Don't build your house on the sandy land, don't build your house too near the shore...
These lines begin the common sunday-school song which teaches children that the desirable goal of life is certainty. I believe that most people are stuck in this mentality. They are afraid to step out of their comfortable beliefs to explore the possibility of something beyond the same rocks on which they stand. Freud calls this arrested development, clinging to the oceanic feeling in which people are trapped like infants completely dictated by their superego. Nietzsche said, balhadghdshghhjaksghfs, and that those people are weak and insignificant. Up until recently in my life I identified with those people on the rock. I was content, but then it cracked. I was forced to move on.
I did not leave my rock intending to find another more desirable rock. I have abolished the idea of certainty from my thinking. In a way...
I would like to return to the song about building one's house on the sand. It has occured to me that the rocks on which we sit, our beliefs, our perceptions, our faith, are very small rocks. In fact, if you step back from all the arguments, discussions and debates you can see that everyone is sitting on their own little rock and all those rocks are the sand. People who claim to have the rock solid truth are just sitting on pieces of sand. It is merely a problem of scope and perspective that they cannot see the fragility of their position.
The problem with what I am currently saying is that I am being entirely unoriginal. Plato being the first to mention this idea. The aforementioned Freud and Nietzsche also said this. The problem with all of those dead white guys is that after criticising peoples' knowledge they set up their own system of belief and then founded their own little rock. They sat down on the beach with everyone else. Nietzsche arguably didn't because he went nuts, which leads to my final thought...
Is the alternative to certainty, insanity?
I hope not! I am looking for some sort of order to chaos. I am looking for certainty to uncertainty. I am looking for knowledge in ignorance. I am seeking the unseekable. I am experiencing paradox. Sometimes it seems futile and it is terrifying, but sometimes I see the paradox and I become ecstatic. This bipolar experience of life is infinitely more certain than the small certainty offered by belief and whatever else people use to delude themselves. I'm not building my house on the sandy land and I am nowhere near the shore, I'm sailing away, and it turns out that the ocean is made out of kool-aid and seahorses are just ancient aquatic saxaphones cursed by Posiedon to float androgynously through the ocean.
My mind is shot from studying for exams, among other things, salute for now...
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3 comments:
now we may have a metaphoric problem, for who is to say that rock is more certain than sand. if anything there is more certainty in said, for there you shall be taken by the ocean in a moment when the winds excel and the waters rise. yet on the rock you are left to wonder if these waves could come so high as where you are, or perhaps the tree next to you will fall and crush you.
granted, in most minds, the idea of safety means certainty, yet when living in such an uncertain world, the ideal is impossible
Sand doesn't taste good.
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