Sunday, November 23, 2008
A Preference for Insects (Waking Up Changed)
I don’t care what Kafka says. It’s one thing to wake up in the morning as a bug, but quite another to wake up as a nihilist. Offered only the two, I’d opt for insecthood any day. At least I’d have a tangible shell to protect me instead of a melting, plastic shield of dying beliefs.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Razor's Edge (Psychedelics and Morality)
To say that a particular idea is “right” or “wrong” to “some particular degree” is the same as to say the social acceptance aggregate, as determined by my interests, is either strong or weak. Which is to say, the idea is more or less useful around certain kinds of people (the ones I need to stay linked to).
Suicide and Inertia
"I" continue to exist to the extent that my behaviors are meaningful to others. This is because socially determined meanings are necessary for movements to be actions, and actions are further subsumed as meaningful with reference to "me" as the person acting.
In other words, "I" am a product of the attitudes held by others about the meanings of my behaviors.
But this implies a kind of enslavement, since my self is constructed from outside of me and apart from my own choices. When I recognize this slavery, I may feel threatened and become disillusioned with my world. This results in my innate desire for freedom, a desire to be self-determining in the construction of my identity and my choices for acting.
But I can only attain this freedom if I refuse to behave in ways that will be meaningful to others. Self-determined "actions" lose the meaningfulness that makes them "actions," so that they become mere events. As a result, my desire to escape from enslavement is also an embrace of inaction.
Freedom, then, is only achievable through inertia.
Inertia and suicide are two ways of describing the same experience. The desire for suicide is the desire to abstain from meaningful movement (action) and suicide is the successful attainment of such abstinence. It seems, however, that that such a mission cannot be entirely authentic since it sets up inertia (escape, suicide, etc.) as an objective. By replacing old objectives with a new one, I have simply assumed another socially construct that underwrites the meaninfulness of my behaviors (making them actions).
This suggests that, to really commit suicide, I cannot not use a gun or a knife (which would involve meaningful behaviors and objectives, ie., actions). The authentic suicide requires a resting in inertia, voilitional stillness. This is death through inaction, outside of choice (illustrated by the passive starvation of the protagonist in Knut Hamsun's Hunger).
On this account, suicide is the cessation of action, sustained non-movement without deliberation, complete inertia. I have described this elsewhere as "trading places with the vagrant," by which I relinquish all possessions and commitments that provide me with identity. This is "death" in a very profound sense, is it not?
So, in the end, freedom can only occur in the process of pure suicide. If tomorrow I will not exist, I am free to do anything today.
Writing on Napkins (An Unsober Reflection on Freedom)
(transcribed from notes on my bar napkins)
Availability as potential absence = alcoholism.
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When, finally, I can see objects as objects, I will be free.
And in any event, there are two ways to be free: To be (1) attuned to the social structures, and (2) to be entirely naïve with respect to them. The dances between the former and the latter are the reason I’m an alcoholic.
The fragility of a social structure is determined by the degree to which you recognize it as a social structure. The neurotic (psychotic?) tend to shatter everything because, in the light of their gazes, everything becomes fragile and a path can be laid in any direction.
Falling Asleep
When you’re at the edge of sleep, the little nervous geists in the back of your head begin to emerge, and your fears flash before your eyes. The events and things and people that you do not want to look at, they are always there, waiting to look at you.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
A Note About Existing Things
In short, things are. The rest is a sham, wrapping paper, undebugged programming, a history of contests woven into protective garments that cannot be removed, only decayed (death).
Why I Stopped Believing In "God"
I spent years searching for resources to prop up my dying faith. I sifted through every potentially useful theological and philosophical apparatus I could find. Every one of them dissolved in my hands.
I can no longer look into the eyes of the suffering—all of their eyes, past and present—and believe that a God of any interesting sort is really out there. If there is a God, this God is either a malicious tyrant, an impotent sub-deity, or somehow preoccupied with other things. In any event, such gods hardly suffice for religious devotion.
“The steward of the senate named Gering; old Mrs. Kanzler; the tailor’s fat wife; the woman cook of Mr. Mengerdorf; a stranger; a strange woman; Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wurtzburg; the old smith of the court; an old woman; a little girl, nine or ten years old; a younger girl, her little sister; the mother of the two little aforementioned girls; Liebler’s daughter; Goebel’s child, the most beautiful girl in Wurtzburg; a student who knew many languages; two boys from the Minster, each twelve years old; Stepper’s little daughter; the woman who kept the bridge gate; an old woman; the little son of the town council bailiff; the wife of Knertz, the butcher; the infant daughter of Dr. Schultz; a little girl; Scharts, canon at Hach…”
Need I say more?
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The above—the problem of evil—is my main reason for giving up on God (god?). My second is the one cited below, a modified excerpt from a paper I wrote in grad school:
In spite of what many sociologists say, I am of the opinion that religion in a robust sense isdying. Its death is not identifiable with, say, reduced denominational loyalty or neglect of traditional doctrine, but with a trajectory of retreat accompanied by a demotion in function. It has assumed a defense strategy that has been formed in response to modern threats to religion.
First, what do I mean by “demotion in function”? I arrive at this idea by dividing the history of American religion into two stages: before and after the onset of the “quest culture.” Before the quest culture, in keeping with the larger part of the history of religion, institutions and doctrines functioned chiefly as explanation. Backed by divine authority and revelation, they answered questions like: Where does the world come from? Where do humans come from? and, Why did this or that event happen? In the late modern era, however, this role was gradually discredited owing, among other things, the increasing acceptance of scientific forms of explanation. For instance, only a hundred years ago, if the average American were asked, Where did the world come from?, he or she would probably reference the doctrine of creation: “God made it.” These days, fewer and fewer people would respond this way, citing instead the Big Bang or some other science-related explanation. This suggests that religion has largely lost its validity as a way of explaining how the nuts-and-bolts of the world hold together and where they come from. So, when I say that religion has been demoted in its function, I mean that, except in some Fundamentalist enclaves, religion is no longer allowed to function as an authoritative explanation of the outside world (at least, not to the degree that it had in the past). Viewed from another angle, this may simply be described as a feature of societal differentiation: religion no longer supplies an overarching umbrella of explanation and has become, alongside politics and the arts, one of many parts of a fragmented social order.
Second, in response to this demotion, religion has been forced to protect itself by assuming a trajectory of retreat. This notion relates to the fact that American spirituality has become so radically individualized and psychological. If, as I suggest, religion has lost its authority as explanation, the individualization of religion appears to be a kind of defense strategy: threatened by the growing dominance of secular explanations of the “outside world,” religion has retreated to the inner sphere of subjective experience where it can perform another, more practical role and can insulate itself from scientific critique. So, whereas scientists can easily question a religious claim like, “God makes the wind blow,” they would be hard pressed to question a claim like, “When meditating, I often feel the presence of my inner goddess.” In short, I am suggesting that American quest religion is, in part, a prophylactic strategy that keeps science on the outside where it can do no harm to religion, and which keeps religion on the inside where it will not feel threatened by science (although, of course, I have more than just science in mind).
In my view, this conception helps unify many features of contemporary American religion. 1) Quest: without the explanatory apparatus of religion to map out the world, it has become commonplace for people to feel as if they have lost their moorings. 2) Autonomy: without an overarching explanatory structure, it has become necessary for religion to make more modest claims about the scope of religious “truth”; a single belief system is no longer true for everybody, it need only be true “for me.” 3) God as immanent: secular thought forms have made it difficult to maintain that there is a personal being “out there” who, from time to time, interferes in worldly affairs. It seems more plausible to say that God is within my subjective experience since, in that way, no one except myself can have access to it. Having lost explanatory transcendence, God has become so immanent as to be above critique. 4) Achieved religious identity: if religion has no power to explain my place in the universe and if it is not “out there” in the structures of reality imposing itself upon me, I must trust my inner voice and, reflexively, choose my own religious identity. More examples could be cited, but these will suffice to illustrate how my second claim can unify a broad range of religious phenomena. Put differently, my claim is simply this: just as a turtle retracts its head and appendages within its protective shell upon seeing a predator, so American religion has retreated to a place within where it can avoid potential attacks from science and other non-religious modes of explanation.
The History of Philosophy as Theater
A theater-performance demands its characters. If a character is needed, the playwright senses it and the play, as if by its own volition, fills itself in. Situations open up vacuums.
The history of philosophy is a theater-performance and it, too, demands its characters. The pre-socratics brought a demand for a Diogenes, Hegel’s dominion brought a demand for a Kirkegaard, the analytics brought a demand for a Rorty.
But there is no playwright. We must write ourselves in. To repeat with a different emphasis, we—that is, we philosophers—MUST write ourselves in (when our performance is demanded). The performance, the situation, elects us to this call.
Further, we must play our part properly, if grudgingly, as it is given to us. We must wear the masks we are given (even when they are ugly).
To be concerned about the performance, about its successful progression, is to be concerned about truth. Therefore, to demand our own place, to demand that we ourselves BE the whole of the performance—the ones having “arrived at truth”—is to detract from the success of the project. Imagine a worker assigned to drive bolts into the north tower of the
It is not attaining the form of the good, but being a part of the means by which it is attained, that we must strive for.
Losing My Moorings
I have lost my moorings and see only a horizon, and don’t have a clue where I am going or why.
When I was younger, my life had two anchors. The first was my set of objectives in life: my career, religious goals, etc. Second was my structure of meaning, the way I ordered my world, religiously or otherwise. These two anchors were crucial in keeping me motivated and sane, but now I fear they are slipping away.
The first to go has been the “structure of meaning” anchor. When I contracted that God-awful disease in college (which they call “philosophy”), my assumptions about the world began first to shift from one place to another, and after that to disintegrate as if by old age. I am like a piece of metal that is severed because it has been bent too many times in the same place. My disease has so progressed that now I believe in bad faith, as a way to cope, but not in any deep or complete way. My beliefs do not permeate me anymore; they are out on the surface; they are thin and fragile.
The next to go was the “objectives” anchor. I am no longer certain of what I want to accomplish in my life. My greatest fear—that I will wake up one day near the end of my life and discover that it had all been quite ordinary—is beginning to come true, if no other reason than that my destiny is slipping away from me, leaving me behind with “the masses in mediocrity.” I have no destiny anymore.
My destiny is gone because it can find no purchase: I have a bifurcated mind. On one side there is a chaotic mind that has given up on the hope of finding any real meaning in the world, or order, or reason to exist and go on. This mind sees only the “booming buzzing confusion” and, because it is ruled by nothing but doubt, cynicism and disappointment with all of its previous attempts at ordering the world, it wants to do nothing and would become nothing if it had not been coupled with the other side of my mind. The other side of my mind is the fantasy that I choose to accept. It is my ostensible reality, framed not out of conviction but out of…what?...my need to survive, to cope, to at least enjoy life a little?
The two sides are at war and I am detecting a trendline that is forecasting the winner. It says that the chaotic mind will ultimately be the victor, that I will lose that last bit of conviction that keeps me from throwing in the towel. Sometimes I feel like writing off the world—the whole damn thing, the whole, stupid damn thing—as one big absurdity.
What is better, lady piety? to be honest with myself and give in to nihilism, or to squelch the chaos with lies about meaning and order, and gratify my thirst for pleasure?
Nietzsche makes my wine taste bad.
I suppose one should say that, in this case, it is wiser to be the hedonist; at least it promotes survival.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Poetry Defined
Poetry is honesty…broken up into chunks.
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