Selfish-Altruism

In my experience, it is often glibbly and triumphantly claimed by academics that human beings are motivated out of intrinsically selfish and utilitarian purposes. Not only the Hobbesian philosopher, but the secular humanist(characterized by utilitarianism and materialism perhaps) would claim that ethics is not dictated by an "ultimate law", but rather are socially and historically developed conventions. This is an entirely pessimistic view of humanity and results in a belief that altruism or love is impossible. This seems wrong to me.

The Christian, or religious person, conversely posits a belief in an ultimate ethical code. God, or a higher power, dictates laws in which the person is entreated to do "right actions" towards the distinctly "other" being as well as the self(and God for that matter). Any action counter to these laws is deemed to be sin and therefore outside of God's will. Altruism and love are defined as adherence to the law. I am immensily repulsed by this idea as well.

I have long been searching for a third way or perhaps a synthesis of these two opposite, yet equally revolting opinions of the world. It dawned on me today as I was speaking with a friend of mine that an answer has been lying under my nose all this time. I was asked to do something by my friend which could have negative consequences for him. I flat out said no. My reason was that I did not want to see him get hurt. I then admitted that I also didn't want to live with the guilt of that. It struck me that it wasn't purely my care, affection or love for my friend which was stopping me from potentially helping him hurt himself, but my own self interest. I did not want to feel loss or pain at my friends potential pain. The materialists seem to be right, but my thought took another unexpected turn.

With all of the writing I have been doing about "self" and my tentative conclusions that there is no central "I", but rather the individual finds definition through interaction with the "other", I have found a solution to the imminent problem of this post. That is, can I act out of real altruistic love outside of the Christian/religious ethical code? I would like to invert the conclusion from my conversation with my friend.

If I reason from the assumption that nothing exists independant from other things, i.e. that the self is found through dialogue with the "other" then even if I act out of self interest I am actually acting out of altruistic love for the "other" simultaeously. Just as my motivation for denying my friend's request was both to protect him for his sake and my own, so also do I behave with altruistic love both for my own sake, but in the broader sense. If part of who I am is "the other" then my motivation for altruism is to benefit both myself and the other, but both at the same time as well. It is the broader "we" whom I seek to benefit. It is not even the collective good that I would be seeking, but self and other edification at the same time. It is only in the ridiculously individualistic and materialistic west, which I find myself in, that this concept of connectivity between "different" beings is entirely misunderstood. It is called maladaptive and naive and is often connected with Christianity. This claim could not be further from the truth.

It is fundamental to Christian ethics that there be a distinct "other". Christianity outright rejects the notion that the connectivity of selves preceeds ethics. At most, a Christian would accept that by living in "loving harmony" with one another we can become united. My argument is inherently different from Christian theology because the connectivity of selves necessarily preceeds ethics. Without this connectivity there is, as a good Hobbesian, moral positivist, utilitarian or materialist would say, no motivation for human beings to act ethically beyond the conventions of society which regulate their actions.

I will support and clarify these claims later, this is but a skeletal framework...

Abyss- 1

Balance. To walk a tight-rope. To cross an abyss. To live. Life is a balance. Avoid hell, gain heaven. Minimize pain, maximize pleasure. It seems to me that every time I find some sort of contentment, understanding or happiness in life it is always balanced out with an equal or relatively worse event or feeling of shittiness. It is not merely an emotional low, but a period of intense confusion, darkness, numbness, hopelessness and motionlessness. Does this feeling of shittiness merely come from the relatively less pleasurable "norm" experienced after coming down from a point of ecstatic revelry? Or, is it that the universe will not allow for any concentration of contentment lest it should explode or implode due to an unbalance? Could there be a law of the universe which tends back to stability? I know, I know, scientists have many laws about such things. I am not expert enough to name them though. I am speaking in a psychological, or more precisely, a spiritual, ephemeral, mystical or esoteric sense, but who really knows?

Maybe I am just bipolar...but then again I believe that all "psychological abnormalities" are just more distilled manifestations of the human experience. Am I "maladaptively" endowed with a fluctuating psychie which takes me to the top of mountain-tops and then plunges me to the depths of the cold ocean floor. Worse still, a psychie which takes me to both places at once and leaves me in a completely and miserably insane world of grey.

I hate psychiatrists.

They are worse than church...I love saying that, as if church were a basis for guaging something's level of pestilense to my soul.

And I've slipt, so there is nothing more to write.

Abyss...

Writer's Block

I would be really happy if "writer's block" was merely a delicious salt lick. Does anyone remember that Simpsons episode in which the doctor explains to Mr. Burns that the only thing keeping him alive is a perfect balance of every imaginable disease? This is the state of the ideas in my mind. They are all trying to get through the door at once, so I cannot get any of them out. That and I'm feeling lazy and contemplating further academic suicide. Perhaps something will condence in a little while. To anyone who reads this thing, keep checking around here every once in a while because some good stuff may surface without any warning. Like the bloated corpse of a long dead goose released from the cement shoes given it by the violent duck mafia...How's that for an alternate vision of the mighty Phoenix arising from the ashes...

Twilight

Fire is glass
- encircling the calm mystique-
Reflection enhancing
casting shadows of th'above's unique.

The dimmonds glimmer -
vivid from beneath.
Light eclipsed -
yields a dazzling, muddled wreath.

Depth is unknown,
as the wind stirs the still
- amiable ripples intrigue;
the dusky colors fulfill.

Reinterpreting the Darkness

In Latin the word for black is niger. “Nigger” is also a pejorative term used to degrade people with a “black” skin tone. The word black is also associated with evil. The Latin for white however; is candidus. It derives from the white togas worn by highly respected senators. It also carries a positive meaning. Juxtaposed to the evil meaning of black, white is often associated with good. Even to describe people with non-white skin as black therefore seems to carry with it a degrading meaning. I am not saying that all white people are racist(I myself am a Mic-Mac-Limey-Crout), but I think that our interchangeable use of the words black and white to describe skin tone as well as our conceptions of evil and good is telling of a fundamental danger in the development of human language. It is little wonder that fear and loathing towards non-white people has been so prevalent throughout western history. I would like to clarify that I do not believe that racism is a white problem alone, but my argument is concerned with the effects of language of thought; this is not a discussion about racism.

I will not here get into a nature/nurture debate because the result is always a compromise. I must assume however; that thoughts are imbibed by children as they encode meaning using symbolic systems known as languages. Thought does not entirely precede language. Bias and discrimination are learned, they are not inherent. This is nowhere more blatantly shown than in the early aversion to the dark by children. What? This seems to be a contradiction! It may appear to be, however; it may seem natural to say that children are afraid of the dark and therefore the dark is necessarily evil. I propose that while black/dark is frightening it is not necessarily correct to associate that fear with negativity. I propose an alternate meaning to the word black. Instead of thinking of black as the physical embodiment of evil think of what white looks like in relation to black. Is black not much more full than white? Does it not have more depth and mystery? In a completely illuminated room nothing is hidden. That is why it is not scary to sit in a well-lit room. To sit in the dark however; is frightening because there is an element of the unknown. If a light could illuminate the entire universe would it not make it so that one could see through everything and therefore see nothing? Is white not the absence of everything? Whiteness therefore becomes the embodiment of oblivion, not black. In blackness, in the dark, there is matter, there is form, there is substance, there is life. We cannot see or understand it, but it is something nonetheless.

This is why I believe that ignorance, ignoramus, is better than knowledge. To reside in your total lack of knowledge is to truly embrace reality, but that does not mean that you are embracing a depressing and “black” reality, a reality fit for suicidal nihilists. It is when you reside in a world which is entirely illuminated by your false sense of knowledge that you are truly residing in oblivion. To know something is truly a futile and depressing thing. Think now how devoid of substance the white person is compared to the “evil black person”. It is the white person who is a hole in reality, a white hole, a void. It is fitting how western culture, dominated by white people, has itself mimicked the skin tone of its lost makers. Our culture has reached oblivion with a form, the outline of distinction surrounding the white body. Perhaps my use of Oprah as an example of “Oblivion’s Torso” was wrong? I retract my statement about Oprah, Martha Stewart is the embodiment of oblivion, but then again, in all seriousness, maybe it is I…

At Least I Don't Live in Somalia

too livid to live
too terrified to die
i linger like a spectre
a fleeting whisp of smoke
haunting myself
haunted by life
a prisoner of my own existence

The State of Affairs

I have just stumbled onto an idea which will take me a considerably long time to write on decently. Something about history, myth and of course, ME. I may post bits of it from time to time, but at the moment I am just so excited at coming up with a way to articulate myself that I have no way which direction it will go. My egocentric searching may be silent for some time. It is time for that Irishman or perhaps that Penguin to keep things alive here. Poetry Helianthis, Poetry! Bring this abominable silence to an end!

Oblivion's Torso

I have found that quite frequently I will encounter the same topic of an idea in the different venues of my life at the same time. This could be that I am merely looking for a certain thread and therefore find it everywhere, but it pleases me to think that there is a sort of progressive unfolding of understanding in my development. My most recent example of such an occurance happened earlier today.

My last post was ultimately concerned with, what in my view seems to be, the lack of definition for our current era. Today I attended a lecture from one of my first year profs, a man who has done much to free my mind from the slavery of dogmatism. He was lecturing on Hegel today and quite fittingly he began to talk about the ideas that I had been discussing in my last post. He was talking about the concept of Zeitgeist. I have been familiar with this term before, but it did not occur to me that Zeitgiest was the topic of my last post. In German Zeit roughly translates age/era. Geist has three meanings, mind, spirit and ghost. I do not know German, but it doned on my also that the Latin word animus also mean mind, spirit and ghost. The word Zeitgeist therefore means spirit of the age. It is the ethos of a generation, it defined the age, but it also haunts it like a ghost. Hegel believed that the Zeitgeist of his time was that truth was progressively unfolding through rational inquest. I have not actually read any Hegel, so please someone correct or expand on this assertion. Hegel lived in the 19th century when modernity and rationalism reigned supreme. Although those terms themselves are elusive and complicated I will not get into a discussion on them. I have always had a strong repugnance for the 19th century and the "enlightened" smuggness of modernity, so I am perturbed. I began this post by claiming that I think of my life as something that unfolds rationally. I will leave this idea for now because I don't know enough about Hegel to continue.

However; the idea that a Zeitgeist haunts every age is interesting. For, with the claims of my last post, it seems that I am discontented by the lack of ghosts to haunt me. Perhaps what holds true of horror films hold true here as well. The most terrrifying element of a horror film (a quality one at least) is not what is seen, but that which is obfuscated and enigmatic. A chimera is more frightening than a crazy texan with a chainsaw, or a Punk Rocker with a Norse Broadsword for that matter. Likewise the Zeitgeist of our present age is more terrifying than those which haunted previous generations because we have no idea what it is. My fear of Zeitgeist is not unlike my spiritual fears. The only thing I fear more than a malevolent god is no god at all.

So I am terrified, terrified because our age isn't even defined by decadence or waste anymore. We are haunted by nothing and nothing has therefore become material. It is not that our age is actually defined by nothing which terrifies me, it is that nothingness has taken a shape and now haunts us. We are haunted by a very real and powerful nothingness, rather than a benign and apathetic nihilism.

And now for something vecetious for a change...and that shape is Oprah, beware her gaping maw of nothingness...

Deadening Silence in the Midst of Calamatous Noise

I am a historian. Some of my professors would spit blood at this claim, but it is true nonetheless. I am a historian because I constantly think of things in temporal terms. I do not simply evaluate ideas, situations, people or objects in an isolated moment, but take into account both the past and the future. I believe that it is vital to human existence to be able to do this. Since the present is ever fleeting the human condition is to be caught up in the act of memorizing, remembering and projecting those rememories into the future, so as to make appropriate choices and actions in what we commonly think of as "the present". Confused? I am! If nothing else, take from that an understanding that the study of history is not merely the memorization of facts. It is vital to human existence and I am therefore compelled to study it.

That last paragraph was more of a rabbit trail from what I actually want to discuss in this post. As a historian I am constantly evaluating the past, both my past and the past of the world as I see it. I read many different works, I watch films, I talk with people and I observe the world around me. I look back at different times in history and build pictures of what it must have been like to exist in that moment. For example, to be a teenager in the 90's was to be depressed and disillusioned. This is a vast oversimplification, but the job of the historian is to simplify the eternally complicated past. Needless to say, and this is essentially the reason why some of my professors hate me, all of history is a myth, which the historian recreates and tells in order to understand the past, present and future. There is no such thing as an objective historian. History is not written by the victor, rather it is written by historians. If such is the case then we must also realise that accounts of history are therefore entirely informed by the historian's own personal experience. Still I have not arrived at what I intended to write about today.

I have been reflecting lately about this first decade of the third millenium AD/CE. I have been wondering, by what characteristics will it be remembered. Has anything happened of note? Sure we have the Iraq War, but people merely call that "Vietnam", which is grossely historically false. Although the war is similiarly motivated by American Exceptionalism and Imperialism, to call Iraq Vietnam would be like calling chapter twelve of a novel chapter three. Our decade has also seen an increase in incredibly feel-good humanism both secular and Christian. In my view, people just seem to be saying nothing, and a hell of a lot of nothing. Take blogging for instance. I believe that the Introspective Irishman has been writing a post on this topic for quite some time. As far as deconstruction and disillusionment is concerned western culture seems to have hit a pinnacle. We can't get more beat than the beatnics. We can't get much more nihilistic than Death Metal and Punk Rock unless bands begin hacking their audiences to death with Norse Broadswords in teenage antiestablishment fueled rages. We can't get more hypocritical in the west in regards to "the environment-global warming-climate change", "poverty", "AIDS", etc etc...

We have really reached a nothingness in society and culture. Nothing is moving. There is no where to move...except Mars...or the ocean floor. Nothing is controversial. All the lines have been crossed...except perhaps the aforementioned Norse Broadsword idea. We have worked ourselves into such a stew of acceptance that reaction is coming. Christianity, hardly monolithic, is moving to become either completely the same as secular humanism or reaching back to strict dogma after terrying in the land of humanistic acceptance of diversity. Islamic countries are getting right pissed off at "The Great Satan-the US". East and South-East Asia are becoming economic powerhouses which threaten all sorts of global conflict. Africa is still in a bloody mess from the rape and pillage of the past 300 years. And here we sit in North America, in our urban yuppie apartments, our comfortable suburban ranchers, and we feel sick. We are so sick that we go faster, work more, play our Ipod a bit louder to block out the deadening silence in the midst of calamatous noise. There is no up and there is no down and nothing really matters, everything has been said before. There is no point in doing anything except to prolong our physical existence.

But, what is man if his chief good is to but sleep and feed? The words of the sage come back to me..."eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die...fear God and obey God's commandments". I refuse to attach some sort of imagined religious/relational purpose on the physical acts of life. That is what the likes of Rick Warren (the author of The Purpose Driven Life) would have me do. I saw a book last month which acclaimed Warren as the most influential pastor of our time. This is true. He has acknowledged the meaninglessness of everything and written copious amounts of drivel to insert an imagined purpose into human existence.

I'm still waiting for something to truly happen in this decade, but perhaps my problem is that I think that other eras have had purpose. Perhaps it is only the historical rememory of the past which leads me to believe that the past was any different from this era. See, for good or ill, I am a historian, in every sense of the word...

I Reside In Sanity

I have never found any substantial evidence which would lead me to believe that the universe is an ordered and rational conglomerate. Neither have I been convinced that observable functions within the universe have the capacity to be operationalized, systematized and generalized. I have never heard a rational or logical argument which could convince me that an event or idea is absolutely true. By the nature of these very assertions I cannot ever prove that they are true. Does this mean that I am wrong? Do I contradict myself? Certainly, I am entirely incorrect, but only if I am incorrect. If I am correct though, I am also incorrect by the virtue of my being correct. Are my assertions therefore self-destructive? I will explore the opposite belief, that there is order in the universe and that truth is absolute, to deduce whether my beliefs ring true or are simply the ravings of a mad-man.

Some may argue that I cannot see order and symmetry in the universe because I cannot see all of it. In other words, they would argue that I am not God and therefore cannot see the "big picture". This perspective shares the same superficial contradiction which problematizes my own view. To claim that I cannot see "truth" because I have a limited perspective of reality is in itself a relativistic argument. This is much more a contradiction, hypocrisy and cop-out than my assertion that truth is essentially unknowable. To claim that there is a black and white truth which is God, while simultaneously saying that humans cannot "fully know" that truth is a cop-out. It is like having one's cake and eating it too. To use the more palatable aspect of relative truth while ultimately claiming that one can find the absolute truth upon submission and death is hypocritical and contradictory. This is the basis for the "relationship with Jesus" paradigm so deeply embedded in contemporary evangelical Christianity. It takes the harsh absolutist claims of Christian dogma and softens it by integrating the less problematic aspects of relativity. The core of institutionalized Christian dogma has not changed in 2000 years. The different social articulations of the dogma continue to change and flow with the rest of society, but the central tenet that man is unworthy and must submit to God remains the same. (don't get me wrong, I have fear of God, I just don't think that the God of black and white is God at all, but a devil concocted by power hungry and ignorant people) I have gone down a rabbit hole and must get back on track with my initial thought. My claim that the evangelical Christian articulation of dogma has not change anything from the "turn-or-burn" and physically violent manifestations of Christianity in the past is vital to my argument.

I have been told in numerous arguments and discussions that the Bible says that God is a God of order not of chaos. It is somewhere in the Old Testament, but I don't know the exact reference. My first criticism of that verse is that it is being interpreted shallowly. From a Jewish interpretation it might even say the opposite. I am not an expert of Jewish theology, but I am under the impression that it is permeated with contradictions, paradoxes and reversals. It is only the rational exegetical interpretation of Christian theologians which leaves no room for ambiguity. In the Gospel of John 8:32, Christ is said to have claimed that "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". How could something that is fixed and ultimately knowable set one free? I realize that I could now divert into an entire discussion on which sort of freedom I am referring to. I shall summarize. When I say freedom I do not mean the freedom to do anything, a state commonly and incorrectly referred to as Anarchy, or the much maligned concept of Anarchism. Neither Anarchy/chaos not Anarchism have anything to do with the Hobbesian concept of the violent state of nature. Freedom is a freedom of being bound to everything else, a freedom to coexist peacefully. It is this kind of freedom which sets you free, not the freedom of a sovereign and absolutist God who in His unending mercy will allow us to exist free in his Kingdom. What then does the freedom I am advocating look like?

To be honest I am not sure. I think that it might look an awful lot like the "Kingdom" which Christ refers to. Unfortunately western or perhaps human thought and action is marching further and further away from this Kingdom and freedom. Institutionalized Christianity is perhaps the most advanced in its drive towards a completely materialistic and ungodly articulation of truth. (I mean materialistic in the marxian/fauerbachian sense, not consumerism, although that is a symptom of the denial of a metaphysical reality) A Christian reading this may agree with this last statement, but I assure you, I am here claiming that the assumption of absolute truth is the most materialistic and ungodly perspective that a person can hold. The petty and shallow arguments and sermons which permeate churches are not the things of God, they are worldly things. The things of God are mysterious and can only be grasped by exploring those mysteries, not giving up, leaving it to an unmoving faith in certainty. Uncertainty breeds hunger, it compels motion, it is real faith, real understanding, real Unity with the eternal!

To bring this to a close, what does this exploration tell me about my initial assertions? The more "sane" belief that truth is absolute and is merely incomprehensible to humans leads to nothing but dead, materialistic and religious dogma and tradition, no matter how it is articulated. My "raving nonsense" is advantageous on many fronts. Practically, in interactions with other people, to enter a conflict with the assumption that no one is right leaves people more open to other perspectives. Spiritually, I am not creating any idols of God. I am not claiming any knowledge of God. That does not mean that I do not seek, it merely means that the eternal is not something to be grasped by mortal man. "The assumption of infallibility is the elimination of dialogue" -JS Mill. Certainty necessarily leads to destructive behavior. History shows this! Sociology shows this! Psychology and Philosophy show this! My claim that the only thing I am correct about is that I am incorrect is not a new idea. It's Socratic to the core. It has issued from the lips of every heretic and dissident in history. My assertion that truth is unknowable therefore rings true, but it is also very much like the ravings of a mad-man, for they are one in the same...

Unequivocal Light from Every Direction

Eternity and oblivion
Everything and nothing
All directions and One Direction
they are all one in the same
paradoxos

The human being, the artist to be more precise, and the writer/speaker still more distilled, does not own the ideas that he expresses.
He is a conduit through which the realm of ideas, thoughts, the eternal expresses itself in a knowable form. An utterance of the unknowable. A clearing of the obfuscated.

The thinker must never assume to own these thoughts or even his particular articulation of them any more than Strauss' violin should claim to own the Blue Danube.

There is no reason to feel as it one's ideas have been stolen. This sight is copyright protected.
why?
Will I ever gain anything from what I write?
What is money?
What is fame?
They are all just dust in the wind.
Plagerism is not wrong because it is stealing from the person, but because it makes profane the sacred temple of art. It sullies the holy act of channelling the eternal.

The true artist lives in obscurity and dies unknown to the world with only the hope that their articulation may some day touch other hurt and lonely mortals.
To have the capacity to grasp the infinite to such an extent that one can create a piece of art reflecting it, is reward enough.

I am not arrogant about the learning I have done. I am not proud of the ways I have and continue to express the ideas I see floating in eternity.
I do not believe that I am right and other people are wrong.
I only protest when someone refuses to acknowledge this ignorance.

I hate dogmatism, people creating rocks out of sand.
I hate opinion, I have belief.
Against opinion, beyond belief---paradoxos!

I appear aloof and academic, but on the contrary, I deny ownership of knowledge. I find myself here again...I know nothing. I begin another chapter of my life back at this spiraling beginning and terminus.

May the thoughts, shapes, tones, textures, temperatures, sounds and hues of the eternal decend on me. Transform me into a glowing light, so that I can radiate its wondrous light. Illuminate the dark and ignorant world around me.

Save us all from this world of mirrors and illusions.

Through our art, let us express something truly and unequivocally real.

This cannot be reached through human means, our greatest art is equivocal, dark and obfuscated. We are but dull reflections of the radiant light. It is only through Unity with All That Is, that we truly become.

Our expressions and experiences of Art are but hints to the glory and ecstatic joy which we can achieve once we are free of our mortal trapings, our pride, ambition, anger, laziness, excess and small-mindedness...

I once said that all articulations of the eternal is idolatry. But, if done reverently(not to be confused with religious reverence mind you) they can help us achieve enlightenment. When we are enlightened we will have no need for art because we will be One with That which we attempt to mimic...

(with that the writer exploded into billions of miniscule light particles and vanished from human perception)

and the mystic within me breaks forth once again...