The Three Dimensions

The human race has long since adopted a sense of duality in its understanding of life. Most of us are aware of the claims that there is a realm of objective knowledge beneath everyday consciousness - be it 'God', underlying cause and effect scientific laws, or fundamental historical processes. But, at the same time, we are clearly constrained by the contrasting realm of partial, subjective experience - vague images, assumptions, untrue beliefs, 'fake news' and other forms of surface conjecture.

In this way, social life has often been seen as a struggle for meaning, conducted between underlying truth and superficial consciousness.

But, of course, we don't all believe this either!

The first obvious clue might be that the 'truth' dimension has itself many different, competing versions. No universal consensus has ever emerged. 

What we seem to have instead, is a temporary state of affairs where one set of interpretations holds the field for a while, invariably enabled by powerful social groupings with vested interests, and a generally docile population. The status quo can easily masquerade as immutable fact, but change is inevitable, and history ably demonstrates it.

Even the great God 'science' can now be reasonably questioned for its underpinning role in industrial pollution and technological overkill. Have the consequences of scientific activity ever really been 'known'?

In summary, there is indeed a core of predictability about our current economic and social institutions, but these will be viewed subjectively in many different ways by individuals within the system. Furthermore (and here is my point) a sinister third dimension is now emerging. Not only have large sections of the population withdrawn from once established norms of conduct (work, social obligations, rule of law), they have gone one step further - entering a new 'inner world' of computer virtual realities, individual obsessions and anxieties, feral crime and sports overkill.

It is not just a reinterpretation of prevailing norms. It is a cessation.

Quantum existence.