The Great Gig in the Sky

“I think its time we compiled a list of places that we shouldn’t go.” – Maximo Park.

So here I sit, listening to Pink Floyd and Jazz music. I mindlessly go from thought to thought, and occasionally write. Yet as each thought rises from my mind it becomes too vague to exist outside me, and it dissipates. To grasp at it, is to destroy it outright, to let it go, is to let it drift away into the abyss of the physical world. I am here again, at the point I always come to, the point of reflecting on the mirror’s surface, the knowledge of knowledge, the knowledge of self.

In the name of unquenchable desire for knowledge many realms of thought have been explored and perhaps invented using this vague ancient defense as validation. Yet, as we focus our telescopes on the sky and trail our microscopes across strange alien fungi, we forget where knowledge comes from, to where it goes, and why we desire it to begin with.

We desire knowledge because we desire things like us – we desire ourselves. This is why we cherish such qualities as freedom and equality – the ability to make one’s self and to make others be like you. The greatest scientific discoveries in the world have always been immediately followed with questions that escape the realm of science. Until recently, this was a shame to even scientists.

Yet, this post is not an attack on science (like most of my others), it is instead an attack on everything – perhaps out of some metaphysical angst that must manifest itself as anger in order to make my feeble flawed soul feel empowered like some ancient Greek warrior. But none the less, I lash out violently at the entirety of my generation, in the process scourging myself.

How oft I failed to stop and understand my own argumentation. How oft have I walked the tight-rope between logic and emotion claiming clemency from either attack on the basis of its counter point. I am, after all, a lingual illusionist. The David Blaine of philosophers. The Criss Angel of poetics. Have I garnered anything but applause from my audience, who seeing the trick are convinced of magic, yet go home knowing that it can’t be true – despite any emotional response.

Just like everyone else when I finally settle back upon myself I cannot put a finger on where I am. (Anyone who tells you differently is one of two things. A liar, or an idiot). Yet, like most people I still claim a ’selfhood’ to which I am obligated to be ‘genuine’. The tension between these two ideas gives the birth of such beautiful concepts as freedom, free will, and choice. I am concrete that changes. The result is the amazing ability to stroke the passions regardless of logic, and then collapse back into a world of 1+1 justifications. Proof. Poof.

The greatest pleasures arise from this tension and furthermore by this tension is magnified like an echo chamber. This equality of opposites within our souls allows the passions to win just often enough to make us miss it when its gone. Then in its victorious return it is all the more glorious. Furthermore, I am not entirely sure that this is a necessarily bad thing, but rather a misdirected good. Part of me wants to embrace this passionate side and perfect its music – while another part, the equality of reason, demands I embrace something “higher” – an emotion that is not without its own pleasure.

The result of continued friction and tension is, of course, orgasm. The release of the self in favor of one or the other. In the release there is always simultaneous guilt and pleasure, immortality and death, love and hate. The person is either truest or most false in the midst of this orgasm wherein the ‘pure’ form of the two sides is most dominant. But in so doing, in so stepping into purity, we have betrayed the things that got us there – the tension of two opposites. So have we become more pure by dissolving one side in favor of the other – or have we become less human because we have too much clarity. Perhaps we add this to the list of places we shouldn’t go. Perhaps we draw a map and mark it with an x. Perhaps we just sit here and listen to The Great Gig in the Sky.

Midnight Contemplations

Why do we waste our time talking about a ‘perfect world’ when such a thing cannot be imagined?

I have grown so tired of theories that attempt to remove complexity, remove contradiction, and by doing so, remove humanity.

The Valiant Never Taste of Death But Once

“I do not fear death. I fear that I may somehow inadvertently or purposefully bring it about.” - My paraphrasing of Timothy Holmes.

I wish I could take credit for this extreme lucidity and eloquence when I responded to the same question… I cannot. Though I did answer the question in a similar way: “No I do not fear death. I fear the deaths of others”. I for one have always confronted the idea of death with more curiosity than fear – even the darkest hours of my atheism whereupon I still agreed that the deaths of my loved ones was far more painful than my own death.

This question did arise rather suddenly and externally when myself and Mr. Holmes participated in an interview wherein the subject of death was discussed in relation to spirituality and politics. It is important, beyond the urging of my words, that we understand the entirety of modern politics is based around death and the complete desire to avoid it at all costs. Beginning with Machiavelli, and then Hobbes, and finally with Locke the idea of death becomes the foundation of rights. Natural rights flow from the nature of death.

Death’s introduction to the political order makes any answer extreme. Since our idea of life, and it’s rights, are based on death – killing becomes either grim natural reality or perverse execution. In reality it is neither.

“Death is the respite from life. It is possibly joyous and maybe even preferred.” (again another paraphrase – Tim please send me the actual quotes if you can remember them and I will errata this entry). Death as respite is something I could never believe as an atheist (though many have tried to put forward a similar concept). This understanding does come about it is in the esoteric writings of select secular philosophers who then get misquoted and misunderstood by others. It is equally important that we understand that such a concept can never be the popular understanding of the masses in a secular state.

This is not a defense or justification of religion – it is reality. The post-enlightenment birth of secular states coincides with political revolution based on the concept of death. The two need each other. If we are to understand death in a Hobbesean or Lockean way then we must see it as flowing from nature and to be the subject of reason. Thus the state shouldn’t indulge itself in the particular mythologies of churches. Thus we arrive at our modern state.

Modern religious freedom creates an accepting environment by refusing to have any religious beliefs. Thus when confronting issues of death the state must make decisions without metaphysical guide posts. This has a tendency to make the regime either act too brutally or too late. Almost every war since the Enlightenment has been a total war, an ideological war, and a devastating war. The wars have been so gruesome that even the “good guy’s” virtue was often clouded or downright abandoned. America entered the war late to save American lives – then they ended it early by dropping two nuclear weapons. Again to save American lives. Here is not the time to discuss just war theory but it is important to point out this phenomenon historically.

But here is the not the time to talk about such politics either. It is the time to point out the reasoning of a secular state. Reason, as it turns out, is no different than blind faith. It indulges itself, justifies itself, and is often used to do all sorts of bad things. Is fighting over democracy abroad any different than fighting for the glory of God? Our love of democracy is based only on post-enlightenment reason that is ultimately based on a new death theology.

What I am about to say is perhaps the most extreme thing I have ever committed to public dissection. Perhaps death isn’t all that big of a deal. Perhaps life (as we know it) isn’t all that big of a deal. It seems the greatest virtues eventually push individuals to put their own lives out of the picture. Ultimate humility, ultimate courage, and even ultimate justice sometimes demand a lack of regard for one’s own life. We are going to die. So don’t waste time fearing your death but rather fear you have not lived. Fear that you will die alone sitting watching the TV. Fear that you will have never changed another person’s life for the better. Fear that no one will mourn your death.

This idea is also dangerous. For once you realize the meaningless of death you no longer have the whip of the slave driver. The clear direction to the stars is cut short of its gravity and you’re left to drift in an apparent void. The temptation is to dive into meaningless and arbitrary faith – do not do this. This is not a justification for such irresponsibility. The fight is hard and it may flirt with that old slave driver like a mistress. It may find the bitter sting of the whip pleasant and what was once your master is now your ally. This is the most tempting and problematic effect of this new belief – one that for ages lead antiquity to the heights of greatness.

In the end, it is most likely our proximity to death that allows us to transcend and understand the things beyond our body. Only in the comfort of science could we embrace cold unfeeling atheism. Only with the soft despotism of the television could we finally give up the freedom we fought for. Only in the age of medicine and health could we devote our lives to living healthily only to realize too late that we never did anything with our 75 years. This proximity fueled our pre-science ancestors in the Renaissance who watched a great empire fall, a plague strangle Europe, and a 100 year war over a holy land they’d never see. They saw it every day and they clawed with clenched hands at the dark sky to let some light through.

The enlightenment itself started in the mild rumblings of an Earthquake in Lisbon. Such tremors have shaken the world and crumbled entire foundations. We now fear death or worse, we ignore it. But why? For what good does all this fretting and worrying do? Do we not shake the earth so badly that the ghosts of Lisbon pity us? Do those wraiths sit somewhere beyond it all fearing that one day they will be thrown back into a body and reintroduced into the fear of our skin? Perhaps I will ask them when I meet them. Perhaps they don’t even know the movement that started in their name. In which case I won’t tell them, I won’t make them worry about us, I’ll just ask about the weather or how the weather used to be.

Absence From Those We Love Is Self From Self – A Deadly Banishment.

People, despite the desire of the misanthrope, are defined and made individual precisely because of others. Independence, as we come to find through age, means depending more and more on a select group of others. This selection must be more narrow than everyone but more than nobody but, besides that, we know little about the best possible form of communication with each other. We are born into relationships, flourish in relationships, are educated in relationships, grow old in relationships, and everyone wishes to die in the arms of those who love them. That group of lovers might be small or large, but everyone wants someone to love them.

This may seem relatively obvious and I hope it does. You see, like most foolhardy scholars I aim toward developing an ontology that I can live my life by but more importantly I hope to show others a better ontology (preferably my own) in hopes to contribute back to the web of relationships that brings me here. The above paragraph can be considered a thesis – the thesis of human relations as the core of individuality. It seems obvious to most humans but has certainly taken heavy criticism throughout the years. Both the adherence and the rejection of such a thesis finds its roots in the natural contradiction of the human person – a contradiction I have alluded to over the past year in this blog and hope to elucidate here.

Man desires to be with others but also desires to be chosen from the group as an essential component. That is to say that every person identifies themselves with a group but desires that from among that group they are special, perhaps talented, gifted, or great. Every person desires to be more than simply a member of any group and often this desire turns against the group. The easiest way for man to ascend is to force other people under their foot. Hence we arrive at the struggle of history. It is the tension between individual and group that drives history.

Yet another exception with undoubtedly more to follow. Not only to we expect ourselves to be special and among the horde an exception but we also think such (or at least desire or even expect such) from our lovers and beloved. An example, no matter how childish, is the “my dad could kick your dad’s ass” playground argument. Though neither boy has knowledge of each other’s father, nor do they most likely understand the level of kick-ass-ness of their own, they have set forth a parameter that they hold to be other parameters and above all others in that category they have placed their father. This complex doesn’t stop at childhood physically speaking, though one could make the argument that this particular trait of humanity might only exist in the childish in spirit. This same principle arises in culture in nationalism, patriotism, and even racism (but that is a whole different can of worms).

The question at stake behind all of this is… what is selfhood? Such a question escapes every form of investigation except introspection and finds most of its answer tied to the question “who am I” or even “what am I”. Such investigation eventually leads one to the idea of a self and also the idea of what a human is writ large. Yet, since our self is very affected by our history, introspection takes us to a point wherein we begin to make assumptions based on personal experience about other people that we identify as human beings. The question then asserts itself that maybe there is rather little that actually binds us at all – perhaps we are unique and that is actually very horrifying.

The truly unique are without companion, without understanding and cannot be understood, they have neither contrast nor compliment, and are completely alone. In our case, if we are unique, we are unique individuals with physical symmetry. That is to say our bodies do not reinforce this assertion and in fact forces the opposite conclusion very often. Our bodies are not unique; they are different, but not unique. They have contrast and compliment, we all understand those physical processes, and bodies are not alone. In fact they come from two other bodies and usually join to other bodies as life goes on. Bodies are what we hold in common.

Thus we arrive again to the question. Introspection leads one to discover the ways in which we are particular, unique, and special (perhaps only for ego’s sake) while our bodies drive us toward neediness for others. So what is individuality? What are we? In what ratio do we find true humanness – whatever that means. Very often our resources are divided between goods of the body and goods of the soul – which do we tend to and when? Why do we feel alone? Why don’t we love everyone automatically? These are questions without answer and constitute the entrance to a highway of my theory. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Things That Increase My Hope For Humanity Part I

Setting: Starbucks, late afternoon \ early evening, a mother and daughter are waiting for their drinks. Daughter is yelling things.

The mother says: “Honey, you can’t just say that. Words are important. Just because you’re joking that doesn’t give you the right to say it.”

Few people I have met defend the important use of language like this. Perhaps it is because she is a mother. I wonder if she follows her own example away from the children. I think as a society we need to push this issue more though. Far too many people get away with “I was just kidding” to mask a deep seeded dislike or inherent implied insult. Jokes, after all, are based in reality… and so are words. Would it really tax our brains that much if we made an effort to use words more appropriately?

Disclaimer: I am not saying that humor isn’t important, nor that one SHOULDN’T tell jokes, but that saying “I was only kidding” shouldn’t be a scapegoat when someone’s feelings are hurt. I am merely advocating a responsible use of language.

Let Every Eye Negotiate For Itself and Trust No Agent

Why is it that when crisis occurs everyone who comes to help uses it as a stage from which they can promulgate their own cause? Even worse than this is that they genuinely feel that they are helping by slathering their ideological DNA over the issue until its cause, effects, and origin are obscured to all those concerned. In this age we cannot help others without helping ourselves – for this is the meaning of ideology.

Education

It is everyone’s right to be educated. But it is the responsibility of the educator to know when to teach someone the truth, and how much of the truth they can handle at that moment.

Solzhenitsyn, Czeslaw Milosz, and Tocqueville: An Eternal Golden Braid

“Moreover, since I have lived a long time in exile, I may be legitimately claimed by all those who had to leave their native villages and provinces because of misery of persecution and to adapt themselves to new ways of life; we are millions all over the Earth, for this is a century of exile.” – Czeslaw Milosz Banquet Speech 1980

I now return to anthropocentricity, and in particular evaluate the 20th century (‘the century of exile’) and how these strange sons of the enlightenment became distasteful of the direction that Western Civilization is heading in. In particular the role of extreme oppression, totalitarian regimes, and genocide on all sides turned the minds of Solzhenitsyn and Milosz toward democracy with a critical eye – but first lets turn several centuries back to a man heavily admired by Milosz: Dante Allegeri.

Why Dante? Why do we trun centuries back to Italy to discover our current dilemma? “A patron saint of all poets in exile, who visit their towns and provinces only in remembrance, is always Dante” (Milosz, Nobel Prize Lecture 1980). Dante not only embodies poetics but he was also an exile, who, unlike Milosz, could not find solace in being in the century of exile. Dante also understood anthropocentricity as he placed pride in the bottom two layers of hell, as well as the first layer of purgatory. It is the proud who become traitors, as we see Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in the mouth of the devil himself. But alas, Milosz is not talking about the pride of just one man against his fellow man, but the pride of Man against God (or anything higher than man, for that fact).

This anthropocentricity arrives as a product of the same movement that brings modern democracy – the enlightenment. Note here a delineation between modern and ancient democracies – this will be explored later. Ironically, the enlightenment also makes way for the two greatest opponents of democracy – communism and fascism (fanatical nationalism). All three governments share a commonality, which shows best their relation to anthropocentricity and the enlightenment.

Democracy is founded on the principle that man can logically understand what is best for him and that in groups his desires are checked by others to form a common good created through the fulfillment of contrary private goods. It is man who makes laws which reflect what is best for man and only through this communal process can he create a government which is just. Here anthropocentricity appears as man’s ability to rule over himself – through law.

Communism is the belief that true utopia can be created on earth by the sharing of all, and is not far from Christian Theology. However, Communism puts heaven on earth by creating an ultimate and absolute end to history whereupon all social classes are equal and all conflicts cease. Any aim short of this absolute end is deemed political heresy, and what arrives is the belief in man’s unlimited possibility to achieve this end; a faith in mankind over God.

Fascism is the bond one has with his nation – and its absolute leader and speaker. Here we see cold efficiency of tyranny combine with ideology to create a super state whose goal is the consumption of all. Fascism’s close ties to nature and scientific realism allow it to set aside justice as something higher than man, and rather embrace the cold power of the will to achieve ends – for what else is there for man other than ends – the belief in anything higher than man himself is deemed a dream.

All three were born from a single principle of the enlightenment – that man’s reason (and his reason alone) is what gives him his identity – and furthermore – his power. This power, if properly aimed, could and SHOULD master nature to make it his slave. It is cold reason which rejects anything higher (anything beyond reasoning, i.e. epiphany, faith, belief, or revelation), it is mechanical reason which applies lifeless history to known future in an attempt to reach a paradise within man’s mind, and it is short-sighted reason which dictates the new laws.

Triplets of the Enlightenment. Of whom, 1 has risen from the ashes of two world wars and one cold war. Democracy, the child of liberalism, of the ill-fated French revolution, of Locke, has stretched the globe like the once great English Empire. Democracy, the study of Tocqueville, the asylum of Solzhenitsyn, the linguistic prison of Milosz, offers freedom of the body, and enslavement of the soul. So is the contention of these three authors, who see in the world’s most prolific political institution a problem only visible from outside its persuasive walls.

Inside its walls nothing is clearer than the supremacy of democratic Western ideas – it is enough to fuel wars and commit atrocities so long as democracy is preserved and is allowed to metastasize. Allowed to escape criticism by being in the shadows of its two brothers for an entire century, it has now emerged as a beast too big to be fed, but it eats and it is still hungry. The two biggest modern critics of this beast are already layer before you (Solzhenitsyn and Milosz), and interestingly, grew up under the oppressive weight of democracy’s twin; communism (Milosz having experienced all three triplets of the Enlightenment when Nazi Germany invaded Poland).

How could these two writers be so critical of democracy? The answer lies in exile, and in Dante Allegeri. 

More on Dante’s role, and role of Exile, in the criticism of Democracy to come… but I feel enough head way has been made to warrant a rest to better distance ourselves from this material for a short while.

Humble Pie- The Color Grey

“We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.” – François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

There is a prevailing notion in modern society that being humble means to shed all attitudes of greatness, embrace the baseness of mankind, and become completely and utterly self-deprecating. Among all the misuses of virtue, under all the crimes committed in the name of God and government alike, this may be the deadliest. It is after all, the turn of post-modernism. Mankind is a highly evolved animal whose capability of knowing truth is akin to a whale learning to wipe his own ass. We are nothing but monkeys in spacesuits, children playing dress-up, liars and pretenders and the truly humble man recognizes this and is thrust into despair. The truly humble man stands alone as the remarkable man of wisdom who knows only that everything known is questionable and because of this gift of perception he is damned to complete and utter despair among the void – and what is even worse is that he refuses to shut up about it.

For him, humility is to remind oneself of their beginning, as apes coming down from the trees to find solace in the caves. It is the science of psychology which reminds us of our truest motivations, which are almost always base, and reflections of our base beginnings as such stated. It is genetics that reminds us of chance’s domination over our existence. It is biology which points to flaws over time and the haphazard nature of survival and the “fittest”. There is no good, no bad, only adaptation – survival. Hence to be truly human is to be the survivalist, we are after all at the top of the food chain. It means being adaptable, malleable, and most importantly valueless. If such is the state of our natures then humility is to recognize this vast smallness, this endless weakness, this natural flaw, and to claim it as truth and thus deny the opposite, and worse, condemn it as hubris. To lift man from these ashes, to lift oneself from out of despair, is disillusionment at best, and egoism at worst.

This is the birth of the color gray. True happiness, is despair. True virtue is utilizing viciousness to survive. True greatness is to reject all greatness. To act ethically is to be actionless. Ethics, and the corresponding pedestal it puts mankind onto, is removed as a dream, a false standard, and an impediment to man’s survival. To be gray is to above all, survive. Our bible is the computer, our crosses are telephone poles, our churches are gymnasiums, our dogma is technology, our bread is gray, our wine is gray. Our monuments are office buildings, our temples are smokestacks, and our tombs are the American University. The skies overhead are very, very, gray.

There is a long forgotten panacea and it has everything to do with humility. The post-modern movement has one thing right: to be humble is to know ones origins. However, if man’s origins are not merely from monkey, but instead from something greater than true humility would be to recognize this. If our very nature calls us above our base behavior, if there is something within us, that has been in us since our creation, that holds us higher than animals, something that makes us different, special, and apart from the rest of the universe, then true humility would be very different. If only there was a contrasting belief that held that man was somehow more than mere matter. That there was something mystical about human beings, something unnatural, that makes them not even comparable to animals. If only we could find a way to show that man is actually super-natural, above and outside the confounds of his body, and in some way related to the very glue that holds the universe together, as if smelted from some cosmic forge, as if born from an atomic womb. But such notions are dreamy, and arrogant. So, to maintain my humility, I will refrain.

For now I can only make the claim that the self-deprecation of an entire race is not good and can never be considered good. It is the offspring of a complete misuse of the word of humility. People use humility as an excuse to gain sympathy, because one cannot attack those who are attacking themselves. Its like a pre-emptive strike to prevent others from getting in, or to gain attention. Look how humble we are! We hate ourselves!This is not humility. Do not embrace your animal side. Embrace the high and lofty expectations that are buried deep within your soul.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”