Human beings everywhere have culture. For each culture, there is a view of life and the world—with variances on this from individual to individual—which determines how the individual’s perceptions are given meaning, how everything is perceived and interpreted. If I look to a hole in the plaster of my wall and say, "What does it mean?" there is really no answer to this question that is not culturally bound. It does not actually mean anything—it is not language, after all. But were I to bring a date in here, she would think perhaps it means I do not care about the state of my apartment; the owner of my building would think it means he will have to spend some extra money to fix it once I move out; it will mean different things to different people. The Existentialists look at everything people infuse with meaning this way and take away that "arbitrary", culturally bound meaning—and they are left with a life devoid of meaning. To them, this is the reality of life, which people hide from themselves by infusing everything with arbitrary and in a sense illusory meaning.

This does not signify that the imposing of meaning on perceptions is conscious. When one walks into a new acquaintance’s apartment, and sees a cockroach, the very sight of the cockroach will be infused with emotion and meaning that is culturally bound. The lower class in the same society would not be bothered by just one cockroach; it would not be infused with the same meaning, and thus its very image would be different. It is a very difficult thing, in daily experience, to separate sight, the emotions associated with the images in it, and what they mean to us. On the conscious level, these are usually fused into a single experience, so that in a sense we "see" our emotions about the sight and its meaning all at once.

I would suggest that it is human nature to infuse everything with such meaning, that culture cannot function unless it does so. An anthropologist can shift his webs of significance, for a time, from those of his or her own culture to those of the one he or she is studying. An Existentialist or mystic can see the "illusion" of such culturally bound meaning and experience life with a lesser degree of any conceptual framework and see things "how they really are". But the anthropologist, Existentialist, and mystic must go to some psychological lengths to do so. An anthropologist studying a village of Guatemalan peasants who are constantly being terrorized by the Guatemalan Army will learn to see the army as the culture sees it; and this will be easy for him, because, coming from his own culture, it will be very natural for him to assume the army is wrong. But an anthropologist studying the Guatemalan Army itself will have a hard time seeing things the way their culture sees it—he will be too caught up in his own cultural convictions, his own webs of significance, that tell him what the army is doing is just wrong. Some anthropologists are able to do such things, but they are only very extraordinary. The same goes with Existentialists and mystics. Actually, much of what Sartre said, especially in his fiction, about the experiences he had once he ceased to infuse everything with meaning, is hard to relate to by most people. I think he knew as well as anyone that this experience was not the norm, but was something out of the ordinary. He writes, during a long description of such an experience in Nausea, "This moment was extraordinary." Had such an experience seemed perfectly ordinary to him, I don’t think he would have written it down.

Science works through means of conceptual frameworks as much as culture. The theory of evolution, general and specific relativity, and other conceptual frameworks, form the webs of significance through which scientists perceive and interpret their data. This does not mean the theories cannot be tested or, if they need to be, modified or thrown out. Science develops these frameworks through a process that allows them to find the best "working models" for both explaining data, and finding out what it means. It is the same as the example of the hole in the plaster of my wall. When a scientist finds the bones of a Neanderthal, he may ask himself, "What does it mean?" But bones do not actually mean anything; language does. And yet he will see meaning in it by means of the conceptual framework he is working with. It would mean something completely different to a scientist who has a different view of Neanderthals than he; and it would mean something radically different to a scientist 200 years ago who does not have the conceptual framework of even the theory of evolution. Most people think it would mean things that are "true" to the present-day scientist and things that are "false" to the scientist who does not work through the ideas of evolution. But even scientists admit that conceptual frameworks need to be in a constant state of modification in order to better explain the data; and most do not think they will ever come up with a theory that represents "truth" completely and absolutely, with nothing left to modify. Our current view of the theory of evolution, to future scientists, could be viewed as being as mistaken as is Newtonian physics to a physicist today who views things through the framework of general and specific relativity.

It is my thesis that such webs of significance, such conceptual frameworks, both cultural and scientific, such meaning to things that are our means of perceiving and interpreting our experience, is where human "truth" lies. It is human nature to view the world this way, whether I am an ancient Greek who believes in Zeus and finds meaning in that, or a Christian who believes in God and finds meaning in that. Such a life, admittedly, could be called irrational. But it is only human nature to view things through infused meaning and culturally bound webs of significance, and the philosopher is deceived if he or she thinks he or she is free of such "irrational" conceptual frameworks. It does not matter whether God exists. God is part of our worldview, like it or not, and he means something to us, there is "truth" in believing in him.

The mystic will say he has found the nature of all things by transcending the webs of significance, seeing that they are illusion. But he will also say that there is no way for him to tell you what that nature is—it is so fundamental that, as soon as he has said a word, he has misrepresented it. This type of truth is perhaps how things really are, which the scientist and philosopher cannot see because of their attempt to apprehend it through conceptual frameworks. It is the final truth, the only truth that is not attained through the "illusion" of arbitrary concepts. All else, then, though it may be rational, cannot completely or absolutely represent things how they really are. So to say scientists work under a "rational" and "true" conceptual framework, and Southern Baptists work under a "false" and "illusory" one, is only to refuse to see the shortcomings of science, and the fact that the Southern Baptist’s world has truth to him, just as the scientist’s world has a different truth to him. The Southern Baptist could not live happily under the scientist’s worldview; no one should expect him to change. One may say the actual propositions the Southern Baptist comes up with to express his beliefs are generally false and speculative. But scientists too have been known to come up with all sorts of false propositions as a result of their belief systems throughout history, and we would be a little naïve to think the scientists of today do not do the same.

Much of what human beings take very naturally for "truth" they create for themselves. These truths are true, and yet culturally bound and ultimately arbitrary. Take the truth "Today is Monday." This statement can be actually true or false. But "Monday" is a concept our culture created, that has no correspondent in nature, outside of our own, spontaneously created, arbitrary belief systems. The Existentialist will call this type of arbitrary, culturally bound concept "not the way things really are", and will try to experience life free of all such concepts. Our culture is filled with such concepts as "Monday", "July", and even functions with the concept "ownership" which is just the same. Ownership is neither a process, activity, nor object. If a man who owns his house said to you, when you asked him what he would do today, "I think I’ll go and spend a few hours owning my house," this would sound a little strange. If I own a spoon that is in my kitchen, the spoon itself is no different than if nobody owned it. But it is viewed differently by human beings if I own it. Ownership has become the cornerstone of our economy, but it is a culturally bound, socially constructed convention, which some cultures in history have functioned without any concept of. Ownership does not exist in nature; human beings create it with pure mental activity, and the meaning they impose on the world around them. It has become an integral part of our world, and how we view reality. Just glancing at newspaper articles, it’s astonishing how many of the "facts of the world" they report have no correspondent in nature, but are facts only about the socially constructed world we have created for ourselves, whose only correspondents are the psychological life of the individuals in our society. We have created our world partly through means of such concepts as these, and this is what we take as "reality". It is no wonder, then, that some of us are capable of breaking from such "reality" and seeing the world differently, when caught in a delusion.

Science has answered for us many of the questions that previous generations have sought to answer with irrational beliefs, such as, "What are the stars?" and, "Why does the earth sometimes quake?" We have answered these questions using mainly reason, and so we have found answers we really have reason to believe are true, though we are constantly adjusting these answers as we consider more data. This has created what many in the scientific community view as a "rational worldview" in which we leave all the old superstitions, including religious mythology, behind, and our belief systems become finally based on reason, belief systems that approach, if they do not describe precisely, the truth. In the middle of the 20^th century, W. T. Stace wrote an essay, "Man Against Darkness," in which he saw human beings as in the process of leaving the religious illusions behind them. In the future, they would have to deal with the incomprehensible solely through reason, without the aid of comforting myths about God and a spiritual world.

He turned out to be wrong about the demise of the religious worldview, which persists today, and in fact the spread of religious fundamentalism has only grown in the past few decades. (To be fair to him, he later changed his views on the illusion of religion, and argued, based on a philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of mysticism, for the existence of God.) To those in the scientific community, though, they view themselves as having a purely rational worldview, as being purely rational beings, not to be fooled or deluded by irrational mythology, like the Southern Baptist.

I would propose that even these purely "rational" scientists are constantly creating irrational beliefs, mostly about what they cannot know. Some physical anthropologists believe Neanderthals were a separate species from human beings; others believe they were only a separate subspecies that was close enough to interbreed. Very few physical anthropologists, when asked the question, will say, "I don’t know." There seems to be evidence for both views; both are rationally defensible based upon the data, and both can partially explain the data. Why don’t most physical anthropologists view this as something we simply need more data to make a judgement on, why is it that so many of them choose one viewpoint or another, rather than stay in the cognitively painful state of suspended judgement? Were their worldviews guided only by reason, the entire community would have the stance of: we don’t know yet. But there is a certain anguish in this position, and so if a physical anthropologist spends enough time mentally living with the issue, the mind will say, "This question needs an answer, whether I have enough data or not," and a belief will form.

In fact, this process of some in the scientific community holding certain beliefs, and other holding opposing beliefs, seems to be partly how science functions. As more data is gathered, each presenting data that supports his or her particular belief, data is finally found that one can use against the other that overwhelmingly shows the irrationality of the other’s belief. But the beliefs themselves, before this data is found, are held to be true by their adherents, before the evidence is actually found that shows which view is correct. Were these scientists purely rational in their worldviews, they would say among themselves, "We don’t know the answer to these questions; we will merely collect data in the hopes of finding out, and suspend our judgement until we find it." For many individual scientists, beliefs are held for which there is not yet enough evidence to tell the truth of; instead of the cognitively painful state of suspended judgement, each has one belief or another on questions we cannot yet know the answers to.

All of us, including scientists, hold beliefs we need to function in our everyday lives, leaving aside issues of worldview. Take the person who believes, "All my friends are very fond of me." If this person’s friends weren’t fond of him, they probably wouldn’t tell him. Were they not fond of him, he wouldn’t know; if he asked them and they didn’t like him, they would lie. He cannot "know" in the sense that philosophers use the word whether they are fond of him. Rather, he will "sense" it if they are not, and this process of "sensing" is not based on reason or logic, but is one of the ways the mind functions with interpersonal interaction. It is not reason that tells this man his place in the social network, but an unconscious function of the mind in a social organism. Thus, the belief systems we form that help us to function as members in a social network are not drawn from reason, but found in things like the meaning we put into the remarks, gestures, body language, and the suggestions of others. The schizophrenic has not lost reason in the sense that he has lost the ability to think in a logical progression, but rather in the ability to accurately see the meaning in events and actions that the rest of humanity sees more accurately.

In my first psychotic delusion, which I mentioned in the "overview" of this essay, my belief system was such that I was a telepath, and all my thoughts were being broadcast to everyone around me, wherever I was, whomever I was with. With this belief system firmly in place, it was the conceptual framework through which I interpreted, and infused with meaning, everything people said. Most people believe that the meanings of words during a conversation are very clear, and that they get all their understanding of the meaning of the people from the actual meanings of the words. But there is much more to it than this. If someone says something in a loud tone, or a in whisper, or with an expression of scorn, the "sense" we get of their meaning is changed, sometimes even turned into an opposite meaning, as words are when they are used sarcastically. Most minds, having evolved to work socially, automatically process all these things, so that we do not know we get the "meaning" from whatever conceptual framework we are under, whatever webs of significance we are in, and only in part by the dictionary definitions of words. Sometimes someone will even suggest things in a covert way, such as in a double entendre, in which we get his or her meaning solely through our own "impressions" of the situation, not through the words themselves. Sometimes when a woman believes a man has come on to her, she will report this to another, and the other will ask her to repeat precisely what the man said. "It wasn’t what he said," she will say, "it was the way he said it."

All my perceptions of interpersonal interaction, under that delusion, were this sense of "the way he said it". The way everyone was saying everything supported, in a way that I could not see as illogical, my belief that he or she knew my thoughts. This was not a failure to see things logically; it is not by only logic, or even mostly by logic, that we understand people’s meaning when we interact. There is no logic to the "impressions" of an experience, which lead to interpretation of what that experience actually means. Just like the normal mind perceives that it gets all the meaning in conversation from the meanings of the words used, so too did I perceive that I got this meaning that supported my delusion from the actual meanings of the words. If I ever questioned my delusion, I would remember specific words someone had said after a particular thought or image had passed through my mind, and say to myself, "It proves it."

I even run into problems with this when I am not under any delusion. A few years ago, I was in a car with my father and stepmother. I was trying to explain some complex philosophical concept to my father. Suddenly my stepmother pointed to a Greek restaurant, and said, "Look at the name of that restaurant: ‘It’s Greek to Me’." I had been conscious, as I was speaking to my father of philosophy, of the little patience my family generally as of discussing philosophy with me. Their attitude usually is, "I don’t understand it and I don’t care to discuss it." So when my stepmother said, "It’s Greek to me," I perceived this as having bearing on me and what I was saying: she was saying, "I don’t understand what you’re saying and neither do I care to: it’s Greek to me." I later asked her if this was what she had meant, as it had disturbed me. She, on the other side of it, had little comprehension of why I had taken her to mean such a thing. She was only pointing out a cute name for a restaurant. Some might think it was "illogical" or "irrational" to perceive such a thing in what she said. But I am convinced that all human beings have the ability to see people’s meaning not only through what they say, by logically analyzing it, but by a capacity for the brain to accurately infuse it with a "sense" of meaning. Though this ability of healthy minds sometimes it errs and there is misunderstanding, is more accurate than my own ability to do so. Had my stepmother really decided to make a comment on what I was discussing, and made a suggestion to this effect, though the actual words she used were little changed, I’m sure most normal people would have sensed and picked up on it.

The FCC has made it illegal to make certain sounds with the throat over the airwaves. This sounds strange when you put it in these terms, and in a sense "illogical" as perhaps Mr. Spock from Star Trek would see logic. But the public infuses such powerful meaning into certain sounds—or words—that it is illegal to make them on broadcast TV or radio. This meaning is not actually in these sounds—the variances of languages over the globe testifies to that, different sounds only meaning what they do in different cultural contexts. This is the world and "reality" our culture creates for us, and it is only too human to live in such a reality and world. This shows that it is not so hard to actually break from reality and live in a different world, as long as the brain is not capable of infusing things with the same meaning as everyone else. The schizophrenic is not so disabled that he cannot tell you the meanings of words—especially if he reads them in a book—but in daily interaction we infuse more than words with meaning; all our daily perceptions, interpersonal interactions, and experiences in fact are infused with such meaning.

A man can learn a language for which there is no documented translation to his own, lesson telling him clearly what words mean what, or clear explanation, in his own tongue, of its grammatical structure, if he merely lives among those who speak it for a given amount of time. The interpersonal interaction he experiences in that land will help him sense people’s meaning without his knowing the dictionary definitions of the words they are using, or even their grammar. This experience, the association of the "sensed" meaning with the sounds they are making, will eventually lead him to understand what those sounds are trying to get across. Of course, the more he learns of what those sounds actually mean the more he will understand such interpersonal interaction. But unless communication is to a large degree the "sense" we get out of interacting with people, and not the dictionary definitions of their words, there would be no way for him to ever learn the language. Unless he gets at least some of their meaning non-linguistically, he would have nothing to associate the sounds he does not know the meanings of with. He must learn the language by means of associating with those who speak it; were he simply to stare at books in their language, with no translation of any of the words, there would be no way to find out what those symbols mean.

Just at the time a child learns his native language, his cultural context is also a completely blank slate. The child is born with an innate capacity to associate meaning with certain ideas and experiences, but at the moment of birth the content of that meaning has yet to be provided. The child learns the meaning of his perceptions just as he learns the meanings of words themselves, simultaneously learning what meaning to impose on things and imposing it on them. And a newborn child, after all, is the most capable student of language of any of us. He simultaneously picks up on the meaning people have behind their words—through a mysterious process of simply being such a "blank slate" in terms of meaning—and the meanings of culture, the webs of significance, he is to live in, and create his reality with. If it weren’t for this mysterious intuition, which very soon allows him to understand relatively complex linguistic concepts, he would never learn the language at all. We communicate partially on the same level still—through this intuited meaning—though it seems like we get everything from the dictionary definitions of the words. When I thought people could read my mind, this "intuition" made the actual words people used take on a different appearance to me, with different impressions which supported my delusion.

Something as "real" to us as capital, or money, which determines the happiness of so many of us, is merely a social convention. Money only represents something, it is not something in itself. What does it represent? Economists say purchasing power. Why ought we to purchase things, and what sorts of things do we purchase? Things that give us pleasure. If we were incapable of feeling pleasure or pain, money would be worth nothing to us; there would be nothing lost in living in the streets and going hungry, and nothing gained in living in a mansion with a gourmet cook to serve us. The very concept of money comes from the power of consciousness to feel pleasure and pain, to infuse its world with value. Money represents the power to get pleasure for oneself; its lack only means the prospect of pain. For those for whom it is an end in itself, it only becomes a pleasure in itself, the pleasure found in having the power to get pleasure.

Sometimes, in the past, I have for a brief moment seen past this, lost the socially constructed value which we place in money. Once, I was in Juarez, Chihuahua, with my father, and I was off my medication (I forgot to bring it by mistake). We had just changed our American dollars to Mexican pesos. I was sitting in the taxi sorting through the new bills as we were stopped at a light. Suddenly a beggar woman came up to our taxi to beg, as they often do when they see an American in a border city. I looked down at the papers in my hand; I knew one of the papers would make her immensely happy, but as for me, I didn’t really see what I would lose if I gave her one of the papers. They were, after all, only brightly colored papers with various images on them. I gave her one of the papers through the window. I was sitting in the front seat of the taxi, on the passenger side. The taxi driver was exasperated with me. "Do you know how much money you just gave her!" he said. "You gave her like 30 dollars!" I tried to explain to him I had been fooled by the look of the new money; I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say, but I was sure the radically different look of the currency had somehow deceived me. He didn’t understand what I was saying, and neither did I, really. The different look of the currency had made me for a moment lose my social associations with it. "Why don’t you give me that much?" said the taxi driver. I didn’t know what to tell him, but I wasn’t about to make the mistake again.

Human nature, then, is the capacity to see meaning in what there is really no meaning in, significance which humans create for themselves, and belief systems that, whether rational or irrational, tell human beings their place in the cosmos and its nature. Humans are not "rational animals with self-interest" but are only rational insofar as their webs of significance make them so, only self-interested insofar as their culture creates self-interest in them. Humans will believe things about what they cannot know, see significance in things that have no internal significance, create their own worlds and "reality" based on culture and conceptual frameworks. All cultures do this, whether it is the cultures of the scientific or philosophical communities, or those of the Southern Baptists or Guatemalan peasants. Real truth, what philosophers call truth, is not as important to humans as meaning, and the "truth" that is in beliefs that may not be true. There is nothing wrong with this, even if our belief systems are filled with false beliefs; this is how human beings create their world and reality. The only other option is to see things without such socially constructed meaning, as does the mystic, and find that truth is actually ineffable and impossible to put into language.

The schizophrenic, from this viewpoint, is every bit as rational as the normal person. The normal person believes things that are speculated, based on his personal, subjective "impressions" that put him into a meaningful world. The normal person will accept societal beliefs about the unknowable, in order to render his experience comprehensible; and the schizophrenic is merely doing the same thing when his mind creates a delusion, because his everyday experience has become incomprehensible to him. If it is human nature to infuse the world with meaning, the schizophrenic is the most human of all of us, creating his own meaning to infuse his experience with, in order to make sense of his world. It is not, after all, by reason that we make sense of our everyday experience, but through the capacity of healthy minds to see significance in what they have been brought up to see significance in, to be in the same webs of significance of the rest of society. The schizophrenic has only formed his own, private webs of significance. Since the meaning seen in our world does not issue from a rational analysis of that world, but from the unconscious processes of our minds, in their natural capacity to undergo socialization, the schizophrenic is no less rational than the rest of us.