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...
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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...
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...
Friday, January 19, 2007
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.
- 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.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
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…
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
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
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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!
Friday, January 12, 2007
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...
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...
Thursday, January 11, 2007
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...
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...
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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...
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...
Thursday, January 04, 2007
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...
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...
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Admission of a Obsessive Compulsive Perfectionist
I try to control the mundane details of life in order to create a facade which can mask the infinite chaos that is my life. I long to bring order and perfection to myself when all I am is laziness and inadequecy. Instead of dealing with the root of the problems in my life I busy myself putting everything into straight rows, placing everything just so, hoping to avoid cracks with my toes, making sure that all the doors are closed. I dot my i's and cross my t's, periods at the .beginning and end.
New Years resolution- bring order to something meaningful and allow the rest to go to shit...right after I uniformly scrape all the enamyle off of my teeth...
New Years resolution- bring order to something meaningful and allow the rest to go to shit...right after I uniformly scrape all the enamyle off of my teeth...
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
No Escape
I realised last night that my answer, given in response to a question posed by a friend of mine, was false. I was asked what my fears are. I answered quickly that I fear being "unknown" more than anything else. This is a lie; a complicated lie granted, but a lie nonetheless. Where in one sense I do fear the fragmentation, isolation and solitude of the existence I see around me, I also dear the opposite of this. I fear being known. I construct arguments and theories which support my flight away from "the other". I latch onto the extreme of knowablity and claim triumphantly that because I cannot be known fully by a single person that it is futile to try to interact with and know "the others" who surround me. What does this extreme look like in more detail I wonder.
I am thoroughly convinced that human beings are not finite beings. This point ultimately brings me back to a point where one can be known, but I will return to it at the end of this piece. I shall begin my argument from the opposite of what I deem to be true. All human beings are finite. This should necessarily narrow the scope of aspects that a human can possess, making them effectively knowable. Yet, let us look at the different ways in which a person must be known in order to be known fully. This shall prove to be an infinite list, contrary to my starting point.
1. People can be known emotionally.
2. People can be known physically or carnally.
3. People can be known intellectually.
A scientist would look at these categories and collect data from numerous sources to create a centralized and agreed apon individual. They would ignore outliers from the data and create a very convenient and simple, albiet quantitatively vast, picture of an individual. This way of investigating an individual is inherently misguided and flawed. There are underlying complxities to these categories which force open the picture of the individual to an infinite spectrum.
The first is the difficulty of the perspective of the observer or interacter. Every person interacts in these three ways differently. For example, John Doe's wife and son know him in very different carnal ways. The notable difference is that his wife knows him sexually, but the son is a part of John's flesh and has a different physical relationship with him. Even John Doe's office affair partner knows him differently than does his wife because the physical sensations are different. The relationship is different. This is an example of the perspective difficulty in the physical sense, but also applies to the other two categories as well.
The second difficulty is the different tones and tinctures within even one observer. Emotions are not all the same. There are different intensities, durations and initiations of emotions which make an emotional experience different every single time. It is not the same thing to get angry at a dog for pissing on the carpet as it is to get angry at a person who has just shot your wife. Even the emotional response to the same person changes due to different circumstances.
I have some other thoughts of the differences. They involve remembering/history, reputation, the interaction between the three ways of knowing someone and irrationality. I do not have time to elaborate on them now, but I may get to it. I feel confident that the difficulties hitherto described are enough to support my claim that human beings are not as finite as they seem. All of the different ways of knowing a person makes it impossible to finitely nail down a definition. Perhaps to be known is to be known in relation to everything else in existence. Buddhists call this dependant origination. In sum, that everything arises in relation to other things and do not exist on their own, but in connection to one another. That is not to say that the self does not exist, but the falsely imagined lone sense of self does not exist. This brings me back to my musing on knowability.
Do I fear being known or unknown? Take for granted that we cannot be fully known by a single being. Yet, we can be known by the infinite fully. Perhaps this is what God is. I do fear being unknown, I fear oblivion, an existence without God, an existence without the connection. I also fear being known on a more primal level. I do not want people to know me deep down, because I, like everyone, have deep dark spots. I do not want those places to be found by people. But, can I escape the infinite, can I escape God. NO! To be known is to be fully exposed, something my mortality will not allow me to do.
I have to stop for length, sleep and sanity. I leave the question as open as it was when I began writing tonight, and I pose it to you my reader. What are your fears? My fears are simultateously to be unknown and known, a frightening paradox which threatens to tear me apart, from which there is no escape...
I am thoroughly convinced that human beings are not finite beings. This point ultimately brings me back to a point where one can be known, but I will return to it at the end of this piece. I shall begin my argument from the opposite of what I deem to be true. All human beings are finite. This should necessarily narrow the scope of aspects that a human can possess, making them effectively knowable. Yet, let us look at the different ways in which a person must be known in order to be known fully. This shall prove to be an infinite list, contrary to my starting point.
1. People can be known emotionally.
2. People can be known physically or carnally.
3. People can be known intellectually.
A scientist would look at these categories and collect data from numerous sources to create a centralized and agreed apon individual. They would ignore outliers from the data and create a very convenient and simple, albiet quantitatively vast, picture of an individual. This way of investigating an individual is inherently misguided and flawed. There are underlying complxities to these categories which force open the picture of the individual to an infinite spectrum.
The first is the difficulty of the perspective of the observer or interacter. Every person interacts in these three ways differently. For example, John Doe's wife and son know him in very different carnal ways. The notable difference is that his wife knows him sexually, but the son is a part of John's flesh and has a different physical relationship with him. Even John Doe's office affair partner knows him differently than does his wife because the physical sensations are different. The relationship is different. This is an example of the perspective difficulty in the physical sense, but also applies to the other two categories as well.
The second difficulty is the different tones and tinctures within even one observer. Emotions are not all the same. There are different intensities, durations and initiations of emotions which make an emotional experience different every single time. It is not the same thing to get angry at a dog for pissing on the carpet as it is to get angry at a person who has just shot your wife. Even the emotional response to the same person changes due to different circumstances.
I have some other thoughts of the differences. They involve remembering/history, reputation, the interaction between the three ways of knowing someone and irrationality. I do not have time to elaborate on them now, but I may get to it. I feel confident that the difficulties hitherto described are enough to support my claim that human beings are not as finite as they seem. All of the different ways of knowing a person makes it impossible to finitely nail down a definition. Perhaps to be known is to be known in relation to everything else in existence. Buddhists call this dependant origination. In sum, that everything arises in relation to other things and do not exist on their own, but in connection to one another. That is not to say that the self does not exist, but the falsely imagined lone sense of self does not exist. This brings me back to my musing on knowability.
Do I fear being known or unknown? Take for granted that we cannot be fully known by a single being. Yet, we can be known by the infinite fully. Perhaps this is what God is. I do fear being unknown, I fear oblivion, an existence without God, an existence without the connection. I also fear being known on a more primal level. I do not want people to know me deep down, because I, like everyone, have deep dark spots. I do not want those places to be found by people. But, can I escape the infinite, can I escape God. NO! To be known is to be fully exposed, something my mortality will not allow me to do.
I have to stop for length, sleep and sanity. I leave the question as open as it was when I began writing tonight, and I pose it to you my reader. What are your fears? My fears are simultateously to be unknown and known, a frightening paradox which threatens to tear me apart, from which there is no escape...
Friday, December 22, 2006
Epitaph For a Friend
A man is a mosaic of all the different relationships that he has had in his life. Throughout life he makes inumerable utterances of who he is to all the people whom he comes into contact with. The mosaic of all these utterances is who that man is.
When a man dies all those people, carrying with them their piece of the mosaic, come together to sort out who that man was.
Is it possible for a Eulogy to do a man justice? Even if the speaker takes into account some surface differences of that man's relationships with different people, brother, son, friend, teacher etc, it is impossible, for no one person can understand let alone explain who that man was.
Can their be a person in a man's life who holds the guidelines to put all those pieces together?
I don't think so, and that is the loss, not only the physical death, but the fragmentation of the mosaic. The fragmenation of the person's memories, impressions, relationships, dialogue---self.
Those left behind are left with only the piece that they had. Some have small pieces, others large. All incomplete, broken, hurt.
It is the wish of all men to be known fully. This cannot happen in life, and it does not happen upon death, perhaps it can happen beyond death. Perhaps man has 100 senses and upon death we are awakened to the 95 senses that have lain dormant since childhood, only retained in the heart of the poet and the comedian. This is why the idea of heaven has been man's desire for countless aeons. We long for a place where we can know and be known perfectly.
We want someone who can read a dramatic epilogue in a sad film while the music reaches its climax and the shot slowly fades up into the clouds, until everything becomes light. This cannot be.
It's been 4 months, and I'll always remember the piece of Garreth that I knew while he was alive. To my most joyful friend who always smiled, especially when life was kicking him around...
When a man dies all those people, carrying with them their piece of the mosaic, come together to sort out who that man was.
Is it possible for a Eulogy to do a man justice? Even if the speaker takes into account some surface differences of that man's relationships with different people, brother, son, friend, teacher etc, it is impossible, for no one person can understand let alone explain who that man was.
Can their be a person in a man's life who holds the guidelines to put all those pieces together?
I don't think so, and that is the loss, not only the physical death, but the fragmentation of the mosaic. The fragmenation of the person's memories, impressions, relationships, dialogue---self.
Those left behind are left with only the piece that they had. Some have small pieces, others large. All incomplete, broken, hurt.
It is the wish of all men to be known fully. This cannot happen in life, and it does not happen upon death, perhaps it can happen beyond death. Perhaps man has 100 senses and upon death we are awakened to the 95 senses that have lain dormant since childhood, only retained in the heart of the poet and the comedian. This is why the idea of heaven has been man's desire for countless aeons. We long for a place where we can know and be known perfectly.
We want someone who can read a dramatic epilogue in a sad film while the music reaches its climax and the shot slowly fades up into the clouds, until everything becomes light. This cannot be.
It's been 4 months, and I'll always remember the piece of Garreth that I knew while he was alive. To my most joyful friend who always smiled, especially when life was kicking him around...
Thursday, December 21, 2006
hmmmm.....
And today I wonder as to what this has become
whence we shallowly sit, awaiting to succumb
- to incolence and lack of minds -
wandering wearily in a dreary time.
I bring a plea to end all this,
for there is more to life than infatuated bliss.
To return and ponder the greater expanse;
that dim and dreadful may no more hold stance.
whence we shallowly sit, awaiting to succumb
- to incolence and lack of minds -
wandering wearily in a dreary time.
I bring a plea to end all this,
for there is more to life than infatuated bliss.
To return and ponder the greater expanse;
that dim and dreadful may no more hold stance.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Clothed in Skin
I am going to say something which very few people will believe. Ready? Wait for it...
My consciousness once spontaneously drifted out of my physical body and I lost all conception that, whatever I may be, I was not my body, but was something much more connected with the rest of reality, something more ephemeral, but at the same time much more than the tiny physical body which I so often mistake for myself.
I told you that you wouldn't believe it.
I tell this story because I have recently come up against some rather frightening medical problems involving my heart. It probably isn't anything, but nevertheless I have been gripped by fear for my mortal body. To quote South Park, "You know, I learned something today". Well actually I have known it for a long time and am reminded of it every time my physical body is in pain. I am afraid of death.
I don't think that I am alone in my fear of mortality, but I feel like a hypocrite in my fear. I must return to the inebriated blog which I deleted referred to in my last post. In describing my decietfulness I also discussed, albeit drunkenly, the fact that my blog name is thephilosopherone. I ranted drunkenly that I am a charlatan and that I do not deserve this title. I don't think that anyone really does. I have considered changing it, but that would just confuse me. I have developed this persona on the web and to change the name would be disasterous. I would like to clear up the misconceptions surrounding that name. I do not profess to have any answers. I do not profess to be intelligent. I read a lot, who gives a flying fuck! I think a lot, who doesn't! I am not trying to bring enlightenment to people, I do not possess esoteric knowledge. I strive to be free, to be free from knowledge, belief, faith...I strive to be free from mortality? So, I am a hypocrite. For all my talk, all my ideas about a loss of self, the fact that " I do not know" WHO I am, is all bullocks. When it comes down to it, I feel a strange attachment to this flesh suit which I think of as myself.
Am I merely like a new arrival to a nudist colony who is reluctant to remove his boxers? Is my attachment to my physical body something that will leave as I grow older? as it wastes away to nothing? Can I truly escape my dependance on my body in this life. The goal of the ascetic is to do just this, but prophets from Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed(don't worry no pictures) denied these practices. They stressed the importance of the physical body. I think that this is where gnosticism (the belief that the physical world is nothing but illusion) falls apart. Our physical bodies are important to our spiritual quests. To deny the body food and water entirely would make it impossible to search for some sort of enlightenment.
I have never fully understood the motivation of a martyr. I have heard many North American preachers exhorting people to praise martyrdom, but it never sat well with me. Perhaps there is something wrong with martyrdom? Could there not be as much value in uttering a few heretical words, but continuing to LIVE? Is not LIFE better than death? I am not denying that martyrdom is a noble thing, something to hold aloft as venerable, but I am just wondering why I would not be able to do it. I would not be able to choose death over life. I WANT TO LIVE! I have something to do, something to say, something to experience. I haven't finished with life. Jesus didn't die until he said that "it is finished". Jesus knew his thing to do (not that we have the faintest clue what that was), but I don't know what I have to finish. How can I ever die if I never find out what it is I am supposed to do, or be?
Perhaps I should focus on just that, on being, rather than doing, I have said this many times before, as has the Introspective Irishman, but when I try to focus on being I end up torturing myself mentally and spiritually and with this recent heart issue, physically as well. My vain struggle to find an elevated state of being leaves my physical body in ruin, which begs the question, should I just give up on seeking? Should I live a contented animal life? sleep and feed, sleep and feed. I can't do that without a lobotomy, so I can't and I must face physical ruin. Maybe then I will be able to shift off these clothes of skin and really start LIVING, finally begin BEING. To be a real living being instead of a shiftless anxiety ridden animal. For now I am caught in a cycle of compulsion to seek something beyond myself with the ironic result which makes me physically unable to seek anything but sleep and food.
I have probably been being all the time. I just want to be concious of that being which only seems to happen beyond my grasp. Oh well.
I still haven't ever seen the dusk...
My consciousness once spontaneously drifted out of my physical body and I lost all conception that, whatever I may be, I was not my body, but was something much more connected with the rest of reality, something more ephemeral, but at the same time much more than the tiny physical body which I so often mistake for myself.
I told you that you wouldn't believe it.
I tell this story because I have recently come up against some rather frightening medical problems involving my heart. It probably isn't anything, but nevertheless I have been gripped by fear for my mortal body. To quote South Park, "You know, I learned something today". Well actually I have known it for a long time and am reminded of it every time my physical body is in pain. I am afraid of death.
I don't think that I am alone in my fear of mortality, but I feel like a hypocrite in my fear. I must return to the inebriated blog which I deleted referred to in my last post. In describing my decietfulness I also discussed, albeit drunkenly, the fact that my blog name is thephilosopherone. I ranted drunkenly that I am a charlatan and that I do not deserve this title. I don't think that anyone really does. I have considered changing it, but that would just confuse me. I have developed this persona on the web and to change the name would be disasterous. I would like to clear up the misconceptions surrounding that name. I do not profess to have any answers. I do not profess to be intelligent. I read a lot, who gives a flying fuck! I think a lot, who doesn't! I am not trying to bring enlightenment to people, I do not possess esoteric knowledge. I strive to be free, to be free from knowledge, belief, faith...I strive to be free from mortality? So, I am a hypocrite. For all my talk, all my ideas about a loss of self, the fact that " I do not know" WHO I am, is all bullocks. When it comes down to it, I feel a strange attachment to this flesh suit which I think of as myself.
Am I merely like a new arrival to a nudist colony who is reluctant to remove his boxers? Is my attachment to my physical body something that will leave as I grow older? as it wastes away to nothing? Can I truly escape my dependance on my body in this life. The goal of the ascetic is to do just this, but prophets from Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed(don't worry no pictures) denied these practices. They stressed the importance of the physical body. I think that this is where gnosticism (the belief that the physical world is nothing but illusion) falls apart. Our physical bodies are important to our spiritual quests. To deny the body food and water entirely would make it impossible to search for some sort of enlightenment.
I have never fully understood the motivation of a martyr. I have heard many North American preachers exhorting people to praise martyrdom, but it never sat well with me. Perhaps there is something wrong with martyrdom? Could there not be as much value in uttering a few heretical words, but continuing to LIVE? Is not LIFE better than death? I am not denying that martyrdom is a noble thing, something to hold aloft as venerable, but I am just wondering why I would not be able to do it. I would not be able to choose death over life. I WANT TO LIVE! I have something to do, something to say, something to experience. I haven't finished with life. Jesus didn't die until he said that "it is finished". Jesus knew his thing to do (not that we have the faintest clue what that was), but I don't know what I have to finish. How can I ever die if I never find out what it is I am supposed to do, or be?
Perhaps I should focus on just that, on being, rather than doing, I have said this many times before, as has the Introspective Irishman, but when I try to focus on being I end up torturing myself mentally and spiritually and with this recent heart issue, physically as well. My vain struggle to find an elevated state of being leaves my physical body in ruin, which begs the question, should I just give up on seeking? Should I live a contented animal life? sleep and feed, sleep and feed. I can't do that without a lobotomy, so I can't and I must face physical ruin. Maybe then I will be able to shift off these clothes of skin and really start LIVING, finally begin BEING. To be a real living being instead of a shiftless anxiety ridden animal. For now I am caught in a cycle of compulsion to seek something beyond myself with the ironic result which makes me physically unable to seek anything but sleep and food.
I have probably been being all the time. I just want to be concious of that being which only seems to happen beyond my grasp. Oh well.
I still haven't ever seen the dusk...
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Paradoxos: My Hermeneutic of Self
I composed a post a few nights ago in a smashed stupor . Naturally I deleted it first thing the next morning. I hope that no one read it, it was mainly based around the music I was listening to at the time which happened to be Blind Melon, that pretty little grunge band that made it big because the lead singer died of a drug overdose.
The central idea in the post was more concerned with me...as all my writing is. I rambled about my deceitfulness.
I am a liar!
Disingenuis!
False!
Nothing that I do, say or am is true.
All the words that I use to convey my sense of self to another person are elaborately concocted lies. How do I know this?
For one, I do it consciously, I am a deliberate liar.
Also, I have no sense of self, how could I convey an image of myself to people without actually knowing what that self is?
If I convey a personality, a concrete self to other people, it must necessarily mean that I am lying. But then again...
Am I being dogmatic? Just because I do not know myself for certain does not mean that my falsely imagined interpretations of myself are outright lies. They are simply interpretations. Again I find myself back on this topic of interpretation. What did I conclude last time? I concluded that interpretation is a dialogue, a discourse, a discussion or a relationship between two beings. We gain knowledge of ourself and "the other" through the dialogue.
The sense of self is found inbetween the two beings.
The space between the two is where everything is found.
Our falsely imagined senses of self are lies, but by interacting with others we find ourself.
I have a rather split personality. One dogmatic, the other sees only grey. Sometimes a third inbetween sees both at the same time. Another sees nothing at all. What does this have to do with what I just concluded about the relationships between people? Perhaps I can find a sense of self within myself. My different and contradictory selves are in fact in dialogue with one another. My writing, my speaking, my eating, breathing and walking are enactments of the dialogue within myself. Perhaps people with a dissosiative disorder/multiple personality disorder (commonly and incorrectly called scitzophrenics) are merely those with very distilled versions of themselves. We all have them, they are just not manifested as clearly as mentally distressed people. That is the root of mental illness anyways, extreme versions of normal behavior.
I within myself am a dialogue of opposites and compliments...I am a contradiction...I must interpret the dialogue between these parts to find a self...not a centralized sense of self, but a self created from dependant relationships between different compartments...this is the hermeneutic of self...I am a paradox...
The central idea in the post was more concerned with me...as all my writing is. I rambled about my deceitfulness.
I am a liar!
Disingenuis!
False!
Nothing that I do, say or am is true.
All the words that I use to convey my sense of self to another person are elaborately concocted lies. How do I know this?
For one, I do it consciously, I am a deliberate liar.
Also, I have no sense of self, how could I convey an image of myself to people without actually knowing what that self is?
If I convey a personality, a concrete self to other people, it must necessarily mean that I am lying. But then again...
Am I being dogmatic? Just because I do not know myself for certain does not mean that my falsely imagined interpretations of myself are outright lies. They are simply interpretations. Again I find myself back on this topic of interpretation. What did I conclude last time? I concluded that interpretation is a dialogue, a discourse, a discussion or a relationship between two beings. We gain knowledge of ourself and "the other" through the dialogue.
The sense of self is found inbetween the two beings.
The space between the two is where everything is found.
Our falsely imagined senses of self are lies, but by interacting with others we find ourself.
I have a rather split personality. One dogmatic, the other sees only grey. Sometimes a third inbetween sees both at the same time. Another sees nothing at all. What does this have to do with what I just concluded about the relationships between people? Perhaps I can find a sense of self within myself. My different and contradictory selves are in fact in dialogue with one another. My writing, my speaking, my eating, breathing and walking are enactments of the dialogue within myself. Perhaps people with a dissosiative disorder/multiple personality disorder (commonly and incorrectly called scitzophrenics) are merely those with very distilled versions of themselves. We all have them, they are just not manifested as clearly as mentally distressed people. That is the root of mental illness anyways, extreme versions of normal behavior.
I within myself am a dialogue of opposites and compliments...I am a contradiction...I must interpret the dialogue between these parts to find a self...not a centralized sense of self, but a self created from dependant relationships between different compartments...this is the hermeneutic of self...I am a paradox...
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Tear in the Curtain
give me extremes, give me excess,
to hell with temprance, sobriety and success.
fuck contentment, peace and rationality,
cleanliness, order, health and
feelgood sentimentality.
prudence, planning, straight roads, business ties, cubicles...
roooooowwsss of urinals!
why these platitudes, these reasons,
this purpose business.
no more reasons, no more excuses
stop trying to defend this divine cerebral spasm called existence!
just let it be!
raw unadulterated reality.
let it flow down like water falls
and echo with wild animal calls
let it rise like mighty snowcapped mountains
and spring up like subterrainean fountains
wrench these dreamers from their slumber
with shrieking lightning and calamitous thunder
tear this peaceful world of illusions asunder...
much too raw and teenage I know, oh well, it stays as it is...
to hell with temprance, sobriety and success.
fuck contentment, peace and rationality,
cleanliness, order, health and
feelgood sentimentality.
prudence, planning, straight roads, business ties, cubicles...
roooooowwsss of urinals!
why these platitudes, these reasons,
this purpose business.
no more reasons, no more excuses
stop trying to defend this divine cerebral spasm called existence!
just let it be!
raw unadulterated reality.
let it flow down like water falls
and echo with wild animal calls
let it rise like mighty snowcapped mountains
and spring up like subterrainean fountains
wrench these dreamers from their slumber
with shrieking lightning and calamitous thunder
tear this peaceful world of illusions asunder...
much too raw and teenage I know, oh well, it stays as it is...
Monday, December 11, 2006
The Twelve Smells of Christmas
The Twelve Smells of Christmas will be a progressive post if I am witty enough to develop it.
12 murdered pine-trees
11 heretical turkies
10 uncle's special egg nog
9 incontinent snowmen
8 upper class chinese ancestors
7 baked/stoned gingerbread...people (pc)
6 Great Aunt Gladys' perfume
5 holly being kissed beneath the mistletoe...let your imagination flow
4 salt in the wounds of the driveway
3 a real stable in which a woman has just given birth
2 burning wrapping paper
1 uncle's special egg nog revisited
This is just an initial impression of what Christmas smells like...
12 murdered pine-trees
11 heretical turkies
10 uncle's special egg nog
9 incontinent snowmen
8 upper class chinese ancestors
7 baked/stoned gingerbread...people (pc)
6 Great Aunt Gladys' perfume
5 holly being kissed beneath the mistletoe...let your imagination flow
4 salt in the wounds of the driveway
3 a real stable in which a woman has just given birth
2 burning wrapping paper
1 uncle's special egg nog revisited
This is just an initial impression of what Christmas smells like...
Thursday, December 07, 2006
things that would make me happy right now...
1) firing purple paintballs during the meeting of a cult, quickly rolling up the windows and then shouting "whoo!" at the top of my lungs and then speeding off. yes, all in that order.
2) taking a random trip to montreal and living w/ correy for a couple weeks and talking about how depressing life and love can really be
3) quitting the olive garden
4) seeing an obese, furry, little animal outside my window. preferably lost or running into something and knocking itself out
5) gopher hunting or just finding a gopher skull to decorate my room w/ (no really, they're so intricate and cool!) actually i take that back, i *need* to shoot something living that's furry and that screws the farm over...
6) beating a table full of guys in texas holdem and spending the money on barcadi breezers, yes a drink right now would be very nice...
7) knowing the rest of, "DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD..."
8) setting a certain dutch reformed, the-only-public-Christian-school high school in edmonton on fire
9) waking up tomorrow morning in coquitlam next to john and since i'm going there, i minds' well wish that time would stand still for 2 years in that moment. there i wished it.
10) being able to hand out a decaf drink to a bitchy customer that needed their caffine fix just one last tiiiiime
11) wipping my brother's ass at family guy monopoly and then gloating about it for days about how i'm so awesome and better than him b/c i'm older. *sigh* those were days until he grew and got smarter. no really, i'm a good older sister, nathan and i are close.
12) finally finding that yellow brick road therefore making all my referrences not insane and not stupid.
that's it, i'm tired. i just downloaded, "butterfly" by crazytown and that's made me pretty joyful. oh orange county, you were such a good movie now weren't you? ahem. if any of you guys give me any of the above things you will instantly become a good friend of mine. yes, since good friendships are fucking cheap these days, i thought it appropriate to put that out there. excuse my french, i'm a little bitter right now. damn it, i so wish canada had volcanoes right now...
2) taking a random trip to montreal and living w/ correy for a couple weeks and talking about how depressing life and love can really be
3) quitting the olive garden
4) seeing an obese, furry, little animal outside my window. preferably lost or running into something and knocking itself out
5) gopher hunting or just finding a gopher skull to decorate my room w/ (no really, they're so intricate and cool!) actually i take that back, i *need* to shoot something living that's furry and that screws the farm over...
6) beating a table full of guys in texas holdem and spending the money on barcadi breezers, yes a drink right now would be very nice...
7) knowing the rest of, "DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD..."
8) setting a certain dutch reformed, the-only-public-Christian-school high school in edmonton on fire
9) waking up tomorrow morning in coquitlam next to john and since i'm going there, i minds' well wish that time would stand still for 2 years in that moment. there i wished it.
10) being able to hand out a decaf drink to a bitchy customer that needed their caffine fix just one last tiiiiime
11) wipping my brother's ass at family guy monopoly and then gloating about it for days about how i'm so awesome and better than him b/c i'm older. *sigh* those were days until he grew and got smarter. no really, i'm a good older sister, nathan and i are close.
12) finally finding that yellow brick road therefore making all my referrences not insane and not stupid.
that's it, i'm tired. i just downloaded, "butterfly" by crazytown and that's made me pretty joyful. oh orange county, you were such a good movie now weren't you? ahem. if any of you guys give me any of the above things you will instantly become a good friend of mine. yes, since good friendships are fucking cheap these days, i thought it appropriate to put that out there. excuse my french, i'm a little bitter right now. damn it, i so wish canada had volcanoes right now...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
