I have come to a stark conclusion

“Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.” Houssaye

I have come to the stark conclusion, despite the reservations of my better half, that the human race, as a series of individuals, rather than a whole entity, desires the complete obliteration of individuality. It is obvious that by the light of day man claims utter loyalty to concept of extreme individuality, of freedom, of radical selfhood as opposed to otherness. It is certain that man wants to put his name on every piece of paper, on every statue erected, and to say it after every act accomplished. Yet, in the darkness, at night in the silence of stars dying man wishes for completeness, wholeness, and the strength that comes with the absolute, unquestioning, complete forfeit of the self into the slavery that is humanness.

The claim to selfhood is an egotistical claim. It is the claim of a madman, awash in a sea of bodies, the dead and the living alike, who share a name, a face, a common bond yet he screams “Me, Me, Me”. This is the same man who claims ownership of things, taking them into his self and saying “My, My, My”. Is this the happy man? Is this humanity?

If you claim to be an individual, then you have not loved. If you claim to be free, then you have never been human. If you think that you heart, brain, and body have a name, then you do not know them. For in the darkest times, in the pit of crisis, in the void doubt and loathing, who do we turn to? When the complete neediness of mankind wracks us whose name do we call? Surely the man who calls his own name is lost, surely he is damned.

Salvation lies in the becoming of another. Blessed is transformation, is unity. To become another is both paradox and common sense. Who is themself all the time? The stagnant, the heretic, the fanatic, not the human. What is true education? The becoming of another. Whoever acts the same when they fall in love as they did when they were alone is a soulless snake whose tongue says one thing but heart desires another. (“Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently.”) Yet is not love, is not education, is not change what desire most? Is this not within us? This drive to sacrifice our self to the other.

It is from love that we make the voyage into the other. And from this voyage we gain only love. Like Father, like Son. Yet love is also reciprocal, and demands two separate entities. What is union between one thing and itself? Cohesion? We care not for union of one with self, but one with one. Yet here we arrive at individuality again. In order to enter in union we must be separate, yet in order to be happy we must be in communion with the other. Through it all love hangs between us as a third ambiguous entity as both cause and end. It binds us and drives us to be bound yet once bound we can no longer love.

It is from this paradox that arises a three pronged universe. The is, the meaning of is, and the ought of the is. The is is becoming while it is ceasing to be. Yet it maintains its meaning (Or identity in the case of mankind). While having a meaning it also maintains an ought which dictates the current meaning is not correct and demands a new meaning without embracing a new is. All three are the same object, they share the same physical space, they are all part of the thingness of the thing, yet they are three separate things. A man as he is, is not as he ought, and the man as he ought or as he is, is not his meaning. The meaning of a man is entirely incorporeal, where clearly a man is corporeal. Both the is and the ought are partially corporeal but only the is exists within time. The ought exists only outside of time governing the is, without ever knowing the burden of temporality.

From this trinity arises three ways of understanding the world. Man can understand things as they are, or how they appear. He can also understand things as they ought, according to his understanding. Or he can understand the meaning or gravity of an object as it relates to the whole of existence. In this way we arrive at common sense, the arts and sciences, and philosophy. This is also why common sense, although it appeals to us as we are, often falls short of understanding a thing, and why our senses often fool us. Likewise the arts and sciences, while they can tell us how things ought to be, often fail to understand the simple and common phenomena of human existence, like love. Finally we arrive at philosophy whose job, as it tries to know the whole, is also to reconcile common sense knowledge with the knowledge of the arts and sciences. Since it attempts to unite two others into one unity (as it also attempts to unite all of existence into one unity, called truth) it is rightly called ‘love’. Yet in combining the two it finds only how they disagree without any actual ability to mediate. To put it simply, in making the two into one it doesn’t respect the individual assumptions from which both are based. The mind is not the body. Thinking (or rationalizing) does not always agree with what is sensed. Joining the two into one does not take this simple fact into consideration and hence we arrive at the falling off of philosophy.

It is precisely for this reason that the dialectic fails to solve the problem of philosophy. Thesis and anti-thesis combine to form synthesis but still leave both thesis and anti-thesis. Like residue from an experiment the thesis and anti-thesis remain to claim autonomy from the synthesis, and rightly so. What is a man without his senses? Yet what is a man without reason? Yet the man who tries to use both perfectly with end only in confusion. Thus the thesis and anti-thesis, despite their shared destiny to unite in synthesis, will always be separate. Despite the fact that synthesis gives meaning to both thesis and anti-thesis, it calls for there meager existence to sacrifice itself for a better, it can never claim them entirely. For a whole is always defined by its parts – and parts are always defined as ‘not wholes’.

It is certain that all parts, so much as they can, desire to be a whole. Wholeness combines is, ought, and meaning into one. It is also what we call truth, that principle which makes a whole of everything. In human terms, we call this desire, the greatest of all desires, love. Yet the love of something is not love itself, nor is it love as it ought to be. Hence now, even as we get closer to understanding, the same problem arises. Is there a thing which is as it ought to be as well as meaning itself? Furthermore what qualities would be necessary for such a being to exist?

Such a thing must be non-physical (since matter is prone to falling into disorder), it must be eternal (since time is a measurement of change, and the ought, if it is, cannot change), and it must give meaning (since meaning, if it has a meaning, gives meaning to itself and hence gives it to all). Lastly this thing must be a whole without parts (since as we have already stated that wholes that contain parts necessarily maintain the individuality of its parts). Surely I say to you that a being of this type and quality cannot exist, and if it did, it would certainly not be good.

The reason for this lies in the ability to give meaning. Such a giver recognizes the other and gives them meaning in accordance with it’s is and ought. Such recognition of the is and ought as it gives meaning also mandates an entering into time and space. Such entering into time and space would shatter the being into parts: the eternal, and the temporal; the physical, and the immaterial. Such a break would necessitate a new relationship between these two wholes: that which gives meaning and that which is as it ought in all ways. This relationship, according to the assumption set forth previously, would desire a wholeness with each other, and hence love each other. This love would then exist as a third entity which is neither the is as it ought nor is the meaning of all things but is rather the desire for the is and the ought to be one with the meaning of all things. Hence the pattern of the order of the universe reflects itself in man and the way man understand the universe and furthermore, man’s love is a reflection of the universe’s love for wholeness. It is only when time and space do not exist that this structure and order dissolves and true wholeness is possible.

Our constant reminders of temporality and physicality is what chains us from eternal love. Yet it is also in the bonds of love that we forget temporality and physicality, even if only for a moment. Inevitably we will fall again, out of unity, out of wholeness, and into the individuality of time and space. Our only hope would be a place outside of time and space where our meaning resides without time and space and that perhaps one day our is and ought will rejoin it and all other meanings as a true whole. Until that time we must mimic the cycle that the universe has given us, a three pronged understanding for a triple layered universe, where all things are three things but only in so much as they are one thing. All the while both our sense and our reason will tell us this impossible, but when the darkness of night rolls in, and the stars invade the sky, while we lay next to our lover, we will know it is true, because for a moment, we will be immortal.

“Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock.” Mary Parrish

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.” – Herman Hesse