At many times I wonder if philosophy is divided into two categories; the blindingly obvious, always known if not spoken, and the unknown, and creative. Concepts like the principle of sufficient reason, and Occam's razor, as I understand them, are present in most of our uneducated debates and writings without anyone ever knowing that they have been codified and solidified. There are two sides to this; One, that these principles are so ingrained through unconscious inheritance of thought patterns in western thought-society that they are only there because they were integral in ye olde days, or (2) that they are more fundamental to our Kantian thought-framework, and even if we didn't know how to express them, they were always at work. Then on the other hand, there are concepts like the more modern linguistic theorists, and logic-hagglers, and their principles aren't usually intuitive, and don't usually seem to be present in some unconscious format in our minds already. When Occam wrote about not multiplying entities without cause, did he really add anything very new to the body of philosophy? Don't we already know the principle of simplicity without needing to be told it? And as for principles of logic, in harsh light they're just nigh-arbitrary rules for a constructed system made up by a bunch of hairless apes on a ball of dirt in a big ol' vacum. How do they matter? Why bother? What possible cause for significance do they have? Furthermore, what are criteria for significance? Why those? POINT- Are our instinctive senses of truth-sense and false-sense nothing more then inheritances from a dead age? Or willows bending to mood and emotion or delusions of faith?
What are the ramifications if Wittgenstein was right with his tractatus? If all philosophical propositions are meaningless, (including his own) what then are we to do with our inherited senselessnesses? Discard them, and live without meaning? Create our own?
How could we possibly create our own meaning, from scratch? Isn't that the ultimate arrogance, the perfect hubris? Yet- if we live in a world without our old boundaries. If what we know is senseless, and internally contradictory- then where might we go from here?
The Fremen fear the realm of alam-al mythal, the realm of myth, without boundary, because without boundary, it is impossible to point at some place and say "I am here- I am a person, I have existence"
Do we open our eyes to see this world around us? We are told that nothing ever changes here, that one day is much like the rest, that nothing lasts forever, and all the rest. Is change so impossible? Is the new so hard to come by?
Can we become active in creating our own lives, become active players in our own world? Fight the Cassandra effect? My mind shrinks from this challenge, and wants to return to the world with bills and friends and games and little farces of life that make it tolerable to forget that I live in a world without meaning. But why not? Why not sleep forever, lost in the waking utopia of the middle-class suburban life, die with deathbed wisdom and peace with the universe? My truth-sense tells me all truth-sense is meaningless. My instincts are therefore meaningless, or not, and my instincts tell me a slow and sleepy death of life is repulsive and should be fought at every opportunity. Why listen to instinct, when the easy route is so much easier?
In its own system, there is no counter-argument to this. Truth-sense is out the window, and counter-argument and argument are farcical dolls jerked by whims of mood. There is no meaning, so why go to all the bother of creating some?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Acts of Creation at Last
Maybe it's about time to actually write what I started this blog to say.
This is me being honest. This is what sleeps in my heart and which I choke down every time I am forced to listen to anyone talk about things in which they believe.
And yes, I am young and stupid and angry and unfortunate and probably shallow and unexperienced, but I claim that my death and life and thought will be no less profound than anyone who has lived or died before or after me.
In my eyes, my generation is running out of things to believe in. This is foolish. The first thing we read in the Foundation Year Program was an egyptian poem. In this was the bemoaning of the ending of the civilization of the time. Young no longer respect their elders, brigands and cutthroats rule the land, the rulers are corrupt and incompetent, and surely it can get no worse than this. Nothing lasts forever. This is not Buddhism. Buddhism is an emotional neutering which delivers what it promises.This is history. Standards of living go up, GNP grows, life expectancy increases, and in all measurable ways things have gotten better for us. (I'm ignoring impending environmental disaster because it's more like impending evironmental moderate alterations and compensations. Overblown). But in the noosphere, things are bleaker than normal, and yet more fertile. After Nietzsche, and Derrida and Heidegger and Wittgenstein, most organized modes of thought have been ...fully understood for what they are. As I see it, and understand it, Wittgenstein really did let the fly out of the bottle. There are still many overgrown children who believe in Gods that hold their hand and tell them the world isn't scary, but here's a news flash, idiots: God. Is. Dead. More to the point, he never existed. You made Him/Her/It up. From paper and dreams, you gave yourselves comforting illusions. Nothing more. And for the rest of us, we can try to ignore the problem, or improvise. In Galileo's time, and place, there was only one option. Now we have a buffet. From all over the world, we may now pick and choose our salvation. Tantra, Zoraster, Islam, Christianity, nihilism, atheism, agnosticism, gnostics of all sorts and every branch of new-age bullshit we like. "No, really, I find, like, that crystals really help me deal better with hostile people. I mean, like, I can see their auras, and I know, like, that it's not mine and they don't have to bother me if I don't let them, y'know?" "I find the simplicity of the neoplatonic's ideals really speak to me, you know? Like there's something there which I can relate to." "But I understand now, God really does love me! So much, just so much love!...*drunken mumbling*" And do any of you see how hypocritical these things are, from their own backgrounds? something as fundamental and universal as faith and conviction have become commodities of psychology and personal fit, mix'n'match convenience packs of your favorite hellfire and heaven bite-sized pieces. And even if someone takes it into their head to order an entire cake with all the trimmings, or less, or more, or whatever, that still doesn't change the fundamental irreconcilabilities present in their roots. This has been gone over. I'm confident I could go somewhere, and maybe I couldn't, but I'm not here for that right now.
Creation ex nihilo. Creation out of nothing. I pose this- Can we believe fully and have faith in something we fashion ourselves, out of whole cloth? Can we make our own futures, our own ethics, our own meanings, from nothing? We have nothing now, certainly. We have forgetfulness and corporate scandals and impermanence, and middle age and deathbed compactions of life experiences and plastic flowers and urns and barbie dolls. Can someone really believe in that? and what else is there to believe in? The word of Allah and Jesus war against each other and although every streetside philosopher can point out the absurdities of their actions, no one really cares in the holy war?
"Destroy the place and you destroy the person". Herbert was right, and I'm hijacking him. We the possessed and cared for and blessed, are discontent. We have the leisure of time to think, and we find nothing is worthy to think about. Our works are as dust in our mouths, and with our survival all but guaranteed, we find nothing worth living for. And the wheel of time will turn, and we will have economic shifts, and we will then be the third world while Africa feasts, and we will have meaning again. Survival. Food. Shelter. Company. Companionship. Things will be simple again, and we will write songs of the beauty of nature and love, and an all-loving god/ess will rule or crush us and we will be happy. Again. And the wheel of time will turn again. Things will change. We with foresight and reason can see all this, can see all mortal efforts go to dust, all things forgotten, all things change. And after the pain and loss and questioning, what then? WHAT THEN?
Give up?
This is me being honest. This is what sleeps in my heart and which I choke down every time I am forced to listen to anyone talk about things in which they believe.
And yes, I am young and stupid and angry and unfortunate and probably shallow and unexperienced, but I claim that my death and life and thought will be no less profound than anyone who has lived or died before or after me.
In my eyes, my generation is running out of things to believe in. This is foolish. The first thing we read in the Foundation Year Program was an egyptian poem. In this was the bemoaning of the ending of the civilization of the time. Young no longer respect their elders, brigands and cutthroats rule the land, the rulers are corrupt and incompetent, and surely it can get no worse than this. Nothing lasts forever. This is not Buddhism. Buddhism is an emotional neutering which delivers what it promises.This is history. Standards of living go up, GNP grows, life expectancy increases, and in all measurable ways things have gotten better for us. (I'm ignoring impending environmental disaster because it's more like impending evironmental moderate alterations and compensations. Overblown). But in the noosphere, things are bleaker than normal, and yet more fertile. After Nietzsche, and Derrida and Heidegger and Wittgenstein, most organized modes of thought have been ...fully understood for what they are. As I see it, and understand it, Wittgenstein really did let the fly out of the bottle. There are still many overgrown children who believe in Gods that hold their hand and tell them the world isn't scary, but here's a news flash, idiots: God. Is. Dead. More to the point, he never existed. You made Him/Her/It up. From paper and dreams, you gave yourselves comforting illusions. Nothing more. And for the rest of us, we can try to ignore the problem, or improvise. In Galileo's time, and place, there was only one option. Now we have a buffet. From all over the world, we may now pick and choose our salvation. Tantra, Zoraster, Islam, Christianity, nihilism, atheism, agnosticism, gnostics of all sorts and every branch of new-age bullshit we like. "No, really, I find, like, that crystals really help me deal better with hostile people. I mean, like, I can see their auras, and I know, like, that it's not mine and they don't have to bother me if I don't let them, y'know?" "I find the simplicity of the neoplatonic's ideals really speak to me, you know? Like there's something there which I can relate to." "But I understand now, God really does love me! So much, just so much love!...*drunken mumbling*" And do any of you see how hypocritical these things are, from their own backgrounds? something as fundamental and universal as faith and conviction have become commodities of psychology and personal fit, mix'n'match convenience packs of your favorite hellfire and heaven bite-sized pieces. And even if someone takes it into their head to order an entire cake with all the trimmings, or less, or more, or whatever, that still doesn't change the fundamental irreconcilabilities present in their roots. This has been gone over. I'm confident I could go somewhere, and maybe I couldn't, but I'm not here for that right now.
Creation ex nihilo. Creation out of nothing. I pose this- Can we believe fully and have faith in something we fashion ourselves, out of whole cloth? Can we make our own futures, our own ethics, our own meanings, from nothing? We have nothing now, certainly. We have forgetfulness and corporate scandals and impermanence, and middle age and deathbed compactions of life experiences and plastic flowers and urns and barbie dolls. Can someone really believe in that? and what else is there to believe in? The word of Allah and Jesus war against each other and although every streetside philosopher can point out the absurdities of their actions, no one really cares in the holy war?
"Destroy the place and you destroy the person". Herbert was right, and I'm hijacking him. We the possessed and cared for and blessed, are discontent. We have the leisure of time to think, and we find nothing is worthy to think about. Our works are as dust in our mouths, and with our survival all but guaranteed, we find nothing worth living for. And the wheel of time will turn, and we will have economic shifts, and we will then be the third world while Africa feasts, and we will have meaning again. Survival. Food. Shelter. Company. Companionship. Things will be simple again, and we will write songs of the beauty of nature and love, and an all-loving god/ess will rule or crush us and we will be happy. Again. And the wheel of time will turn again. Things will change. We with foresight and reason can see all this, can see all mortal efforts go to dust, all things forgotten, all things change. And after the pain and loss and questioning, what then? WHAT THEN?
Give up?
____ This ____
Life is beautiful. Life can kick you in the face, take all your money, and then flaunt the (female dog) who stole it all personally in your kitchen, taking fer fecal matter without repercussion. I restrain myself from attacking her for the benefit of my friends, because I certainly don't see myself getting any money back from her. We trusted her, and she threw shit on us, and then rubbed it in all our faces, and stole some more. We gave her a second chance, and she did the whole thing again, only this time she's leaving, and sees fit to blame the whole mess on me. ME. I HAVE PAID FOR HER EVERY GOD_DAMN MONTH this year. Every time. And she screams in my face and tells me to F-ck off, when I point out reality to her. I am paying and paying and paying, and she is screwing us, and I will pursue, but expect no justice. Some shit I understand. A car hits the person you love most, fine. It happens. Drunk Driver. Slippery roads, whatever. Bank forecloses? Pick up the pieces and start over. Shit happens. But this is and has been personal, and I have expressed every one of her god-damn christian morals, and so has everyone else in the house, more so. And she walks all over us, to the tune of $1600 (Which is not the worst it's been) and more, when so much more is counted. This is money I don't really have. It is tuition, and rent, and bills and food, and that's all I can afford, at the best of times. And I cannot exact justice because that would be wrong. This is personal. I may not be a starving kid in Nepal, or Ethiopia, or wherever, and I may not have seen my parents get killed at the hands of government-paid mercenaries so my land could be cleared for american megacorporations, but I have had someone in my confidence and whom I trusted screw me over royally, and then do it again because she just wanted to. My friends have taken the abuse, and the worry and frustration, and I must restrain my fist. All because somewhere in the christian morality we all inherited from our great-granddaddies we were told it was wrong to exact revenge and justice and so it was the word of God. And I won't, for the sake of the friends I have, but I don't feel like any of them really understand just how much I hate this. And the whore is in my kitchen taking her shit and she will, for all intents and purposes, get away scot-free, because she has nothing left to lose. We will take it up the ass for her, for a morality which is false and shallow, and we are not in a position to do so. But I can hate, and will not be told my hate is wrong.
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