Something must be done!

'All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.' Blaise Pascal

I have often wondered if Man (in the gender-neutral sense of the word) has a nature. To ask this question does risk being massively general, not to mention seeing Man as a fixed entity, rather than an evolving entity. It is also a question running the risk of generalizing ones own cultural heritage (or brain-spamming) across a vastly varied globe.

I do, however, think Man has a nature. And that nature is 'to do things'. It sounds a bit obvious and general - and you might accuse this vague answer of being meaningless. Of course Man has to do things! Yet I am not saying 'to do things' as a massively broad prophecy. I am in fact saying that Man would rather do something over nothing. Given a choice between grief and nothing, Man would choose grief; it agonises Man less than boredom.

Man is a creature of motion, never able to stay still without a powerful reason to do so. The essence of Man is therefore action. Even stupid or 'evil' action will suffice over inaction. In fact, what does Man call more evil than inaction? (He may also call inaction anti-social or cowardly!)

The gaps in Man's endless movement - which we call holi-days, are windows set into his tightly packed schedule. And those holi-days are not spent in rest, but grief! If the sabbatical were to be truly a time of rest, Man would do nothing with them, rather than something. Sadly for Man, he is obliged, even coerced, into going on holi-days in an attempt to prove to the world that he is enjoying himself.

For Man is a social animal, however much he may try and deny it and call himself an individualist. In short, he cares about what other people have, what other people think he has, what other people think he should do, what other people think he thinks about what they think he should do, and so forth.

Preferably, Man would like to have more than his fellow specimen one or two notches up or down on the 'scales of success'. Man is the great comparer, the great envier. He is pushed and pulled into motion by his petty dreams; dreams of quantity over quality. Even though this appalling state of affairs is so dismal and unsatisfying (even for the winners), Man would rather clutch onto his second-rate existence then pause for thought. For to truly think about the soiled world he lives in is to destroy it utterly.

But why? What drives Man on in the face of such obvious ignorance, depravity and simple stupidity?

The simple answer is evolution. We have not evolved to be thinkers - we have evolved to perform immediately pressing linear tasks. But this is not to reduce the whole of Man (the story-teller, the inventor, the artist) to chemical reactions and genes. That would be silly, Man is not his genes.

However, part of Man is his physical body and this is forever an influence upon his character, producing in him that which feels intuitively right without explanation. For instance, why should Man fornicate and procreate? Because it feels right to do so.

Nature is a circular entity. Try asking it question: Why exist? That I might exist. Why grow? So that I may grow. Why reproduce? That my offspring may reproduce. Why adapt? That I might become more adaptable to my environment. Unsatisfying answers to the philosopher!

Observing the white moss growing on the windowsill, one colony has dominated more of the sill than its fellows. In the context of the moss, that larger moss is something of an expansionist empire! But why are they growing? That they may grow. There is no reason beyond this and nor do they need a greater reason to continue their quest for mastery of the window-sill. To the outside observer, it seems utterly futile, but try telling that to the moss (or by analogy, anyone who thinks the purpose of life is just to procreate and seek nutrients)!

Fortunately, we homo sapiens sapiens have been 'blessed' to be more than a colony of moss, or a fruit fly, or a tiger, or what have you. We have the power of language, the power to create many great things - literature and mathematics and of course philosophy! And we have the creativity to dream of timeless scapes and create wonderful works of art. And we can invent incredible new devices that alleviate the suffering imposed upon us by nature. And we can reach the stars.

We have imagination.

Our ability to imagine the perfection of affairs in the world (in this world) creates for us a virtuous character to strive for. This is the boon of our imagination. Many a philosopher has posited worlds which exist outside of space-time where perfection exists. Many a religion has promised bliss and eternal salvation in this life or the next. I do not believe either of these to be true. They are perfections which exist only in our minds, as opposed to the actual world confronting us. Still, they are another means of keeping us moving.

These perfect dreams are what grant us purpose, and allow us to be virtuous; for virtue can only exist when there is an end purpose toward which we may move. Far from making us idle utopian dreamers, this perfection is the yardstick against which we can compare our underachieving selves.

We do have a purpose, and that is to glorify our creativity, our intellect and our spirituality (self-awareness) over our evolutionary commands. When something feels right without explanation, it is nature's voice. Love, hatred, visceral emotion, sensual pleasure, this is the voice of nature. When something is dreamed as in art, or reasoned as in philosophy, or observed as in scientific endeavour, it is the creation of Man, built on the foundation of his so lofty mind. It is of great value. It can take us beyond adaptation to our environment into the realm of what I call the imperfect balance of Man; the best we can possibly do. Fiction and art is often a direct representation of this striving, a spiritual journey without which life would be quite unbearable.

For to think that we have no cause greater than to procreate, seek worldly power and enjoy physical pleasure is to set the bar extremely low, and invite all sorts of horrid wars, greed, hedonism, pretense, madness and tribalism into the 'daily life' of our species.

To conclude, I would fain return to the beginning of this article. We must allow our wretchedness to fail and die, rather than maintaining it for the sake of something to do. For this we must recognise that sometimes, just sometimes, doing nothing is better than doing something.

St. Zagarus

Why Live? (Let us speculate)

The question "why should we continue living", cannot be seen as a purely philosophical question. There are interests at stake which lie on top of it, and smother it's purity. We could talk about it, but the words would have to compete with ingrained habits; the necessary connections that are created by our expectations. To truly ask the question “Why Live”' means a terrifying leap into the abyss of existential nihilism - to start again, from yourself, with nothing taken for granted.

This is why we cannot get honest answers from power. Power has at its heart only its own interests, and not your own as an individual (there is no such thing as a power which respects individuals). The question of why one should live does not even occur to one swept away by power. It knows why it should live, and that is to compete and win, to triumph, against other powers (be they natural or artificial). All other reasons to live - if indeed there are any - are subordinated to the ambitions of power. Dissidents will be tolerated so long as they do not pose a perceived threat to power. Indeed, dissidents can be part of power, themselves being defined through struggle with it. They become obsessed with it, hating it as they fight it. Dissidents may also give those within the bosom of power purpose and belonging. The people will choose a familiar dictator before they embrace the unfamiliar liberator.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Perhaps corrupt is the wrong word - power is an expression of human purity. And that purity is the purity of an answer, which strife and contest provides. Nothing provides purpose like war. The question is not whether men will war, but only by what means. Castles and fiefdoms have today become replaced with ASDAs but the tigers on the train to Canary Wharf have all been reading A Game of Thrones the last time I checked.

But do we not have a natural drive toward happiness, peace, equality? No. How can self-hatred survive in so many people and how can so many deny their own interests for others if this were the case. Why do some people have unhealable wounds? The answer is that we human beings do not have a drive toward life and happiness, we have a drive toward purpose and meaning, even if that means maintaining our own suffering and stunting ourselves. We are context machines, and we will destroy ourselves, literally our own bodies, in the name of meaning and belonging. Nowhere more will we find our answers than in the bosom of power.

Mind / Body and Life -

If we take the above seriously, then we are posed with a simple criticism. It sounds as if I am saying that there are drives and forces beyond our control; as much within us as they are without us. How can this be justified? Are we two people?

An effective argument for mind/body dualism (the type I refer to states that a human being is made up of two 'components', and that the mind is not identical to the brain) lies out there, in the real world. It is also evident in our own bodies. Mind/Body dualism can explain human hypocrisy, or paradox, more than anything. The 'physiological morality' - that is, the morality of the body, consists in drives. We are not separate from them, but nonetheless do not know where they come from, when they will come, and we cannot turn them off. If we could turn them off by force of our own will, how could we turn them back on?

Greed, war, tribalism, these things are not the result of 'moral evil' nor individual selfishness. They are the product of physiology, and the playing out of natural drives; they are often, if anything, done for the sake of love. There is such thing as a human being, a human essence, that can be discovered. It is forever changing, it is not always the same, but it is still fairly predictable.

The awakened mind rests inside this irresponsible animal. I was once criticised, rightly so, for suggesting that the human body works like machine. So we know it does not, it is a forever changing, and subject to irregularity. This does not take away the fact that it is a creature of appetite. Just because something is not set in stone, that does not mean it is completely fresh and new with every passing moment; human nature will change with evolution, but it will bring with it patterns of behaviour which indicate what it is.

If you have accepted this, then you agree that we cannot hold human beings responsible for their actions precisely because of their unchosen natural imperatives. Our natural urge is to become powerful (in relation to a weaker body), or at least reach a basic level of power (ownership of space, resources and so forth). We may not consciously do these things at the expense of those immediately around us, but when one power rises, another will often fall.

The natural imperatives for power and belonging are encouraged by customs. We are social animals, and we are never alone - individualism is impossible, and desirable only for genii and philosophers. The masses are social animals, their internal, innate drives provoked by the outside world, for even at the smallest level of biology, genes require an environment to stimulate them. And the people cannot be held responsible for wanting to be part of power, for that is how they will hoard wealth, how they will find a sense of purpose, how they will fornicate and create children - in short, how they will become a human being. As each person is not responsible for their nature, nor are they then responsible for allowing it to actualize them. This will to life is separate from the conscious will! The drive to life is not you - as in, you the entity who is reading now.

It is only Inhuman Beings who we may hold responsible, those who are aware enough and willing to shut out the drive for life and outer-power. They have existed throughout history, in the form of monks and holy people (self-denying ascetics). However, the Inhuman Beings of the past had something we do not have - the ignorance of obsessive religiosity. We are left with no such escape route from ourselves, and this is why human civilization has not progressed beyond that of a bee seeking a colourful flower, or the enchantment of a politician's lie.

To advocate a world less wretched than our own, is to be inhuman. And as an (In)Humanist, I can only welcome the destruction of natural values - which allow a man to say one thing and then do another, and get away with it so easily. Which allow such a vast disconnect between idea (mind) and action (body). Whose Justice is so utterly, blatantly non-existent. Who permits evil so long as it is evil done within a custom. Where natural instincts to protect one's own lead to favouritism and inefficiency. And where every two steps forward have been accompanied by one backwards.

So why live?

In light of this, why live? If you are of nature it will be to execute your imperatives - to breed, to play, to cling, to gather, to power, and to fulfill your appetite. If you are not, then there is no reason to live. This does not make death any more of an inviting prospect - one does not need a reason to live to continue living. It simply means that there is no actual reason for it beyond what is dreamed up, or argued for. Certainly there is no appeal to nature; the easier answer!

The reasons to live given by institutions or power are just reflections of their own goals. This is obvious insofar as they provide a final answer which falls into the boundaries of their great plans. No institution will ever entertain the notion that life is goalless - their very power lies in the ability to get people to put themselves, body and soul (as it were) into their projects.

I am apart from the human sea, and my head is above water, so it is impossible to return to the flow. Out here, there is only the stark beauty of a fleeting, decaying, imperfect world to live for, and the 'romance' of solitude. That, and the warm glow of philosophy which may be a better guide to surviving the void than any religious belief or hiding hole. Who knows.

St. Zagarus

Clouds of Truth (A Comedy) - By St.Zagarus

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'

On Decadence -The Microwaveable Kebab - By St.Zagarus

On Decadence -The Microwaveable Kebab

The great elephant in the room of our times - Elitism! How mixed up the masses of our land have become over this word. It is as if they went in discovery of an attitude toward it, discovered a reason, and then turned their conclusion upon its head!

Our culture is infused (or should that be poisoned with) equalitarian values in all areas of life, turning our collective experience into one long grey mush. Democracy has intruded its nose where it is not welcome, and has failed to overthrow the tyranny it was actually supposed to!

To be clear: ownership of machines and parliaments is left to the last people we should leave them to - aristocrats. And the creation and appreciation of artistic culture is left to the last people we should leave them to - plebeians!  And the result is dire. For so long as the cultural world is poisoned by equalitarian values, the cultural human has nothing to aspire towards. If every artist is equal, then there is no self-improvement, no growth, no cause to strive after. The lowest, basest mass-artist is as valid as the soulful musician. How appalling it would be if we had no tools to differentiate between the two. We would be left with no critique to attack the microwaveable doner kebabs of art and culture.

What are we so afraid of?

Nature's Meritocracy -

Let us now examine what it is that makes creation and culture 'genuine' (a word much overused indeed). My argument is simple: genius comes from an uncomfortable place, and often leads to an uncomfortable place. Genius is miserable, thrust into greatness. She throws away her double-edged sword, as Elric would disgard Stormbringer. Yet it follows, and will do so til the end. It is a curse as much as it is a blessing. It is self-indulgent, yet universal, selfish, yet possessed with a tortured love for humanity. It is not learnt (though it can be improved with practice), but comes from somewhere far more profound.

It is empty and void, forever disatisfied - yes! This is genius, nothingness. This is the cosmos speaking to you through its silence, asking 'What you have done?' This is the raw power of creativity, unable to be pinned down or defined, yet still recognisable. We cannot define creativity because it should be equivalent to defining the nothingness from whence it emerges. Nor can we set a blueprint to repeat it, however much we should enjoy doing so. Genius tramples barriers, it loathes chains. Genius tears apart its diploma, and curses the academy. Her art is painful passion, a mirror held up against nature, and it ignites the same in the viewer.

The true 'creative nothing' is a natural nothing, and it cannot fill itself up from without. No warm embrace can comfort the genius. Nor can they fill themself at all. For there is nothing but constant movement toward-the-unreachable for this genius, and constant sorrow at their constant failure to transcend themselves. Still, they must create, or wither and die. This is the driving engine of progress! It shuns the false paradise offered by the bulk, bloated mass. What a sad day it is when the plebeians aspire to nothing more than plebeian decadence.

For religion has gone nowhere. The religion of old and the 'materialism' of new empties-out each subject and then offers them redemption through their particular means. Religion, 'materialism', they each hold their worshippers in warm embrace, and they are easy with such love. One need only submit to them. This is the emptiness-fullness dichotomy for the masses; a watered-down void! the emptiness of the lowest common denominator! Democracy has been applied to culture, art has become associated with easily available pleasures or talentless provocation - talentless provocation for all! The bar has not so much been lowered as it has been buried under ground - plunged under magma! The 'organic' nature of creative art has been captured, distilled, put through a refinery, and rolled out the other end, infinitely reproduceable and imitable. The culture is democratic in that the 'creatives' know what the people want and give it to them, a paternalistic and patronising affair. Challenge is not 'accessible', and risks are not to be taken.

It is everywhere, and it is all pervasive. It can invade any space and colonise any land. When it's banners appear on the horizon, the people welcome it, even calling it over, seduced by plastic promise. Such a world impresses itself upon me, it's loud, rude culture too foolish to know how grotesque it truly is. The healing light of true genius, which also pervades, is nonetheless drowned out by banality. Woe is I, the bedraggled St.Zagarus, the besieged one, pulled down into such an abyss of purility! Only the dull, lowing roar of a castrated bull can utter from my pained, heaving lungs, a desperate rallying cry for the righting of the world.

Yet when we each of us aspire to become deities of our own boundless selves, then I shall fall silent.

The state of affairs -

Civilization is not under threat of annihilation. There is no looming Dark Age and there is no danger. Let no doomspeaker coil you into a fearful serpent, and charm you with their lies. It is under threat of something perhaps worse - it is on the brink of being defined by a microwaveable doner kebab. It is plebeianism, low conformity, congealed mediocrity, what-went-before, repetition, recurrence, routine, banality, habit, stupidity, lowered standards, appeasement of the easily appeased, trivia, false hope, emotional manipulation, a river of herd mammals, ignorance, denial of instinct, backwards-looking, downwards-gazing, trough-feeding, collectivistic, microwaveable mass cultural death, a grey stain to mark the already shoddy history of our shoddy species.

Dissent has always been the changing force of civilization, and dissent has always followed great individuals. The philosophers almost universally had one message to the Establishment, directly or indirectly. That message was 'Fuck you!' (complete with an exclamation mark). Kant declared himself a 'Copernican revolutionary!' after all! Yet the so-called rebels of our decadent civilization are as wretched as the forces of Order they suppose to attack - they are just a bit worse at hiding their tracks. Most of them are concerned with 'entertainment' to fill the void of meaning created by meaningless labour; they are an essential part of the soulless engin. Where are our heroes! Why are our artists not dissenting?

Answer: They are, they are just drowned out by the white noise of herd-culture.

St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 52 'Open Topic'

How useful are the senses to the knowledge seeker? - By St.Zagarus

How useful are the senses to the knowledge seeker?

We all have to start somewhere on our quest for knowledge. It is absolutely unavoidable. How can I write the second sentence without the first? I cannot. Likewise, how can I build an idea without a foundation which I take to be true, even though I have no evidence for this foundation? I cannot. To make this more solid and less of an abstract, floaty idea, let me put this (and my neck!) on the line.

The beginning of knowledge, the first instrument of truth, is sensory experience. This would be some form of 'Empiricism' in philosophy-terms. What can be touched, tasted, seen, heard or smelt is our foundation for knowledge. We can narrow this list down a bit, and put 'sight' on a pedestal, as it is the most useful sense in discovering knowledge.

At any rate we have our foundation. We can gain knowledge through the accumulation of sensory data. By experiencing things we can piece together general rules: when X happens, Y will follow. We can provide observable, testable evidence to convince people that our theories have a certain probability of being correct. We can take an unromantic view of the world, unobscured by mythologies and beliefs. We are born as blank slates, created equally to develop ourselves however we might. Nothing is set in stone, and everything is reversible. The old can be overwhelmed by the new. Nature can be drowned beneath a deluge of experiences. What comes out, is what goes in. That is it.

'Is that it?'

No, for the senses are useless... -

There I said it! Of course I do not mean it, I am just stirring up a bit of beef. But what I mean to say is that they are useless on their own. Reducing reality to sensory experience is like observing a frozen lake and thinking it only an icy surface. In trying to understand human beings, we cannot rely purely on the 'output' of peoples behaviours. Nor can we understand ourselves from a purely empirical position, as so much of what we are is not even truly experienced by our senses.

Our senses do the job they were designed to do. However, they are not sufficient to tell us anything universally true - objective knowledge - because on top of them lies a personality. This subjective personality has the ability to prioritise, it has emotional weights attached to it, which drive and pull it. For instance, it can focus on rushing to the bakery, and as a result miss the forlorn snail innocently crossing the pave.

Scrunch! - one dead snail. For what - an iced bun?

Our personalities can be dominated by group psychosis (being made to ignore facts of reality because everyone else around us is ignoring it). The rules and norms of society can be counter to the acquisition of knowledge, and our own sensory information can be ignored, or perverted, because of it.

Taken into a broader context, no amount of sensory awareness can guarantee that personalities will prioritise what is important over what is trivial. No amount of sense data placed upon the scale will produce an ounce of meaning - placing a heap of pieces on a board does not create a chess set - and without meaning, or subjective purpose, we cannot seek knowledge. For knowledge is whatever is useful to our interests and biases as individuals, or masses. Anything that is not useful, is not knowledge. Therefore, we cannot rely on a purely 'earthly' concept of using experiences of the real-world to find knowledge. There is no knowledge out there, even if there is a real world beyond us. Knowledge needs a subject to find it – you!

Let us look at an example to further this: we have two sides of the same coin - enchantment and disenchantment. You and I could walk through the same shopping mall. You bedazzled by the colours and squeaky clean shops, me disgusted by the lack of spontaneity and the artificial-ness of the environment. You excited about the shiny surface of a curvaceous mobile telecommunications device, me sickened that anyone could ignore the horrid conditions of the asian serf-worker whose blistered hands made it. We would both be sensing the same combinations of molecules and atoms, the same colours and smells, the same outer world. Our senses would be roughly equal in their capacity to detect physical matter. Our different positions are therefore not caused by sensing something different, but our reaction to experiencing the same thing. A massively complex reaction that is part emotional, part rational, part natural-animal,  part chosen by our will, and so on. At any rate, something within us is choosing to come to a different conclusion. All whilst using the same sensory experiences.

Yet if the first instrument of knowledge is sensory experience, how is it possible for us to come to such radically differing viewpoints when experiencing the same things? There is one answer to this. The foundation of knowledge is not the senses, however useful they are.

Sense information becomes important only after we have decided what is important.

Knowledge, with a big K, is impossible -

If we accept the above train of thought we lead to the inevitable conclusion. Knowledge seeking does not begin with a pure desire to sense the world, to capture it on the 'blank slates' of the mind. What the end product of empiricism's grand project - the scientist - studies and develops is decided by factors which are almost always political, economic, or personal (just ask - how many noble men and women of science engineer the weapons of tomorrow, or waste time developing anti-hair loss products?)

There is no such thing as pure sensation; all senses are wreathed in subjectivity, emotion, prejudice, thoughts of past and future, concepts created by language, and so on. If we could use our senses in a pure sense, unobscured by personality, everything would become inseparable.

Without the power of words to divide and highlight things, without the concept of time to predict things, and without the weight of emotion to move us into action and create our preferences we are incapable of seeking any knowledge at all. The ability to do these things is innate - we are born with them. We, as individuals or masses, merely choose how to use our innate faculties.

The first instrument of knowledge is what-is-important to us. Yet what is important to us?

St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 51 'Open Topic'

Freedom Lite - By St.Zagarus

Freedom Lite

Freedom is the most highly vaunted thing there is. Material gain and the social status attached to it are close competitors, but the people who get those things like to think they have done so by their own free effort.

Yet when confronted with the ultimate freedom, that feeling of being a living-feeling-thinking individual (a place we often end up in existentialist philosophy), you cannot gloss over the hole-filled road of life with easy answers.  Eventually, you must stare death itself in the face. You must come to grips with the very fact of your mortality and fully comprehend that you will someday cease to exist, becoming nothing. All of your personality ends at that terminus point, scattered into the winds. The body is broken down into tiny fragments and devoured back into  nature. In the eye of cosmic time, you were not even the batting of a lid - you were a slight twitch! What then confronts you is the sheer scale of this existence, and the grand context we human beings are thrown into. Just to continue breathing becomes a choice; each inhalation, each exhalation, is passed through a valve of thought and feeling. Why, breath in, why, breath out.

Life Instinct, Death Instinct - By St.Zagarus

Life Instinct, Death Instinct

            For myself, the life-instinct itself has died. It amazes me, from this cold vantage point, how readily people are able to accept 'life' as a given. Nourishment of the body, its pleasuring, the generic love of husband and wife -- how do they maintain it? I would always find myself asking this question. Then it became quite, quite obvious. They do not answer the question, 'Why this life-instinct', because they never got round to asking it.

Without taking the life-instinct for granted, there is the possibility of becoming absolutely still, of starvation, and thoughts of void. Nothingness. A wise man once told me, “Philosophy is something you do. Then you go home and have your dinner.”

Well if only it was that simple! Dinner itself is the life-instinct, something which should be so obvious, but humankind is not so simple. There are some people who starve themselves for emotional guilt, or to reach a certain artificial ideal. Yet not all such starvers are bound by emotion, for we need only look at religious fasters, or the scientist,who is too engaged in her discovery for anything other than caffeine (caffeine, caffeine!). This is philosophising beyond the basic needs. They have done their philosophy, but they are not having their dinner. Still, these people, with their grumbling bellies, are saying yes to life in other ways. The death-instinct is something different altogether. It is emptiness for its own sake.

When one struggles even to exist for a day, let alone longing for eternity, it becomes obvious that there is nothing substantial after this life; for dreams of after worlds and reincarnation are themselves just the continuation of the life-instinct. It is so obvious a child might see through it. So, why are we so carried along by the stream of life if it is fundamentally futile? Challenging the life-instinct can be quite a frightening prospect; like putting a violent political ideology in a newspaper. It will not convince everyone, but it will convince someone. To even ask the question might lead to the possibility of danger. It is better for people to remain ignorant of such decisions and let the basic drives of the human body answer the biggest philosophical questions for them.

A man once asked me, “Isn't the point of it all to bring new children into the world?” As if it were so obvious, like two and two making four. If we took him for his word, then the mere reproduction of humankind would itself complete us, and answer all of our questions. Yet it is ridiculous logic, for it never reaches any end point, nor does it provide us with any conclusions. The goal is to recreate, and the offspring’s goal to recreate, and so forth, and so forth, forever. No. Besides, human kind is never just satisfied with the physical creation of its offspring. There is always more to do, more to get, and more to be. This is, naturally, entirely self-deception, yet still it demonstrates how ludicrous it is to suggest that procreation alone is enough to provide anyone with purpose. The life-instinct does not take us anywhere except to the life-instinct.

The death-instinct can only be self-destructive. A murderer is not taken by the death-instinct in my definition. Murder is often premeditated, it encourages the body to be filled with emotion and energy, it has a purpose very much of this world. The murderer often intends to live after the act, and tries to conceal what they have done. In contrast, the death-instinct has no such purpose but death itself. Nothingness and slow decay is the death-instinct, and it is solitary, indifferent to the people around it, never causing harm to anything.

The conclusion of the death-instinct is always eternal nothingness. In this, it has more of a solid argument than life. Yet do not think that just because something has a more logical argument that this means anything at all. The argument is more valid because it reaches a conclusion, but whether or not it is acceptable or desirable is up to you to decide.

There is fundamentally nothing out there, we all know it, deep down inside. However, we cannot accept it. You might say, “There is no meaning except that which you create,” but this is greatly problematic. For it is advocating self-deception. Every idea needs a starting point. A humanist will want to end suffering, for instance. Yet in order to validate themselves, they must prove beyond doubt that there is a reason to sustain human life, and that it is of universal value. Human rights are the result. This document objectively declares the value of all human beings.

Yet if this document were objective (that is, true outside of the ideas of an individual’s perception) then all who looked upon it must be convinced of its validity. I am not convinced. It is a great idea, and better that it exists than it does not. This does not mean it is true. Something that feels good does not give it weight. To go back to our example, humanism is grounded in nothing. It begins with an assumption. This assumption cannot ever be challenged for there is nothing to weigh it against, except the bleakness of a meaningless cosmos. In this light, it can only be maintained by self-deception. It is a guess like any other.

To conclude, what would you be without other people around you? Strip the layers away from yourself, one after the other. The names of people and places, of gods and masters, of possessions and creations, dreams and purposes, and then of your own titles. You are left with nothing but raw experience, without a hole in which to bury your head and without the possibility of continued self-deceit. We need other people to actualise ourselves in this world of philosophical shadow (that is, philosophy which is useful, but ultimately meaningless).

Without the fleeting goals of our fleeting cultures, we are faced with the yes or no of pure human freedom - life, or death. This is what separates us from all of the other creatures. For whilst creatures may lie to one another (just think of the cuckoo, or the camouflaged snake, or the orchid mimicking a fly's mate), no creature has yet been able to lie to itself. And no creature doubts that it ought to continue existing, to strive and try as it might to maintain itself. Yet we humans -- at the pinnacle of reason and intellectual power, inheritors of such incredible bodies and capable of so much -- are prone to one fundamental weakness. Questioning whether we should even continue to exist at all; I wonder, is this the source of all our freedom, and all of our creative power?

This is the death-instinct itself, the temporary absence of any life-instinct.

By St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 43

Sacred Life? - By St.Zagarus

Sacred Life?

I -

In nature there are moons, stars, planets, comets, meteors, gas clouds, black holes, great expanses of empty space. When we observe this vast cosmos, separated from us by distance beyond our imagination, what can we infer from it, what can we draw out of it? Nothing!

 

'Order', you may say, yet what do stones and suns know of order? Our mortal reality: A life, brief in the scope of this immense cosmic theatre, then death - and that is that. Once you are dead you are gone, vanishing out of existence. Your personality crumbles, you are broken down, you do not awaken. We are dragged into this world whether we like it or not, we act, and then we perish. A good life, a bad life, all is equal in death and all is forgotten, eventually. You leave with nothing, there is no chance of another go, there is no path to eternity, you will not continue on in some other form. You may desire permanence, eternal order and the security of some sacred soul - no such thing is available to us. We are fleeting and slight, our capacities are limited, we know things only through the filter of our fleshy bodies.

II -

The sacredness of life is the result of one thing - personal preference. There is no logical reason for life to resume. Logic is, after all, supposed to exist before and after humanity, to be true in all possible worlds, above and beyond the preferences of individuals. What could such a cold master care for warmly-beating hearts!

 

Rationality, the ability to make choices free from emotional impulse, how does this grant value to life? For some are more rational than others; the scientist more so than your dear old nana; the civilized scholar more so than a tribesmen, someone with a more powerful brain over one with a less powerful - yet still would you call the one more deserving of life than the other. The ability to make such rational choices, from where does it give value to life, and how do we measure rationality outside of human beings, with human tools and measures.

 

This raises a question: 'If there is no meaning to discover outside of human creation then all choices are equally futile, and the ability to make very good choices through rational thinking is of no greater value than to be purely driven by some other force. Everything will eventually crumble away, and anything you do is of no significance to the cold universe.'

Not quite so, our personal preferences can always grant rational choice meaning. We do not discover the meaning of rationality inside of rationality, we discover it through our own feeling, belief, or trust in it. To put it another way, you can convince someone through rational argument of something, and maybe discover something along the way, but this will only work if the other person has chosen or is able to think rationally.

III -

We all suffer, some very much more so than others. There is no one who does not suffer; be it boredom, physical pain, lovelessness, whatever. This suffering has been explained in many ways. Sometimes it is sacred and has at the end of it a reward. Then there are those who frame it in some different kind of meaning, turning to fate for comfort (it could not have been any other way and it was not just a random act of chaos - thus my suffering is eased by understanding it).

At the opposite end of the spectrum is pleasure. Pleasure is preferable to suffering, yet neither state provides meaning, and thus sanctity, to life. A more materially rich life of higher sensory pleasure does not automatically make the meaning-seeker that much wiser. The absence of suffering is no foundation to the discovery of 'hidden truths', or meaningful lives. If it was, the level of 'profoundness' would increase the richer a civilization became. We have the greatest eye for physical nature in our scientific culture, but does the ability to make precise discoveries tell us anything about life, the universe and everything, or are we just imposing our own views upon it after the discovery.

And how do we ever know for sure, for absolutely certain? What does it feel like to have absolute knowledge of something, for I know not.

IV -

The imagery of a path, leading to enlightenment or a furthering of our lives is to me a horrible piece of imagery, and poorly constructed. A path runs from one point to another. All the way along the path, on either side of it, is ground. Wherever the path eventually leads to, it is surrounded by ground, ordinary, dull, ground. It just serves to highlight the absurd nature of our thinking: We have to go somewhere, we have to ascend somewhere, we have to evolve toward something. No, we are on a geoid called Earth, and all paths lead round in a circle.

Lines move directly forward. They appeal so much to us, being quite straight forward to navigate (walk along it - it is as simple as that). If the path leads directly forward, it must begin somewhere, and end somewhere. Where else can it end but infinite perfection, beyond mere humanity. Forwardness within time, progress and advance, seems to be a universal amongst the civlized. It creates goals and objectives, and these create truimphs and prizes. What suffering is caused by this focus on something direct and rewarding. Imagine if we just were.

V -

Here I will now make a positive argument for the sanctity of all life - the rot is no pleasant sight to the eyes. The casualties, the suffering, the maimed, these are not beautiful. It is the shallowest impulses within that make us turn away from death in disgust, the appearance of it that effects us more than anything. This very same vanity wants us to see life flourish, be vibrant and attractive. Appearances are more important than we give them credit for and we cannot brush the realities of death and suffering away by raising a plastic facade around our environment. The stink of death and decay will always waft through any shield we hold up against it.

VI -

If the human being is sacred only because of our whims, the personal preferences of individuals, then whether or not we grant these same dignities to anything - be it a stone, a plant, or an animal - is equally valid, and dependent on nothing more than our vanity. It is to this that I appeal to you then, reader. In vanity consider your fellow life forms, for it is not even in our self-interest to be selfish, cruel and murderous. When more people agree that life is sacred then do not, we shall have sanctity of life, and the only philosophy we need to wield to uphold these principles is an absence of any higher principles to give us meaning.

We can aim lower and make our world better on the back of shallow whims.

By St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open topic' Issue 39

Let the cries of 'love' die and live - By St.Zagarus

Let the cries of 'love' die and live

I -

Philosophers are supposed to challenge everything. Not just what they know to be false, to build their esteem upon the ruins of the cardboard castles they kick down - but also what they know to be true. Yet if we took philosophers at their word we would be left with only so many hypocrites and cowards, their motives well hidden behind a smoke screen of 'objectivity' (the search for truth removed from any human, or individual bias), when in fact they know precisely where not to look, in case they face contradiction.

  Let us then dive into love, often spoken of which such bittersweet warmth, yet here so cold, as if the words were made of icicles - runes of chill!

Love, nothing could pull us further away from truth. The first love is that of a parent, a love we now call essential. For to be loved is to be able to love - or so say the psychologists! We need love now, all of us children of europe - we have been too far pulled in to christian morality to ever turn back (see the prophet-philosopher Nietzsche for more of this). This need for the parent to love the child they would like to think was universal for our species - this is not so. What of the tribe who raises their children in darkened huts without human company?

II -

Love thyself - What is there to love of the actual physical body - at worst a grotesque bag of flesh, at best a neutral beauty no more sightly than a moon or a grove, granted extra emphasis by the vanity that we too are possessed of one. Or perhaps the soul is worthy of love, that corrupt thing easily swayed, that lies to itself and those around it habitually, such that meeting an honest one is enough to make us feel like we live a charmed life! How have we allowed the soul to grow warm when there is nothing colder than it, being as it is a mere mirror with which nature may see itself.

Love thy neighbour? Where do we gain the warrant to trample on anothers individual rights to be left alone, or ignored, or generally not considered very much!

Love thy nation - so often uttered by 'hard nosed realists' - yes the same ones who adhere to invisible boundaries of law and culture, beneath their vainly fluttering flags.

Love thy god - a personal connection, a father for those hopelessly in need for the perfect parent, how desperate! A pitious grasping out into a cold cosmos in search for something all powerful and inhuman, yet human!

Love thy cola - when a capitalist is onto something, we know how easily such a thing can manipulate people - love this liquid, love this combination of metal and plastic, love this motorized car!

Love thy ruler - the captain, the duke, the charismatic general, the high-priest, the witch-doctor, himself void of character and desperate for the mass adoration of his little lovers.

And perhaps the ultimate vanity, the grandest insult to a concept that may otherwise had held some power - unconditional love. The love of dog for master, debasing even for a canine! In a human it is worse to the factor of ten times - what more is it then the need for a perfect port in which to lay anchor, a hopeless reflection of ones own need for perfection-on-earth, a desire to escape ones solitude to find solace in another person, as a foetus does a womb. Yet what a vanity it is, for who deserves to be loved without condition - no one!  And mark this - if one expects the same in return, to try and mould the other into a lover unconditional, then what utter vanity and further self-seeking, what doubled-over wretchedness!

III -

An old mood passes, replaced with the new. Can any philosopher ever escape their emotion, for the true crystal plane of reason?

  Love is incredible, irresistable. If has softened the hearts of the warrior age and brought about our expectations to protect all people - at least to a basic, realistic degree. Love of one another is all we have to cling to. Beyond each other, we can also love ideas (being moved by them in the same way as any other passion), art, music, our crafts - we can love all of these immaterial things.

  You can try and resist love - you will fail. The cold-heart melts or else it fights a constant battle against itself - even if the coldness wins, that tortured character still asks 'what would it have meant to have loved?' and this question will spin through their memory until they perish once and for all.

  The words said against love were just that; words, an interesting flight of thoughts. The great haters with their great venom were unloved, and rather than move toward the healing heat, they retreated further into the shadows by renouncing that which they never dared to grasp themselves.

By St.Zagarus

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 33