Wairua

 

It is an interesting co-incidence that the Afterlife is the topic of the current Newsletter issue: yesterday I visited the very tip of New Zealand, where Māori beliefs have it that souls leap off the rocks and start their journey to Hawaiki, the original Māori homeland.  This starting point is Cape Reinga (pron. Rianga by Anglophones), for which the Māori is ‘Te Rerenga Wairua’, the flight of the spirits.  In this context rerenga is best translated as ‘leaping-place’.  But rerenga could also be translated as ‘refuge’ or ‘flight-place’, and wairua could be re-read as wai rua, water+two, i.e. two waters.  And indeed Cape Reinga is the meeting-place of two seas, the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea, between New Zealand and Australia.

According to Māori mythology, the spirits of the dead travel to Cape Reinga on their journey to the afterlife to leap off the headland and climb the roots of the 800 year old pohutukawa tree and descend to the underworld to return to their traditional homeland of Hawaiki, using the Te Ara Wairua, the 'Spirits' pathway'. At Cape Reinga they depart the mainland. They turn briefly at the Three Kings Islands for one last look back towards the land, then continue on their journey.  A spring in the hillside, Te Waiora-a-Tāne (the 'Living waters of Tāne'), also played an important role in Māori ceremonial burials, representing a spiritual cleansing of the spirits, with water of the same name used in burial rites all over New Zealand. 
In all this we are tempted to see the spirit as emerging from two bodies of water, perhaps a third, with the addition of the water to cleanse the soul.

But to my mind, the afterlife is a short wee nap till the End of Time.

Martin Prior

Restitution

Restitution

Too often we say the words together:
after-life
as if they denote some place,

what we really mean is
life-after-life:
a conceptual weakness.

For the atheist
there is just this:

after life
molecules
dirt
blood flowing back
into the mix

a perpetual awakening
from the dream of life;

one great long yawn
from this galaxy of cells.

Simon Leake

After the life of a philosophical story teller

I was asked to write a short story on a specific subject, by an old mischievous friend, who  remains,  still to this day, a perennial magician of great elusiveness. Who reveals nothing, and only operates on the planes of appearance. His soul, known to be neither black nor white, shudders along the parameters of this breathing organism. But I hate arbitrating stories around themes! As a rule, I do not allow any morsel of matter to provoke my bones into the motions of a story teller.  Any story written thus far has only been, seemingly and spontaneously, electrified by a force that reveals itself through me. And I write!

Alas, for some time now, I have not been stirred in this way. The magician reminded me that this is so, when he beckoned me to  write on a subject nearly as tricky as he; the afterlife. So what does a philosopher have to say today about this great, unexplorable subject and for what purpose has he beckoned me to do so? I am led to believe this is to engage the modern reader with an ancient question in a philosophical way. Also, that this activity may give me a sense of purpose. And already here,  there is something being said about life, that it can be, perceived to be,  purposeful.  The next question might be that, if life may be purposeful, is the afterlife, perhaps, purposeless? To explore the afterlife, one must clearly know what life is, in order to distinguish when it has ended, and what occurs after. To begin,  one may ask, can life be without purpose, or is purpose a defining feature of life? If purpose is a defining feature of life, and there exists something without purpose, but perhaps once had it, we may say that this thing is of the afterlife.

Wherever people walk, when asked,  they may articulate why they are walking.  The answer usually consists of the connective 'to'. For example, ''I am walking 'to' the king's castle'', I am walking 'to' my impending doom'', or ''I am walking 'to' firm up my bipeds''.  You could argue that you are walking 'away' from something, or someone, but away necessitates 'to'. People orientate their actions towards some goal. But what about other life forms?

Are other life forms actions purposeful? Plants move! Indeed, they may wilt and wither under an immense temperature, or gracefully spiral towards a lustrous light.  Although we may not suspect that plants know  or can articulate sentences with the connective 'to' or 'away', it may be argued that plants nonetheless move with purpose. However, we can think of other peculiar instances.  Some people may walk, not because they aim 'to' or 'away'. Rather, they may say that they walk with no aim, to get nowhere. Here, it may look as though walking is aimless, yet the aim is within the activity itself, and  internal to it. Sometimes, one just wants 'to' walk.  We are here trying to understand what are the essential characteristics of life, so we may distinguish life from what is after it, and purpose appears to be, thus far, a defining feature.

Unfortunately, upon further reflection, I am getting into a pickle. If I am unsure what the essential defining characteristics of life are, how am I citing instances of life? There is a presupposition being made of what life already is, when I evoke such instances. I could go with such presuppositions, and take the modern scientific view of life. Something is living if it expresses a number of basic functions such as, breathing, excreting and moving.

What is 'afterlife' is then what becomes of that thing when it ceases to express said functions. That is on what is life,  but we can still ask further, what has that thing become when it no longer carries out those particular functions?

Alas, even if we admit of  some scientific assumptions on the defining features of life, there is another presupposition; namely that there exists a hard and fast distinction between life and the afterlife. After all, they may indeed not be opposites. Nor may the afterlife be the negation of life. So what if there isn't such a stark distinction?

What comes after life, could be a lot like living; with only one or few features to distinguish it from life.  Blurred lines, matrices and overlapping qualities and quantities  could interweave into something which is beyond life and the afterlife. Beyond the binaries of barbarian thought! A mystical force that spontaneously excites the nerves into the motions of a writer that keep us on the cusp of banality and creativity. 

Yet there are many maybes, speculations and postulates for an unenthused story teller. And one simply cannot begin to tell tales on such a tall subject without the invisible force that communicates through me, as I am stricken to the world of appearance, with the tricky magician who too is hiding within it. Oh when will I see again and be able to illuminate life?

Regrettably, this will be my first non-story, as I cannot summon the ability to write on what is such an impenetrable subject in a philosophical manner, unless I enter the realms of pure fancy and then I will be in the realm of  fiction. But that was never the aims of this philosopher.

One day, soon, I shall return to transcribing  The Philosophy Tales. 

Ellese Elliott

Afterlife

To determine the existence of an afterlife with absolute certainty is an impossible task. Nevertheless, it is possible to discuss this concept and how it is expressed in human beings. The aim of the following text is to analyse the concept of the afterlife and raise some key points of importance related to this phenomenon.

To understand the development of the concept of afterlife in humans, it is crucial to address the fact that  human beings are the only creatures to consider the idea of  an afterlife, as they are the only ones capable of conceiving their own death. This is not just due to the fact that human beings are ‘conscious’, but because they have a ‘first person’ perspective that ‘makes possible an inner life, a life of thoughts that one realizes are her own’ (Baker, 2007). This gives human beings the ability to philosophically examine the nature of existence, different from other creatures. Human beings are not capable of existing without a body, and this corporeal form becomes the object of the first person reference. According to the realization of a first person perspective and the body being an object of human reflection, the possibility of the idea of one's own death rises when the existence of biological dead is faced.

At this point, a cultural scientist (epidemiologist) would argue that religious notions are spread through human social groups and are acquired as part of a process of ‘cultural selection’. Religious notions are not only expressed in strictly and declared religious individuals. This is a strong factor that supports the presence of an afterlife in human ideas, especially because it plays a big role in shaping the way this afterlife is conceived.

Intrinsic to human reasoning, there are some phenomena that shape our understanding and considerations of reality. In the case of an afterlife, there are two key phenomena. The first of them is ‘promiscuous teleology’ and the other is the existence of intuitive ontologies. Human reasoning is characterized by a ‘promiscuous teleology’ a capacity that ‘causes us to see meaning and intentionality in everything that happens, we automatically postulate an agent as an explanation of various events; often this is some god-like concept’ (Pyysiäinen & Hauser, 2010). The human being sees its body and its ‘own’ as an object that needs an explanation or an intention. The purposeful values that we attribute to reality are strongly determined by intuitive ontologies: non-deliberate reflections which we have evolved, a ‘set of expectations about the kind of things to be found on the world.’ (Boyer, 2000). 

These two factors describe a human behaviour in which there is a need to answer the question, what is going to happen to me after I die? And by means of its intuitive ontologies, it will try to describe the process in a set of categories.

There are different sets of categories that may fit under the afterlife process, but only one, and probably the most important, will be discussed. It is the notion of the existence of a metaphysical part of human beings. This describes the way that biological death is not the ‘end’ as there is a being that escapes the physical changes.

Helen de Cruz says: ‘We reason about other people’s actions not in terms of their bodily properties but in terms of invisible mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. As a result, we can easily imagine disembodied minds.’.  This phenomenon is also highlighted by Bering. He analyses a study with an emphasis on determining the attributes that humans give to a dead mouse. Young children were demonstrated to consider the mouse's mind as still active, even though they knew the biological functions –including the brain- were over.

The most remarkable finding was that the concept of an afterlife does not seem to be part of a cultural, social or religious education but it seems to be part of the natural default ‘setting’. This is supported by the fact that the adults and older children were not that likely to point out these attributes. It is therefore possible to state that the idea of the existence of a ‘disembodied’ existence after biological death is possible without a religious paradigm informing part of the process.

According to the previously stated ideas, it is possible to suggest that the intuition of an afterlife breaks social barriers. It is inherent in human beings, and needs to be addressed outside just a religious view. This concept is ‘meta-religious’ and requires an embracing insight.

The afterlife, or its contrary, the end of existence in the biological dead continue to be a plausible ideas for religious and secular individuals. It is too hard for humans to consider any other kind of alternative for our existence, due to our Intuitive ontologies.

Therefore the afterlife makes up part of the existential paradigm. Human beings are incapable of embracing the idea of what is to exist or not after biological death and try to give a value to it in any of its expressions, even if it is the debatable ‘non-existence’. 

Julian Santamaria

Philosophers in the market place!

Civic Liberalism: self-image and reality

Herewith another brief contribution.  Last time I was looking at economic liberalism, now I shall look at civic liberalism and its self-image, and consider the reality in the pecking order of exploitation.

So Picture One is the self-image for an economic liberal. It defines authority, as regulating the market-place but not the market forces.  Civic liberalism sees itself as confronting authority, asserting the rights of ‘Man’.  Feminism might be regarded as an applied form, operating within a society it seeks to change, substituting ‘men’ for ‘authority’ and ‘women’ for ‘society’.  In fact civic liberalism conflates limited resources, skills and expertise and the supply curve into ‘authority’ since it is not sensitive to the economy:

Well, let us simply roll on the reality.

Now we see that far from confronting each other, they are intricately related, but have different skills, and different cultures, the latter, in yellow, not on the critical path of exploitation.  The second diagram characterises people who I would call secondary exploiters.

Once again we have the grey, and the various freedoms are no longer white, and we see grey: the ignorance and fear of those they jointly exploit.

The culture of those exploited has a place in Marxist interpretation of culture.  In particular the term subaltern was coined by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (subalterno in Italian).  According to Wikipedia:

“In critical theory and post-colonialism, subaltern is the social group who are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland. In describing "history told from below", the term subaltern derived from the cultural hegemony work of Antonio Gramsci, which identified the social groups who are excluded from a society’s established structures for political representation, the means by which people have a voice in their society.”

However, in characterising exploitation as an economically-driven relationship between the cultures of exploiters and exploited, I am not focussing on social groups who are “geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [again my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland.”  I am talking about people within the hegemonic power structure.

For me it is the secondary exploiters who are partially if not totally outside the hegemonic power structure, though they depend on it.  And it is this degree of cultural independence which looks like individual choice.

And the capitalism of the primary exploiters is still a cancer, which the hegemonic powers try to protect from its host.  And the cancer still continues to move forward, like a drunken crab, conscious only of its very immediate surroundings.

Martin Prior

Reverence and Happiness

I just had the fortune of gazing up at a full moon, reflecting the light of the sun through lazy, misty night clouds. The celestial body is so far away that I can't even register it with my sense of depth perception. It is ludicrously huge and distant.

I never made the full moon appear. It was just there, unexpectedly. Nor did I play any part in engineering the sky, which appears massive and profound from this open-air space I call home. From here the sky is not a slither of blue between buildings, as it is for most in the urban sprawl. It is a vast canvas, and I can see the sun rising on one side of the world and setting on the other so much that the process has become embodied within me.

Depth, distance, size and scale is integrated into life out here. Wonder carries with it. This wider sense takes me somewhere further than moment to moment happiness - they create reverence for the cosmos by making me part of it.

Without a sense of reverence and wonder and eternal mystery, how flat our lives.

This is not to promote lack of understanding like some romantic rube. We have scientific tools that can tell us how far the moon is from the earth, or even take us there to have a proper gander at it.

The availability of these facts do nothing to remove the sheer poetic joy of the moon in this moment. For perhaps it is gazing back at me, and feels like I am some small part of its perception.

Imagine not having that sense of art or poetry.

How terrifying it is to think that we may live in a future where vast walls surround us and we lose all contact with the Cosmos which created and sustains us. Once we lose this sense we lose reverence.

And where else can that lead but to the moment-to-moment emptiness of mass-hedonism; the second-rate happiness which plagues our age and tramples the natural joys beneath its clumsy feet.

For there is a difference between the flickering light of a fire and the scientific canopy of a lightbulb. The latter is more useful, but the former is more terrible and passionate and beautiful.
 
The moon is high in the sky tonight, and nothing of human contrivance can match its wonder - except perhaps the conversations in the corridors of philosophers

Selim 'Selim' Talat.

Last Week's Questions

Last week's questions:

1) What is an individual? Is it possible to divide human beings from the world / environment in such a distinct way?

Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). It is only possible for an individual to make such a distinction on their own behalf.

2) What does it mean to be rational? Is the acquisition of wealth and power a rational goal?

Goals are axiomatic. Actions can only be categorised as rational or otherwise in the context of their probable efficacy in achieving a goal.

3) Is it idealistic to think that capitalism makes those who deserve it rich in light of the economic crash? Is pure capitalism as utopian as pure socialism?

A1. Yes. A2. Both require a benevolent arbiter. Finding such an arbiter is utopian.

Answered by Michael Bryant

Letters and answers

Letters and Answers

The Philosophy Newsletter is a very variable enjoyment, but it comes as a shock to see the ridiculous self-centred balderdash of Ayn Rand still being put forward as a worthy basis for a way of life.

Her influence on the world of business, economics and government has been entirely bad, in that it justifies greed and selfishness as the basis of a way of life.  Her philosophical image of the world has been the basis of the trend over the recent decades for the rich to get richer and the poor poorer, because the rich believe they deserve their "rewards", and they can use their money to influence government policy in their favour and create or destroy governments.

Her "individualists" are seen as struggling against others to achieve a better quality of life and keeping the world going by filling wage packets and paying taxes, but that is rubbish.

The vast majority of them start off rich anyway, and those that become rich make their fortunes by finding new ways of acquiring wealth without directly competing with their established rivals.

They make sure they don't fill any more paypackets than they absolutely have to and put as little in as they can get away with.

They demand lower taxes and find ways to avoid paying them wherever possible.

I could go on at length, but that would mean looking carefully  - even scientifically - at what is happening in the real world.

Putting that stuff up as the basis of a philosophical argument is making philosophy look ridiculous.

Sid Gould