Cooking Concepts

 

Let’s start with the first three fundamental ingredients: 

• Existence 
• Identity 
• Consciousness 

Unpack each one, give it a rinse, then lay them out together on the metaphysical cutting board.

Now we must decide on what type of dish to create in order to bring out the full flavours. Certainly not a lazy mix of all three, that would make them indistinguishable from each other. Not three completely separate courses, because it’s the combination and contrasts which give them each their appeal. 

Anyway, our task in the kitchen is to represent them (not recreate them), so we need a bowl (a containing frame on a blank page). I prefer a round bowl so that baking is as even as possible.

Some sort of axiom pie seems apt, for with a pie there’s a definite outside and inside. We’re baking it from the “Objectivist Cookbook” so we know that Consciousness should be the filling (otherwise we would serve up the primacy of Consciousness — a sickly fare). 

But what should form the pie’s outer crust? 

What about a crust made in two equal halves of those two ‘external ingredients’, so all three ingredients can be in contact with each other; thus Consciousness would be half within Existence, half within Identity? 

I don’t think so because Existence and Identity would seem too separated.

What about Existence as the whole outer crust, with Identity as the ‘between layer’ (inner crust), both containing Consciousness? 

It’s more apt as Existence and Identity are corollaries, two sides of the same coin, while Identity (via identification) is a bridge that Consciousness needs to grasp the reality of Existence.

We'll see what comes out of the oven next month…

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