Spinoza’s Ethics - By Joe Sturdy

 Spinoza’s Ethics

Imagine that there is a God. Not a religious God, but just a thing, a power, called God – it is in nature and is absolutely infinite, that is – it has no beginning or end and causes itself. This is a key concept. It is the only such thing in the universe and can only be so, as it causes itself and for anything else to do so, would mean that it wouldn’t be by itself in the cosmos. You get the idea.

This ‘God’ must exist. As a result, if it must exist and self-causes itself, it must have some life-force. It cannot negate itself: it must thus produce something to carry on living, says Spinoza: he calls these 'somethings' modes. This is a very versatile term: they can be thoughts, imaginings, memories or anything at all physical – not just human bodies, but animals, carrier bags, cars, trees, the molecules and atoms that we breathe and come into a contact with on a daily basis. Think of a mode like this: the cricket ball smashing the window, the person tripping over the ball that was just kicked. Each of these, the cricket ball, the window, the person are modes.  These are produced endlessly, constantly. These are an abundance of richness.

As each of these is produced by God, which has a certain power as its life-force: the power to exist and thus produce, each of these modes too, has a little bit of God’s power in them. While they cannot, as God does, create themselves, they do have a bit of life-force within them: the power to keep living at all costs. This makes sense to us with humans: we snatch a hand away from intense heat, but what about a table? Spinoza would say that its property of staying upright and not breaking would consist as its life-force.

God has this life-force and constantly has to pump these modes out into existence, for that is what its essence and self-cause is: the force of needing to do whatever is needed to carry on existing. God cannot negate itself – it must keep on existing: by production of modes. As a result, we should see God as a power.

What sort of power? ‘One that creates all events and all things’, says Spinoza rather simplistically. The things, we understand: modes. But events? Each little event – the bag floating up into the air (caused by the movement of air), or the cricket ball smashing the window? Really, this is caused by God? Ultimately, yes; except to us, we don’t picture it as that; rather we see it as the cricket ball that was thrown by the child, smashing the window. In one way, that is of course true: the cricket ball did smash the window; modes can still interact with one another – but God is, in Spinoza’s eyes, the cause of events, as he produced the modes.

At this point, then: What have we got? Let’s take stock. The following points should be able to be seen:

An infinite (never ending, never beginning), self-caused and producing being that must necessarily do this to exist: ‘God’. It is non-religious. It produces a huge abundance of modes.

Modes – thoughts, memories, imaginings; physical things – atoms, molecules, trees, animals, human beings, carrier bags, cars, sugar, wood – you name it. These are produced by God and have a little bit of desire to do what they can to survive within them.

At this point, a couple of points should be made: if this has been set out well, it should be clear by now that, while we traditionally think that life events revolve around one another: the child cries and the mother sees this and picks it up and makes it happy again; what actually occurs is that each of these events is determined by God.

As a result, choice does not exist. Everything is determined by God, through God: he is the mover and shaker of the universe – he is within everything. Even though modes (the child and mother, for example) can still interact, ultimately all this is decided by God. We are, contrary to our beliefs not the most intelligent things on Earth: we are just another mode, fighting for survival like everything else (or so says Spinoza in part 1 of his Ethics, but will he maintain this deterministic world view in later parts? - Ed).

The traditional hierarchies of the Church, and indeed life, are now abandoned. There is no more supreme being: he is in all of us, in all things. Equality, should, according to Spinoza, now exist.

By Joe Sturdy

Philosophy Tales : The Quest - By Ellese Elliott

Philosophy Tales : The Quest

Once upon a time, in the depths and wisdom of space, a lone man traveled across a strange land in the pursuit of something great. His search had lasted (it seemed) as long as time existed and he had traveled over six hundred thousand plethrons.

He was not weary, he was not wavered as his belief, a belief in something greater kept him going.  It had kept him Alive! The land he traveled across was by far the most treacherous. However, he was an experienced traveler and was equipped with all sorts of gadgets and tools to overcome the danger. He believed he would live.

Winds as strong as a herd of wild horses stampeded over his blistered body. Blistered by the cold. The hail, like blocks of ice, battered everything in its way. The sky emerged as a shattered mirror, the ground a pebbled desert of glass. The whole world was a luminous white. His belief had led him here and his belief would lead him out of here.

As he reached the peak of the mountain a peculiar noise filled his ears. A silent ringing, whistled. The strong forces of nature seemed to immediately subside and he thought his eyes blurred the view. Removing his shield from his aged face, some of his skin was removed with it.  He rubbed his eyes trying to focus, squinting into the distance.

There was nothing wrong with his eyes.  

"Hergh" he gasped as shock overcame him; traveling down his frozen nerves, cracking his insides. He wailed with every muscle left in his body, but no noise was absorbed by any object to use for its own life force. The silence traveled endlessly.  There in front of him, his belief was realized. It was something great. It was nothing. "Ex Nihilo" he mouthed; the nothing. All around, everywhere and nowhere, emptiness.

He looked back at the battered land and at this point, at this peak, it seemed to emanate from the nothing. How can the nothing create this world? Equally, the world seemed to dissipate into the nothing, gaseous and intangible, then gone. He removed a glove from his left hand exposing his tender flesh to the bitterness of the cold and reached slowly out into the unknown. As he did his hand seemed to run away from him like water rushing over a fall. He quickly retracted. His hand however, remained intact.

The man stood between the vortex of creation and destruction wondering if he himself at that moment was being created or destroyed. His whole quest appeared to be a journey into a great nothingness. A grand voyage away from reason.  "How could this be?" he asked himself, questioning what was not before him.

In a state of disbelief he pondered on the borders of this contradiction. 'Maybe,' he thought, 'it was just that things had never traveled any further then this point. So if I throw something into the nothing then there may be something.' This seemed to be a half reasonable hypothesis to make. 'Now what something shall I throw, aha a rock, a rock is a something.' He hesitated for a minute, not quite sure. Then he picked up an icy rock from beneath his feet. In the face of its potential end it shone with every imaginable and unimaginable colour possible.  Giving himself enough space he threw the rock as hard as he could into the nothing, his body nearly flew with it.  The rock fragmented into a rainbow of light then disappeared. His fear was confirmed.

He was not shocked as he only had fooled himself intently that this was a possibility. A possibility from the old life.

The old system, or way, of seeing things before such discoveries of non-being. Behind him the day was turning to night. The sun set and the stars rose. And yet before him remained still. If the something, the rock, could not travel through the nothing, does that mean that the sun is not traveling through nothing either, but always traveling through something? How can this make sense? How can anything move if there is always something in its way? The world has become a plenum of glass pebbles on the edge of a vacuum according to reason. Maybe it was his mind that created such nonsense. 

He then thought that maybe it was his belief that had caused such events. He believed there was something greater and yet he did not know what that something was. This is what led him here. Therefore because he did not know what that something was nothing then stood before him. His belief had created the reality. But was the nothing, something? The simple answer was no. He believed in a great something not in a great nothing. As the nothing wasn't something he dismissed this idea as absurd.

In turmoil the man reflected on his life. The great journey he had taken because he believed in something greater and now he had found it, but he didn't understand it. The man stood on the edge of everything for a long time thinking how all this, all of this could be possible and how he could find out what it all meant. His whole life had led to a point of not knowing and he was not willing to except it. No way. What was worse then any event that had happened on his journey was to come this far to discover something great and not know what it was.

He must know.

He held his breath and believed - 'I will know the truth' and he leapt out of the something and into the nothing. He felt alive.

He was gone.

Did he find the answer? No one knows. No living being would come across the nothing for over five million years. When they did they would not have to find the answer by jumping in, as they had advanced way beyond the powers of reason we have today. But I will tell you one thing for certain. The being did not have even an inkling of passion for knowledge as the man who made a great leap from belief to knowing. 

The End

By Ellese Elliott

Surrealism and Philosophy - Part I

I was asked to write a brief piece on the relationship of surrealism to philosophy. For anybody trying to understand these links, the most immediate problem is that the only book in English suitably titled “Surrealism and Philosophy”, has not been in print for many years. Once, however, you acquire a copy there is another problem, the author, Ferdinand Alquie, ignores the actual theoretical preoccupations of the surrealists and constructs a platonic model of surrealist theory instead! Admittedly it is difficult to avoid Plato and his influence once one starts to deal with philosophy in any way, but I have to suggest that in order to understand what the early surrealists were thinking, and how this affects the movement today, it is necessary to come to terms with what the surrealists actually thought and read rather than to project upon them whatever fantasies or ideological preconceptions one might have. I have decided, given the constraints of the newsletter, to break down my account into 3 parts. The first of which will deal briefly with the manifestos of Surrealism which must be the starting point for any decent account of the subject.

The Manifestos are certainly a product of their time, but nevertheless they do manage to articulate the principles of surrealism as it emerges, grows and develops. So, in the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), André Breton defines surrealism as: “Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” (Breton, André: Manifestoes of Surrealism)

This early preoccupation with automatism was indeed the focus of surrealism in the early days, but its value has often been doubted and questioned by some surrealists. It was partly inspired by Freudian free-association, but should not be confused with it. This kind of automatism emerged from experiments made by Breton and Phillipe Soupault when they created a collaborative text which became the first surrealist book Le Champs Magnetique, or Magnetic Fields (1919).

Over the next few years the surrealist vision developed rapidly, even as the movement spread to several other countries, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Romania among others. By 1929, during a major crisis in the movement, and with a number of people leaving the movement and joining the circle around Georges Bataille, Breton felt the necessity to restate the position of surrealism in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1929): “Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point. From this it becomes obvious how absurd it would be to define Surrealism solely as constructive or destructive: the point to which we are referring is a fortiori that point where construction and destruction can no longer be brandished one against the other. It is also clear that Surrealism is not interested in giving very serious consideration to anything that happens outside of itself, under the guise of art, or even anti-art, of philosophy or anti-philosophy — in short, at anything not aimed at the annihilation of the being into a diamond, all blind and interior, which is no more the soul of ice than that of fire.”

This text shows Breton’s interest in the dialectics of Hegel. There has been some argument as to how much he understood Hegel, at least at this time, but I don’t think Breton is simply trying to reproduce Hegel’s ideas, but use the notion of a dialectical overcoming in order to arrive at this state beyond contradictions. Breton had already stated that “beauty shall be convulsive or it shall not exist” and was later to develop this poetically as “Beauty shall be convulsive-fixed, magic-circumstantial, erotic-veiled”. Each phrase locks together antithetical and antagonistic images that become something greater than the parts. The poetic and intellectual origin of this is Lautréamont’s Le Chants de Maldoror, and the famous phrase “as beautiful as the chance meeting upon an operating table between an umbrella and a sewing machine”. Effectively, these “convulsive-fixed” images undo binary logic and allow the mind access to new ways of thought. It is almost incidental that they should be expressed as a painting, drawing or poem. It could equally be expressed by action in the street.

In the next part want to go a bit further into the notion of convulsive beauty and also the surrealist engagement with politics. In the third part I shall focus on the principle of poetic analogy. Apologies for dodgy citations, but this was written off the top of my head, without my usual books to hand!

  
By Stuart Inman

Click here to read Surrealism and Philosophy Part II

Real motives - by St.Zagarus the damned

Real motives


You think that because you entertain the possibility that you are imbibing intellectual poison that this somehow vindicates you of any chance of being wrong - token resistance! You search for arguments to undermine your position, you appear modest, but this is just to fool yourself into thinking your position is not dogmatic.


What exactly are your real motives for believing in a "better" world? Dare to find them if you will: Guilt, weakness, fear - these things colour your utopian discourse. Guilt for being born on the right side of the tracks. Weakness for not being able to compete with the new aristocracy. Fear of admitting that you could have succeeded in the cruel vortex that is society.


Stop and consider your real motives, ere you preach to others. Fools!


St.Zagarus the damned

Art - by Harry Wareham

To the death of the humanities. Here, Here. - By Ellese Elliott

To the death of the humanities. Here, Here.

Over one billion years had passed.  Whole worlds had transformed and yet one question still haunted the mind,"How can one know what is real?"
This question was about to appear fleetingly for the last time in the year 2064; just before humans destroyed each other as they gave up their freedom to think.
This story is for the last of those thinkers and all that preceded them. Let their long endeavours not be in vein. 

Once upon a time, after man had ravaged the earth, two feral boys scavenged through the rubble, among other vermin, searching for something to eat. Another, Aaron stood watch for the 'Red Lights' (the police), who taxed the boys for any morsel of valuable scrap they had. Such was the world driven by greed. But the boys outwitted the Red Lights on most occasions and sold their scraps down the Traders Path for rarities such as fizzy pop. As Aaron stood watch, he gazed into the sky, which too had been destroyed. One could see only thick black dust. The sun was not seen, nor the moon; they had become mere myths. But that indistinct night, Aaron's eyes were shown something other than what he had ever seen, "Wow". A twinkle of green light shone down.
He immediately left his watchmen's post, wading through the waist deep rubble.

"Boys! Boys! Look up!"

"What?" the boys replied, anxious that the 'Red Lights' had spotted them.

"Up there!" But as Aaron pointed toward the skies nothing but a quilt of darkness could be seen. "I swear" Aaron said, "I saw the sun!"

 "The sun? The sun isn't real! That's just a story that the crazies tell. You want to join them - ay?" 

"But I did see it" Aaron replied, "It was amazing!" "Go back to your post A' and watch out for the Red Lights." Aaron returned to his post, confused. That night he looked up at the sky for hours, but there was nothing, nothing but a void.

"How can I know if the light was real?  How can I ever know if anything is real?"  In a black hole of doubt, Aaron gazed into the flashing neon fires of the Traders Path, as the destitute world around him collapsed into nothingness.

But Aaron did see it.

The green twinkle of light had beamed over one billion years from a planet, long ago destroyed, where the question of reality first appeared in a great mind. The mind of Assyria; the hunter of the Endoxon tribe.   
She stood nine feet tall, her metallic scales shimmered in the glow of the moons and her giant webbed feet allowed her to hunt along the sea bed, un-anounced. She sat on top of a rock, contemplating the still waters when something caught her eye.
The hunt was on! Assyria ran into the waters. Within seconds she spotted her target as she sprint along the sea bed. Her prey swimming for its life, but it wasn't enough as her claws speared the creature; dead. She dragged her kill back to the land and the Endoxon Tribe ate that night.

The next day Assyria headed back down to the waters where Thalassa wander in the shallows. Once, Thalassa was a great hunter, but struck by a bolt of lightning, lost her memory and thus forever wandered the seas, alone. Thalassa,  whispered through the sounds of the sea, "Do you think your memory can be trusted? Beware!" Before Assyria could ask Thalassa what she meant, Thalassa disappeared into the waters which echoed her message. For a while Assyria stood, thinking about what Thalassa had whispered, gazing into the green light of the moons.

That night, Assyria walked across the desert and returned to the Endoxon tribe.  When she returned Assyria found that the tribe had starved! Their once proud armoured bodies had turned into bone and dust.  From Assyria's feet the last cried, "Why have you left us for weeks without food Assyria, why?" then finally perished. But Assyria had brought them food only yesterday.   Had Thalassa's prophecy turned into a reality; had her memory not shown her what was real? Assyria ran. She ran across the deserted land and jumped  from the tops of a jagged cliff into the deep waters, Splash!

Underneath the rough tides was a quiet, blurry realm. Assyria walked along the sea floors, confused. She could no longer turn to the tribe to know what was real, nor her memory. Then, in the corner of her eye, Assyria saw silver wavering locks of hair. It was Thalassa. "Wait!" Assyria cried as she ran towards Thalassa, disturbing this murky underwater world with her presence. However as Assyria drew closer it was not Thalassa. "Enhumi?" Tall flowing sea grass rooted in a rock formation towered over Assyria who stood in disbelief. First her memory and now her eyes could not be trusted to show her what was real.         

Assyria walked deeper and deeper into the depths of the ocean wracking her mind, constantly questioning whether her memory or her eyes deceived her. The pins of green light faded under the force of the water and no creature was strong enough to live. "How can I know if anything is real?"

Looking out there was nothing, nothing but Assyria and the void.

In reality everything can be doubted, destroyed and fragmented. Assyria's world had broken down both in her mind and around her. One billion years later, on a different planet a young boy, Aaron did the same. But what he was about to do that Assyria didn't was amazing, he created a new world. As he gazed into the flashing neon fires of the Traders Path, he questioned. Casting all things into the domain of the unreal he realized; how can a  thing be unreal? How can anything, including the green twinkle that showed itself to me not possess reality.  And with this thought,, a thought that rendered the distinction of real and unreal nonsensical, he recreated a different world.

The End 

By Ellese Elliott

In defence of Utilitarianism - By Lloyd Duddridge

In defence of Utilitarianism

Perfect the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be useful to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself.
- Bolesław Prus


The greatest happiness for the greatest number. On a instinctual level this appears to make sense. However Utilitarianism has faced many challenges from the philosophical community. They say that it undermines the idea of individual justice. That the idea would seemingly condemn an innocent individual if it suited the whims of the mob. That also seems instinctively correct, justice is not a numbers game, its not a mathematical equation. They also say that one persons conception of happiness, is not the same as another's,so how could happiness be seen in such general terms? They also say that it is bloody hard to spell. This final objection I concede to the prosecution. However it is the previous two objections that I wish to defend Utilitarianism against.
The first objection is usually formed by using an example such as this: Imagine a single man that holds views that are not dangerous,but make the mob angry. Now under simple Utilitarian argument the mob are entitled to do what they want with the man who makes them unhappy. The reason they are able to do this is their collective happiness,seemingly outweighs the happiness of the individual. Thus things such as gang rape,would be permissible. So how could Utilitarianism respond to such a damning objection?
I would argue that it could say this in response. Justice is a bedrock upon which most peoples happiness lies. Now the mob may seem the larger group in the example outlined. However the even greater number is the group that believe in justice. Thus in committing an unjust action, you are committing an action, that in the longer term would bring about greater unhappiness. The question of justice can be thrown back at the critics of utilitarianism. Does justice bring about the greatest happiness in the greatest number? The answer is seemingly yes. Thus it appears that even concepts go through the process of utilitarian judgement. We disregard injustice for the simple reason that it fails the utilitarian test. This is the simple answer to those who say that utilitarianism will always lead to unjust situations. The evidence is that all concepts we hold in either positive or negative go through a process of utilitarian testing. So if justice is utilitarian,how can utilitarianism be unjust?
The second objection is that utilitarianism is too general. One persons happiness is not another's. This is a point that I concede, but it is one that I feel can be overcome. This is because I feel that we must approach ethics and morality in a different way. We must see morals as useful myths. They may not hold in all possible universes,they may not be god given. However they are still vital to human life. They are myths given to us,in order to give us rules for action. They are bed time stories but no less important for that. Now if we see ethics as an individual call for action, what could be a better lessons for action than, you should act in a way you think will bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number?
How can you understand other peoples happiness they will ask. I would answer that we should not view action as something that happens blind,and arbitrarily. We act after experiment, after seeing what works for people. We can do things such as ask others what makes them happy. Action does not happen in a vacuum. Or rather it should not happen in a vacuum. This is the difference between intelligent action, and unintelligent action. So how can we understand other peoples happiness? A good start may be by asking them what makes them happy. Communication and language make utilitarianism possible. Thankfully these are two tools that human beings possess.
So in summary. Happiness is increased by concepts such as justice. Thus utilitarianism rather than being the ethical school of the unjust, becomes the province where justice is taken most seriously. We do not value justice because it is our duty to value justice, we value justice because it makes us happy. Thus gang rape is not permitted under utilitarian logic, for it undermines justice and thus undermines happiness. Additionally we must see ethics as rules of action. Man made rules, rules that can be questioned, but vital rules none the less. Now can there be a rule that can be improved upon than this: When you act, act to increase the greatest happiness for the greatest number? I would argue there is not. However all ethical rules will only work if we do not make ourselves into islands. We must communicate with each other. We must ask other questions on just what they value,for we value that which makes us happy. It on this remark that I rest my defence for utilitarianism.

By Lloyd Duddridge

We Don't Own Our Bodies - by David McDonagh

We Don't Own Our Bodies

Give me the names and addresses

of citizens who don’t exist

then try with all your damndest might

to slap them on the wrist

teach their fake lives important lessons

about morals imaginary

permit them to relocate their enlightened lives

to places, though unreal, sanitary

For these lowly, miserable invisible souls

the state shall regard remorse

and with a resounding slap across their ears

changed minds will be forced

give them the spin in the printed press

these citizens who don’t exist

when they cast their vote for a fake candidate

their losses will not be missed

Send brigades that really aren’t there

to extinguish their unfortunate fires

and though there aren’t actually any problems

interference is what the state requires

send me those names, send them right now!

give them all to me

the maintenance of delusional people who don’t exist

is the essence of democracy

by David McDonagh

Still in the womb - By Selim 'Cynical Bastard' Talat

Still in the womb

You thought you had left the womb behind but this was very much a lie. You left *a* womb, yes, but not wombs altogether. You came out, covered in blood, severed from your physical mother, but now the womb you inhabit is one of ideology, religion, whatever. You were forced out of one womb, and clambered willingly back into another! Your umbilical cord is made invisible to you for habit, but look down at your belly and see it; handle it with your clammy paws and make it real in your mind. You are submerged in all manner of juices, fed from outside of yourself. Sadly, the gender-non-specific parent carrying you is probably hitting the booze and fags quite hard, so all of that information colouring the world view you have already decided to maintain could well be poison. Who knows? (and the one who knows, should they care?)

This is not a one-child-per-tummy job. You are joined by millions of people submerged into the same idea (or their version of it perhaps, but they will have a lot in common with you). Some of your fellows you can see, some of those people are abstract numbers on the internet or occupying some distant geography, some of those people are heroes who wrote books about this idea. Nonetheless they are all made real by your clutching after them.

Everyone else is unthinking. And they must be unchoosing, for they have not chosen what you have chosen. Remember that the neo/nouveau/pretentious jargon-womb must be climbed into; you cannot end up in an ideas belly by force; it cannot wrap tentacles around you and suck you through its gender-non-specific genitals! Thus, the strength of other people outside your womb is misled and becomes a blight on the meta-narrative of humanity; everyone else outside of your idea is an unthinking enemy to be feared. Those brainless not-you's are powerful springs pulled back by habit and animal desire, and they will burst out and lash whatever they strike. Poor fools  (go and save them ye evangelists).

You think that because you entertain the possibility that you are imbibing intellectual poison that this somehow vindicates you of any chance of being wrong - token resistance! What exactly are your real motives for believing in a "better" world? Dare to find them if you will: Guilt, weakness, fear - these things colour your utopian discourse. Guilt for being born on the right side of the tracks. Weakness for not being able to compete with powerful men (who do not question but merely act and devour anything in their path). Fear of what would happen if you were actually able to take power; fear of responsibility (sneering guffaw!).

Still, it's more dignified to be a foetus than a worthless sceptic. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be...still in the womb! (punchline)

By Selim 'Cynical Bastard' Talat

Hands

 

Hands (plural),

my hands (also plural);

there’s two of them:

extensions from the same one trunk,

but also not hands,

also skin, hair

and bones I can’t see,

and blood I infer

from the swollen veins

of a languid summer tryst.

Hands but also tools

to tie, press, grasp, hold;

moving tools; climbing tools;

tools to turn things over

and make sense.

Hands but symbols also:

semaphores for the deaf,

a thumbs up and a clap.

Instruments for appreciative sounds,

together,

for anger slapped down

on a hard wood table.

 

Hands but also roots

for digging into the world;

lines of communication

for my sense, perception.

Digits on which I count

1, 2, 3, 4…

Palms on which I rest the coconut.

Hands but also evidence

of time:

of ageing, eating, that last cigarette

lingers on the fingers

Hands but also biographies:

the one broken page book of our lives;

an afterthought of DNA.

We say hands

but know the language fails us

and leaves us wanting

for imprecision,

so when I take your hand in mine

know, it makes so much more

than simply hands.

Simon Leake

Hands by Harry Wareham

How many more will desire destroy? - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

How many more will desire destroy?

The swirling vortex of desire forever threatens to suck us into its eye and toss our shattered hulls hurtling through the sky to collapse back into the amoral waves.

If you were asked to summarize the strongest element of human nature in a word, you would be making a wise decision to reply 'desire'. To be human is to desire. Yet before we open up this artery of thought, let me try and define the word desire in philosophical terms.

Desire comes before choice. It has to. We cannot choose to desire something. Desire is a reactive, pulling force to some material object external to us. At the same time, we have inside us machinery that allows us to desire in the first place. So, desire is a longing for something outside of us, that exists in addition to the ability to choose (and is not necessarily stronger than choice), and we have a natural inclination toward this desire. In other words, desire is the product of an emptiness inside, constantly provoked by some external force.

But why does desire destroy some people and not others? What force inside a person makes them more resistant to desire than another? Should we be more resistant to desire? Are the happiest among us not the ones who allow themselves to be carried along by this force?

What does Desire do to us?

Desire does not relate to happiness, but to satiation. The anticipation of desires fulfilment is itself what the body remembers when it nostalgically fantasizes over its past pleasures. In effect, the greater the speed at which desire can be satiated, the less satisfying the satiation of that desire, yet the more seductive the fulfillment of that desire (the easier it is to access a desire, the less pleasure it will bring, yet the very fact that this desire can be easily satiated makes it a more hounding force).

Desire is a habitual force, engrained in us. The desires we have become an essential part of our identities, regardless of how detrimental they are. To try and overcome a desire, therefore, is to shed part of what binds us together. Every morning we slip back into our identities and seek after our goals - often that goal is the satiation of some desire. Quite simply put, desire gives us something to do. Without this busy chase after the tail-of-want, we would forever question how it would have felt to have caught it, and this feeling cannot be extinguished.

Many religions are littered with examples of asceticism (denying oneself the fulfilment of material desire). These romantic religions are damned to self-pity: By recognising fulfilment of desire as pleasure and then denying it, the religious figure is asking to be looked upon as a sacrificer. Yet this ascetic is just as empty as someone forever trying fill the 'leaky vessel' of want with the 'clichéd metaphorical water of satiation'. Denial of something is nothing to build ones personality upon. Polarizing oneself with the greater mass, and thinking oneself good for not participating in something is a negative means of defining oneself. The faith in God/nirvana that monks/nuns supposedly seek in the place of material fulfilment is just as much a whimsical dream. Asceticism - it's a load of bollocks!

The religious drives away from the material world will never succeed anyhow - the power of something shiny and plastic will win over "higher spiritual goals" every-time. The only way to overcome the endless tugging, clutching at things beyond us is not to play holier-than-thou, but to argue that those desires would never lead to happiness in the first place - thus we are not denying ourselves by turning away from mass consumption, we are actually approving of ourselves (for what should replace endless outward desire, but a philosophic introspection and the cultivation of ones own creativity; yet this is the seed of another article).

If each mastered their own desires, what would happen?

It is foolish to be arrogant. We all have desires we succumb to, be it sex, lust for power, food, gadgets, war-gaming miniatures and so on. The question is not whether humanity can escape its desiring doom, the question is to what extent humanity will limit the damage it does to itself and its surroundings.

Desire overrides a persons moral codes; it overwhelms the barricades a person has prepared against the impending flood. It drives people to act in an irrational way. It cuts off understanding of cause and effect, it blinds us to consequences.

If everyone we lived with was able to understand and to some extent control their desires, then our world as we knew it would cease to function. The foolish neo-peasantry, forever running upon the treadmill of work would have nothing driving them to perform tedious, machinate and/or physically demanding tasks if they did not have some trivial reward to pursue. We live in a society where being wise with power would lead to its collapse - thrift would clog the engines of civilization and the walls will crumble. Desire, on a wider scale, is the only thing maintaining the alienating, miserable (yet sadly necessary) experience individuals have of consumerism. Only as an individual can one duck out of this seductive (but ultimately fruitless) game, and live ones selfish life free from shopping malls, pointless purchases, and fast foods.

For the greater masses to wake up and realize they are living a lie is too terrifying a change for one to comprehend, far less wish for.

By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Tales - Grandpa Will - By Ellese Elliott

The Philosophy Tales - Grandpa Will

One murky night, deep inside a village, Grandpa Will sat in his dusty old chair warming his socks by the fire.   It was a cold night, colder than usual.  The wind outside howled, the vines on the trees whipped the window pane and every so often you would hear a swarm of bats shrieking and flurry past the front door.  Grandpa Will was just nodding off, his mouth wide open when he heard a creak. His head turned in an instant. Grabbing his walking stick, embellished with skulls, he slowly crept toward where the sound came from, ready to strike.

He felt his heart beating in his mouth and his knees knocked together as he saw a tall shadow stretch around the corners of the living room. 

“Grandpa, I can’t sleep.” Little Lois had stumbled out of bed “Will you tell me one of your stories, please” she begged.  Grandpa Will let out a sigh of relief and sat back down in the same chair that he had for over one hundred years. A cloud of dust filled the air as he slumped down letting out a heaving cough “ergll cough cough cough erlg cough.” He placed his stick back down beside the fire and said in a coarse voice:

            “Come and sit by the fire Lois. I will tell you a story. It begins on a cold murky night, just –like- this one.”

As she sat by the fire little Lois asked, “What’s that key?” pointing to around his neck.  Grandpa Will ignored Lois and continued...

In the early hours of darkness, in a far away land, the wind howled and hail assailed the slopes of Mount Kismet. Only lit by the light of the moon, one could see a crazed scientist hiking up the mountain dragging a huge sledge of wrangled scrap.  All the villagers who dwelt below Mount Kismet knew the story of the crazed scientist, who every night trawled the mountain dragging his supplies, but no one had ever spoken to him. Some said he was lonely, others just thought he was wild, but a word to the wise, he was in fact- a genius.

That night he stumbled, at the peak of the mountain into his cave in a mad frenzy.  His work was nearly complete!

 For seventy three years the scientist had been working on ‘Project Automaton’. This project spawned out of a fateful night when wife Amelia, whilst searching for supplies for her husband, tripped and plummeted from Mount Kismet. That night she gave up her ghost and with it went the scientist’s sanity.

He had captured her ghost in a small, peculiar jar that bared an ancient symbol, the Ouroborus; The ‘eternal return’.          

The scientist believed that if he built a machine that replicated his wife he could breathe her ghost into the machine and she would come back to life.

 Tonight he added the last part to his machine.

 It was ready!

 Many scientists before him had laughed, “How stupid” they would say, “Every one knows you can’t bring a robot to life” and “Every one knows there is no such things as ghosts.” But this was the moment and he was about to find out if you can bring a machine to life.

He took the peculiar looking jar from the shelf and unscrewed the top. A whiff of perfume filled his nostrils. It was her.

 He locked his lips around the jar and he inhaled deeply inward, sucking every last drop of her ghost out of the jar. For a moment his heart felt warm. He then placed his lips over the machines and breathed out so hard he collapsed to the ground.

Feeling nostalgic from the perfume and a little light headed he pulled himself up and opened his eyes.

“And what do you think he saw?” Grandpa Will asked.

Little Lois shrugged.

The machine lay down in the same position as before and the ghost floated out of the cave towards the skies.

The scientist frantically grabbed the jar and ran out onto the mountains. He must catch her. The hail was hitting hard, the conditions were slippery. “Amelia” he shouted “Come back, come back!”

He jumped over great heights defying death over and over. How could he have been wrong, why didn’t she come back? He approached the very top of the mountain and he had her ghost in sight. He leaned over the edge, desperately reaching out.

Then the rocks became unsteady from underneath his feet and the scientist tumbled down Mount Kismet rolling and bashing into rock after rock, continuously being beaten by the hail.

From the ground he gazed up – he gave one last whimper as he saw her ghost float into space and cried a single tear.

All that he had hoped for, worked for and longed for had evaporated. The crazed scientist felt beaten and his heart broken. He looked down and saw that was not the only thing broken. 

Protruding from the torn flesh was not blood covered bone, but sparks of electricity and twisted metal. He was a robot.

After all this time, was what he had tried to prove in front of him? Was he the real ghost in the machine?

The hail turned to rain.

By this time little Lois had fallen sound asleep; sure enough dreaming of her own stories she will one day tell to her grandchildren. Grandpa Will pulled a blanket over her shoulders and kissed her on the head. Grabbing his stick he walked wearily over to the far side of the room where he unveiled a box bearing a familiar symbol- the ouroboros. He removed the key from around his neck and after many years passed opened the box. As he peaked inside, a tiny beam of light sat in the box, it was her  Grandpa Will opened a window and uttered the words “I love you”- before softly blowing the last part of Amelia’s ghost into the sky.

 He cried a single tear and then he finally fell asleep.

The End 

By Ellese Elliott

Art by Harry Wareham

The Sentient Rubik’s Cube

We sometimes like to perceive the world as an objective reality, but what if we were that objective reality to a subjective world that actually perceives us? What if it is us (who boldly like to make the claim of being empiricists) that actually were the experience to a rational ‘thinking’ and subjective world? Maybe David Hume’s argument regarding the problem of induction and the limitations of Knowledge could possibly fall down to the probability that we are nothing more than an object such as a Rubik’s cube that is manipulated into presenting different colours. These colours could be representatives of beliefs, ideologies, religious beliefs to emotions such as happiness and sadness. Just as we would like to believe that we are turning a Rubik’s Cube to find the right combination, it is the world that turns us in order to complete the puzzle.

As the saying goes ‘you have to try to think outside of the box,’ well maybe we are a box! What I mean by this is that we can detect an external presence (being the “objective” world), and as we can detect ‘it,’ it also detect us. Therefore, if the world were to be a ‘rational thinker’ and we were nothing more than a historical development for the world to experience, then surely this might explain just as an experience does not last forever, we also do not last forever and in fact we have more in common with experiences than the rational world has with us. The world is constantly in motion and yet we are not and the world, quite obviously, has a robust mechanism that must be rational as we are constantly pursuing empirical data to find some form of rational argument to prove our theories.

If we were supposed to be rational agents, we need not look around the corner to see what we could find, we would know just what was round the corner as we would be rational agents and who else but the world should know their body better than anyone to know just what is round the corner? I think it may be fair to suggest that maybe we are not philosophers at all and could be nothing more than literature that the world studies in order to shape a better future and a better world. We are made up of words after-all!

Sean Ash

Untitled

I live in one moment by likely default

perched from the surface of a granule of salt

not gazing not blaming for all who take fault

in the pleasure of enormity

not professing our infancy

until we’ve all seen it

and can agree.

I live in one body, I do not possess

but somehow I do perceive my chemical dress

and perch to observe one growing nest

in the groans of desire

sugary envy to perspire

until we’ve all seen it

and may inquire.

I live in one mind written by men

perched from the summit of one gallant pen

drunk near the litter of their community den

in the gossip of black ink

pooled into one celestial sink

until we’ve all seen it

and then think.

David McDonagh