Clouds of Truth (A Comedy)
I speculate once more after
the truth. What is truth? What it is is what there is. What it isn't is what
there isn't! Yet before we can begin to understand truth, I see three great
clouds or barriers.
One, the crystal ball each
of us hold inside. It remains cloudy, we cannot see into the centre. This is
the appeal, it tells of the past and future in such a vague way. Comprehending
it is always just at the edge of the mind. The ball is safe, locked away in a
vault, tucked away in its farthest corner. It is not to be revealed to any
stranger (though friends are sometimes welcome). It is never exposed for what
it is. The decision has already been made, the ball is true and profound. It
will look only where it wants to look. It is frail, the cold of the outside
world will freeze it to death; the claws of democracy will tear it asunder. It
remains hidden.
This crystal ball we all use
to discern our own subjective truth lies within us all. If we revealed it to
the cosmos, it would reflect the darkness of the cosmos. It would say nothing.
It can only survive in the womb-water of the skull! Why do I say this? Anything
can be questioned to the point that it crumbles to pieces in our hands. A child
is scolded for asking 'Why?' incessantly, for that child will bore a hole
through any wall of truth and expose it for what it actually is - an educated
guess. We must pretend that we know, for to admit that we do not know is to let
the void be filled with any number of horrors worse than our gentler ignorance!
For instance, it is better to believe that the light of science will eventually
explain all-things, than to allow cynicism to snuff out its optimism, perhaps
allowing fundamentalist religion to take root. Action follows belief! And
belief is the glorification of an educated guess. And no belief can survive the
sceptics scrutiny, so hide it half away in your crystal ball.
Two, the weight of emotional
attachments. They can crush the impulse to seek for truth. They do not replace
searching for a meaningful existence, and they cannot fill the longing for
transcendence from our mortality. Instead, they displace. When the emotions are
good, and sweet, they are a consolation at our inability to ever know much of
anything. They carry us forward, creating small wells of gravity to keep us
from floating off into the aether, dragging us their short distance.
Even the 'wrong' emotions
can be 'right'. For instance, rage and hatred can grant us a narrative. A
narrative can grant us meaning. Each story will wrap around the subject like a
cloak. Some kind of self-importance follows. Emotion is a kind of gravity,
binding us all together. It cannot produce truth, for the passions are little more
than chaotic shapes in a bubbling cauldron. The meaning we ascribe to them, the
primacy of the L-word (love!) and so on, is all just an attempt to keep the
universe fluffy. They can keep the 'normals' entertained whilst they flounder
upon the sparse beach of nihilism. A cold-hearted philosopher on the other
hand, should have nought to do with emotional impulses. They are alone, even in
the embrace of a lover, alone.
Three, the fabric created by
large numbers of human beings. Conformity and stability create this social
fabric - without it we are left with chaos. Doing the same thing, monotony,
dullardy, the grey paste that is culture, forever disappointing and mediocre,
is nonetheless essential. Like the passionate emotions, winning the esteem of
many-human-beings is a plaster upon the open void of meaninglessness. It is an
instinctual and pleasant path to self-importance. And even if the herd scolds
us and attacks us, still it is some reaction, and still we maintain some
relation to our fellows, and thus relevance.
Is being hated for no reason
whatsoever preferable to absolute atomised isolation? I think we think so. For
freedom and individual liberty, whilst espoused by the greater many, is just a
means of surviving drudgery and servitude. People speak of freedom to account
for their lack of it; just as the turkey at the edge of its farmyard cage
imagines the land on the other side is its domain. Only the bravest souls want
any true freedoms, for to create ones own values and motivations is the real test
of strength, and it is far easier to be buried in the great mass swarm. Safer
too.
And how many hurl their
wrath against the herd from within its safe boundaries! The ones with the
loudest voices are often just that, voices; words without deeds. How many
revolutionaries truly understand that revolution means the end of a social
order, bringing in a period of time when there is no right and no wrong - a
limbo between States? Violence is inevitable under such conditions. And it is
not only political minds who are drawn to such destructive change. The hungry
psyche of the human animal, lurking just beneath the polite and conscious
individuals striding through life, is satiated by perpetual virtual violence
and sex. They hunt animals and fight battles and climb ranks, all without a
semblance of risk. They are natural humans who forever live at arms-length;
embracing their darkness through such safe means. They want safety, but they
also desire freedom from safety, an escape valve through which to channel their
guilty impulses.
However disgusting the
Leviathan (State) whose belly we rot within, could it be any worse than no
Leviathan at all? The masters know full well that a thinking citizen is a
dangerous citizen (for if all citizens were Socrates there should be no
Athens!) Thus, the greyest of all Stately orders, the dull plodding mediocre
bisonette, the cords of human flesh and idea which knit together our inane
sphere, are favourable to their absence – the State will always glorify its
mediocre foundation! Our dross utopia! Fluff to line the harsh edges of cold
reality. In mediocrity we trust, and may we live in uninteresting times.
And so, here are
demonstrated three clouds, preventing us from discovering what we might
discover. Yet what we might discover is precisely nothing but mindless, moving
matter. Here is where the light of science has led us, deeper and deeper into
the nature of Nature, leaving us with a resounding 'Ok, now what?' when the
last scientist observes the last unit of physical reality through the last
lens.
We are left with a wholly
material universe, and when looked upon in such a way, it becomes wholly banal.
What the difference between a nebula and a human being? They are composed of
similar elements, only one has the ability to move of its own accord, and
incites certain chemical reactions in the brain (you know - emotions), and the
other does not, and that is it. Everything is thus everything, and everything
is futile - one sometimes feels that this universe was made for stones and dust
particles, far less sentient creatures! It is a universe of appearances, and
such appearances are fleeting. There is nothing Eternal.
The great light of Reason
(with a capital 'R', meaning Reason the ability to discover objective truths,
as sure as mathematical truths) has been snuffed out. Apparently, telescopes
and neuroscientists have replaced the Rationalist philosopher in understanding
the universe around us, and ourselves. We can safely bid farewell to moral
absolutes and a higher order discoverable through Reason. Instead we are
confronted with floaty, flaky moralities, which ask only what to eat, what to
drink, who to f***, and where to shit.
The actual truth is a void,
a solid, fundamentally unchanging void (if all parts of the void are equally
meaningless, any alterations in the void are just meaningless components
switching places). No amount of conscious searching for transcendence
(something outside of humanity, beyond humanity) will get us anywhere. We shall
always be disappointed, we inheritors of the West who have been given our
legacy of individuality and intellect. We will always need that unexplored
something beyond the horizon. We have nothing left but dissatisfaction and
empty promise, and this is the fuel that stokes the mindless consumption
engine.
Our 'truth' (the false
truth) has no foundation of its own, for Reason is dead. There is no longer a
yardstick against which to measure truth and falsehood – all we have left is
our surface world, with its surface level of reasoning. Upon such a paltry
plane, anything goes!
Our truth rests atop a
steam, rising from a fire; the fuel of this fire is ignorance itself. We do not
look to the ignorant flame! Ignorance is our heat. Without it we are frozen.
We observe truth from the
corner of our eyes. To stare into it directly is to gaze into an abyss.
The last write of St.Zagarus
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 53 'Open Topic'
