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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.