to make an ongoing distinction between these two quite real, complimentary, but different realities. If it is directly noted to an attentive man, he can be made to momentarily realize what is being herein described, but will instantly forget entirely about it, with it having no effect on him whatsoever. It is not supposed to.
Few people are born with the capacity to recognize the factuality of these two realities, and its startling operational significance in the life of man. From one valid, verbal view, the failure to realize that humanity lives simultaneously and unwittingly in these two different types of realities is the source of all questions, conflicts, complaints and confusions not directly related to food, sex or land. Men will kill over water, but only argue over literature. They comprehend totally someone committing such a murder, but are at a complete loss to understand how some people can be a Republican.
There is nothing TO understand about physical reality. It is just there and everyone realizes it is there, and everyone knows how to deal with it until it finally deals with you in the final act of dispatch. But no one of ordinary brain-imprinting understands man’s second reality, for the reason that their consciousness makes no distinction between it and the physical one. It is not programmed to; it is not intended to; it is not needed to, and it does not. But if yours does, then here is your “problem” – and if yours does – there is your solution.
J.