The Philosophical Orgasm

“All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.”

- Jorge Luis Borges

Philosophy is difficult. You can read the same piece over and over, making little progress each time, losing faith and on the verge of giving up and then... something happens. The fog clears, everything slots into place, the philosophy offers itself up to you, the tension subsides and your whole being is filled with warmth and understanding; new clarity dawns. This moment is something many of you will be familiar with. It comes on quickly, and strong. And it changes the way you understand forever. You’ve taken it, conquered it, made it yours. Borges sums it up perfectly; in that moment of clarity we become part of something larger than ourselves - we access that shared knowledge (shared, that is, by all those who have gone before, who have walked the same path) and can speak the words as our own.

Some people call this the ‘Eureka!’ moment, but I am inclined to say there is even more to it than that. The Ancient Greek εὕρηκα translates roughly as ‘I have found it!’, hence its association with scientific discovery. We can all recall the story of Archimedes jumping out of his bath and running naked through the street exclaiming ‘eureka!’ upon his discovery that the volume of water displaced in his bath was equal to the volume of the part of his body that was submerged. In the case of philosophical understanding, something more personal is going on. It is not merely a case of seeing how concepts operate within arguments - the understanding goes deeper than that, is internalised, changes you. It’s like an orgasm in your mind, that permeates your whole being. The more difficult the philosophy you are trying to grasp, the more intense the orgasm. It isn’t about finding a solution to a problem, it’s about augmenting your ideas in preparation for the next exploration. On each subsequent journey, you’ll take those new ideas along with you.

Philosophy doesn’t translate as ‘love of wisdom’ for nothing...

Saffron Bowles

The Phenomenology of Love - By Sean Ash

The Phenomenology of Love

When I think of the word love, and when I think of how best to write an article based on such a thing, I'm left here just staring at my keyboard in a state of melancholy. I begin to reminisce on many painful memories and events that have, hitherto, taken place within my experience of twenty-first century love and life. I no longer feel the immediate joy of what 'love' may have meant to me ten years ago, but instead I now relate to an entire new meaning of what the word love actually both means and implies.

We often see a pretty painted house from the outside and assume that only beautiful things can exist within. Often do we also see two people in-love emerging from the beautiful house; pecking one another on the cheek as they make their way to work. As they do so, we may even think to ourselves that they must share a happy matrimonial home. Unfortunately, we have no real access to formally declare such a thing as truth, even though we frequently display the tendency to do so we are often mistaken as inside the house exists a reality of its own.

As a divorcee that was once married for four years, as well as someone who has experienced the feeling of being "in-love" throughout numerous relationships, I have come to realise that love is not what it says it is or what it first presents itself to be. Love can be all the bad in the world, the same way that it can be all the good in the world. I guess, to understand why I have chosen to begin this article by placing love in such a negative light, is because I ask the reader to question, why not? Why must we always hold an immediate denotation for such a word that is painted out to be so beautiful when it also has the potential of producing negative connotations. It is this denotation that strangely asks of us to immediately believe that love can only exist within its very own extreme.

We are presented with the fallacy that love is a garden abundant with beautiful insects and flowers; where all people are at one with each other and that this is the absolute truth of what love actually is, however. When you are enabled to not only read a word but can also become the word, it is only then can you grasp the meaning of such concept; a concept that was at first observed as a mere object but has soon-after become even more-so tangible.

Is it possible that love, just as with anything else, has a secret method of working that we fail to see due to the fact that we are always happy to accept the first appearance? The more I look back at all of my experiences as well as all the pain I have experienced, in the name of love, the more it draws me closer to the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who posited that things worked dialectically, and opposing forces were essential to reaching the absolute (synthesis). It reminds me of when my son entered the world for the very first time. The moment I first encountered a visual of my son, I loved him very much and pretty much more than words could describe. However, what reason could be applied to such an instant and on the spot love? What I loved of my son I'm not so sure of, as I knew nothing more of the baby I held in my arms than I knew how to explain what it was about him that I loved. In fact, nearly six years on, I still have not reached a full understanding of this love! Although, we sometimes arrive at discord with one another, the love only seems to grow harmonious from this and the word love then becomes enabled to be defined to a greater extent.

It is exactly the same should our relationships with one another dissolve, as we enter the experience of hurt and pain due to the fact we are experiencing loss and so we find ourselves confining ourselves quite frequently to our memories. We take a look back as we stand on the dark lonesome road and all we see is a corner; never knowing what is around the corner as most times we tend to dwell on our losses rather than make way for time so that it can take us around the corner and into happiness again.

Love cannot be a form of utopia or heaven, as I believe that love is an equal balance of both love and hate as it continues to move forward and grow just as we do. There is an equilibrium to where both love (Thesis) and hate (Anti-Thesis) clash together thus creating the absolute attachment (Synthesis). To try to imagine the perfect relationship between two people or between Nations as something being 'bliss' would be to ignore the truths that actually bind all together. It has taken many wars to show people how to love. For example, post-Second World War in the UK, minorities have faced racism and violence while here in this country. Even though this country fought against the likes of Hitler and fascism, we started off by (the thesis) a noble cause by standing up and fighting against such vile hatred. Soon after, when minorities first came to the UK to take up much lower paid work, we then alienated them (the anti-thesis). In 2012, we now embrace them as our own and are mostly proud to call them British, just as they are to identify themselves as British. It could also be argued on a supra-level that Hitler's 'hate' could have been the original thesis or the anti-thesis to a single human race. Maybe his movement worked for the good of humanity as many of us now, despite our differences, like to see one another as equals.

Therefore, the synthesis can only mean equality, and such equality can never be balanced without understanding both sides. Love was never meant to be easy as if it were easy, who would truly want it? As something that is earned produces more value than something that is simply given away for nothing. Love and hate are all to thank for the struggle towards equality on a national level right the way down to the relationship level between two people.

by Sean Ash

Heart on a chain - By Perry Smith

Heart on a chain
Flushed away
Limbo Messiahs
Change your desires
Broken and bruised
Change it for someone new
Who knows?
Who cares?
With so many, you can't lose
Don't place your bet
Life's not a gamble
Don't wait for that one diamond sandal
It doesn't exist
Not now
Not ever
Futile to persist
"My son, just go out and get pissed"


By Perry Smith

Love - By Eliza Veretilo

Love

Love...

So many human acts, crazy acts, unjust, just, random, even evil acts, are justified under the banner of love. What amazes me is how powerful it is, as a justification. Its power to heal and turn everything into something good and how it takes over all other human emotions. What keeps a mother forgiving an ungrateful child? Love. What keeps a working man in a 9 to 5 jobs he hates? Survival, yes, but also and even more importantly, love to his family. Ultimately, love is an affection which causes joy and attachment. We need it, we crave it. It is goodness and we are inclined to feel it for everyone. The problem? Our society has turned this powerful, almost universal human love that everyone needs, into a selfish kind of love, the only accepted ‘love’ is love between couples.

Let me explain myself better, I’m not saying that having one partner is being selfish, it’s not, you can only love one heart at the time, they claim. What I mean is that humanity is more inclined to love each other, to share with each other, but it is more convenient to our economy for people to group in pairs and spend all their love tokens on each other. This is not exactly something we are naturally inclined to do. Our ancestors lived in communities where they shared; they shared time, resources and attention. Altruism is saintly, not as a coincidence, but because it’s loving. Our current focus on the couple as the centre of ‘life’ actually has some damaging consequences on us. For example, people who don’t have a partner feel less adequate and people who have one feel forced to stay in that relationship even though maybe their real interest is elsewhere. Neither of this people has something wrong with them and I’m sure, everyone has the same amount of ‘love’ to give. They are just doing what is ‘acceptable’.

I would like to point out the example of teachers; teachers educate and look after children that are not theirs, for the most part of the kid’s awake day. The children form an attachment, without asking question about ‘blood relations’ and so do the teachers, they begin to care. Could there be anything more natural than the human inclination to educate and look after the young? But no, love nowadays is equated with sex. The human you have sex with is the human you must love. And thus love turns into a cheesy, caricaturized, caramelised version of it. A pre-packed set of dresses, chocolate boxes, flowers and lube. Love is more than that. Love is caring, love is appreciating, not impressing, love is open, not jealous, love is universal, not only lustful. Love is life giver, not an accessory. Love is what prompts people to do things for others, not a certain partner you need to show off, to prove your value, like all the other items you need to literally hang on yourself nowadays to be somebody.

If love was the pink and red bubble portrayed mainly on television, if love was a quest that women needed to wear make-up to embark on and men needed to fill their wallets to join, love would not be that blanket under which some of the biggest craziest acts in history have been sheltered under. Love, raw, real human love to ourselves, to others, to nature, to animals, to knowledge, to art, to music, to sport, to hope, to life cannot be compared to the petty image of lust that romcoms sell us on a daily basis. Could we claim and re-brand the word love? Could we escape the set of ‘must-haves’ that are expected of each individual in Western society (must have a partner, must have an office job, must have a fiat, corsa, whatever, must have this month’s it colour, most have office party... you know the rest). Could we take the cheese out of the most powerful of human emotions and reclaim it as a basis for action? For growth instead of drama? Could we? Could we rid ourselves from the illusion and destroy the false idol that has been built instead of love? There is a little love heart sitting next to me on my desk, its reads ‘my hero’. I still want to claim, yes, we can reclaim love.

By Eliza Veretilo

Love: the ultimate -ism‏ - by Martin Prior

Love: the ultimate -ism‏

It was my intention to contribute an article in reply to various points in last week's Politics Special, but this week's edition is "all about Love".

Well I think I shall still make a contribution, since of course love and -isms are related. What I was going to say, in my political article,was that -isms are all about modal and deontic logic – respectively about what is necessary or possible, and what is obligatory or permissible - and to say that you don't have an -ism really means that you do not use strong modal or deontic operators (necessary and obligatory respectively) in the characterisation of your belief. More about that on some other occasion.

Strong modal and deontic operators are of course central to Love, such that we can say:

It is necessary that everything is possible.

in other words, nothing is necessary. But this contradicts the above principle, which does of course assert that something is necessary.

Therefore love is fundamentally inconsistent, which is of course what we would expect, and would explain the concept of a 'love-hate' relationship.

"Maybe we should leave the matter to the meta-physicists... "

by Martin Prior

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic ("needs additional citations for verification")

G. H. von Wright, 1951. "Deontic logic," Mind 60: 1-15. ( a very respectable source!)

Art - By Harry Wareham

For more art by Harry Wareham please visit www.subpots.co.uk/

                                  Philosophical Tangents: Class War!

 

On the Claim of Not Being an ‘-ist’ of Any Sort - By Soo Tian Lee

On the Claim of Not Being an ‘-ist’ of Any Sort

A few weeks ago, I was engaged in a discussion with some friends on that wonderful debating chamber that is also known as Facebook. We were talking about educational reform in quite an animated fashion when suddenly one of the participants in this online conversation said something along the lines of: “I don’t believe in being an ‘-ist’ of any sort. My politics is beyond self-identifying as socialist, anarchist, monarchist, etc. Such identities are ideological and I’m not interested in them.”

Oh, the wonders of the age we live in where some claim to hew to a politics without tradition, a politics that does not come from anywhere other than one’s own head. “Ideological politics is so 20th century,” they say in a tone which is almost a sigh of boredom, accompanied by a flick of the wrist. With an ostensibly questioning look, they continue: “Weren’t all these firm political stances what led to the totalitarianism that plagued the earth during that age of extremes? It’s time to move past such things.”

Such a standpoint, which some have called ‘post-political’, may look deceptively reasonable, and even laudable. Two imposing pillars of horror in the last century, namely fascism (Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, etc.) and communism (particularly the Soviet and Maoist forms), were indeed founded on inflexible  political ideas. Is it not much better, then, to be somone does not feel the need to identify with a tradition of political thought but is able to mix and match the best bits of various political ideas to form a balanced, ‘holistic’ viewpoint?

My view on this is quite simple: to claim that one is not an ‘-ist’ (or an ‘-ian’, an ‘-ive’, or whatever suffix one uses) is to hide from oneself and (some) others the views that one really does hold. And the danger with this is that quite often, these views will just be rather mainstream and, quite possibly, rather centrist. In other words, the dominant strands of political thought that are the building blocks of one’s political viewpoint will be the ones that are widely accepted and transmitted through newspapers, popular film and music, random conversations on the bus, and so on. For example, I have never met a post-political person who did not think that capitalism is the least objectionable (if not the best) way to organise society. Neither have I met a post-political person who objected to society being organised according to hierarchical structures. In both these cases, there were political beliefs behind these opinions, namely supporting capitalism and believing in formalised leadership. But these political beliefs were hidden by claims which rejected ‘politics of the old sort’, claims which acted as a fig leaf that covered the nakedness of the post-political position.

I was searching for a literary depiction of the post-political standpoint when I remembered a few lines from a fairly old book, fairly well-positioned in the Western canon of literature. Towards the end of this book one finds these sentences apparently written from a divine being to a group that claims to worship him: “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!”

Some may object to what I have just said, saying, “Alright, alright! So my pick-and-choose, lucky-dip-ish way of doing politics may be a random jumble that results in a lukewarm concotion. But, to repeat myself, isn’t this far better than the dogmatism that characterised the last hundred or so years? At least I’m not killing anyone by being a moderate!”

Do moderate, mainstream, and/or centrist political views not result in any harm? A popular saying commonly (but probably wrongly) attributed to Edmund Burke states: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” To be post-political often results in sitting on the fence and saying that things are too complicated for one to act. In other situations, being post-political results in one rationalising the present state of things as being the best that things could be at this present moment, and that all that can be done is just to tweak things a little bit here and there to make the situation even better. But the fact is that we live in times where those who seem to be moderates are actually extremists for the status quo. Even as the wheels in the great machine continue to turn, the earth continues to suffer from environmental degradation, inequalities among people continue to widen, and old forms of oppression linger on while new forms arise.

What is required of us today is not a balancing act at the centre of politics or a complete exit from the field but rather a new form of principled politics that strives to avoid the consequences of the old extremism by paradoxically infusing one’s principles with a strong dose of humility. We don’t have it all worked out just yet, and may be wrong on a number of accounts, but the solution is not to avoid convictions but rather to embrace them in a way that combines passion with the openness to change one’s views if they are proven to be inaccurate or less helpful than one originally believed. Yes, one should say no to dogmatism, but no to content-free politics as well, as such politics are but a new form of dogmatism, an unavowed (or even disavowed) dogmatism.

Well, what can I say to end this piece? Simply this: soon after the social network debate that inspired this article fizzled out, I quit Facebook, and so can now probably be considered a non-Facebookist. But make no mistake: this too is being an ‘-ist’ -- that is, an ‘-ist’ of the old sort, a political ‘-ist’, a principled ‘-ist’.

by Soo Tian Lee

At its most fundamental level, what is power?

If we move outside of our human world, what occurs in the cosmos? An asteroid, hurtling through space toward another, collides with it. The body with the greater mass and greater speed will be damaged in the impact, but it will exert more of an 'influence' on the other body. The very large and dense bodies, the stars, hold the smaller bodies, planets and their moons, in their gravitational pull. Effectively, looking at the cosmos we can guess at a motive, but ultimately it looks like a whole lot of cause and effect. With the cosmos being inanimate and incapable of perception, we cannot say there are any power relations at all, but just an unfolding of various movements and collisions and such.

Now have I just wasted a hundred words or so of article space, or has this helped to put things into some kind of perspective? Are we any different from naturally occurring bodies, bashing into each other with no real discernible motive? I think so. Yet before we get onto humanity, lets bring it closer to home; the animal kingdom. Some people may turn to the wild world of animals as some kind of indicator of our own power-situation. There is a lot of killing and chasing and worry outside the walls of civilization. Predators use whatever means they have at their disposal (i.e. their bodies and hunting skills) to catch prey, so that they may devour that prey and sustain their own bodies at the slain creatures expense. The prey on the other hand is going to do everything it can to escape. If we may generalize, it is a constant battle for survival, where hunger is an ever-present threat.

So, power in relation to human beings; what is it!

Power in the human sphere is more complex than the clashing of forces, or the 'violent/benevolent' survival cycle of nature. There are two great categories of power we must take into consideration in regards to humanity. These are materials/technology and identity.

Firstly, how powerful a group of humans are depends on how materially rich they are. With a greater potential to move matter, to disrupt matter and to enrich matter, a group of humans can maintain itself to a better degree than another group of humans, and can use its material superiority to destroy any perceived threats to it. Yet perhaps more fundamental to this material power is the notion of identity; namely, group identity. Without the ability to cooperate with, or bully, fellow humans in the same group, power quite simply cannot reach the magnitude it now occupies; group identity is the only way societies can form and function on such a huge scale. The identity people gain from belonging to a group, be it a nation, or a culture, or a religion, or anything, is the means used to win that persons loyalty and ensure they will act according to how the ruler-ship decides. These groups are held together, above all else, by a common language. Language therefore, is the prerequisite to a developed identity, and thus to power.

  

The actual human body

Language and technology determines how we react to biology. For instance, woman's lot has for most of human history been decided for her, either by the raw facts of her being the reproducer of human kind, or male dominance reducing her role in society to that of a second-class citizen. It is only recently, with more (but by no means total) recognition of woman's potential, and the material means to ensure reproduction is not too much of a burden, that women can move toward liberation from patriarchal servitude and be allowed to flourish on the world stage as man's equal. Thus, we cannot attribute group-identity to biology alone, but must look at the whole situation to determine how much power a group-identity is capable of obtaining.

We are not, however, completely free from biology, nor are we completely removed from the bounds of nature. Our bodies for the most part of our time on earth were geared toward a life of scant survival. Now we live in an age of abundance, yet our bodies have not had time to catch up. We have an instinctual, infinite hunger for everything that ever has been or ever will be, and nothing can satiate us. This biological lust for everything lurks within us all.

The individual

Whether I like it or not, I belong to the group 'human'. We could dance around all day searching for a definition of the word, but generally speaking we can recognise a human being from a stone, a camel or a lamp-post (or a lamp-post shaped like a camel). In addition to human, I belong to the group male, olive-skinned, attractive/cute, English-speaking, 'P' political group, 'Q' religious group, 'R' economic class, belonging to 'X' family, and so forth. All of these factors play on my abilities to function in society. We could potentially view all human beings as individuals, with their own source of power and their own unique possibilities, but how often do we see a person and how often do we see the metaphorical masks they wear, or are forced upon them?

     
That is not to say that individual power does not play some role. There are always geniuses emerging who defy all of the rules. For the rest of us individuals, we do have personal power structures and we can be strong or weak, we can make good or bad decisions. Like all highly evolved mammals, we have a sense of self and we can reflect and decide on what to do. Yet ultimately our success or failure is not entirely in our own hands; our power to act is hampered or aided by our belonging to this group or that group. This means that the ultimate choices we can make as individuals to exert our power on the world, require us first to find a similar group and forge an identity within it: A thinking individual within a mutually friendly group.

    
Those of great individual strength wish to make everyone fight on their terms; 'I'm a powerful individual, why can't you be too?'. In reality, the power of the individual is propped up by a collective identity, whether they care to acknowledge it or not. Just as a fish does not see water, the privileged does not see his privilege; he cannot see that much of his power comes from outside of himself.

An opinionated answer

So, what is power in relation to humanity? Power is economic, social, sexual, physical, personal. Power is the ability to project ones interests out of the mind and onto the world, to make people and matter move. But it is not just an unfolding random force, nor a drive for pure survival, it is couched in our sentient ability to use language and build group identities and create machines of abundance and destruction. Our use of power depends on great projects; goals and dreams and plans and visions - everyone who uses power does so for an end they think is worthwhile. The infinite lust for power may be informed by our biological drives, but how we react to and deal with this biology is determined by us.

Looking at the world today, the ultimate form of power manifests itself in dominant forces getting other people outside of their immediate interest group to destroy themselves for the dominators benefit. Nowhere has this been more historically demonstrated than in woman, who for most of history has failed to recognise herself.  Sadly, we have not yet found a way to prevent this almost universally occurring form of self-destructive behaviour. We certainly won't find it through moralizing, or meekness: No individual, or group has ever surrendered its power willingly. It is only through fighting that power can be taken and shared amongst all power groups, such that they may shape the world around them into a mutually agreeable place.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Wheel power - By Sean Ash

Wheel power

The Political Party and the Ferrari are clearly two different things, yet peculiarly both things appear to be indistinguishable. Where there is power, there is a Ferrari and where there is a Ferrari, there is power.

The phenomenal power of the Ferrari has alluring capabilities with its radiant red body and dazzling shine. It seizes the corner of every eye as it first presents itself, and does so much more immediately than any other car as we instantly become struck by such beauty. The Ferrari is unique and arguably no other car could stand out or make such an impression. It is this very pulling power; the attractiveness combined with our very own fantasy that conjures and conceptualises such machinery as being powerful, and we know this as we soon come to realise that we want this particular car like we want no other. Although we may fantasise over such grandeur, it is a useless thought to accommodate if such power cannot be grasped, as power without the hand is like a Ferrari without the driver; disadvantageous, inactive, inexpedient, sterile and unproductive. If such a thing were not to be made productive, it would mean living in a world far from reality with the possibility of being enslaved by the imagination.

The driver, that being the hand, detects such opportunity and strives to take hold of the wheel. He does so essentially in order to fulfil a sense of self-satisfaction and security of the reality. Secondly, he does so in order to present to the subordinate a higher mode of authority by presenting them with the paradigm of both hand and power as one. Finally, he must attempt to hold onto the wheel at all costs. For the driver to succeed, he must first undertake a degree to learn how to drive so that a license can be attained. He must be highly skilled and ready to manoeuvre against many things that could potentially cause great danger for the driver, the Ferrari and the pedestrian. The driver must be concerned with all things and protect all, as if the driver were to lose the fuel (pedestrian) or were to 'write off ' the Ferrari, then he would surely face losing power. He must also be fully aware at all times; ensuring that one's senses are clear, pragmatic and undiluted so that the slightest possibility of danger can be avoided. The driver would need to mirror (White paper), signal (Bill) and manoeuvre (Act); pressing down firmly on the clutch to then find the biting point (cuts). As circumstances have changed, he will need to either speed up or slow down and so the shifting of gears is imperative as also is of the option to reverse. He must know his car inside out, its potential limits and most importantly, how to cut corners. The driver rev's his engine to display just how powerful the Ferrari is and the pedestrian has heard nothing like it.

The pedestrian represents the oil (fuel) to power. Without the oil of the pedestrian, both car and driver are insufficient as if the Ferrari receives no fuel then both car and driver become inoperative. As not all pedestrians can achieve the driving seat of the Ferrari, it is the pedestrian that lives in a world far from reality and it is they who are enslaved by the imagination. They build among them fuelling stations (polling stations) where they supply the necessary fuel every time the Ferrari should pull in. They would then wash the car, polish its body work as someone who washed cars for a living would clean expensive cars while imagining himself owning such a thing one day (should one work hard enough). The pedestrian would then go out and speak to other pedestrians emphasising just how great the Ferrari is, as they would then continue to glorify the machine in an attempt to persuade others to join in on their worship.

They are the energy that presents power with the opportunity to be efficient and they are the cause for it to act or not to act. Never realising that their fuel has an unparalleled power of its own, the pedestrian struggles as they push the car along every time it breaks down. They make excuses for it every time a part of the Ferrari goes wrong; sometimes blaming each other for faults that are not of their own but of the driver who had lost control. The Ferrari starts to pick up scratches that are deep within the body work and impossible to remove. The upholstery starts to pick up stains, burns and holes are all that remains in the seats. The mileage has reached its limits and the engine needs rebuilding. The pedestrian fears losing any purpose it may have had and they cannot see an ounce of security for themselves without the Ferrari. They salvage what they can and leave this as an inheritance to their children. The driver will always feel that he is destined to drive the car but this does not always mean that the driver is what is best for the Ferrari, the pedestrians and the driver himself. Power should not be given to those that seek it, but instead those who can reject such power are the ones that should have power. As those who possess the ability to reject such power are the only ones that can truly take control of it.

By Sean Ash

Beyond the Gods - By Ellese Elliott

Beyond the Gods

Once upon a time, above the vast ocean waves and over the rainforest dew, beyond the heavenly planets and past the light of the moon, there was a magnificent kingdom which harboured amazing power: Pantheios; kingdom of the Gods.

The kingdom of Pantheios was populated with Gods galore. There was the God of the seas Hydrathon, the God of fire Pyroniter and the God of the stars and the sun Aurora, and so on and so on. Each God had its own particular niche, but all gods were indeed the creators of the Universe. Again and again, they recreated the grains of sand and the drops of rain. Triumphant! Powerful! Unbeatable!

However, there is more than just the Universe. Lots more! And despite the fact that the Gods could move the tallest mountains, part the deepest seas or spin the gigantic planets with merely the sleight of their hand they could not answer humanities most simplest question; "Why?" [Soft Break][Soft Break]Why am I here? Why am I am human and not a Lion? Why does the sun appear small and big at the same time? Why does Aristotle think I am beautiful and Plato not?  Why is love deemed good and hate bad? These questions could not be answered by merely pointing to some physical thing in the world. For every answer the Gods gave another question followed, and then another. It was hopeless. These were what the Gods called philosophical questions, questions that could not be answered with the eyes, if at all.

And so, it was often, that the Gods did not create again and again, the stars and the sun, the mountains and seas, but sat thinking, or arguing among each other about such questions of beauty, of morality or of life. And whilst they did, time worked against them. Holes appeared in the universe, planets decayed, and humans cried out as the natural order of things was thrown off balance as some of the Gods created and others stayed thinking.   

In what appeared to be the middle of no where, in utter darkness, one could see a slither of light, tall and narrow escape form a page of black. Disguised in the absence of things, a door led to where the gods meet.

  "Booom!"  the strip of light quivered. "A king is needed to rule over the people Demos!" Pyroniter  

  shouted, slamming his fist on the majestic table. 

  "But why Pyroniter, can the humans not rule themselves? Why do they need someone to tell   

   them what to do?" Demos reasonably argued.

   "Because you made the humans imperfect Demos! You are a fool!" 

    "Now now Pyroniter, if people are imperfect, then so is the king and what use is an imperfect  

    king? I am no fool Pyroniter, you are just short tempered."

   "Short tempered! Short tempered!? We have been here for over one thousand years you long  

   winded fool.  I've had enough of you Demos! I am going to ignite planet earth and watch it  

   burn!"

   "Don't be so rash Pyroniter. Even if the humans are gone the question still remains, forever 

    unless we answer it."

    "They will die soon anyway when the sun, the stars and the water are gone because I,  

    Hydrathon and Aurora stay here with you, and these problems you have created, these people.

    We have argued much, we have listened much and I am tired."

And then a quiet Hydrathon who had been listening for quite some time said this.

  "What if we put it to a vote?"

  "A vote Hydrathon whatever do you mean?" Aurora questioned.

  "It is quite simple Aurora. Either we think the humans need a king or we think the humans do not  

   need a king. If you think the humans need a king then wazzle your inhilomar  if you think the

   humans do not need a king then shnoogle your grokinfider."

  “But how do we decide who is right?" Demos asked.

   "Well Demos we are all Gods and so it  

   simply cannot be that two Gods are wrong and one is right. So whoever out of you, Pyroniter  

   and Aurora is the only one who thinks so then that God must be wrong."

And so they put it to the test and they took a vote. Pyroniter wazzled its inhilomar as did Aurora, but Demos shnoogled its grokinfider.

That's it then, but as Hydrathon was about to champion Aurora and Pyroniter as the winner   Mons God of the Mountains and Dimensio god of extension came.

  "Oh no not you Dimensio." Aurora whined.

One time Dimensio sat thinking about the problem of beauty and what it is for so long the whole Universe shrank into a tiny point and so he and Pyroniter had to make it pop out again in a huge explosion. There was a ringing all around for ages afterward.

And so the gods created the philosopher

By Ellese Elliott