When is an illusion liberative?

Question

I was thinking about cinema and how it might encourage us to see ourselves as movie stars in our own narratives, maybe like existential literature but without the sense of being trapped in that, and how communism may be impossible, how nirvana is often said to be an illusion. When does an illusion matter enough for the freedom it offers to amount to anything (I don't mean 'valuable' or 'meaningful' necessarily but, I suppose, no worse off for it not being real).

Answer 1

In 'Fascicle 47: On the Vines That Entangle, the Vines That Embrace' (available eg at The Zen Site) in the Shobogenzo of Eihei Dogen, the contrast is made between the negative qualities of entanglement in Buddhist thought as exemplified by the invasive climbing weed kudzu, with the 'entwining' of slow-growing wisteria compared to the positive impacts of a teacher-student interaction. In Buddhist thought, the teaching to awaken from ignorance and delusion, must be exactly in the realm of those things - the teaching that can be spoken, is not the true teaching, or else we would already have attained the goal of unshakeable liberation from the causes of suffering, simply by hearing it. In Zen they say the teaching is not through words and letters, but a direct transmission from mind to mind. You might say entwining towards mutual goal of liberation, vs entangling in the grappling of pursuing individual advantage.

In Buddhism, Maya is translated as 'pretence' or 'deceit', pictured as a negative mental quality like say lust, and used to mean the illusionary qualities of our experience. For Buddhists, conventional experience is always founded in misconceptions, is always a kind of dream or illusion. There is no other kind of subjective or self-identifying experience. Delusion, craving, suffering, and the arising of causal chains and identity, are seen as of a piece, in the chain of dependent arising. There is no true unity in the external world, except in what is regular in the nature of minds and their shared history together or codependent arising. The contrast is intersubjectivity, non-attachment to subjective preference, and accepting sunyata and interdependent co-arising - which is to say, not acting in your own intetests only, but in the interests of all beings (you included). In this sense, the Bodhisattva Path of delaying the end of suffering until all beings are freed from the hells, is an attachment, an illusion, which liberates. It makes the direction of travel the goal, rather than it's fulfillment, and by so doing, attains it's goal.

I really like this essay: Nāgārjuna, Nietzsche, and Rorty’s Strange Looping Trick; which as I see it makes a case for a core motivation of philosophy as to reach a place with 'epistemic elbow room', where we find ways to drop unproductive areas of dispute, and shift our mental energy towards the choices that impact how we live our lives, and use our minds. This is essentially meta-philosophy: rather than choosing truths, choosing what kind of truths to choose. It takes up other criteria than simply being true, but instead the world and mind you make with your attention.

For Cuba or Vietnam, Communism certainly offered something better than being a colonialist playground built on ruthless exploitation. I would make the case that in general leftwing politics is motivated by a vision of moving towards a more positive way to live, and rightwing politics is motivated more by what is feared or seen as hostile. Details here: Two ways of thinking about social reality (progressive/fluid vs conservative/structure) In this view, positive and negative images of the future are motivating, regardless of whether they are illusory - usually they are, though the illusions tend to wear out and lose power if they keep failing to account for and predict the world. Justice, peace, perfect circles, these are ideas that cannot be found in their true form in the world. But they can be used as liberating illusions, to make sense of what to do, what direction to go in, in response to the complexities we experience.

I think it comes down, to a response of the heart not the mind, to know what has liberated you. Does an idea feel like it's leading you to a place of freedom, a place where our finitude can connect with the transcendental, the personal with the universal? Liberation is not an abstraction, but an experience. Does this idea, this use of your mind, the world this idea will build with others, lead you towards helping all beings? We cannot verify the destination, but we can know the direction. That is the image, the illusion, which liberates.

Perhaps the illusion is only like an exasperated hand shewing a fly from a bottle, rather than that the fly has ever 'really understood' what's happening... But choose flying more free.

Answer 2

I think there are outright falsehoods (e.g., all squares are circles) and then there are "perspectives". Some perspectives lead to too much freedom (e.g., you will be rewarded in heaven for killing people) and most who don't hold that view would judge them as "bad".

Some other perspectives are more benign and liberating. For example, the perspective that "life is a school" will help you handle hardship and failure by focusing you on growth vs achievement. Similarly, the idea of free will, however fuzzy, helps most people maintain a sense of agency vs lapsing into fatalism.

Answer 3

Perhaps I am not understanding your question, because I am finding something perplexing in it, but I wanted to offer two perspectives that might address it.

1. The idea that we necessarily start with incorrect ideas and successively refine them. Much of what young people are taught amounts to useful fictions, because there is not enough intellectual background yet to start with truth. This is sometimes called, "Lies to children"

2. The upending of all illusions as the goal of Zen or Mahayana Buddhism, through wording like The Heart Sutra. This ends up unraveling the entire basis for discursive thought and belief, which leaves one with nothing to stand on except the experiencing of experience.

So teaching is liberating, and unteaching is liberating. First we build the sandcastle of ideas, then we watch reality wash it away.

Answer 4

If we go with Spinoza, never.

As exposed in Ethics, illusions are "inadequate ideas", it is to say representations in ones mind that do not fit with reality. Such ideas prevent one from acting rationaly (as their premises about the world are false, they can't reach adequate conclusions) and exposes people to unexpected events, usualy negative, i.e. disapointment. Disapointment in Spinoza's view is always a problem with the disapointed: the universe is what it is, necessarily, and if it does not match our expectations it's because our expectations are innadequate, as the universe can't be.

He also warned against hope, as it is, just like fear, a product of ignorance: if one can predict what is going to happen, they don't need to hope and can act appropriately with intent instead of going through life haphazardly.

Spinoza even argues that the best "freedom" we can expect is to act rationaly on the basis of adequate ideas, therefore truth is always preferable to comforting falsehood. In his view illusion simply never offers freedom.