Western Dualism / Addictive Split of Reality / Dreams behind Reality Simple Definition of dualism: Dualism is a man-made division of space (reality) in two mutually apart principles. Henk Tuten: There is no relationship between 'mind' and body because there is no immaterial 'mind'. There only is the brain, and brains are part of the body. Like: material world and spiritual world (catholicism); hell and heaven; evil and good; logic and emotion; accepted and unaccepted. This most frequent use of the name in modern western philosophy is where it is contrasted with monism, and adds 'something' to materialism. The Catholic Church often denies that making two realities out of one is idealism, but this of course is playing with words. Ideas (brainwaves) can become very real, and even cause bodily illnesses. Western dualism then is the view that reality is divided in a 'mental' part and a physical part. See a buddhist interpretation of western dualism or a cartoon of western dualism. Contrast: The theory of someone like B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) is based upon the assumption that learning is not 'mental' but just training of change in behavior. In western dualism 'mental' reality is not seen as a brainwave (complex and flimsy but physical) but characterized as 'the design' (nonphysical blueprint) behind the physical reality of weight, location, size, .. color, ...; Dualism dominates the way of experiencing reality of Western people. Western People try to 'understand' reality. It is practically impossible for western dualists to experience things otherwise. 'Understanding' and 'consciousness' have become our Western way of replacing full reality with a shallow 'rational reality'. Western dualism ('mental' reality or 'spirituality' as leading for physical reality) and/or rationality (mind-body, good-evil, true-false, ...) is ritualized in in Catholic Church (with cardinals of good-evil) and/or the Church of Science (university, with professors as cardinals of 'true-false')). Wester dualism (True-False) and Asian buddhist dualism (temporary acceptable-temporary unacceptable) are essentially different. The Western interpretion of Zoroastrianism (source of Christianity) as dualistic in western way, is caused by their own western dualism that anything is either TRUE or FALSE, good or evil. Zoroastrianism also is source of Buddhism, and Buddhism treats reality in holistic and relativistic way. Western dualism = THEORETICAL division of sense reality in man-made and wilderness, in metaphysical and physical, 'good' and 'evil', 'continuous' and 'discrete', 'ratio' and 'intuition'. Catholic dualism is not about the divide 'church/state' or 'faith/education', but about the split between 'mind' and body. Western dualism was made law and order in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AC, and became a serious addiction since Descartes and Kant (mind body split and metaphysics)in Enlightenment, and a VERY serious addiction since Positivism (Vienna Circle), and a VERY VERY serious addiction in the popular variant 'critical rationalism' of Karl Popper. Universities are impressive mind body split churches where training aims for dividing brain and rest of body. Example: In 'business' making the arbitrary divide 'workers' (who do physical work = labor) and 'managers (who do metaphysical work = 'thinking'). And then distinguishing between 'hard dollars' as physical trade-tool in the 'wilderness of workers' and stock exchange virtual 'money' for metaphysical use by the 'managers'. A stock exhange produces produces virtual money, and then acts as money laundry to make virtual money into hard money. Descartes in Enlightenment argued for dualism as follows: There are some things that are true of my body that are not true of me. It must be Descartes' mind that found that he has qualities that don't belong to his body. Typically roman christian: things like holy spirit. 21st century Western dualism is still based on creationism: There has to be a 'something' in every 'thing' that is 'no thing', and we Western humans have 'minds that are preprogrammed with that 'no thing' (slaves of duality). Resulting in Priests of Science in universities researching 'mental properties' ('the no-thing in things') and neglecting a lot of physical properties that don't fit their cultural picture of 'the no-thing in things'. Asian dualism = ethics = PRACTICAL (situation dependent) division of sense reality (the things; neither good nor bad) in safe things and unsafe things Resulting in 'Tiger Monks' (a tiger is dangerous, but neither good nor bad). What makes it all confusing is that both Mohammedanism (muslim version of Christianity) and Hinduism (dividing in castes) also divide reality in good and evil. Dualism as splitting an object into paired fields of study (mind and body, values and facts, TRUE and FALSE, law and physics, abstract and material, proved succesful in technology. It is a TOOL only, and not fit to act as 'natural' law in cultural behavior (digital lifestyle). The key Western approach towards for progress, after Enlightenment has been a mind-body split, supreme 'consciousness + 'ratio' (creation) and inferior intuition (matter). A holistic approach would imply a return to sensible matter. And cherishing the results of 'rationalism' (very good tools to explore reality). A clear 21st century example that not 'ratio' but emotion leads to decision making: In neurology recently a brain tumor patient lost the emotion-lob much of his brain in surgery to remove a tumor. All tests of motor skills, intelligence, and reasoning ability aftr surgery were as usual. But his emotional responses were clearly damaged, and he was unable to respond emotionally to any stimulus, never becoming angry, sad, or happy as he once had. One striking result of this emotionlessness was a TOTAL inability to make even simple decisions. Everyday decisions, became an endless struggle in his brain between all the rational arguments for one way or another. Without the push from his emotions, the patient was never again able to come to any decision. Hopeful is that the source in BEHAVIOR of both Western Christianity and Buddhism is Zoroastrianism. The only difference is the western myth 'understanding' and the resulting 'interpretion' and 'theory'. Henk Tuten,