My first chapter is an argumentation against what I will refer to as naturalism. By that I mean the naive naturalism of those who view the way things are as indicative of what is desirable. If I am a certain way, that is desirable because I am me. It's good to be me and not to be different from me, not even in a way that would make me different in the future to what I am today. Well, not unless I am passively rendered different. But it is always wrong to actively interfere with life's passive processes. Passivity is goodness. That which is done to you is better than that which you do. Especially and above all don't do anything to yourself, or cause a different chain of events to flow than the natural processes.
To be God in relation to oneself is the ultimate sin.
So naturalism is desirable as it offers many benefits, such as saving energy by not engaging actively, of avoiding the sense of guilt and sin by taking on an active role, it avoids the possibility of making a mistake and it does not require that one should have to think too deeply about right and wrong or who makes the rules that govern the world.
I'm not sure why I've ended up writing in a religious vein, when I am not religious. I find conventional religion creepy and it fills me with despair. I find the negation of religion, if anything, creepier, because religion is the syrup that fills in the cracks of every meaning. It seeps into all aspects of life. Those who think they don't embrace the world religiously would have to track down every trace of human meaning and make sure that there's no unwarranted reverence for all manner of things existing just because they are the way they are. But if one reveres certain aspects of life more than others, there is likely a religious feeling of devotion at work. One upholds certain views or values reverentially, including within secularism.
By contrast, pure objectivity isn't that much fun at all. Take a look at that sentence, these words on a page. They're actually meaningless in and of themselves. Unless you imbue them with meaning, they will stay exactly as they are, objectively black squiggles on a light screen background. You can attribute meanings to what I have written, but by doing so you are adding the syrup of subjectivity into the boring cracks of mundane life. The words mean nothing and none of this means anything. That only starts to change when you take it to heart, evince some reverence, and pour your own sense of meaning back into the words. And then they come alive.
It's up to you how you take things and what you reverence. In any case you are bringing some things to life without realizing it and leaving other word-corpses dead, without much sympathy. Objectivity be damned! You never had any in the first place and wouldn't like it as a whole if you were able to obtain it.
But the mind does not reveal the mechanisms of the mind or how this whole light show is created. You're locked inside the spectacle your mind invents for you, and when you say you crave objectivity, what you really mean is you desire security and assurance.
Hence, your most magnificent contrivance: You project "God" outside of yourself as if to assure yourself that the whole spectacle in your mind were not created by you. Now everything seems so much more secure, "objective" and reassuring. You're no longer responsible for anything and meanings seem to make themselves, without your agency. You're also off the hook regarding all those things listed in the third paragraph above, which would make you feel shaky about your project of being here on Earth and staying alive.
You'll have to forgive me, as I am, myself, shaky. I've had horrible experiences. And every time I trundle off somewhere when nature calls, I read a few more passages from Georges Bataille, which adds up to my feeling mentally disturbed. A bit.
I'm occasionally afraid I might suddenly cause my own irrevokable annihilation with just one false move. Everything seems intensified -- but very, very shaky.
But word corpses no longer frighten me, although I am aware that life moves in and out of them. They're at the mercy of the reader, really, whether they can come to life or stay buried and musty in their catacombs.
In any case, there's nothing natural about this. One chooses, rather, what one will allow oneself to see -- and bit by bit one opens up to realising how much of reality is carried around in your bone-encapsulated mind, while what is out there waits to see if you will have the courage to approach it.
To approach what one does not yet know is terrifying. It's easier to say that everything already in my head is all there is, that this is more than sufficient for me and represents what is out there in the world as well. The fact that you will die at some point thoroughly denies your theory, but don't let that bother you. All is well for now -- for now.
But then we have a reverence for what we know, which is basically what reflects our own presuppositions about what is out there and indeed how reality works. It's good. It's not bad. We revere things -- and in so doing, we place our meaning into them. We simply cannot stop. We are driven wild.
Objective, dead reality entices us and before you know it off we've gone again -- creating meaning. I created a meaning in the past that the male gender represented God and women were the reflection of man's glory. Then I realized what I was doing and recanted. That had been an error.
After all of this, I understand how easy it can be to make mistakes. We desire and expect our own views to return to us via the reflection of the exterior world, but then there's a distortion and some dissonance. Something has shifted either internally or externally. The result is less than satisfactory -- we feel cheated. The emotional mind demands its equilibrium: when words become less meaningful, less efficacious and more corpselike, it's time to move on.
I left that state of mind and entered into another. That was better. Soothing. Cool.
To revere is to stay enthralled, which is to say among the living. Not to be able to revere means the old gods are dying. We should create new ones or be condemned to lifeless objectivity, mere words upon a page.
I'm more sympathetic with the human condition having read Bataille -- but I also find it more hopeless. How few people there are who can break out beyond naturalism, to look beyond their heads. Even those who are able condemn themselves to states of freefloating ghastliness. There will be few who can understand what they have said.
Better to be a philosopher like Nietzsche who rouses people on the basis of familiar reconstructions -- an old God who has died but is somehow reappearing.
People get enthused by what they know, because, you know, it's reassuring.
If there's another way to live than looking out beyond one's head it may not be advised. To live life as a ghostly apparition gives one much dexterity and freedom, but the words one writes will have a different meaning, depending on who on is. To depart too far from convention means to lose one's substance almost in entirety. One has to stay a little closer to it, or others will not breathe in their life-inducing breath.
But reverence sometimes demands that one steps out further afield. It sometimes works that way. Don't ask me why.
To be God in relation to oneself is the ultimate sin.
So naturalism is desirable as it offers many benefits, such as saving energy by not engaging actively, of avoiding the sense of guilt and sin by taking on an active role, it avoids the possibility of making a mistake and it does not require that one should have to think too deeply about right and wrong or who makes the rules that govern the world.
I'm not sure why I've ended up writing in a religious vein, when I am not religious. I find conventional religion creepy and it fills me with despair. I find the negation of religion, if anything, creepier, because religion is the syrup that fills in the cracks of every meaning. It seeps into all aspects of life. Those who think they don't embrace the world religiously would have to track down every trace of human meaning and make sure that there's no unwarranted reverence for all manner of things existing just because they are the way they are. But if one reveres certain aspects of life more than others, there is likely a religious feeling of devotion at work. One upholds certain views or values reverentially, including within secularism.
By contrast, pure objectivity isn't that much fun at all. Take a look at that sentence, these words on a page. They're actually meaningless in and of themselves. Unless you imbue them with meaning, they will stay exactly as they are, objectively black squiggles on a light screen background. You can attribute meanings to what I have written, but by doing so you are adding the syrup of subjectivity into the boring cracks of mundane life. The words mean nothing and none of this means anything. That only starts to change when you take it to heart, evince some reverence, and pour your own sense of meaning back into the words. And then they come alive.
It's up to you how you take things and what you reverence. In any case you are bringing some things to life without realizing it and leaving other word-corpses dead, without much sympathy. Objectivity be damned! You never had any in the first place and wouldn't like it as a whole if you were able to obtain it.
But the mind does not reveal the mechanisms of the mind or how this whole light show is created. You're locked inside the spectacle your mind invents for you, and when you say you crave objectivity, what you really mean is you desire security and assurance.
Hence, your most magnificent contrivance: You project "God" outside of yourself as if to assure yourself that the whole spectacle in your mind were not created by you. Now everything seems so much more secure, "objective" and reassuring. You're no longer responsible for anything and meanings seem to make themselves, without your agency. You're also off the hook regarding all those things listed in the third paragraph above, which would make you feel shaky about your project of being here on Earth and staying alive.
You'll have to forgive me, as I am, myself, shaky. I've had horrible experiences. And every time I trundle off somewhere when nature calls, I read a few more passages from Georges Bataille, which adds up to my feeling mentally disturbed. A bit.
I'm occasionally afraid I might suddenly cause my own irrevokable annihilation with just one false move. Everything seems intensified -- but very, very shaky.
But word corpses no longer frighten me, although I am aware that life moves in and out of them. They're at the mercy of the reader, really, whether they can come to life or stay buried and musty in their catacombs.
In any case, there's nothing natural about this. One chooses, rather, what one will allow oneself to see -- and bit by bit one opens up to realising how much of reality is carried around in your bone-encapsulated mind, while what is out there waits to see if you will have the courage to approach it.
To approach what one does not yet know is terrifying. It's easier to say that everything already in my head is all there is, that this is more than sufficient for me and represents what is out there in the world as well. The fact that you will die at some point thoroughly denies your theory, but don't let that bother you. All is well for now -- for now.
But then we have a reverence for what we know, which is basically what reflects our own presuppositions about what is out there and indeed how reality works. It's good. It's not bad. We revere things -- and in so doing, we place our meaning into them. We simply cannot stop. We are driven wild.
Objective, dead reality entices us and before you know it off we've gone again -- creating meaning. I created a meaning in the past that the male gender represented God and women were the reflection of man's glory. Then I realized what I was doing and recanted. That had been an error.
After all of this, I understand how easy it can be to make mistakes. We desire and expect our own views to return to us via the reflection of the exterior world, but then there's a distortion and some dissonance. Something has shifted either internally or externally. The result is less than satisfactory -- we feel cheated. The emotional mind demands its equilibrium: when words become less meaningful, less efficacious and more corpselike, it's time to move on.
I left that state of mind and entered into another. That was better. Soothing. Cool.
To revere is to stay enthralled, which is to say among the living. Not to be able to revere means the old gods are dying. We should create new ones or be condemned to lifeless objectivity, mere words upon a page.
I'm more sympathetic with the human condition having read Bataille -- but I also find it more hopeless. How few people there are who can break out beyond naturalism, to look beyond their heads. Even those who are able condemn themselves to states of freefloating ghastliness. There will be few who can understand what they have said.
Better to be a philosopher like Nietzsche who rouses people on the basis of familiar reconstructions -- an old God who has died but is somehow reappearing.
People get enthused by what they know, because, you know, it's reassuring.
If there's another way to live than looking out beyond one's head it may not be advised. To live life as a ghostly apparition gives one much dexterity and freedom, but the words one writes will have a different meaning, depending on who on is. To depart too far from convention means to lose one's substance almost in entirety. One has to stay a little closer to it, or others will not breathe in their life-inducing breath.
But reverence sometimes demands that one steps out further afield. It sometimes works that way. Don't ask me why.
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