Welcome and "The View From Nowhere"

So I've noticed that this blog now has several followers! I want to welcome everybody and encourage you to comment and question. I have so much to learn, truly. Knowing that I've now opened this blog up to public viewing, I will try to explain my postings and the terminology in them more fully; before, the blog was functioning more as a sort of repository for quotations and ideas I thought were interesting and was meant primarily for my own perusal.

That said, I had a deep moment today. I just finished reading a novel called 36 Arguments For The Existence of God. The title of the novel is meant somewhat ironically as it is the title of an appendix for an imaginary work of philosophy that the protagonist, Cass Seltzer has written in which he destroys all 36 known arguments for the existence of God through reason. This "fictional" appendix actually appears at the end of the very real book that's sitting on my lap right now. There is one scene in particular which I wanted to share as it has to do directly with this blog. Towards the end of the novel, Professor Cass Seltzer debates another professor regarding the proposition: God exists. Cass is arguing from the negative position though he does not see this as inconsistent with religious practice. I decided to quote a bit of what Cass argues about the goal of ethical life because I think it dovetails nicely with all the neo-hasidic and nondual Jewish beliefs I've been exploring here (the brackets are mine!):

"There is a point of view that's available to all of us. The philosopher Thomas Nagel called it the 'View from Nowhere.' When you view the fact that you happen to be the particular person you are from the vantage point of the View from Nowhere, that fact shrivels into insignificance. Of, course, we don't live our life from this perspective [ratzo v'shov!!!!!] We live inside our lives, where it's impossible not to feel one's self to matter. But still, that View from Nowhere is always available to us, reminding us that there's nothing inherently special or uniquely deserving about any of us, that it's just an accident that one happens to be who one happens to be. And the consequence of these reflections is this: if we can't live coherently without believing ourselves to matter, then we can't live coherently without extending the same mattering to everyone else. The work of ethics is the work of getting one's self to this vantage point and keeping it relevant to how one sees the world and acts. There are truths to discover in this process and they are the truths that make us change our behavior...and become moral grown-ups [as opposed to changing our behavior for fear of punishment or gain of reward]."

This was revelatory when I read it. It seems to me that this "View from Nowhere" is synonymous with bittul ha-yesh, or nullification of self that comes with the realization of the Oneness of reality. The "work of ethics" to achieve this outlook that "Cass" refers to is my own rationale for Jewish (or in general, religious) practice. The more one realizes this Unity, that Ein Od Milvado is true, the more one realizes our responsibility to one another and the Earth because ultimately, those differences are illusory even though we LIVE in the going and returning, the ratzo v'shov, of subjectivity and the View from Nowhere. This is beautiful because I think the contemplation of this View, or this nullification of self, informs both our subjectivity and our objectivity and that is the work.