We each have a pair of eyes which look out onto the world from slightly different angles. Because of the ordered similarity and difference between the two views the world gains stereoscopic depth.

Likewise, our two ears hear a similar sonic world, but each ear hears some sounds a little louder and some sounds a little softer. Because of the ordered similarity and difference between the two views the world gains stereosonic depth.

The stereosonic depth and the stereoscopic depth are perceived separately but can also be related (to use the word incorrectly) synesthetically to create an abstract depth. (Or is it this abstract depth that gives meaning to stereoscopic/stereophonic depth?)

The abstract depth is confirmed (or established) in our experiences, which are always twofold: reflection on the past related to our ongoing anticipations of the future. Without this play of future and past (which constitutes our present) time would not be time to us. It is hard to imagine that we would be ourselves anymore. I imagine we would be like Edwin Muir’s animals.

They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.

For with names the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With names was built and walled,
Line and circle and square,
Dust and emerald;
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.

But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memoried day.
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifth great day of God,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.

On the sixth day we came.

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On the sixth day we came… We who speak to one another as a fellow I, as a thou. Together we call the world out of empty air.

We who, like pairs of eyes or ears, like the past and the future, bring together in language a stereo-ontic sense of the world, and bring out another divine dimension: the subject.

Without We, I am negativity, a nothing, a void, a dreamed thing populated with images.

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Like two hands of a common body touching in gassho, two people speaking a common language meet in respect and transcend the illusion of the ultimacy of the ego. We say Namaste or Shalom to someone who hears our voice in world and understands. In dialogue we are changed and renewed and finally understand that in authentic we – dialogical we – none of us can believe he is alone.

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Namaste/shalom/thou is said dialogically, or nothing is said in the word. It is just idle repetition of a word. All dialogue is practical namaste/shalom/thou. Dialogue is the opposite of idle repetition of words.

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Some of us want to be left alone, except we don’t realize the extent to which we are sustained by togetherness.

The most antisocial man breaks down in solitary confinement almost immediately. The most antisocial thinker must necessarily go insane. He uses the same words, but cannot communicate. Nobody can save him.

Dialogue is what stabilizes our world and makes the primordial chaos of the phenomenal flux solid and real.

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Take note those times when you speak to your friend and lose yourself in conversation; when you are absorbed in your work and forget yourself; when in collaboration nobody knows who thought of what and everybody knows that what the group produced was impossible for any of the individuals; when you speak to someone and only that someone and what is being said is revealed you you as you hear it…

Take note of how you feel afterwards.

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If you can never lose yourself, you can never find yourself.

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Stereo – ORIGIN from Greek stereos ‘solid.’

Parallax – ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from French parallaxe, from Greek parallaxis ‘a change,’ from parallassein ‘to alternate,’ based on allassein ‘to exchange’ (from allos ‘other’ ).

Dialogue –  ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French dialoge, via Latin from Greek dialogos, from dialegesthai ‘converse with,’ from dia ‘through’ + legein ‘speak.’

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Love and duality. – What is love but understanding and rejoicing at the fact that another lives, feels and acts in a way different from and opposite to ours? If love is to bridge these antitheses through joy it may not deny or seek to abolish them. – Even self-love presupposes an unblendable duality (or multiplicity) in one person. – Nietzsche

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When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 22:34