This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
Squint your eyes to see clearly
Blur reality to make it real
Let focus go from your deceiving eyes
To know what's been concealed
We've all been blinded
Subjects to visual misinformation
A systematic denial of the crystalline
To see the fine grain
To read the hidden words
The context of parallel truth
Devoid of fragmentation
Our light-induced image of truth
Filtered blank of its substance
As our eyes won't adhere to intuitive lines
Everything examined
Separated, one thing at a time
The harder we stare
The more complete the disintegration
Dissolution
Eyes re-opened
Reasoning focalized
Receptors activated
Perspectives distorted
The ladder beyond our grasp
The twin-headed serpent forever hidden
Where's the true knowledge
Where engines of the sane and insanity merge
The clarity, the unity
Reality untouchable, transparent
Invisible to our fixed, restricted fields of vision
Existence taken for granted, absolute
Possessed, owned, controlled
By the common sense-infected rational gaze
Onward forever we walk among the ignorant
Never stray from the common lines
Blur reality to make it real
Let focus go from your deceiving eyes
To know what's been concealed
We've all been blinded
Subjects to visual misinformation
A systematic denial of the crystalline
To see the fine grain
To read the hidden words
The context of parallel truth
Devoid of fragmentation
Our light-induced image of truth
Filtered blank of its substance
As our eyes won't adhere to intuitive lines
Everything examined
Separated, one thing at a time
The harder we stare
The more complete the disintegration
Dissolution
Eyes re-opened
Reasoning focalized
Receptors activated
Perspectives distorted
The ladder beyond our grasp
The twin-headed serpent forever hidden
Where's the true knowledge
Where engines of the sane and insanity merge
The clarity, the unity
Reality untouchable, transparent
Invisible to our fixed, restricted fields of vision
Existence taken for granted, absolute
Possessed, owned, controlled
By the common sense-infected rational gaze
Onward forever we walk among the ignorant
Never stray from the common lines
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I first commented on this song in 2008, four years ago. I'm commenting again because in those four years I've changed and so my interpretation of the song has changed.
I no longer believe that the "rational gaze" of the song title refers to the world as experienced by the bare sense organs precisely because the sense organs often deceive us, prompting the philosophers to declare that we need rationality to know what's truly real.
In an ironic reversal of my original interpretation, I now think that what is being criticized is precisely this rational outlook of the philosophers and of our current empirical scientific paradigm. Indeed, Meshuggah implores us to let go of this rational gaze, this lens which we place over the naked eye to break the world into small pieces so that we may know all of it. My earlier interpretation equated the rational gaze with the workings of the naked eye, but it seems clear to me now that the rationalistic outlook is just a tool, one that has been overused to devastating consequences on the human spirit and the biosphere.
I used to be threatened and befuddled by the message of this song, being a strict materialist at the time. It seemed to me to be a gateway to all sorts of unverifiable nonsense, and perhaps it still is. But I have come to appreciate the meaning of the saying, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And so perhaps we should learn to live with the truth of uncertainty, embracing that we cannot know everything under the sun by reduction or representation--that something just as real (though not amenable to measurement) is lost when "everything is examined, separated one thing at a time."
This is exactly the process I went through. I at first thought it was an opus to rationality. But then I became familiar with the assumptions inherent to science and became convinced through introspection and reading on the subject that science provides incomplete but useful truths rather than painting an accurate picture of the universe. With this new way of viewing the world, the meaning you described came into the picture. It's clear that this song is describing serial processing in a negative light, the line "Everything examined. Separated, one thing at a time. The harder we stare the more complete the disintegration" makes it clear that we're distorting the picture by breaking it apart.<br /> <br /> I don't think Meshuggah is calling for a return to blind religion, but more of a focus on the wholeness of reality. Not looking at it as though it can be broken apart and completely understood, but rather that the stuff of existence lies in the experience, the whole. That we need to have some focus on the gestalt and realize the map isn't the territory. I think this interpretation fits well with Meshuggah's existentialism.