GRUENWALD TO MASCOLO
WHAT IS GREAT IN MAN IS THAT HE IS A BRIDGE… F. NIETZSCHE
The preceding epigraph was fervently discussed by a group of four young artists in Dresden in the fifth year of the 20th century. The man from whom it originated had died a few years earlier in Weimar. He had suffered a mental collapse on the 3rd of January, 1989. An oft quoted anecdote relates that the catastrophic failure of his mind was consequent to the witness of a brutal beating of an old work-horse, wherein the exhausted animal was said to have been whipped across the face and eyes. The veracity of the story has been suspect by a century of literary sleuths. It was preceded by a report published a decade earlier in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: “There are lines in Nebkrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes.” It was also said that the man interceded by throwing his arms around the neck of the horse before he collapsed in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Aberto. After the incident he was questioned by the local constabulary for disturbing the peace, but the only peace that was broken had departed permanently from his mind—that, if nothing else, we know with certainty.
He was taken to a mental hospital. He dashed off a series of seemingly incomprehensible notes, the so called “mad notes” of the historical and literary record. One of them he signed Der Gekruezigte: “The crucified one.” It was said that his combative writings had unhinged his sensitive nature. It was said that the God of whose death he had written had exacted an Old Testament revenge, that the worms of tertiary syphilis had been directed to eat into the frontal lobes of his brain. It was said that whatever he had formally been, he was now, here at the tethered end of his consciousness—irretrievably insane.
Later he was released to the care of his mother and finally to a sister who would modify many of his books and reflections to satisfy her own dark ambitions. A decade after the original confinement he suffered a series of strokes–one in 1898, another in 1899. The final explosion in his once indomitable mind was detonated on the night preceding his demise. Frederich Nietzsche passed into history on the 25th of August, 1900—the onset of the 20th century.
Much speculation has attended the philosopher’s “bridge” reference from Also Sprach Zarathustra. In a preceding line he suggested the span was also a rope over an abyss. We know that the metaphor (be it a rope or bridge) was an egress to the Ubermench—the Overman—a bridge beyond the human, all too human to the infinite beyond the stars. The Ubermench has been much debated in the 20th century and was inspired by his devotion to the thought of the most sane man of the 19th—Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Man is a stream whose source is hidden… I am a surprised spectator of this ethereal water… there is no screen or ceiling between our head and the infinite heaven… The soul abolishes time and space—before its revelation space and nature shrink away… The soul gives itself alone, original and pure. It sees through all things… Man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle… there is no profane history—all history is sacred; the universe is represented in an atom—in a moment of time… the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and comes out into eternity… a certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious in men, as if they had been blasted with excess of light.
Those lines were gathered from an essay called The Over-Soul included in Emerson’s Essays, First Series—Emerson had studied the Upanishads in the early 1830s. The equation of the German’s Ubermensch and the American’s Over-Soul had traveled 2500 years from the forests of India as the Atman-Brahman dichotomy—a formulation that suggested to Nietzsche that man was a bridge and his destiny was to become the Ubermensch on a distant shore. The four men in Dresden contemplated just such a traversal. They had congregated to join the art of the distant past to the promise of an illimitable future—a future that had so recently closed in upon Nietzsche, yet remained opened to the four as they shared their sketches, woodcuts and paintings. That their work has continued to engage our sympathies is a testament to its value—it remains open to a 21st century audience not distilled by the interlude of time between its creation and our consideration.
The bridges in Dresden connected a millennium of cultural history. Some would be destroyed in a fire-storm designed by the Allies to incinerate the city’s cultural centers and the 25,000 Germans who lived in and adjacent to them. The design was flawlessly executed on February 15, 1945.
Each of the four artists lived beyond the exigencies of the fabled war to end all wars–one will commit suicide in 1938, but the other three will survive the second war that put a lie to the finality of the first. During the ascendancy of the National Socialists the group will have their paintings denounced as “decadent revelations of the Jewish soul.” One of the four had studied to be a theologian—the other three were Christian.
The Nazi’s declaration presaged the death of millions and was foreseen by Nietzsche in the previous century. It also prompted the expatriation of thousands of its artists and intellectuals who would never return to Germany—each of these four will live and die in their homeland. In 1905, however, death (with whom they would come to often dance) was still decades off with the whisper of its waltz. In 1905 they were very much alive and the bridge they were to build was impervious to war or fire-storm.
Its construction had begun over 30,000 years ago in caves in the south of France. It continued at a much later juncture early in the cinquecento along the Franco-Germanic border during years that were concurrent with the painting of a celebrated ceiling in a chapel in Rome. Another genius named Neithardit or more familiarly, Matthias Grunewald, created a masterpiece every bit as worthy as the one Michelangelo was laboring on at the same historical moment.
The Isenhiem Altarpiece transcends a rich artistic catalogue of eras. It is as if its multitudinous panels were magically conjured by Medieval incantations and propelled through the heights of the Northern Renaissance. It is an early encroachment of Mannerism—an era to which the elder Michelangelo will also notably contribute. Four centuries later the distended horror of its blood soaked Christ (Der Gekruezigte) and the transcendent color scheme of his triumphant ascension will collide with the aesthetic imaginations of those four visionaries of whom we have been speaking.
Its trajectory will then continue through Modern and Post Modern Art of the 20th century. Its contemporary manifestation in The Neue Wilde remains as primal as a fear that first fractured the sky in a foundational painting by Edvard Munch. We will find it fracturing our Facebook complacencies in the Deutschland imaginings of Bernd Zimmer and Rainer Fettling and again in Italy and America in the exquisite cavasses of Francesco Clemente and Bruno Mascolo.
Grunewald’s Altarpiece is the first of many paintings that will bridge their era to our own. Appropriately enough, on that day in the fifth year of their 20th century, the Dresden quartet of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Smitt-Rottluff, Eric Heckel and Fritz Beyl named their ambitious stylings after the central metaphor in the earlier cited epigraph of a fallen hero who had been blasted with light—they called it Die Brücke.
Beyond the Rabble
“Reflections”
on
Love, Truth, Intelligence, Religion, Animals, Science, Psychology, Culture, Modern Times, Philosophy,
Morality, Universe, Living and Dying,
Nature, Language, Sports,
Knowledge,
etc.
Jon Ferguson
Copyright 2019
Morges, Switzerland
For a long while he stood by the side of the road
Watching the cars go by.
Finally he flagged down a taxi.
“Where do you want to go?” the driver asked.
“Beyond the rabble,” he said.
Contents
FORWARD…4
Perspective…5
Language…12
Knowledge…15
Intelligence…18
Thinking…22
Truth…28
Culture…34
Mankind and Nature…39
Religion and Churches…47
Philosophy and Philosophers…54
Animals..61
Science…67
Thoughts on the Moral Quagmire…74
Living and Dying…80
Love…86
Psychology…95
Modern Times…106
Sports…122
Universe…125
Today’s Pessimists…131
ESSAYS and REVERIE
Getting Screwed…140
Guns…145
Judges…147
How Many Terrorist Attacks Will It Take? …151
The Death of Tragedy…153
Chomsky on Inequality…159
Chomsky on YouTube on the Republican Party…162
Fake News…165
Real Evil…168
Why Prostitutes Never Say Thank You…173
The Dream…174
Lantana…176
APHORISMS…179
TOMATOES…185
POSTSCRIPT…187
Forward
What you are looking at – perhaps holding in your hands – is a compilation of thoughts written by a man during a five-year period from 2014 to 2019. What are “thoughts”? What is a “man”? These are not silly questions; they are part of these reflections, which, in one way or another, are all about existence, human and otherwise. What “existence” itself is is also part of the deal. Seemingly even eminent scientists can’t agree. The thoughts have been arranged in categories because it was imagined that this would facilitate their accessibility and make them more chewable and digestible… Bon appétit!
J.F. Morges, Switzerland, March 10, 2019
Perspective
Education. – I took a biology class and never felt the miracle of life. I took a chemistry class and never felt the miracle of matter. I took a meteorology class and never understood how all weather was connected. I took a history class and was never taught that every moment of history is infinite. I took a class in psychology and nobody ever mentioned that the human head – like the head of an eagle – has been formed over millions and millions of years and hence can never ever be fully understood. I took a class in ethics and no one suggested that perhaps by its very nature existence is devoid of morality. I had four years of high school Spanish and the teacher spoke English ninety-nine percent of the time. I took a class on Heidegger and the teacher acted like Heidegger was God. I took a select senior seminar called “The Meaning of Life” with a Harvard professor. One day before the lesson I found myself in the water closet urinating next to him. We finished at the same time. I washed my hands. He didn’t. What the hell I thought, and I said, “Dr. Sorensen, didn’t your mommy teach you to wash your hands after you go pee-pee?” “No,” he replied, “my mommy taught me not to go pee-pee on my hands.” – That is the only thing I remember from the mouth of Dr. Sorensen.
We’re such a trusting species. – We trust our eyes to see what there is to see. We trust our ears to hear what there is to hear. We trust our noses to smell what there is to smell. We trust our brains to make sense of it all. Is it that hard to understand that with a different set of apparatuses everything would look, feel, even be…different?
Fog. – When there is fog, people say they can’t see very well. But their eyes are exactly the same as when there isn’t fog. With or without fog their capacity to see is exactly the same. They just don’t realize that when there isn’t fog, what they are seeing might just be another kind of… “fog”.
In one lifetime. – In one lifetime (mine) the declared “scientific” age of the earth has gone from 100,000 years to 1,000,000, to 10,000,000 to 1,000,000,000, and now to 13,000,000,000 years. What will our physicists and paleontologists say a thousand years from now?
Greatest weakness. – Is not man’s greatest weakness his lack of perspective? Not only can he not imagine that perhaps the earth has already gone through many cycles of existence – human or otherwise – but he forgets that everywhere he walks he is tromping on the decayed remains of the dead. Billions and billions and billions of dead creatures – human or otherwise – are every second under his toes, part of the dirt and dust of the earth.
Repeating the same mistake. – Every generation of men thinks it is the summit of “civilization”. We subtly and instinctively always feel that history has led up to us, rather than understanding we are just a small cog in the great wheel of Being. We think our modernity is modernity. – We humans lack perspective, but we are rarely short on overestimation of our importance in what we call “history”.
Perspectival penury. – Men always think their great accomplishments have never been done before. It is highly possible that everything happening now has already happened in a similar fashion, and not necessarily in another world, but possibly right here on this earth. It could have all been going on billions of years ago, it all got wiped away by a cataclysmic event, and it all eventually started up again to where we are now. Who knows? What we have now may well have even been surpassed millions and millions and millions of years…ago.
Vacation in Germany. – We were having breakfast in a small hotel in Rust, Germany, I looked closely at all the families eating around me and speaking the local language. Had the men been born sixty or so years earlier, they all would have been my enemies and we would have been trying to kill each other.
Overview. – I recently saw a short film in which former astronauts talked about the experience of being in space and looking at the earth from afar. They all said it gave them a “new” feeling and perspective about “life”. To finally be able to “step back” and get an overview of the world changed their lives forever and made them much more open-minded people. – This is a tragedy for humanity. Most people need to go into outer space to get a “perspective” on their beliefs, values, and customs, and to feel the “mystery” of life. Unfortunately, very few people ever get there. Hence, few ever get to inner space…
Reflections on the body. – It took me a long time to realize that I had a real body that was miraculously functioning without “me” doing anything at all. – The problem is that the body is too close to us. We take it for granted. Just like existence itself; people can’t step back and appreciate the fact that anything exists at all because they are in it, part of it, and they are too busy doing what they do to step back and observe themselves doing it. – Imagine what is going on in your body every second of every day…the heart, skin, the lungs, the blood, kidneys, liver, anus, tongue, the cilia in the digestive tract, the tendons, ligaments, muscles, bones, glands, penis, pelvis, vagina, pancreas, …everything…all connected to a so-called “brain”, the chef d’orchestre that is doing what it does without any help from “me”. – Naturally, we only notice our “body” when something goes wrong. When things are going right they are invisible, completely forgotten as we go about the business of our daily lives. – It took me almost sixty years to appreciate this body of mine, and your body, too. And a dog’s, a bird’s, a worm’s, an elephant’s, an alligator’s, a fish body, a snail body…the whole business of “bodies”! – As usual, we are blinded by our educations. As children we learn that God created man and that was that! No more questions asked! No marveling at the uniqueness, the miracle, the trillions of cells hanging together to make “me” or “you”. Even in science class in high school, the teachers did nothing to get me to appreciate “the body”. We memorized words for body parts, but the incredible phenomenon of the body itself – whether “evolved” or “created” or otherwise – was lost in the process. – My guess is that most people go through life without appreciating their bodies, just like most people go through life without appreciating “life”. I suspect this is exactly what happens in the “animal kingdom”. One thing is certain: most human minds are not able to step back and get a perspective on things. Fish probably cannot appreciate “water” until they have been pulled from the sea, lake, or river and are gasping their last gasps for…“water”! I wonder how many people, just before dying, finally are able to ask the question… “What was that?”
Night and day. – We humans see life divided into day and night, light and darkness. Half (roughly speaking of course) of the “time” we have light and half of the time it is dark outside. This is how we see the world – day and night! This is how we experience the world – day and night! This dichotomy is built into our minds and we extrapolate to “life”, to the universe, to being, i.e. we think the universe is divided into “day” and “night”! But of course with a little reflection we immediately realize that this dichotomy is nonsense for the rest of the universe. There is no darkness where the sun is. There is no light whatsoever where there are no suns or stars. The sun never “goes down” on the sun. The sun never “rises” on the sun. The asteroid that is flying through space has no light and darkness. This is a dichotomy only for us, as we spin and fly around our sun-star. The same is true for ideas like “up” and “down”, “left” and “right”, “in” and “out”, “high” and “low”, “good” and “evil”, “right” and “wrong”, “life” and “death”, “truth” and “untruth”, “war” and “peace”, “heaven” and “hell”, “love” and “hate”, and of course “day” and night”…. All these are part of our world, but have nothing to do with the rest of Being. Our vision of “life” is not a vision of “truth”, not eternal truth, not truth Truth. It is simply how the human being perceives, functions, and “lives”. No matter what we do, no matter how “intelligent” we become, no matter how deeply we look into space, we will always be looking into the mirror…the mirror of who we are and what we are made of, the mirror that reveals all our human parts and passions…. We who see the sun setting, the moon rising, the day breaking, and the night falling, we are the wandering visionaries that are always locked inside our spaceship! We will never see the “real” world. We will never unlock the box of truth. But so what? What does it matter? Why should we care? What good would it do? Our truths are functional lies. We need them. We can’t live without them.
Better world. – How do birds perceive electrical wires that pass through our cities and fields? Obviously as places to sit. How do young boys with BB guns perceive birds sitting on electrical wires? Obviously as things to shoot at. How do most people perceive boys who shoot at birds? Most likely as, “boys will be boys. In a better world, which perspectives need to change?
All-knowing gods. – What human prejudice has led people to create all-knowing gods? Wouldn’t gods who admitted they “didn’t know” serve the cause of tolerance and understanding far better than the heretofore omniscient ones that have produced war after war, intolerance after intolerance, and hate after hate?
Sorting Device. – Everything passes through a “mind”. Every word or sound that is heard passes through the mind of the hearer. Every thing that is seen passes through the mind of the seer. Every thing that is felt passes through the mind of the feeler. The mind that hears, sees, and feels might be that of a human being. It might be that of an animal. It might even be that of a detector (a detector of light or an intruder, for example). But it will be sorted out in some way by some kind of sorter. – Let us call this sorter “consciousness”. It is the best word I can think of. All sights and sounds and things and parts of existence must pass through a consciousness, not in order to exist (the universe certainly would continue to exist if all humans and animals and smoke detectors disappeared), but in order to be part of the conscious world…i.e. our world. We men and women of the world all have an idea of what the world is. Our ideas may differ a great deal or be very similar. But they will always be the ideas of a consciousness – or “mind” if you prefer – that is “conscious of”. No consciousness can absorb every sight, sound, and thing. Every consciousness is limited to what it sees, hears, and feels. Hence, what we call “the world” will never be the world, but always somebody’s world, the world as perceived by a consciousness up to that point in time. – This is a very important point for me…for my world. It is meaningless to many other people and their world. It is important to me because being aware of it makes me “open” to essentially all interpretations of the world…the universe…existence. I do not think my interpretation is correct and others are wrong. I think none are correct and all are insufficient. All are limited and all have gone through a sorting device, i.e. a consciousness of some sort. And as I have said before, consciousness is a great mystery to me. – Of course my consciousnessprefers certain consciousnesses and interpretations of the world to others. And so do yours and everyone else’s. We all have our druthers. But we should not forget that our perspectives – no matter how intelligent, well read, thinking, and experienced we are – are always severely narrow. – Can you imagine the quantity of sounds, sights, and parts of existence that will never pass through your sorting device? It is mind-blowing how limited we all are.
World peace. – A friend just returned from Vietnam. He said the people there were very polite and friendly, but that deep down inside their souls they think Caucasian people are slightly inferior to themselves. This, of course, is standard fare. If Caucasians (even the most open-souled) are honest, my guess is that deep down inside they think Asians are slightly inferior to themselves. It seems to be human nature to think that what is different from “me” – from “us” – just isn’t quite as good or as right or as valuable as we are. It doesn’t matter who we are, we are the reference for all the rest…. Until this silly fact is profoundly understood and rejected, there will be no peace on earth. Humans will continue to be a second rate race and the earth a second rate place.
“World peace”… continued. – This observation about people feeling that what is not like “me” is somehow inferior or second class (and the need to eliminate this in order to have world peace), is not just about our feelings for the human type. I believe that until all creatures are perceived with equal awe and respect, there will be no world peace. Of course, some creatures will have power and will decide what should live and what should die, but an utmost respect for even mosquitos, termites, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, wild turkeys, cows, pigs etc. should and must be felt before they are exiled, eliminated, or sacrificed for consumption.
The Problem with Our Categorizations of History. – I believe that we today have a very misguided opinion of ourselves. By “we” I refer to people in the Western World who have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries, i.e. in what we might call “the Modern World”. We consider ourselves in a certain scheme of “history” with which we have been indoctrinated all our lives. – What is this scheme and how has it warped our vision of ourselves? … We of the Occident (I freely admit that I don’t know how other parts of the “modern” world – Asia, Africa, etc. – divide history and how they perceive themselves within) have a scheme that goes something like this:
– The Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages with lots of hairy types…
– The Egyptians who liked cats, had nice queens, and built some amazing pyramids (an incredible feat given they had no electric-powered machines and such)…
– The Classical Greek and Roman cultures where man really started to “think” and “figure things out”…
– The Middle Ages or “Dark “Ages which began with the “fall of Rome” were rather shitty times with lots of hungry people and few bright lights…
– The Renaissance which kind of changed everything, i.e. we became intelligent again starting with Leonardo and Michelangelo who were our kind of guys…
– The “Discovery of America”… Europe had been the place to be, but now there were two places to be…
– The Great Industrial Revolution ushers in the modern world with electricity, machines, factories, trains, no more washing clothes in rivers, schools for almost everybody, etc…
– The Modern World of the 20th and 21st centuries with all our wonderful things like the Eiffel Tower, cars, Hoover Dam, skyscrapers, telephones, New York City, television, airplanes putting the whole world within a day’s reach cassettes, cinemas, Hollywood, Las Vegas, shopping malls, computers, hundreds of TV channels, Internet, GPS, Google, Facebook, etc… So this is where we are today. We see ourselves to be at some kind of civilized summit. We look back at those Dark Ages and those slaves carrying those stones up the Egyptian pyramids and we think how advanced we are and how far we have come. We look back and compare ourselves…we are advanced, we are hi-tech, we know how things work and where we came from, we understand the world, we are “high civilization”! Of course we have our little delays and bumps in the road when we elect a Donald Trump and the NRA keeps guns on our streets…But overall, we really are an “enlightened” civilization. – Perhaps I am very alone, but I greatly disagree. I think that we – in many many ways – are highly barbaric, highly uncivilized, and in spite of all our gadgets, I believe that in a thousand years people will look on us just like we look back at those “dark” Middle Ages. Of course many people today think we will have destroyed the world by then. But I’m not one of those. I think we deeply exaggerate our place in the cosmos and our status on this earth. We see ourselves with bad eyes. We think ourselves with bad brains. Weare not that civilized. A truly enlightened human world has a long long way to go. – Here is a list of what are, for me, ten of the most blatant examples of our backwardness:
1.We continue to believe in divinities. As long as we believe in fairy-tale divinities that will take care of us in “the next life”, this life will have a second-class status.
2. We continue to believe that mankind is somehow “outside of nature” and hence “free”. Because of this we continue to fill prisons with “criminals” who should be “punished”. Prisons are a damning proof that we still have a foot in the Dark Ages.
3. We continue to believe the universe (existence) was “created” or had a “beginning”. This is an excellent example of how difficult it is for the mind to “move forward”. Being probably has no beginning or end and human being is a part of Being.
4. Approximately 150 million people were killed by wars in the 20th century. This is not a sign of civilization. Both political and religious jingoism of all kinds are still rampant in the world.
5. There are more than one million traffic deaths annually in the world. Cars, buses, and motorcycles are wonderful ways to move around, but our whole safety system is barbaric. And there are millions and millions of idiot drivers who follow too closely and go too fast in dangerous conditions.
6. We still believe in justice and revenge. The idea that “justice” is possible in this world is infantile and a throwback to Biblical times and the Middle Ages. Wanting people to “pay for their sins” by getting “proper” sentences (i.e. the death penalty or silly “180 years in prison for multiple murders”) are totally uncivilized ideas. Death or imprisonment should never be considered “a penalty” but only a way to eliminate undesirable harmful creatures like viruses, scorpions, rattlesnakes, and other killers.
7. We still teach and say absurdities like “Columbus discovered America”. This kind of disrespect for the rest of the world (in this case, the people living in the Americas in 1492) is still rampant in many parts of the earth.
8. We still believe we can know where we (or anything else for that matter) “came from”. Believing we have an “origin” is an example of how simplistic our thinking about the world has remained. We see beginnings and ends to everything when in fact everything is infinitely complex and infinitely deep. Of course there are surface “origins”, but real origins are meaningless and inexistent. Until we admit this, we will still be in a sort of universal “kindergarten” wherein we explain things in naïve embryonic ways that do not get at “truth”, but rather perpetuate misunderstanding.
9. We still consider ourselves to be “life” and planets, suns, moons, stars and galaxies to not be “alive”. Even though we “live” for some seventy or eighty meager years (whereas planets, suns and galaxies have been around for billions and billions of so-called “years”) we still consider ourselves to be the measure of what we call “life”. This anthropomorphic nonsense reveals how primitive our vision of existence is. The question should not be, “Is there life on other planets?”, but rather “Why can’t we understand that other planets are life?” Until we do not see all Being as a “living” thing, we will be archaic.
10. We continue to believe that the world is a “moral” and an “immoral” place, i.e. we think it is possible to create some kind of moral kingdom on earth. Existence on earth is “eat or be eaten”. Some things will always be eaten such that other things can continue to be. This “fact” means that some parts of the world must be sacrificed for other parts of the world. There will always be a struggle “for power”. Given the “nature” of our world (beings must consume other beings to survive), a “moral” world is impossible. – The day we understand these things will be the day we begin to have a grasp on who we are.
Sin of a lack of perspective. – I am convinced that the greatest sin in this world is a lack of perspective. Lack of perspective is at the root of erroneous beliefs, ill-will to fellow creatures, precipitous judgments, a lack of appreciation, and even war. That said, the problem of what the proper perspective might be still exists.
Language
Words and cells. – There are about 200,000 words in my dictionary. There are about 50,000,000,000,000,000 cells in my body. How good are these words at explaining my body? Or, better yet…the world?
Magic. – When one hears a word often enough, it will automatically take on a certain ontological status, even though it might have absolutely nothing to do with anything real.
Language and thinking. – One will always be a bad thinker until one is able to look at the words of one’s native language and think they look very strange – like Swedish or Polish or something. As long as one’s native language appears normal or natural one will not be able to step outside of it and question whether or not it reveals and corresponds to truth. If, suddenly, one’s language feels “strange” before one’s eyes or in one’s mouth and ears, then one can begin to think about how one thinks and what one thinks with. We think with words. Where do these words come from? Who invented them? Do they actually have anything to do with “the world”? Isn’t the world much more complex than words? – When a word like “of” looks strange to an English speaker, he or she is probably on the path to actually thinking.
Friend and foe. – Language is a great friend, but it is also a great enemy. It is a friend because it allows us to feel warm and cozy in a world that makes sense. It makes us feel like we are part of a group (don’t groups always have simple slogans behind which and through which they “unite”?) in that every word is a “shared” symbol for a “shared” world. It allows us to have laws so that our jungle feels like less of a jungle. It allows us to not drown in eternity and infinity, but rather situate ourselves comfortably in time and space. It allows leaders to command and followers to carry out their orders. – But language is also a great enemy, perhaps the greatest enemy of its supposed bedfellow, truth. Because if language does one thing, it is that it makes common, it simplifies, it allows the herd to move along together. But as Oscar Wilde once said, “If more than one person believes something, isn’t that already proof that it is not true.” Language chops up infinity and eternity with its heavy knife and makes it edible for humankind. For that we thank it. But in so doing it distorts…everything. – Language enables us to live together, but it does not allow us a glimpse of who, what, and where we really are.
Discussions about God. – Why is it that when people talk about God they never define what they are talking about, i.e. “God”? Everyone acts as if they know who God is, what God is, and how God is, when in fact no one has any idea about the nature of “God”. No one has ever met Him (Her? It? …), seen Him, had a drink with Him, or has any first hand knowledge of Him. Isn’t it possible that God might be a “species” that is very different from man and has absolutely nothing in common with man? Perhaps human thought and language have zero to do with God. Isn’t it as if some crab on the bottom of the ocean was trying to talk about Einstein or the Fourth of July? – People love to speak of things that they know little or nothing about. A few thousand years of chatter about “God” is a very fine example.
I love you. – When people say “I love you”, what do they mean? Does every “I love you” – even from the same person to the same person – mean something different because the circumstances surrounding the declaration are always different? Time always passes; life is always in flux; everything is always “becoming”. So, are the “I”, the “love”, and the “you” – and the mix of the three – not always something “new” every time the words leave a mouth or a fingertip? It seems the answer is inevitably “yes”. But we mustn’t forget that the same would apply to all sentences from the heads of all people about all subjects all the time all over the world.
Poverty of language. – Think of how poor our language is…Example: We break the world down into “man” and “animal”. We lump all people together into one category and into the other we dump…mice, chimpanzees, worms, ants (also referred to as “insects”), dinosaurs, flies (are they insects too?), elephants, cheetahs, dogs, grizzly bears, eagles, bumble bees, giraffes, gorillas, goats, cows, sheep, chickens, rats, pigs, trout (also referred to as “fish”) sharks (fish?), shrimp (fish?) minnows, whales (fish? mammals?…how about “big black beasts of the sea”?), butterflies (insects? birds maybe? how about “birdsects”?) beavers, rattlesnakes, tigers, porcupines, kangaroos, cats, crocodiles, hummingbirds, horses, fleas, foxes, etc., etc., and we call all of them “animals”. Could anything be stupider than that? A man and a pig have far more in common than a pig and a butterfly. A man and an elephant have for more in common than an elephant and a flea. A man and even a chicken have more in common than a giraffe and a shrimp…And yet…and yet…we continue to group creatures as “men” and “animals”. Ah, the magic of language! Abracadabra! Reduce the infinitely complex to the absurdly simple! – There is no such dichotomy as man and animal. There is no such dichotomy as good and evil. There is no such dichotomy as everything happens for a “reason” and everything is “random”. There is no such dichotomy as up and down in the universe. There is no such dichotomy as hot and cold (there is just a continuum of what we call “temperature”). There is no such dichotomy as man and woman (isn’t every human being totally unique?). – The next time you go to “the zoo”, try to imagine that people are not looking at animals. It is far far more complicated than that.And don’t forget to ask yourself which creatures – on both sides of the windows, fences, and cages – are of more value and why you think so… If you think long and hard you might get a glimpse of how strange and limited most minds are and how “language” most certainly hides truth much more that it reveals it.
Possession. – Let us ask ourselves: Do we possess language or does language possess us?
McDefinitions. – What is tragic? A dead animal on a road. What is interesting? The life of a dead animal and a road. What is good writing? Words that make life interesting. What is good? What makes me feel strong. What is bad? What makes me weak. What is worthwhile? What I look back on and want to live again. What is happiness? Knowing that what you love loves you. What is freedom? Being able to be with what you love. What is love? What makes me cry tears of joy. What is intelligence? A bird in flight. What is stupidity? Making the complex simple.
Knowledge
Bed of knowledge. – Where has the mystery gone? … To sleep in the bed of knowledge.
Less as more. – One can see more walking through a neighborhood than flying around the world. One can feel more with one finger in a minute than two hands in a lifetime. One can think more with ten words than all the words in a dictionary. There can be more love in a teardrop than in a Bible.
History of knowledge. – “How old are you?” a little girl asked the world. “I don’t know,” the world answered. Her older brother heard the conservation and butted in. “What do you mean you don’t know how old you are! You’re 13,000,000,000 years old!” “What makes you so sure?” the world said. “My science teacher told me.” “And do you believe him?” the world asked. “Of course I do. He’s my teacher.” “Before your teacher, other teachers had very different answers,” the world said calmly. “Well, they were all wrong,” the boy said. “How can you be sure your teacher is right?” The boy became red in the face and angry. His little sister laughed. The boy hit her. She cried. The father came into the room and wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
Evolution of knowledge. – A long time ago people had to test everything before they ate it to see whether or not it was poisonous. They knew everything about what grew in the forests, jungles and fields near them. Such knowledge was essential to survival. Today we know nothing about this subject. We know different things. If a sudden cataclysm destroyed all supermarkets, restaurants, and farms, we would soon learn about plants again. We would have to in order to survive. What must we know today in order to survive? Where the hospital is, not to eat too many fatty foods, not to smoke or drink too much, not to overdose on drugs, how to avoid bad neighborhoods, bad drivers, and crazy people with guns… No, knowledge about how to survive is not a constant. Is any knowledge?
What no one wants to admit. – As far as I can tell, no one wants to admit the mystery of existence. Our whole civilization is based on “knowing” things. In school you must “know” the answers if you want to pass. In the justice system you must “know” who is guilty and who is innocent. You must “know” your religion is true and that “God lives”. Science must “know” the Big Bang was 13,000,000,000 years ago. We must “know” our motives for what we do. We must “know” the origins and causes of our behavior. We are even supposed to “know” why we love someone or why someone died. Then we’re supposed to know what has happened to the dead. Science wants to “know” how the brain and mind work. But what if we don’t really “know” any of these things? What if we can’t know? What then? The answer is simple. Life becomes a great mystery. Everything. Judgment disappears. Truth disappears. Teleology disappears. In fact every “ology” takes on a new light. Paleontology, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, epistemology, theology, astrology…even subjects like mineralogy, geology and sociology. Everything looks different. Sure, we can set up rules and play the game of knowledge. But in the end there will be no winners. What is really left for man to hold on to if we admit the ultimate mystery of Being? The only thing I can think of is finding your own Garden of Eden, your own Adam, your own Eve, a place where you can look around and share the joy, pain, beauty and mystery with someone you love.
Blindness. – We are all blind to many things. There are many things that we can never see. This is especially true when we realize that our eyes are attached to our minds.
Knowing. – He thinks he knows. On what grounds? That is the question: On what grounds is his knowledge based? Ask him if he has examined those grounds? If his examination of the grounds of his knowledge has taken less time and effort than the examination of his knowledge, then might it be that he knows…nothing?
Being careful. – One should be careful when one takes on a belief. One should be careful when one makes a judgment about something. One should be careful when one chooses a friend or a mate. But one can never be totally careful because one never has all the facts. Not only does one never have all the “facts”, but some deeply examined lives have come to the conclusion that two things are possible: 1) that there are no facts, 2) if there are facts, all humans can ever do is give their opinions about these facts.
Imagining infinity. – Imagine if a god or a man (or any creature) could see the whole history of a part of the universe…even the smallest crumb would become infinite.
Self knowledge. – Inside my body are a myriad of organs and cells that I cannot see and have absolutely no control over. – And to think that there are people who claim they “know” themselves…
What kind of funeral? – Which funeral would you prefer to have for your own: a funeral like Mozart’s where essentially no one came, or one like Michael Jackson had a few years ago with thousands of people in the audience and millions in front of their television screens? – I asked myself this question this morning. The answer was simple: if the people at Mozart’s funeral truly knew him and loved him, I’d rather have his kind of funeral. I doubt very much that the people attending Michael Jackson’s funeral either knew him well or loved him. – I am always fascinated when I hear people say, “I know him” about me or anybody else. What does it mean to declare, “I know him”? That you know his face? That you know the name that is attached to the face? That you recognize him if you see a picture of him or see him in the street? That you have met him or talked to him? That you have heard him on the radio or read some pages he wrote? That you once had a meal together? That you slept under the same roof? In the same bed? – Of course none of these things mean that you “know” someone. What good is it to have ten thousand people at your funeral if none of them know you? – So what does it mean to know someone?? I have two brothers who I don’t think know me at all. I can’t say I know them either. And why not? Because we live in two different worlds. Because other than sharing a house and parents together as children, we have essentially nothing in common. We don’t see the world the same way. We don’t believe and believe in the same things. We don’t share the same values. This of course doesn’t mean that I don’t love my brothers. I have nothing but the greatest respect for them and their lives and only want the best for them. But that’s the way I feel about more or less everybody. Does that make my love for my brothers a “watered down” kind of love? – What kind of “love” is possible for a person you don’t “know”? What kind of knowledge is possible about a person you don’t love? How many people do you truly know and love? How many people truly know and love you? – If your answer to the last two questions is “one”, you’re probably luckier than most people who have lived, live, and will live on this earth.
Intelligence
Intelligence. – Two men are sitting on a park bench. A bird is singing in a tree behind them. “What do you think the bird is saying?” one man asks. “I don’t know,” the other answers. “I don’t have the proper brain to understand birds.”
Stupidity. – Two men are sitting on a park bench. A bird is singing in a tree behind them. “What do you think the bird is saying?” one man asks. “Nothing,” the other answers. “Birds can’t talk.”
Defining intelligence. – How might intelligent human beings define or identify intelligence? How much agreement will there be? Where will the emphasis be? Will it be a capacity to manipulate numbers or materials? An ability to create machines that allow humans to live better or stay alive longer? Might it have to do with a vision for a maximum of peace on earth? Or perhaps with a capacity to love as much of life as possible? A capacity to create new things? An ability to question accepted truths? – As I thought of these possibilities and others, my head filled with this idea: Might the real test of intelligence be first and foremost a capacity to take everything one has learned in one’s world – truth, values, cultural ideas about what life is and what is important – and put it to the following test: “Are these things for me? Do I believe in the truth and goodness of these things? Do I accept these things and want these things in my life? Or do I want other things…my own things?” – How many human beings actually do this in their lifetimes? Is this not the “hardest” thing to do? Does it not require the most brainpower and courage? Does it not require the strongest backbone? Who is capable of taking all the truths and values that have been handed down to oneself and putting them through the meat grinder of real analysis and questioning? – It seems to me that this is one of the things that is most lacking in the world and this deficiency is impeding human progress. I do not mean progress in science, medicine, and technology, but rather progress in all the other aspects of getting along with other creatures and getting the most out of “life”.
Simple-mindedness. – People in general prefer the simple to the complex. We need only to look at the history of our visions of metaphysics and causality to realize our predilection for simplicity. God and the Devil; heaven and hell; soul and body; beginnings and ends; good and evil; moral and immoral; true and false; egotistical and selfless…and on and on. In every case we were trying to make things “simple”. And every generation is satisfied with its answers to what life is all about. No one wants to admit that they “don’t know” or how complex it all might be. That the Bible, Koran, Constitution, Ten Commandments, man-nature dichotomy, Columbus discovered America idea, etc. have survived for so long is proof that we, as a “race”, just love keeping things held down tight on the side of simplicity.
Education. – In a lifetime, even the most voracious reader will read an infinitesimally small amount of all that has been ever written. Any man who thinks he is “educated” is deluding himself.
Writers beware. – So you think your book is important, do you? Well, you’re wrong. Most of the world’s important books have yet to be written and those that have been written have yet to be understood.
Wrong and right. – There is nothing necessarily wrong with stupidity, just as there is nothing necessarily right with intelligence. History has proven this over and over. And the fact that no one really knows what “intelligence” or “stupidity” are is no argument against this assertion.
Taking sides in war. – Which side do people take in a war and why? All sides always think they are “right”. No matter which side you are on, you will think you are on the side of the “good”. If you suddenly change your mind and reckon the “other” side is right, you will be accused of “treason” and will either be imprisoned or killed (unless you are able to “escape”). One needs to look no farther than the history of war to understand the serious limits of the human mind.
Sitting on the terrace. – Last evening I sat on my small terrace and saw this: a series of dark horizontal lines, blue turning black, a white circle in the upper right corner. This is what my eyes observed. My head had a different version: electrical wires, the clear eight o’clock sky in spring, the moon. I was suddenly filled with a sense of vertigo. Maybe “vertigo” is not the right word. I was filled with a sense of wonder, mystery, marvel, and behind all that, a feeling that we humans are really rather funny, limited creatures…First the eyes. Who do you know who truly appreciates the phenomena of “seeing”? Who stands in awe at the fact the “eyes” exist in billions of creatures on this earth and these eyes actually perceive lines, colors, forms, and movement? And that is all they see…lines, colors, forms, and movement! But what a wonder that they “see” at all! Then the “head” (is brain a better word?). The head takes what it sees (smells, feels, hears) and turns it into “things” that “are” and “do”…electrical wires, sky, spring, moon, etc.…This becomes “the world”, life, the universe, what is. We go through our whole lives thinking we know what is out there, thinking we know what things are and what is “happening”…But as I sat on my terrace, I realized I knew “nothing” about what I was seeing. I have no idea where I am in time and space. None. I have no idea what “the sky” is. I have no idea of what “the moon” is. I don’t really have any idea what “electrical wires” are (other than they are “hard” and that I shouldn’t touch them and that they carry something called electricity)…I have no idea if what my eyes see (which is probably very different from what the eyes of other creatures see) has anything to do with what is… really… out there…There “I” was…feeling “myself” (also a great mystery) seeing and thinking about “things” that I really knew nothing about. Then I sensed that every “thing” that I was seeing was not really a “thing” at all, but was moving, changing, becoming…All those atoms and molecules in flux…constant flux…myself included… – Sitting on a terrace can be very different things for different people or creatures. I wonder what a fly feels, see, and thinks when it sits on a terrace. In the end (beginning?), maybe there is no such thing as “sitting on a terrace”.
Semi-intellectuals. – Of course we don’t like to generalize, but in this case we can’t help it. We want to make a point about a large portion of so-called “intellectuals” in Western civilization. Let us call them “semi-intellectuals”.… – Many of our Western world “semi-intellectuals” are guilty of one of the greatest errors in human history, i.e. believing that what is good for me is good for others. Semi-intellectuals have an irksome habit of “looking down” on the masses that they ostensibly want to uplift. Why?Because they want to make them like themselves, i.e. cultured “thinkers” who care about what they care about and who think like they do. – Semi-intellectuals denigrate mass society and how the masses live. They feel and believe that the man who watches American football all day with a beer in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other is not living the good life. No, he should be reading Proust and listening to Rachmaninoff.He should be going to museums and “elevating” and “enlightening” himself. He shouldn’t be wasting his time watching vacuous sporting events where humongous men smash into each other and then strut around like professional wrestlers after a phony throw down. – But let us ask why? Why would a man who likes spending his time watching football and guzzling beer be better off reading Proust and listening to Rachmaninoff? Why should the semi-intellectual suppose that this man is like him, and hence should spend his time differently? Is it not possible that human beings can be very dissimilar in constitution and makeup, like Chihuahuas and Golden Retrievers in the canine world? Is it not possible that what is desirable for one is not desirable for another? Cannot one man genuinely prefer a Big Mac, a large order of fries, and a Jumbo Coke while another will feel slighted unless dining on caviar and Dom Perignon? Might is not be that some brains are happy and comfortable believing in Allah or astrology while others will glide toward Nietzsche or Proust? Might it not be that for reasons biological or cultural (or whatever), one woman will greatly enjoy Beyoncé or Puff Daddy’s while another will find solace in Stravinsky or Puccini. Why should either side change? Why do semi-intellectuals want to “elevate” the masses to their truths, values, and predilections? The answer might be very simple: Because when all is said and done, semi-intellectuals are not very smart. Semi-intellectuals are stuck inside their metaphysical and sociological boxes and cannot see outside to wider possibilities of what existence is – or isn’t – all about. Semi-intellectuals cannot imagine that their vision of the world might be largely, if not wholly, erroneous. Semi-intellectuals are very bad at questioning their own beliefs. – Don’t get us wrong. We are not arguing against Proust, Rachmaninoff, Puccini, caviar, champagne, or Tchaikovsky. We are not arguing in favor of Big Macs, Puff Daddy, beer, and football. No…we are arguing for a vision of existence that does not claim to know what is good for the world, that does not believe that what is good for me is necessarily good for anyone else, that does not think its values, lifestyles, gods, moralities, commandments, and veracities, are necessarily better or truer. But perhaps most of all, we are arguing for an intelligence that that can think deeply enough to imagine the very real possibility that nothing – absolutely nothing – in existence can be other than what it is, that perhaps all existence is as innocent as the Milky Way or a pumpkin, and that wanting others to be like oneself very well might make sense when choosing someone to love, but which is silly when judging the world. We are arguing for a mind that understands both the beer-sucking football-loving couch potatoes and the pompous self-anointed kings and the queens of intellectual superiority, and that sees the world in its infinite complexity and not in a semi-intellectual simplicity. – Might this be why semi-intellectuals so hate Donald Trump, i.e. because he does not talk down to the common man, but rather across to him, and even feeds off him? – Who knows how the world really works and what is really true or false or factual? We don’t. – Admitting this is perhaps where we differ most from a large majority of the intellectuals in the world.
Thinking
Thinking. – Have you ever thought about what thinking is? Have you ever tried to think how many thoughts a human being has in a week, a year, a lifetime? I can only speak for myself, but there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of thoughts that go through my head in a single day. Where does one start and another begin? Where do they come from? What are they made of? Is there a way to stop the stream? Isn’t whatever might do the stopping also a thought that is part of the stream? Have you ever thought about that? People in our world act like thinking is the simplest thing to understand, the most comprehensible act of man, i.e. I…think. But what truth is there in this? Is there an “I” that “thinks”? Don’t thoughts come when “they” want to come, not when I want them to come? I think very very few human beings are actually able to “control” the thoughts that come into their minds, brains, heads, or consciousnesses…or whatever you want to call the “place” where they occur. Look at human beings, don’t they essentially produce the same kinds of thoughts over and over? And even the so-called “geniuses” of the world…do they have any idea where their thoughts come from? Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” Might he have been totally off the mark? Shouldn’t he have said, “I am, therefore I think”? Wouldn’t this have been much closer to the truth? – The next time you have thoughts that are hurting you, making you unhappy, or causing you pain, try to change their contents radically and by the deepest thinking turn them into something joyful, lovely, and positive. If you are able to do this, maybe you truly are someone who “thinks”. Or try to take a belief you have had all your life and analyze it from all sides and see if you can begin to see that perhaps it is totally bogus. Then maybe you really are “a thinker”. Otherwise your thoughts are probably just as instinctive as those of any other…animal.
River of thought. – Imagine a great river, the river into which all human thinking flows. Imagine all these thoughts – billions and billions of them every second of every day – eventually collectively dumping into one great ocean, the ocean of thinking…But is “thinking” the right word? Perhaps not. For centuries – even millennia – we have been calling what goes on in the human head “thinking” and this “thinking” has always been tied to a brain, an ego, a soul, a “rational being”, and this rational being “thinks”, “reasons”, “calculates”, etc. And this human thinking is always juxtaposed alongside the “animal world”; animals don’t think…they operate on “instinct”…Or so the story goes… – Now let us “think” for a moment. Whatever they do, animals have figured out a way to survive, to procure this, to avoid that, for millions – even billions – of years. Just like men, they have kept their group going, one way or another, for a very long time. And this – according to humans – they have done without the benefit of thinking!!!…Might there not be a huge “error” here on the part of “human thinking”? Perhaps “thinking” and “instinct” are not two distinct, different categories of behavior. Perhaps there is a huge overlap. Perhaps thinking and instinct are very close to one another. What if there are certain humans (like “queen bees” in the bee world) that do a certain type of thinking and the rest of the human race does another type of thinking, a type of thinking that might be very similar to what animals do? (And might not grouping all “animals” together be a huge error in our “thinking”?) What if most humans should be grouped closer to the so-called animals than to the human “queen bees” that push civilization in new directions? How many humans are truly creative and responsible for steering the world toward new frontiers? Aren’t the huge majority of people on earth followers, “worker bees” that rarely “create” anything? Might leaders and followers not have very different “minds”? – Perhaps the river of most human thought is part of the river of instinct. And perhaps the river of actual “thinking” is a quiet lonely little stream…
What is thinking? – As far as I can tell, no thinker really understands what thinking is, where it comes from, how the whole causal matrix functions. Aren’t thinking, instincts, consciousness, and the whole business of mind still part of the great mysteries of being? But most humans, like most animals, don’t seem to care a whole lot about such “mysteries”.
Conscious and the unconscious. – A fashionable belief today is the notion that the conscious side of consciousness and the unconscious side of consciousness can both be understood. This claim reminds me of the claim that man can understand “God”…Man can neither understand his consciousness nor unconsciousness. That man is “conscious” cannot really be disputed (if we dispute this we might as well dispute everything). But his consciousness can never be conscious “of” itself. How can consciousness posit itself as its own object when it is doing the positing? It can never “catch itself” as it is always ahead of itself. You can analyze how you are analyzing, but the thing (consciousness) that is doing the analyzing can never analyze itself. Might the fact that we are conscious at all be the greatest miracle and mystery of life? We take it for granted. It is too close and hence is not appreciated. But it is in a sense “unspeakably amazing”…The unconscious is perhaps even more amazing. Consciousness is now, immediate, but might it not be influenced by everything that has gone on before it? Might the unconscious be the largest and most enduring reservoir on earth…the reservoir of “all experience.”? How could it have taken so long for people to realize that the mind of a human being is as much a process of “evolution” as anything else? People wanted to think that only animals had instincts and those instincts were the result of their whole history of survival. But man, he was different! He was a child of God! He could think and his thinking was not instinctual, was not based on his history. He was free and only he…But what folly! What stupidity! What blind anthropomorphism! It took up until the twentieth century before people began talking about “the unconscious”, the “sub-conscious” or the “consciousness beneath consciousness” – all of which was the result of the great human saga to “survive” one way or another, a saga very similar to the animal saga. Is a fox born with no instincts? Are fish born without built-in capacities for survival? Are trees? Is “anything”? Of course not! How could we go thousands of years and not understand that the way we think is also something that has a deep, deep history? It is not just our bodies that “evolved”, but also that strange mysterious thing called consciousness or mind “evolved”, for millions and millions of years, just like the mind of an eagle, a serpent, or a bear. We are not an exception. We too have instincts. “Instinct” has always been a dirty word, an animal word, a word that was not part of God and His greatest creation, “man”. But what if God did not create man? What if man is not free? What if man has instincts just like every other living creature? And what if those instincts go back and back…to the beginning!!! What if not only our “bodies” are the function of a very lengthy ancestry, but also our “minds”? What then? What if the very way we think and perceive – our conscious – is based on the unconscious. Yes, let us discover where our bodies came from…let us go back millions of years and find skeletons of apes and gorillas, and Neanderthals! But let us also find out where our minds came from! Let us dig deeply and profoundly into our “unconscious”! Grab your shovels you doctors of the mind! Dig! Dig! Analyze yourselves and others! ! Surely if we dig deep enough we can “understand” ourselves! Finally Socrates’s dictum can come true…I can KNOW myself! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Thank you dear prophets Freud and Jung! You have pointed the way to truth!…But wait!…Wait!…There is a problem! A big problem…What if we can never dig deep enough? What if the history of man and consciousness goes back farther than our consciousnesses can ever know or understand? First we decided we couldn’t know God. “But at least we can know ourselves!” we shouted. But we were wrong. We shouted too soon. We shouted without thinking. If we really think, we will see that our thinking can never know itself. Our past is too deep. We will never understand the infinity of sensations that have occurred over the millions or billions or trillions of years of life and made us what we are! We will never understand how we or anything else got to be what it is…Never, no matter how big our microscopes, telescopes, psychology books or history books!…The unconscious is real. No doubt about it. It is as real as the conscious. The conscious is now, right now. The unconscious goes back and back and back…dare we say…forever.
Forgotten mystery. – Our little planet earth is floating around in some corner of seemingly infinite space surrounded by billions and billions of stars, galaxies, moons, planets, black holes, and whatnot. Very few inhabitants of this world seem “surprised” or “emotionally touched” by this fact. Why are so few people struck by the unfathomable mystery of it all? Most people go to work, watch TV, clean house, gossip about neighbors and politicians and local sports teams, and are perfectly satisfied with dime-store explanations about what “life” is all about. In this, they are so much like the “animals” they denigrate – and eat with the clearest of consciences. Cows, pigs, and chickens don’t seem to care either about the nature of existence, why they do what they do, and why they think what they think…And friends, they do think!
Long and winding road. – We tend to think of history as a road, a path, a thing that has brought us to the now. Behind all thinking about history there is a sense of logic, and the job of the historian is to understand and elucidate that logic. But what if there is no logic? What if everything is tied together? If everything is tied together, time and space disappear. There are no “events”. Historians cannot look in from the outside because they are forever inside. Human consciousness has a nasty habit of thinking it is separate, of thinking it is that thing through which the world can be perceived. But this is erroneous. Consciousness – like everything else – is stuck smack dab in the middle of the totality of being. The camera and the picture cannot be separated. They are one. There is no history. There is no road. There are no events to chronicle. Scientists should stop talking about the Big Bang and start talking about the Big Ball.
About thinking. – All thinking is a simplification. All thinking is limited by language and the brain that is trying to squeeze some part of the world inside itself… – Don’t all facts become abstractions once they have entered the head?
Crabs…? – Do you see what I am saying? That it is very possible that human thinking has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with the real nature of Being. We would never say a crab crawling across the bottom of the ocean understands the nature of the universe, the nature of Being. So why don’t we say the same thing about ourselves? … that we two-legged crabs crawling across the face of the earth are incapable of understanding the nature of Being. – Why don’t we say this? The answer is simple: our pride always gets in the way. And perhaps pride is the passion that has warped man beyond repair…that is, beyond lucidity.
Why people don’t change. – Every bird has a limit to the distance it can fly. One day it will stop and not be able to go any farther. The same is true for human minds. Their thinking can only go so far. Once they reach their limit – and for many it can happen at a rather young age – they have essentially the same thoughts over and over again for the rest of their lives.
Price of stupidity. – People who observe and think about the world spend their time differently than people whose goal in life is to keep up with their neighbors and possess the latest fashionable objects on the market. Walking through a forest is usually cheaper than walking through a shopping center, though a thinking person can observe and contemplate a shopping mall just like a forest. Thinking people also realize that in our world of commerce, fads are necessary for the producers of goods, but not for themselves. They also know that there is no guarantee that luxurious places and things bring more pleasure than simple places and things. Yes, stupidity comes with a price.
Thinking to the end? – Who really does take an idea and think it through to its conclusion? And the conclusion…will it be logical or illogical? In the end, is logic logical? Isn’t everything the result of the premises one starts with?
Pure logic. – Step back. What could pure logic be? Is it the same as “pure reason”? Might both simply be paltry efforts of the human head to play god? We like to think that existence is a “logical” thing…something that finally, when all is said and done, makes sense. “It has to make sense! It has to be logical! There has to be order and “reason” behind it all! Inside it all!” Thus has cried the human mind for as long as we have known it. – And what if it is all just the pouting of innocent little children?
Thinking and passion. – Am I a slave to my passions? Do they own me? Are the slave and the slave-owner one? How is thinking related to passion? And what if the two are simply one?… – We think logic is cold and calculating. Maybe it is hot and miscalculating.
Thinking back. – When you think back on your life, how much of it can you really remember? Be honest: there are millions and millions of things of which you have no memory at all. We all have consciously or unconsciously (probably neither because my guess is they are inextricably linked) written a script that we call “me” based on “my life”. But our memory has selected very few things. What we call “my life” is not known or understood by anybody, including ourselves. But this is inevitable and doesn’t matter. How could it matter? We can do nothing against it. We are doomed and destined to live in the dark. But, like bats, we live fine that way. We have our laws, religions, schools, scientists, courts of justice, psychologists, and fortune tellers all telling us how things are, have been, and will be. No one knows what he or she is talking about, but as long as they think they do – and we believe them – the world functions quite well… “No it doesn’t!” you scream, “The world is a mess!” Then, slowly but surely, you calm down and you think, “Do I really expect anything to be different?…If I do, then the problem is mine.”
Order and chaos. – Isn’t it interesting how at every moment one can observe and feel total chaos and at the same time total order? This is how I live much of the time. But not all of the time…but always when I am thinking.
An example of bad “thinking”. – In a litter of puppies it is said that the strong survive and the weak die. Darwin said a similar thing about all nature with his “survival of the fittest” theory. But is this “true”? Do the strong… survive? Perhaps the “strong” don’t survive. Perhaps the truly strong are too intelligent to survive and they kill themselves or let themselves die instead of struggling to survive. Might it be that Darwin’s theory is just tautological nonsense, i.e. fitness (strength) is defined by “survival”? But aren’t there lots of very “weak” creatures that survive and a lot of very strong creatures that don’t survive, like dinosaurs? “But,” you quickly retort, “dinosaurs were not fit to survive.” Then you are just confirming my tautology by replacing “strong” with “fit”, “the fit survive”. – All this is a perfect example of all the nonsense that goes on in human thinking. The strong don’t always survive. The weak don’t always die. The fit don’t always survive. The unfit don’t always die. The “truth” is, the survivors survive and the dead die. So Darwin really said nothing at all. What is, is, what isn’t, isn’t, and no human theory will ever explain why what is is and what isn’t isn’t. – The puppies don’t survive because they are strong. It is also not correct to say that they are strong because they survive. It is the word “because” that messes things up. We want to say (for essentially everything) that this and that happens “because of” this or that. But all this is a human invention. It is all faulty thinking. The universe is all tied together. There is no “time” with events happening one after the other. This is a myth, a lie, an anthropomorphic fallacy. There is no A because of B and C. Everything just “is” and all the thinking in the world will never explain why. Saying dinosaurs died off because they “were not fit” to survive says absolutely nothing about anything, i.e. it says absolutely nothing about “why” all the dinosaurs died. If you say they “died” because they were too big, that too says nothing about “why too big things died” and on and on we can go forever. – Man only “knows why” because he breaks the world down in a way that “fits” his “way of thinking”. But in the end, he never really explains anything at all. All he does is reveal his make-up and his way “of seeing”.
What now? – Is there a limit to human thought? Does every human being have his or her own particular limits? Can we take our thinking only so far? We have thought all this. Now what?
Truth
A conversation. – “Which has done more harm to the world: truth or lies?” “That’s an easy question because half of the two possibilities doesn’t exist.” “Which half might that be?” “That is the difficult part.” “Well, which is it?” “I want to say there is no truth, but if there is no truth, does that mean there are only lies?” “But lies are true because they exist.” “Ah, you’re right. So there is only truth.” “So truth has done the most harm to the world?” “Let me think…if there are no lies, there is only truth. Then truth is everything; everything is truth.” “But people can’t know everything, so that means they can never know the whole truth.” “You’re right. And can’t they lie when they claim to know the truth about things they don’t understand?” “Yes, of course they can.” “So lies exist after all.” “No, because lies simply reveal the truth about the liar.” “So everything is…truth?” “Maybe it’s all a problem of language. What if truth and lies are not really opposites? What if they are the same thing?” “And what if there are no opposites in all of nature? What if there is no up or down, no big or small, no inside or outside, no hot or cold? What if everything is just a continuum of size or temperature or whatever.” “Then there is neither truth nor lies.” “Yes, now we’re getting somewhere.” “Where are we getting to?” “I don’t know, but I have to get going because I must pick up my daughter at her music lesson.” “Ah music! Maybe music is the only real truth.” “How can music reveal anything except feeling or emotion?” “Could feeling be the only truth?” “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” “Well, it’s been nice talking to you.” “You too.” “Goodbye then.” “Goodbye.”
Information illusion. – Today we have mountains and mountains of information. Google alone has millions of entries. Billions of words are written every day about everything and nothing. But do we really know anything?… – Let’s take the most well-known person in the world today: Donald Trump. Every second of every day people are writing things about him…Donald Trump does this…the President of the United States of America does that…Trump…Trump…What could be clearer than who Donald J. Trump, the most talked about person on earth, really is? – But (I ask in total humility)…but…does his wife even know him? Does he know himself? Does she know what is really in the bottom of his heart? Does he know why his own mind operates the way it does? Do either she or he understand the functioning of one single cell in his body?…Words, words, words…Might it not be that the bigger the façade, the less we know about what is behind it? Perhaps the more information we have, the farther we get from the truth. And why? Because when you think you know something, you will stop trying to understand it and you will proceed on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing…leaving behind you a long trail unfinished business, of half-truths, of…dare we say it…lies. – We like to think that with all our judges, juries, and psychiatric experts today, criminals are understood and given fair trials. But no criminal – either executed, imprisoned, or freed – has ever been fully understood. No judgment is a full judgment. The facts are never all known. We never have enough information…about anything.
Simple truths. – When you are raised in a world of pristine simple truths like…God created the world in six days, the Bible and Book of Mormon are the word of God, the prophet of the Mormon Church has a direct line to God, God is all good, God is all truth and beauty, God is all knowing, pray and you will know the Truth, man was created by a perfect God, everything else was also created by a perfect God but man was the most important creation, God is just and so we can be sure there will always be some kind of justice in the world, the perfect woman is waiting for you to marry and raise a family with (God will help make the choice), the United States of America is the greatest country on earth, etc., etc.…life can be very comfortable and easy. There is total order. All these kinds of simple truths fit very neatly inside the human head. If and when all those truths slowly disintegrate and disappear, life can still be reasonably easy as long as one replaces them with other truths, albeit more complex ones, like those of a political party that advocates ideas like justice and equality. When these truths begin to disintegrate and disappear one can replace them with “philosophical” systems like Kant’s “categorical imperative” or Schopenhauer’s “the world as will and idea.” Here one can live safely for a while still feeling one understands the world. But what happens if all – absolutely all – of these philosophical truths disintegrate and eventually disappear? What options remain for a human being who has not killed himself and whose bones are warm coals and still contain a spark of fire for life?…Might one want to become an “animal” again?
Why the word “truth”? – Were I to invent a language I would probably leave out the word “truth”. Why? Because it is unnecessary. Everything that is is true. Everything that isn’t isn’t true. But what isn’t isn’t, so we don’t have to worry about it. In my language “reality” would be the word for “truth”. The chore would be to try to find out what is real. What thoughts in the human head actually correspond to reality? This is much more difficult than it first appears. Let us take a simple example: A man looks at a tree (the leaves and branches are moving) and thinks, “The wind is blowing”. Does this thought correspond to reality? Probably absolutely not. “Come on!!!” you say. I say, “Let us look more closely.” The word “wind” is a noun and the word “blow” here is a verb. The WIND …IS BLOWING. But the reality is that there is no wind that is blowing at all. The “wind” is not a thing; it is not a noun. The wind – if it is anything at all – is a verb. “Winding” might best describe what is going on…but going on with what? The “air”?…But what is “the air”? Is air a thing? No. It is millions of atoms in motion. Physicists will tell you that atoms are not fixed things, but rather forces. Then they might tell you that we don’t really know what is behind all these forces, etc. etc. – So you see the problem. In most languages the statement, “the wind is blowing” is easily declared true or false. If those leaves are moving, it’s true. If they aren’t, it’s false…But in my language the statement “the wind is blowing” is never a true statement because it has nothing to do with reality. There is no “wind” that “blows”…Now, if we sit down and really think about it, can’t we extrapolate to almost…everything?….But wait! What about the statement “I think”? Is there really an “I” that “thinks”? O Lord, have mercy! What if the great Descartes was totally full of mashed potatoes? Descartes! How could he be wrong?…..Better question: How could he be…right?
Living without truth. – Let us not kid ourselves: We can live fine without truth. Truth is absolutely not a necessary condition for life. In fact, maybe untruth is a necessary condition for life. Can you imagine a world wherein everybody knew “the truth” about what everybody else was thinking…and doing?
Minds. – The truth of the world is in minds. Without minds there is no such thing as truth. That is not to say that without minds there would be nothing. No, not at all. Existence does not need minds to exist. Of course a few philosophers have said, “Existence is mind”. Hegel for one I think. But that doesn’t matter. We are not concerned about Hegel or the history of philosophy here. We are thinking about minds. – Without minds there would be no concept of truth. What happens in minds is what reveals truth. Now let us think: no one knows everything that happens in the mind of another; no one really knows what is happening in one’s own mind, i.e. how is works, why it perceives what it perceives, etc. But our minds are all we have to try to grasp truth. Billions of minds seemingly no longer exist. There is not a trace on earth of most minds. All the thoughts these minds had have disappeared (forever?). The only traces of past minds are with words or drawings that have been left. Otherwise there is nothing. Few books and pictures remain from the past millions and millions of years, even from the past 1,000 years. We look to what is left to define our truth about the world. That truth is very skimpy. Of all the billions and zillions of thoughts minds have had, very few remain… – But today things have changed. Since the invention of the Internet and text messages and emails, there are billions and billions and billions of thoughts that billions of minds have produced that actually still exist. They are in telephones and computers and servers (or whatever) all over the world. And every single day or hour or minute there are billions of new thoughts recorded. All this truth is there. It exists in the form of words in all these devices. -If we were really interested in the truth of the world today we would first need to know everything that was recorded in every message from all the minds all over the world. Of course this is impossible, but at least the words are there. So if I want to know the truth about you, the first thing I must do is read every single solitary word that you have written…and every single solitary word that has been written about you. But even then I will not know “the whole truth” about you because millions and billions of thoughts – “truths” – have gone through your mind (and the minds of others about you) that were not recorded in words. They are lost forever. – So, you see, people who think they know the truth about anything are very unthinking people. Their minds are the kind of minds that keep things simple. They are simple minds. Only simple minds talk about truth and reality and that kind of thing. Sometimes I admire them. Other times I wish they would hold their tongues.
Animal truth. No one would suggest that animals “know the truth” about anything. But they have been living quite well for millions and millions of years. We human types like to say that animals get by on instinct. So what do we get by on? Certainly not on the truth…
What honesty would breed. – If everyone in the world were perfectly honest at every moment of their lives with everybody they come in contact with, how would the world be different? – Other than the disappearance of humanity, I can’t think of much.
“Top Ten Truths”. – We have Top 10 best-selling book lists. We have Top 10 box-office films. We have Top 10 music lists. We have Top 10 teams in college football. We have Top 10 places to retire, Top 10 restaurants, Top 10 richest men, Top 10 commandments… So how about Top 10 TRUTHS? ……. Something like this: 1) 1+1 = 2 2) Kiev is the capital of Ukraine 3) Apples fall because of a force called “gravity” 4) The earth revolves around the sun 5) Hitler was a bad man 6) If you walk naked around the North Pole you will eventually freeze to death 7) Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade 8) The Vietnam War was not a moral war 9) Brad Pitt loves Angelina Jolie 10) Dustin Hoffman is a better actor than Brad Pitt…….Would this be a good list? Which of these statements are absolutely true? Is it possible to doubt simple mathematics? Can we doubt basic geography? Would anybody doubt Newton’s law of gravity? Would anybody today question Galileo’s great discovery? Is there any possible “good” that could be attached to the name “Hitler”? Would one freeze to death naked at the North Pole in summer? Do we know what water really is? When is the moment that “boiling” water ceases to be “water”? Of course numbers 8, 9, and 10 would never hold up as absolute truths….But would any of the others? Isn’t every statement open for question in a questioning mind? For example: What is Kiev really? When a resident dies or a building burns down, is Kiev still Kiev? Ukraine has changed borders many times…what is the real Ukraine? We say gravity is a “force”, but do we really know what a force is? What is really doing the pushing and pulling? And apples? Aren’t all apples different? Does it make sense to group similar things into a category and call them one thing? In a true world, wouldn’t every separate object have its own name? Shouldn’t every object be given a new name the moment it undergoes a transformation and becomes something “different”? Do names ever actually refer to anything real? The large ball that is revolving around the sun, isn’t it changing all the time? Is there really such a thing as “the earth”? – Of course maybe we’re nitpicking a little. But are we really? Shouldn’t real thinking be a form of nitpicking? Shouldn’t thinking involve questioning the most basic premises…even 1 + 1 = 2 ?
“The Magic Mountain”. – Imagine for a moment that all the thoughts that have ever occurred in heads (human and otherwise) are just inexplicable outbursts that have no rhyme or reason. Imagine all the thoughts about “life” – good and evil, truth and untruth, patriotism, beauty, chaos, justice, equality, meaninglessness, god, teleology, etc. – that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. Wasn’t this what Thomas Mann was saying at the end of “The Magic Mountain”. Weren’t all the thoughts Hans Castorp and the other “intellectuals” had in the sanatorium nothing but mental scribbling that had nothing to do with anything “real” in the world down below?
Moment of truth. – Have you ever tried living an hour or a day in which you perceive everyone and everything around you as a great mystery? If you take away the “words” that denote these people or things and if you take away the role they play in your life, what is left that you really understand? Take a microscope and examine them closely. Go back in history to their “beginning” and watch them develop second by second into what they are. You will see infinity. You will know you have no chance of knowing them. You will have a moment of “truth”, the truth being that you don’t really know anyone or anything. – The day or the hour will pass and you will go back to living as if you “know” the people, things, and events around you. This is the most natural thing human beings do: we simplify the world, both inside and out. It allows us to swim through it. – Fish don’t know what water is. We don’t know what the world is, but we keep floating along as if we do.
Honest and unfair. – As long as people believe in truth and justice the world will be wholly dishonest and unfair. Of course it will never be fair, but one day it might at least be perceived honestly, i.e. as something wholly mysterious, amoral, unknowable, and consummately lacking a teleological essence.
Premature. – Aren’t all seekers of truth satisfied with answers that are always premature?
Total moment. – We can write things down, we can take a thousand photographs, we can talk until all the cows have gone home and died of old age…but we will never grasp the totality of any moment of life.
History’s truth. – I’ve said it a hundred times: History is a joke; history will always be a joke. But it is a very good way of replacing the teddy bear, the tattered blanket, or the rag that we used to carry around and sleep with as young children. The “feeling” of history is a most comforting thing. What is more important to the human race than the feeling that the world is some kind of a “logical story”? Perhaps the importance of the feeling of history is only equaled by the feeling of god or the feeling of love”.
Truth about truth. – The truth about truth is that those who seek it have a horrible habit of…finding it.
Culture
Culture virus. – I have a horrible cold, what the French-Swiss call “une rhume”. My nose is completely blocked by the millions of little viral creatures that, for reasons beyond my understanding, have decided to set up camp in me. Because of this invasion sleeping is very difficult and I cannot smell or taste anything. Life is rather miserable for the moment. But all is not lost because I see a cute little metaphor in the experience of this “common cold”. – Might the virus not be compared to culture? The virus was not my doing. It just invaded me and took over my being. It controls most of what I do these days. I see the world through it. It fills my head and colors my life…. Isn’t this what culture does? Doesn’t culture set up camp in each of us and control the deepest parts of our “heads”? One does not ask to be born into the civilization one is born into. Family, language, beliefs, values, and even notions like “what counts as real” and what counts as “life” are all there waiting to possess us, take hold of us, and direct our lives. Like the virus in my nose, culture decides what we smell and taste in the world, what possibilities there are for our thinking and digestion. The difference between culture and the virus in my head is that I know the difference between the virus being there and not being there; with culture one initially has no idea that there are other possible ways of living, thinking, and seeing the world. When one does finally reach a certain “age of reason” (where one might be able to think for oneself…), it is often too late…the culture has already been set in cement in the head and one’s entire existence will be colored by it until death… and one will never be able to see outside of the box…and one will never “think” for oneself…and one will always have a bad cold, “une rhume incontournable”. – After five days the cold virus usually begins to evacuate one’s nose. After fifty years hasn’t the culture virus left most people frozen in their tracks?
Culture bubble. – How many people do you know who are able to actually think for themselves…about anything? Who do you know who thinks freely…who flies above the rabble? Are we not all caught in the stampede of the thought of our time? Who does not join that herd and drift along with it until death? There are of course thinkers at the front that change the direction of the herd. But change comes slowly and the herd is slow to follow. On different parts of the earth there are different herds. Maybe one will follow one herd, tire of its bellowing, and join another herd as quickly as possible…Give me someone to follow, and fast! That is the mantra of mankind. Man will carry one cross, then drop it and carry another, then another, then another. But he will not carry it alone. He must have help. He must have his “group”, his team, his collective values. What man can stand alone on a mountaintop and say – “I believe nothing any of you say. I have heard it all before a hundred times. None of you have the truth. You all say you do. What does that mean?… That if one of you is right all the others are wrong. But I think you are all wrong. I think you are all blind men following other blind men. It is all yapping. I hear it in every marketplace, in every church, university, and political party and it hurts my ears. I can’t hear it any more. I love all of you because I know you can be nothing other than what you are. But I am tired of you. I need respite from your babbling…” – Yes, who among us can say this? Who would want to say it?
Popping the bubble. – Even scientists, philosophers, libertarians, and nature lovers are stuck in their systems. Most scientists are bad philosophers. Most philosophers do not question philosophy. Most libertarians fail to grasp the idea that it is very possible that nothing is “free”. Most nature lovers cannot imagine that New York City and atomic bombs might very well be “part of nature”. The culture bubble might be the strongest bubble of all. To pop it – to cut one’s way out – one needs the sharpest blade of all, i.e. deep deep reflection.
Living in the sea. Ninety percent of all living creatures inhabit the sea. With few exceptions, if taken out of the water, they will all die within a very short time. They are simply not made to live in fresh air. Of the ten percent that live on land, the opposite is true; they – we – cannot survive in water. After two or three minutes we – humans, elephants, dogs, cats, horses, spiders, mice, mosquitos, chickens, etc. – drown and die. We are not fit to live in water. We must have our sun, sky, and air… – There is another kind of sea where ninety-nine percent of humans live – the “Sea of Culture”. Like the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans where there are no precise dividing lines, cultural seas also overlap, but are nonetheless just as real. The American Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Chinese Sea, the Russian Ocean, the German Sea, the Indonesian Sea, Lake Thai, etc. There is also the Christian Sea, the Jewish Sea, the Islamic Ocean, Lake Shinto, Lake Atheist, the Bay of Buddha, etc. In the end, just like the two great bodies of water on earth, there are two principal cultural seas: the Occidental Ocean and the Asian Ocean. These bodies of culture are not made of H2O, but of T2T…tradition, tradition, and more tradition: years, centuries, millennium of rituals and ideas about who we are, where we came from, what values we uphold, our reasons for living and dying, and our logic for what we do. All men swim constantly in a sea of culture. The water is so thick that very few are able to step back and look at another culture with open eyes. When the Europeans came to America they brought a religious and cultural tsunami. The local people were flooded and wiped out. The Europeans, certain of their god and cultural superiority, had few – if any – qualms about obliterating or chopping up the Aztecs, Incas, Mayas, Sioux, Seminoles, Apaches, Cherokees, Pawnees, Cheyenne, Navaho, and all the other tribes…if they did not become “Christians”! The Europeans could not swim in the native culture of the Americas. They had the bullets and better swords and were not open to assimilating anything the Indians had to say about the world. – Culture for people really is like water for fish; it is so omnipresent that we don’t realize it’s there, and even if we do, we can’t separate ourselves from it without finding ourselves gasping for air…
“Coming out”. – In today’s world the expression “coming out” commonly refers to people revealing publicly their proclivity for loving people of the same sex. There is frequently a huge amount of hoopla attached to such moments, especially with athletes. The more macho the sport, the greater the cacophony. – One of my principal beefs with humanity is that everybody seems to think their world is “the” world. Most people cannot see outside of their cultural boxes. Homosexuality (and today’s hugely publicized “coming outs”) is a perfect example. – For the ancient Greeks, homosexuality was very common. There was nothing “wrong” with it. In fact, a relationship between a man and a boy was perfectly normal. Today, in so-called Western Civilization, one can be locked in prison for life for such a thing. In fact, in Plato’s day it was a rite of passage for an older man to teach a boy – between the age of twelve and the moment he started growing a beard – about the ways of the world…Today’s ways are much different. We have homophobia, gay slurs, people thinking homosexuals are perverted etc. We have a huge dose of intolerance, stupidity, and people who think they “are right” and that homosexuality is “sinful”, “evil”, “unnatural”, and “a blight on the earth”. Hence, admitting publicly that one is “gay” (now where did that misnomer come from?) is very difficult to do and usually causes a big stir and much ungayness…. – Let us look at some other “coming-outs” in the history of mankind that have caused similar problems. 1) Jesus. – We are not exactly sure what Jesus came out and said, but whatever it was (“love thy neighbor”, “Roman gods not real”, etc.) left him dead on a wooden cross. 2) The earth is not the center of the universe. – Copernicus, Galileo, and their friends were in big trouble for saying this. They had to hide their true beliefs from the Popes and priests lest they be killed for such heretical ideas. 3) That women and people with black skin have souls. – A few hundred years ago anyone who said this was subjected to much derision and hate. Only European “white” men were believed to have souls. 4) Slavery is bad. – Slavery was perfectly normal until the eighteenth – even nineteenth – century. To say it was wrong would cause many faces to frown and eyes to pinch. 5) Atheism. – For hundreds and hundreds of years, coming out and saying, “I don’t believe in God,” could get a person whipped or killed. 6) Saying that your country is not special. – At least in America where I am from, to stand up and say, “I do not believe the Constitution was divinely inspired and America is not necessarily the greatest country on earth”, can make you the target of much hate and derision. 7) Darwin’s theory of evolution. – Early believers in this were subject to much abuse. 8) Darwin’s theory of evolution: Part II. – Today (except around fanatic Christians) if you say you don’t think Darwin’s theory really explains anything, or if you say the Big Bang explains nothing about the origin of the universe, you are often subject to gnashing of teeth and intellectual ridicule. 9) The non-existence of a beginning. – If you say there was “no beginning”, that existence always has existed, you can be subject to mockery. You must say either God created the world or the Big Bang was the start of it all. 10) Clandestine love affairs especially for top politicians. – In today’s world, this might be even more difficult than saying you are a homosexual. If Barack Obama had “came out” and said he had made passionate love with Beyonce, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, and/or Brad Pitt’s wife, this would probably have caused a global scandal beyond any in human history. For lesser-known people, “coming out of the closet” and admitting you love someone other than your spouse is always a very tedious affair. 11) Moral relativity. – Pointing out that the values of one’s culture are not necessarily considered “good” in another culture can be very dangerous especially around fanatic religious or political types. 12) Denying the truth of one’s religion. – Coming out and renouncing one’s religion can create a dirty messy perilous situation. In parts of the Islamic world it evidently can be punished by death. 13) Denying “truth” in general. – To say that it is very possible that the human brain (like the cow brain or the eagle brain) is ill equipped to “know the truth” – about anything – can get you in the doghouse with most people. 14) Proclaiming that even if the climate is changing, it doesn’t matter. – This might get you verbally stoned or ostracized from modern society. Saying that maybe the earth wasn’t the “perfect temperature to start with” can bring on much ire from your fellow citizens. If you declare that maybe a few more degrees here or there might get rid of some undesired species and bring on possibly some new and interesting species, people will look at you as if you were crazy, which you may or may not be the case…. – In any case, homosexuals are not the only ones who have had to hide in dark messy closets while the world slowly crawls on its hands and knees toward…“the light”.
Human anthill. – What happens to a human being who is ahead of his time and culture? He is usually considered mad and historically has been locked up, ignored, banished, or simply put to death…unless, of course, he decides to keep his mouth shut and stay on the anthill of humanity.
Power of news. – We have no newspapers or television news stations telling us what is happening on other planets in other parts of the universe. These faraway places might have some very interesting people and a variety of scintillating things going on, including horrors, catastrophes, and wild values and ways of living. But we don’t miss the news that we know absolutely nothing about. Imagine: Up until a few hundred years ago, this is exactly the way things were on our earth, i.e. people in what is now called “Nepal” had absolutely no idea what was going on in a place like “Ferguson, Missouri” – and vice versa. In fact they probably had no idea what was going on a hundred miles from where they lived…or even ten miles from where they lived! Not only did people not know what was going on in the world, but also they didn’t care what was going on! (Just like today we don’t care what is going on in other corners of the universe). Now let’s look at what people do care about today. With newspapers, Internet, and 24-hour television news channels, people in China get to see (over and over again) hordes of angry people in Ferguson, Missouri throwing rocks at police officers and setting fire to buildings and automobiles. People in Ferguson, Missouri get to see (over and over again) thousands of dead people and ruined buildings after a devastating earthquake in Nepal. People in both places get to see (over and over again) the horrendous ruins of a plane crash in the French Alps, floods in Bangladesh, train accidents in Philadelphia, ISIS beheadings in Iraq, and on and on ad infinitum. – Western world culture has become a slave to the 24-hour news powers that spread constant horror from all parts of the earth across all parts of the earth. And given that the earth is a big place, there is always some veritably nasty stuff going on somewhere all the time. And the news teams will always be there to sniff it out, pack it up, and send it into our living rooms. – The news today is a cultural disgrace, and perhaps proof of humanity’s penchant for blood, guts, tragedy, and watching others suffer.
Moment in history. – Will our moment in history always limit how we see the world? Will even an Einstein or a Nietzsche, always be limited in how far he can think, imagine, and understand. – Who has brought us the closest to truth? Might it not be he who has taken us the farthest from it?
Sheep dogs. – As the herd moves forward the sheep dogs will run behind any animal that is trying to go its own way. They will bark and bite the heels of the creature that dares stray from the group. Doesn’t this sound familiar to members of the higher races?
Mankind and Nature
Imagine… – Imagine the time – not really that long ago, though we call it “prehistoric” – when all beasts lived together on the earth, when there were no solid walls or fences to keep other beasts at bay, and the only forms of transportation were walking, crawling, slithering, or flying (for winged creatures only). Imagine how different things were and how creatures perceived each other. The time periodwe are imagining was thousands of years before a certain group of beasts came up with – and spread – the monotheistic version of life wherein a great God was said to have created all “plants” and “animals” for “man’s” use and survival. We are imagining a time when there was not a cosmological hierarchy of “value” on earth (God, man, animal, plant, etc.), but rather all creatures looked at each other with awe and wonder and a certain sense of “equality”. Man-beasts had not yet decided they were children of “God”; man-beasts lived in small groups; man-beasts slept in caves or huts (much like birds’ nests with roofs); and there were no fixed ideas running through man-beast heads about where existence came from, where it was going, and what its “meaning” was. – Imagine this moment on earth…and then look at now! Look at how we see life. Look at our values and what we believe in. Look at how we spend our time and where our thoughts are aimed and directed. I, for one, think we are still a very primitive herd of beasts. I am even tempted to say that we have not gone forward, but perhaps even backward. The more we think we know, the less we feel and sense the deep mystery of life…the deep mystery of all creatures…of all existence. The more objects and “events” (TV, iPhones, Google, books, sports, movies, concerts, religions, videos, YouTube, shopping malls, political parties, car shows, horse shows, dog shows, pornographic shows, art shows, and all the rest) we surround ourselves with, the less time we have to feel the unfathomable mystery of Being and even to “love” certain parts of it. (Can one truly love in our cluttered world today?) – But why, you may ask, would one want to feel the unfathomable mystery of Being? I have really no more of an answer to this question than I have to the question, “Why would one want Tommy Hilfiger underwear?”
Making do. – We all make do with what we are. If we are snakes, we slither and crawl, feed on small rodents, and hide in holes. If we are monkeys we climb trees, swing from branch to branch, and munch on bananas. If we are flies, we buzz around picnic tables, land when it’s safe, and try to avoid swatters. If we are fish we live in water, do a lot of cruising, and try not to get caught or swallowed by fish bigger than ourselves. If we are squirrels, we scavenge, do our best to avoid car tires, sleep in nooks and crannies, and save nuts for winter. If we are men, we nurse, suck thumbs, walk, drive or pedal wheeled machines, go to school, try to make money, believe in gods or the absence of such, build things with our ten fingers, etc. We all – without exception! – make do with what we are. Seemingly some of us areluckier than others…
A natural world. – How many people dare think of life withoutany kind of God or godly forces? Who do you know who adds nothing “supernatural” to their vision of the world? – Perhaps in order to do this you must first think that everything that exists is “natural”. Initially, this appears easy to do, but it really isn’t because most people want to say that skyscrapers, pesticides, non-sugar coffee sweeteners, nuclear bombs, factory pollution, car fumes, antibiotics, cement, fast food restaurants, and artificial leather coats are not “natural”. But in our thinking, if man is part of nature, then everything he produces is also…natural! Very few people are capable of this thought. Why? Because they are so used to seeing man as being created or guided or inspired by forces that are “outside of nature”. This, then, makes them think that when men produce things like large ugly buildings or noisy cars, that they are making things that are not natural. But for the person who is capable of seeing the world without any kind of supernatural forces, these things are just as natural as a bird’s nest, a bee-hive, a cloud, or the hair growing in one’s nose or on one’s chin.
What we are not. – We are not the creations of an omnipotent god. Such an idea looks good on paper and in a dear mind looking for solace, but the odds of it being true are next to zilch. We are not animals, not because we don’t resemble monkeys and other such creatures with our similar eyes, bodies, DNA, reproductive systems, etc., but because we really don’t know what “animals” are. We think we do, of course. We think we know a lot of things. But when the chips are all on the table, we really don’t know what elephants, condors, worms, bears, mice, mosquitos, gazelles, gorillas, and rabbits are. They are all as much a mystery as we are. – We are not moral beings, not because we don’t try to do what we think is right…of course we do. Most of us are rather kind and respectful of others. But this doesn’t make us moral, because in the end we don’t know what the “good” is. If we look carefully at the world, there have been – and are – thousands and thousands (even millions) of ideas about what is “good”. Sure…some might be “better” than others”, but one need only look at the great cleavage between meat-eaters, pescatarians, vegetarians, and vegans to realize that there is no moral consensus about what should or should not be sacrificed for human consumption. – We are not outside of nature. We are different. We have some power. But the sun and the tsunami have more. We are not free. We are not superior in value. We are not unnatural.
Clearing Up the Free Will Mess. – Two things stand out when we think about the free will question: a) how very few people seem to actually “think through” the “problem” of free will, and b) how very few people realize the potential importance of the issue. – I remember when I first thought about the idea of free will. I was a freshman at BYU taking an introductory philosophy class. The teacher juxtaposed free will and determinism, said God gave us a soul to “choose between right and wrong”, and class moved on with little commotion or discussion. -But not me. The question (problem) hit me like a brick. I have been thinking about it for fifty years. What is “free will”? What does the word “free” actually mean? What is “will”? What is “behind” everything that exists in the universe? What moves what? What is the “soul”? What is the “mind”? What is doing the choosing? What controls the mind? Did anyone ask to have the mind he or she has? If you didn’t select your mind, how can you be “free” to choose what your mind chooses? Etc., etc…These are just a few of the questions that went through my mind as a student. Many others have followed. -Let us cut quickly to two core problems: first, the fact that creatures make decisions in no way assures that those decisions are “free”. This is where most people stop thinking. They say, “We all make decisions and no one is forcing us to make them, hence we are free.” First we must ask, What is making the decisions? A brain? A soul? An “I”? But what is a brain and how does a brain function? Has anyone ever seen a soul? How does a soul function? Animals all have brains but we never consider their decisions to be free. When a dog decides to bark, is there a “free” part of the dog that makes the decision, or is it purely instinctive? Of course our vision of man and dog will say that the dog acts instinctively, whereas man is free. But is this “true”? How do we know man’s choices are not also “instinctive” and that our bodies and minds have been molded over the centuries just like dogs’ minds and bodies have? No dog asked to have the brain it has. No human asked to have the brain it has. Why is one not free and the other is? – Most people swim in the idea that other than God, people (creatures like you and me) are the only free creatures in the known universe. Take two steps back…Isn’t that a rather preposterous idea? – Now, we must clear up the business of “determinism” being the opposite of free will. This tendency is also the result of simplistic thinking. The fact that I might not believe in free will does not mean that I believe in determinism!Not at all. Determinism is not the opposite of free will. Determinism implies that there is some “force” or plan behind what happens in the universe, that things are determined…or “pre-determined”. I can easily not believe in free will and also not believe that things are determined or pre-determined. They are not opposites. The absence of one does not guarantee the existence of the other. People have great difficulty comprehending the possibility that nothing is free and nothing is determined. But it is highly possible. It would simply mean that all Being simply is… everything…and there is nothing “behind” Being. There is no god or any other “determining force”. This is very hard for the occidental mind to grasp, and yet this vision of the universe is certainly as plausible as a determined, guided, or created universe, and probably even more plausible than a universe wherein certain creatures are “free” and others are not. – Now let us look at the importance of the idea of “free will” in our civilization? Obviously it is central; our entire judicial system is based on “free will”. We blame. We punish. We hold people responsible. We look at each other and think that we are somehow “responsible” for being who we are…that there is a soul (or some such thing) that is free to choose. We don’t think this way when we look at animals. We don’t think they are free. They are either nice or a nuisance, but they are not free. We don’t put animals in prison. Why? Because we think they act instinctively, not freely. We constantly judge people to be guilty or innocent. We don’t do this with animals. We “instinctively” (I use the word ironically of course) feel that people are responsible for being who and what they are, but that the rest of the universe (except God) is not responsible for being what it is. – We think thus: An earthquake is not “responsible” for what it does; a tsunami is not a free agent that suddenly decides to kill 220,000 people; a rattlesnake is never considered “responsible” for being what it is and biting somebody; a mentally handicapped person who commits a crime will not be locked up in a prison; however, a “normal” person who commits the same crime will be locked up or even capitally punished. But couldn’t we imagine that all criminals are somehow “mentally handicapped”? None asked to have the brain they have any more the handicapped person asked to be handicapped. Their handicap is perhaps far subtler and less obvious, but might it not be there just the same? – Let us be clear about one other thing. We must not confuse a disbelief in free will with a belief that society should not make its citizens feel responsible for their actions, and in fact, hold them responsible for what they do. Of course all people must be taught the laws and rules of civilized behavior, just like dogs must be trained not to bite and not to pee in the living room. And if the dog does pee or bite, something must be done. It should be the same with humans. But we should not see ourselves and our fellows citizens to be “guilty” or “innocent”, or “free” or “unfree”. Our courtrooms should not be seeking vengeance or punishment for “evil-doers”, they should simply be deciding if a person who has done something deleterious can reform and fit into society. – In my vision, all things in the universe are innocent (i.e. nothing asked to be who or what it is) and nothing is free (i.e. nothing possesses “free will”…no sun, no galaxy, no plant, no lion, no man, no god). But this changes nothing about wanting love or beauty or wanting to make a better world. One can not believe in free will and still crave to make the world a heaven on earth. Michelangelo didn’t have to have free will in order to do what he did…he simply needed to be Michelangelo. Flaubert didn’t need to be free to write “Madame Bovary”…he needed to be Flaubert. Einstein didn’t need free will to be Einstein any more than the sun needs free will to keep us warm or a sequoia tree needs free will to grow a hundred meters high. Taking free will out of the universe changes nothing about the universe. It simply changes one’s perception of what Being is. – Father forgive them for they know not what they do…Would Jesus have believed in free will?
Close examination. – Close examination of everything “created” in the world reveals that all things are a function of the capacities and capabilities of the makers. In this sense, everything is a function of everything else. We like to think that the world was made for us, when in fact we are – in all likelihood – just another piece of the world. – Let me explain: If cats didn’t have teeth and claws they would never be able to catch mice. Dead mice would never be on our doorstep if Tilou had no teeth and claws. If mosquitoes didn’t bite, there would be no mosquito sprays. If human beings didn’t have teeth, the life of cows would be very different. If human beings sneezed for twenty seconds instead of a half of a second, automobile transportation as we know it would not exist. You could not safely drive at 100 kilometers per hour on a busy highway if human sneezes lasted twenty seconds (unless robot cars were invented). The same is true if human eyes could not see more than five meters. If humans didn’t have fingers, the only ball sport that might have a chance of existing is soccer (although there would be no nice inflatable leather or synthetic balls). If humans didn’t have fingers, there would be no knives, forks, or spoons. If there were no trees, there would be no log cabins or forest fires. If there were no trees, Columbus wouldn’t have had the boats that sailed to America. If America had been underwater, Columbus wouldn’t have discovered it. If men had brains like monkeys there would be no film stars, people pages, guns, ketchup, and everything written about in history books. If Hitler had been born a girl, Europe would have had a different history. If my puritanical mother had remained frigid, I wouldn’t be here. If there were no metals, architecture would be very different. If there were no metals, the most dangerous weapon would be a rock or a tree branch. (If there were no metals, could there be an earth?) If there was no water, there would be no animals, plants, people, or single-celled organisms, or orgasms. If there were no people there would be no zoos, slaughterhouses, Chinese restaurants, or flower shops. If men had brains like other animals, there would be no prisons, churches, gods, or beauty queens. If cheetahs were allowed to compete in the Olympics they would win all the gold medals in the sprints. If Halloween didn’t exist I wouldn’t have cut the two fingers on my left hand. If the doctor in Kaiser hospital hadn’t messed up the operation, I would have been sent to Vietnam (my draft number was “7”). If I had been sent to Vietnam I probably would have gone crazy. If the communist-capitalist dichotomy didn’t exist, there would have been no Vietnam War. If the Americas had remained in the hands of the Incas, Aztecs, Mayas, and Sioux, there would have been no Vietnam War, and much of the world would be very different. If people were the size of ants, my mind would never have contained the image of bodies flying from the burning Twin Towers one September morning in New York…You get the idea. Everything is a function of everything else. We like to think that the world was made for us, but we are just another piece of the world.
Miracles and existence. – If there is one way man can differentiate himself from animals, it is in his appreciation for the one real miracle: that anything exists at all. Unfortunately, most men still believe in miracles, but have completely forgotten about existence.
Nature. – Might it be that anyone who still uses the word nature has no perspective on existence, and anyone who still uses the word “natural” has no perspective on nature?
No one can leave. – One cannot quit nature;one can only change one’s status and surroundings; worms, weather, and fellow creatures will take care of the rest.
The free man. – And if the human brain is simply another organ that acts instinctively…Might the freest man not be the one who follows his own instincts and not the instincts of the state?
How should we judge an advanced species? – After birth, baby ducks stay with their mother for about two months. They follow her everywhere and she teaches them all they need to know in order to survive in the world. Then they leave and live their own lives. Humans, on the other hand, have a very different process of educating their young. Many parents want their children to follow them “all through life”. Some want them to live the same life they have lived. Some use them for “something to hold on to”. Many children are dependent on their parents into their twenties, thirties, or even until they die. Many parents are dependent on their children. Some children are an eternal burden to their parents. Some parents are a lifelong ball and chain for their children. – How advanced are we…?
Reason? – Most dictionary definitions will say that “reason” is what separates “man” from “animals”. So what is reason? What is reason for Obama is not reason for Putin. What is reason for a psychiatrist is not reason for a psychopath. What is reason for Plato was not reason for Nietzsche. What is reason for Cortez was not reason for Montezuma. What is reason for the Pope is not reason for the guy who runs the sex shop behind the train station. What is reason for the wife is often not reason for the husband. Every human has his or her way of reasoning. There is no common thread that runs through all human reasoning. “Reason” separates every human from every other human. To say reason is what separates man from animals means nothing. For all we know, reason is what separates butterflies from giraffes, buffaloes from frogs, ducks from centipedes, and vice-versa. Each certainly has its own way of dealing with the world… Let us resume with two questions: If reason means being rational, hasn’thuman rationality made man the cruelest creature on earth? Does any other creature kill and destroy like the human?
Three questions. – If everything is part of nature, if nothing is free, if nature has no goal, if everything is what it is and can be nothing else, then what is the reason for living? What is the meaning of life? … If no things are part of nature, if all things are free, what then? Could all this freedom have a goal? Could absolute freedom have a reason for living? … A lion is what it is. No thought system I know of gives a lion “free will”. A lion is absolutely considered part of nature by all thought systems. Who would dare say a lion has no reason to live or that its life has no meaning?
Freedom and meaning. – Free will and freedom have nothing to do with the meaning of life or reason for living. One can be absolutely unfree and still give life a meaning and one’s life and other lives a reason for being.
Who really is “alive”? – If the sun didn’t “exist”, we wouldn’t “exist”. The opposite, however, is not true. When will we give the sun a little more credit for being “alive”…for being a living “being”?
Only humans… – Honestly, look out into space…think for more than ten seconds…. It is not beautiful or ugly, good or bad, logical or illogical, right or wrong, clean or dirty, high or low, big or small, created or uncreated, random or destined, intelligent or stupid, happy or sad. Only we humans say such things. – Now look in into your head…think for more than ten seconds…. It is not beautiful or ugly, good or bad, logical or illogical, right or wrong, clean or dirty, high or low, big or small, created or uncreated, random or destined, intelligent or stupid, happy or sad. Only humans say such things. Then they grumble and fight. Birds just fly to another fence post.
Thinking about the mystery. – Did so-called “prehistoric” man think about the unfathomable mystery of Being? – My guess is that, just like men today, he had other things on his mind. He was probably concerned about not being eaten and finding something to eat; man today is concerned about what time he eats, where he eats, and which wine goes with what dish…. – Honestly, which existence is preferable: that of an ancient hunter or that of a modern CEO? Would you rather be Tarzan or the Pope? Whose Weltanschauung is closer to the truth? Today we spend huge amounts of time with doctors, in hospitals, taking medicine, and getting treatment for our decaying bodies. In spite of all the great gods we have created, death is anathema. Prehistoric man probably saw very little difference between life and death.
So who would you rather be…Tarzan or the Pope? – Tarzan, for two reasons: Jane and the wardrobe.
Difference in the kingdoms. – Perhaps the principal difference between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom is that animals never have anything for sale.
Nature. – Doesn’t everything do what comes “naturally”? How can nature be unnatural? The word nature is absolutely meaningless. Every thing in the universe got there “naturally”. When – o when! – will this little “fact” become common knowledge? When will the light of consciousness see the light and night of eternity…deep, deep, deep eternity…wherein man is but a speck…and a very natural one at that…?
Religion and Churches
The Huly Buble. – Once upon a time, a time when things were happening just like they are now, but with variations of course, Gud decided that there was too much seriousness in the behavior of trees, rocks, spinning planets, and sunsets, so Hu decided to create mun and wumun. At first there was just one mun and one wumun, but Gud, being one to plan ahead, gave the mun a punus and the wumun a vuguna and the next thing Hu knew there were mun and wumun of different colors and sizes all over the place. In the beginning Gud really liked watching them fight over things like big sticks and pieces of meat, and Hu often laughed his uss off. All of this lasted for quite a long while and Gud stayed reasonably amused….But, as always, boredom began to set in and Hu decided to make a few changes. First Hu decided to make the mun and wumun talk, you know, make noises with their mouths and tongues and lips. But after a while these noises got to be very repetitive and Gud got bored again, so he decided to put a bruun in the heads of all the mun and wumun. Up until this point all the decisions that the mun and wumun made were made in their punuses and vugunas and mouths. But now, with a bruun in their heads, they had another engine to tell them what to do and which way to go. It’s funny how all the mun and wumun started to take their bruuns seriously. Whereas before, when the punuses and vugunas and mouths were responsible for what was going on, suddenly there were a whole bunch of new things happening in Gud’s funhouse. And the biggest things were all of the sudden the establishment of rulugions and murulities. Suddenly mun and wumun – mostly mun actually – started inventing all kinds of guds and murul principles telling everybody what was rught and what was wrung. Up until then everybody was just kind of eating, sleeping, furnicating, and dying, but suddenly people started to write books and give speeches and see anguls and have vusions about guds and stuff like that, and climb up mountains and tell everybody what was rught and wrung and how to luve their luves. In Chuna their were people like Cunfucius. He was probably a pretty nice guy who didn’t overeat. In Jupon there were things like “The Seven Guds of Guud Luck”. In Undia there were the Hundus with Guds all over the place running around with holes in their shoes. And all around there was the bug duddy Buddhu who got his picture in lots of newspapers and who liked desserts and second helpings of food. In Muxico the sun was Gud for a while until the Chrustians came. In the Muddle East there was the mountain-climber named Muses who had a gud that got mad a lot and threw lightening bolts at sunners. The Gruuks had some prutty guud guds too who even liked to drink good wine and show off their punuses and vugunas. Then came Jusus who was really probably a pretty nice guy, but who got killed and accused of things like walking on water and feeding five thousand people with twelve loaves of bread by people like Puul, Juhn, Luuk, and Muthuw who started writing the Huly Buble. Pretty soon there was a string of Pupes who got real rich, ate well, built nice buildings, and started a series of wars. Then Muhummud came long with Ullah and scarves became fashionable along with cutting off hands and fingers. Then there were people like Luthur and Culvun who had seen enough of the Pupes and started new religions also based on the Huly Buble. Then came the Prutustunts and the Murmuns, and the Juhuvuhs Wutnussus and the Suvunth Duy Udvuntusts and the Buptusts, all kinds of groups like that that were telling people what was rught and wrung and who the real Gud was. It really got to be a big mess and the real Gud was becoming less and less amused by the whole show. Hu started thinking maybe Hu shouldn’t have put that bruun in the mun’s and wumun’s heads after all. Hu finally decided to have a jully guud fluud and into the gurbuge can went most of the muss.
Religion. – Let us look at the word: religion. It is a common word that is used every day by millions of people around the globe. What is under the umbrella of this word? How vast is the umbrella of “religion”? What is re-ligion? Are we re-doing something when we are re-ligious? – It seems the word comes from the Latin, “religio” which means to bind man and god together, or perhaps from the word “religare” which means to bind back. – Let’s look at some of the things the word “religion” includes as it is used in the English language…. I know a religion that says God built the world in six days and then took a rest on the seventh and which has a commandment that says, “thou shalt not kill”, but has massacred thousands – even millions – of people in the name of that God. I know a religion that tells people not to harm even a fly. I know a religion that worships many different Gods and considers cows to be sacred. There are other religions that condone the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cows every day to feed its people. There are religions that don’t let women be priests or pastors or even allow them to talk in church. Some religions don’t really believe in a “God” per se and others think God is everywhere and in everything. I was raised in a religion that thinks men can become Gods. There are religions that believe in glorious heavens with lots of food and virgins for martyrs. There are religions that believe the irreligious will burn eternally in hell. And there are religions that say that after death you might become a duck or a cucumber. I was once part of a religion that claimed drinking wine and coffee was sinful and whose members were told to wear special underwear to help keep them holy and chaste. I know a religion that calls for the lapidation of women who make love with a man that is not their husband (do the men get stoned too?). I know religions that excommunicate both men and women for being unfaithful. I know religions that forgive and don’t punish, and others that thrive on fear and making people feeling guilty…. – Yes, the word “religion” encompasses a wide variety of beliefs and principles, many of which contradict each other dramatically. – In the end, does it mean anything to say that Bill or Sally is “a deeply religious person”?
What religions generally do. – Religions make you feel that life is a story that makes perfect sense. It is usually an autobiographical story written and produced by “God” (or “gods”) that is made known to the world through “a prophet”. You are an important character in the story and you are intrinsically and immediately related to the powers that have created – and control – the universe. You exist for a reason, a supreme reason, God’s reason. If you believe the story you will stay in the grip of the religion for life.
On empathy. – Christianity teaches that we should feel “empathy” for others. Jesus is said to have felt “empathy” for all humanity. We are told we should put ourselves in the other people’s shoes. But if you think about it, isn’t this an rather absurd idea? For me to put myself in your shoes – whoever you are, however big or small your feet are – would take a lifetime of research and thinking, and even then, I would not know “who you are”. It would seem impossible to truly empathize with someone you do not know. And furthermore, if I tried to feel total empathy for another human being, wouldn’t that person eventually fill me to the point that… a) I would lose myself, and b) I would be so full of empathy for that person that I would no longer be able to feel – or have time for – empathy for anyone else? Imagine trying to feel empathy for every living creature (which is kind of the Jesus model that I tried to follow in my youth)…With all the suffering and violence in the world, how far would one get before one’s head exploded? – So if the Christ-ian goal of empathy is impossible, what should one do? Be nice to people? Respect people? Respect animals? Respect their right to live? Yes, of course…But how should one do this? Where are the limits? What animals should live? If we are nice to our enemies and they want to kill us, what then? How do we treat criminals? Did Jesus really turn his cheek or was he just trying to avoid a knock-out punch?
Judging Judgment Day. – Can you imagine the human being who first came up with the idea of “a judgment day”? It had to have been a person who absolutely hated life. It had to have been someone with a huge chip on his or her shoulder. It had to have been someone who wanted serious revenge. It had to have been someone who had been severely mistreated by the world…No loving human being would ever come up with a concept like a “judgment day”, a day which sends fellow creatures to burn and rot in hell eternally! Can you imagine the mind of such a person? Can you imagine the feelings stirring in the heart of the man (it had to have been a man…no woman could be so cruel!) who wants to see part of humanity consigned to “suffer…forever”. How hateful! How wicked! How mean-spirited! How evil!!! – And yet this idea is part of the doctrines of two of the most prominent religions of the world. This idea is believed by billions of people. Does this not tell us something about our “humanity”?
Loving thy neighbor. – Why should one love thy neighbor? Because thy neighbor merits thy love? Because doing so will get thee to heaven? Because doing so will make others look upon thee approvingly? Because one needs thy neighbor’s help from time to time? – We surely don’t love our neighbors because we actually love them. One might treat one’s neighbors in many ways, but love will not be one of them…(unless Cupid strikes, in which case all hell will eventually break loose). Being nice to one’s neighbors makes perfectly good sense. Shouldn’t the commandment be, “Be nice to thy neighbor, so thy neighbor will be nice to thee”? Do we need a god to tell us something this obvious? Birds seem to understand this without being “commanded” by anyone.
An irony about today’s Pope. – Let us go insidethe mind of Pope Francis, the leader of the largest Christian church on this earth. He is considered by billions of people to be the holiestman alive. He is even said to speak for God. Recently, Pope Francis has been talking loudly and often about how Europe needs to help the hundreds of thousands of African refugees who are risking their lives as they flee their homeland in rickety boats in an effort to find a better life. Europeans, the Pope says, must open their Christian arms to these African brothers and sisters. Is Francis himself not part of the Europe he is preaching to? Does he not live in the Vatican in the heart of Italy? Is he not one of the richest people on the planet and does he not have one of the biggest residences? So why, I ask with honest wonder, has he not invited one single refugee to come and stay with him? Why has he not provided any actual shelter, job, or hands-on assistance for anyone? Jesus is the Christ in “Christianity”. My guess is that were he still around to be “Pope” today, he wouldn’t just tell people what to do, but would be the first to bring needy refugees intohis home…
Short history of Christianity. – Why are people usually solemn in Christian churches? Why aren’t they smiling and laughing and rolling in the aisles? Why are their mouths usually closed and their necks slightly bent forward as they sit crunched in their pews? Why are they not patting each other on the back and having a good time? Why are their foreheads often lined and their eyes frequently pinched? Why does the air feel heavy and damp? Why aren’t Christian churches in the open air in the middle grassy fields or in beautiful forests, valleys, or coves? Why do priests and pastors always have looks of seriousness? Why are the walls not covered with pictures of flowers, lovely animals, or beautiful happy people? Why is the mood always seriousness and sadness? … Isn’t the answer to each question quite simple? – Christianity was founded on the idea that life on earth is something negative; it started with Adam and Eve sinning in the garden; God was there to condemn and punish; the body was evil; the mind was impure; human life on earth was a test to decide who would go to heaven and who would rot in hell; if commandments weren’t obeyed, God would send bolts of lightening, etc., etc.…How can one expect Christian churches to be something other than somber places? Imagine what the “Church” did to the Greek and Roman vision of the world! Imagine how the “temples” changed! The Catholic Church painted the world grey. Protestantism threw in a little color, but life was still not something to celebrate. This world always played second fiddle to the next world. – Christian churches will one day disappear. The world will look back at the two or three thousand years that they reigned over the Western hemisphere and many parts of the rest of the planet and wonder, “Why did it last so long?” – So what kind of religion will and should replace Christianity? Let’s hope and pray for one that gives no answer to the mystery of life, that makes no claims on truth, built-in meaning, and “history”, and that celebrates one thing only: Being. Given that Christianity is part of the Being we are talking about(the existence of all things), we will be kind to it. But we will not be unhappy to see it go.
The Mormon Church. – The Mormon Church says that God cursed the Indians with a red skin because they were living in sin around 400 A. D. It also says God cursed Negroes with a black skin for similar reasons. Interestingly, the Church doesn’t say God cursed the Caucasian race with a white skin for being so damned racist.
Providential provincialism. – If I remember correctly, the Bible story (the most popular story of God in the Western world) takes place in a very small area in and around what is today called “Israel”. This is the center, the core, the heart of human existence for everybody who believes in the Bible as the true story of God and man. It all starts a few thousand years before the birth of Jesus. When I was a young boy most Christians believed that the beginning was 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Today, because of the overwhelming archaeological and anthropological evidence, essentially everybody believes and agrees that the earth is much older and that during Biblical times there were things going on all over the planet earth, things that included people. So, I have a question that few Jews and Christians ever seem to ask: When the Biblical story was taking place, where was God with regard to the rest of the world? Was he ignoring the Russians, Chinese, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Americans, Japanese, French, Africans, English, Swedish, Greenlanders, Polynesians, etc.? Of course these people were not called by these names at the time, but there were still people there, i.e. human beings living, dying, and struggling to survive. Did God not care about these people? Were they less than people? Were they second-class citizens? Were they less important than the Jews and the Christians? The Bible has absolutely no mention of what was going on anywhere else in “the world” – and there was a lot going on! How, I wonder, could such a book be considered holy?
Thank you Mr. Smith. – The man who took up so much of my father’s time, Mr. Joseph Smith, at least said God was not only interested in the human beings around Israel, but He also had doings with the “Nephites”, “Jaredites”, and “Lamanites”, the names Smith gave to the people in the New World in his famous work, the “Book of Mormon”. This was a bit of progress, wasn’t it? I wonder when a prophet will start a religion in which every part of the world was equally important to Almighty God…
Churches. – Is anything more evident than the fact that there are “churches” all over the world and every believer in every building thinks he or she is worshipping the “true” god or gods? Unfortunately, few things in this world are less evident.
Necessity of churches. – Churches have been a necessary part of human civilization for a long time. Civilization has felt civilized thanks to churches and what they stood for. And what did they stand for? Could it have been false pride and a desperate need to feel it?
Getting to heaven. – I am inclined to believe that religion and churches are as necessary to most of humanity as lungs are. But why do people have two lungs, but only one church? Wouldn’t being a member of two churches double one’s chances of getting to heaven?
God and Christmas. – It is the season of peace on earth and good will toward men. Should God be part of such a celebration? Shouldn’t this be just a Jesus holiday? – The God of the Old Testament does not seem bent on promoting peace on earth, and He seems perhaps more interested in destruction than good will. In Genesis He says, “Every living substance that I have made will I destroy”… Hmmmm…In Exodus he declares, “For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth”…He sends plagues, slaughters animals, orders Abraham to kill his son Isaac, and on and on. At one point He says, “If an ox gores someone due to the negligence of its owner, then the ox shall be stoned, and his owner shall be put to death.” … I wonder who invited God to the Christmas celebration…
Human nature. – There are churches, whorehouses, and McDonald’s restaurants all over the planet. Need we know anything more to understand human nature?
Will the day ever come? – Will the day ever come when the only divinities are the creatures on earth themselves? – or better yet, the day when there is only one divinity: all Being?
Rejoicing. – I will be the first to rejoice if the universe has a creator and a purpose. I will be the last to lament if it doesn’t.
Church and prison. – The difference between a church and a prison is that prisons cannot punish for eternity. For this reason they are less effective at suppressing crime. – When will we need neither prisons nor churches in order to be nice to our neighbors (and not just the ones next door!)? My guess is that this will come to pass when the only people left on earth believe that either that everything is sacred or nothing is sacred…or better yet, both.
Religiosity – I have decided that any human belief constitutes a religious belief. Each and every belief about anything allows a human being to think he or she knows what’s going on. Thinking you know what’s going on – about anything – is what gives you a foothold in the world. It doesn’t matter what that belief is…atheistic, nihilistic, agnostic, patriotic, unpatriotic, simple, complex, etc. Even a belief like “Grass is green” or “Bill should get a new car” is an idea that anchors its believer in the world. The longer I live the more I think that one must simply believe in something to keep from going crazy. The fact that I believe this idea keeps me from going crazy. – Hence I have widened my idea of “religion” to include all language and all divisions of the world into “things” and placing them in temporal and spatial contexts. When someone says, “The book is on the table,” that person has taken the infinitely complex (the zillions of particles and energy – or whatever – that are “book” and “table”) and reduced it to something knowable and understandable for the speaker and the listener. This is a “religious” leap of faith. It is not really much different than saying “I know God lives”… All thinking with language and all thinking about language making sense (and referring to something “real”) is a form of religiosity. It anchors human beings in an infinite cosmos, just like religions have dutifully done for eons. – I don’t know if Wittgenstein said something similar. It seems he might have. It doesn’t matter either way. If he did, we are just part of the same church…
Philosophy and Philosophers
Spinoza. – There is a statue of Spinoza near the opera house in Amsterdam.The first day I had strolled by without noticing.Spinoza and I are good friends.He walked away from his Jewish upbringing.I walked away from a Mormon one.As far as I know neither left with rancor.Each just said thank you and goodbye.I think both of us had no choice as our minds just kept pushing and pulling finally deciding that there was no reason to believe the “religion” we had been born into. It seems that he did not replace Judaism with another religion.I did not replace Mormonism. I put the word “religion” in italics because few people take the time to think deeply about what the word really means. To me, all explanations for what existence (human and otherwise) is are religious, i.e. they give people a grounding and something to hold on to.With Mircea Eliade, I agree that the sacred is that which fixes one in time and space.Having gone through the process of doubting the Mormon explanation, I couldn’t help but continue to doubt all other explanations. I couldn’t help but turn to philosophy. I have found no explanation of existence that I consider satisfactory.My sneaking suspicion is that Spinoza felt the same thing.Together we have stood amazed.
Reflective life. – Someone (Socrates usually gets credit via Plato’s writings) said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” People love to quote this, especially people who think they themselves are living “examined” lives. But there is a huge problem: What exactly might an “examined” life be? What thinker is really able to “examine” life, such that life is revealed in its most limpid, honest, exact, true form? A physicist? A philosopher? A psychiatrist or psychotherapist? A Pope or other deeply “religious” man? A doctor? A combination of all the above? Some of the above?…This is the problem no one seems to confront when they say “An unexamined life is not worth living.” I’ve heard this quoted a hundred times…But nobody has followed it up with a lucid evaluation of what an “examined” life might be. – So let us think…Who do you know who has truly lived – or lives – an examined life? Who has really thought things through and understands his or her own “life”? Whose life, according to Socrates, has been “worth” living because it has been truly examined? – Maybe the glorious Siberian tiger I saw in the Servion Zoo yesterday has not examined its life, but does that make it not worth living? Or our sun…I doubt it has spent a lot of time thinking about itself, but fortunately for all of us, it is still alive and prosperous and very good at living…
Thinking philosophically. – Have you ever noticed that few people are able to think philosophically? I would even go so far as to say that a good many so-called “philosophers” do not think philosophically. – Before proceeding a centimeter further, we must attempt to define what we mean by thinking philosophically, for this is the key to anything and everything of import in this little reflection. Therefore: to think in a philosophical manner is to dig beneath the surface of all things (including newly dug surfaces), to see things from as many different angles as possible, to examine – and broaden – one’s perspective, and to eventually question all the premises and a priories of human convictions. – Is this too much to ask of a mind? It generally seems to be. – One of the greatest problems in philosophical thinking and thinking philosophically (they are not necessarily the same thing) is that if it is done properly, it must call into question with equal force and enthusiasm not only the beliefs of others, but also one’s own truths. And – perhaps the most difficult task of all – it must finally call into question the very notion of “truth” itself. – How many philosophers take into consideration the very real possibility that there is no truth? I know very few. And here we are not talking about truth being “relative”, for that implies still the idea of “truth”. What about the idea that just as it is now considered possible that there are no gods in the universe, mightn’t we also imagine that there are no truths? – A gold-digger who finds no gold is surely a bad miner. Mightn’t the truth-seeker who finds no truth be the opposite, i.e. the best philosopher of all? – The great irony of philosophy is that for a thinker to admit that he (she) cannot find what he is looking for is not necessarily a sign of weakness or failure, but rather of strength and success. – I now wish to suggest what I consider to be the big problem in human thinking: what we think is “thinking” is really not “thinking” (i.e. logical reflection) at all, but is rather instinctive behavior wholly tied to one’s emotional (existential) status in the world. This is why people get excited when then talk about their beliefs. This is why people go to war. This is why people protect their homeland. This is why we get attached to objects and people and places. None of these things are “well thought out” convictions; they are rather manifestations of our humanity, our deepest instincts, our very nature and being. Our cores are emotional and instinctive, not philosophically founded and profoundly considered reflections. What we call “thinking” usually has nothing whatsoever to so with pensiveness and hard-fought brainwork, but is rather an emotional reaction to how we “feel” about life…our lives…the heart of our beings. – It might very well be that real…pure…philosophical thinking is, in the end, impossible. If it is impossible to dissociate the so-called mind from the so-called body, then whoever invented the idea of “pure spirit” might have been the greatest charlatan of all. Was it Plato? Socrates? Buddha? It doesn’t really matter. The idea has been around for millennia and has been the source of a tsunami of misunderstanding. And most philosophers have been dogpaddling in its wake ever since. – Question: If thinking philosophically is impossible, then what do we have? Answer: The world…exactly as it is today.
Philosophers and love. – I have a sneaking suspicion that philosophers’ philosophies are based as much on their feelings as their ideas. Are not ideas almost always a function of feelings? Can the two be separated? When you’re in a rotten mood, you will never write a gorgeous love sonnet. When you’re in a beautiful reciprocal love affair you won’t grab your gun and start shooting people. Nietzsche never had a great love affair. The only woman he loved, Lou Salomé, rejected him. After much loneliness, suffering and pain, he finally said we had no choice but to love all existence. Kierkegaard never got the woman he wanted either. He ended up saying that love between human beings was impossible and that the only real love one could share was with God. One might ask how these two thinkers would have seen the world had they known great love. Would gods and truth have become superfluous?
Reality bubble. – The greatest philosophical question of all might be: Why do “we” think “we” can know reality? It also might be the question that philosophers have most ignored. And why? Because no one wants a philosopher (or a priest, shaman, psychologist, judge, jury or a scientist) that doesn’t give answers. Such a person is always thought to be useless. Mankind doesn’t want doubts; mankind wants answers. And the history of thinking has been giving answers…answers that constantly change, but answers that are constantly taken by the masses to be “true” and “real”. Nobody wants to follow the man whose message is “I don’t know” – or worse, “I can’t know”. In our world such a person is usually considered of little or no value. Mankind does not want profound questions. Mankind wants answers, even if these answers are bogus. – Perhaps one day the world will celebrate a doubter, a person who says reality cannot be known, a person who says all moral imperatives are simply cultural prejudices that get passed down through the ages, a person who says existence is something that cannot be understood. Perhaps one day such a person will be considered a useful person. And what will he be useful for? He will draw a new map of the universe that puts man in his rightful place, i.e. smack dab in the beautiful middle of infinity.
Physicists and philosophers. – “We know that most philosophers are bad physicists. Do we know that most physicists are bad philosophers? Only when the best physicists are the best philosophers (and vice versa) will we have a chance to lick the lips of truth.” – This thought came to me as I finished reading Carlo Rovelli’s concise book, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”. Therein this congenial Italian physicist explains to laymen like myself what physicists mean when they talk about quantum mechanics, particle theory, loop quantum gravity, the big bang, black holes, other such ideas that are being put forth in our time to explain existence and the universe. In the first six lessons the reader (in this case, me) is able to more or less follow the thinking of people like Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Boltzmann, and Heisenberg, and get a feeling for how they see (or saw) how the world works and how it is explained by certain mathematical formulas and concepts. – Then comes lesson seven. Rovelli begins by saying, “After having journeyed so far, from the structure of deep space to the margins of the known cosmos, I would like to return, before closing this series of lessons, to the subject of ourselves.”…Ah! a good idea, I think…finally a physicist is going to mix physics and philosophy!…He then writes: “Do we also consist only of quanta and particles?…What are we, in this bondless and glowing world?…Within the immense ocean of galaxies and stars we are in a remote corner; amidst the infinite arabesques of forms which constitute reality we are merely a flourish among innumerably many such flourishes…The images which we construct of the universe live within us, in the space of our thoughts”…all thoughts which have me hoping for some good philosophical discussion. – But alas!…What follows are sentences like this: “The images which we construct of the universe may live inside us, in conceptual space; but they also describe more or less well the real world to which we belong…Our knowledge consequently reflects the world”…and then, after saying. “All things are continually interacting with each other…” (a thought I certainly would have little trouble agreeing with), he says, “The information which one physical system has about another has nothing mental or subjective about it.”…Hmmmm…Then I am happy to read a few sentences later, “We still have no convincing and established solution to the problem of how our consciousness is formed.”…Okay…I like that…But the next sentence is: “But it seems to me the fog is beginning to clear.”…Oh really?…And he then goes on to discuss the problem of free will with thoughts like…”When we say we are free, and it’s true that we can be, this means that how we behave is determined by what happens within us, within the brain, and not by external factors”…Talk about fog! … And then… “To be free doesn’t mean that our behaviour is not determined by the laws of nature. It means that it is determined by the laws of nature acting in our brains.”…Hmmm…And finally… “Our free decisions are freely determined by the results of the rich and fleeting interactions between the billion neurons in our brain; they are free to the extent that the interaction of these neurons allows and determines. Does this mean that when I make a decision it’s “I” who decides? Yes, of course, because it would be absurd to ask whether “I” can do something different from what the whole complex of my neurons has decided.”…Hmmm…Freedom? Free decisions?…Sounds a lot more like random-like decisions caused by infinitely complex unknown causes…And then, like a preacher who is clinging to a last thread of his belief in God, Rovelli writes, “When we have the feeling that ‘it is I’ who decides we couldn’t be more correct. Who else?”… – All of this is not to say that Mr. Rovelli is not a good man or a good physicist. I’m quite certain he is both. But in my case, I will listen more carefully to what he says about the universe when he talks a little more cogently and “philosophically” about the human type that is doing the talking.
Reminder of why I left academia. – Recently a friend gave me an article from an academic journal on Friedrich Nietzsche. It seems academicians need to publish to keep their status. The article reminded me of why I quit the world of professors and professorial debates. These people usually spend their lives talking about what other people are saying or have said. I wanted to spend my life thinking my own thoughts, talking about what I have to say, not writing papers about what others are saying. The friend who gave me the article knew that Nietzsche was the only philosopher I continued to read on a regular basis after the university. Maybe this has been a mistake on my part. Maybe I should have spent the last forty years reading and writing about what others have to say. But, for whatever reason, I wanted to live my own life as much as possible, to write my own books, paint my own pictures, and think my own thoughts. I left America and came to Switzerland for exactly this reason…to start afresh, wander a new world and create my own life. I have always found it strange that people spend so much of their lives watching other people do things on television or in films. Wouldn’t you rather kiss the girl than watch others kiss? Wouldn’t you rather play tennis yourself than watch others play? Similarly, I don’t like to read articles on Nietzsche; I would rather spend my time reading Nietzsche directly. (Of course an article might clarify something here or there, but I think you get my point: live your own life rather than someone else’s…) Speaking of Nietzsche, the only time I have ever written about somebody else’s work is a short 100-page book called “Nietzsche for Breakfast” that came out in 1996. I only wrote it because I thought the books I had read on Nietzsche while I was in school were quite bad and rarely helped reveal what Nietzsche really thought and felt about the world. I just wanted to help clean up the mess, and to make Nietzsche’s vision of existence as limpid as possible. – I’ve written twenty-nine books about what I think about the world and one book about what someone else thinks. Had I stayed in the academic world, my output would probably have been reversed, i.e. twenty-nine books on other people’s thoughts and one book about my own thinking. – Even if only a handful of people ever read me, I’m glad things happened the way they did.
Comprehensive books that explain the world. – I am the enemy of pure philosophical discourse.I see philosophical thinking to be vacuous unless it is blended with the nuts and bolts of life.I am the opposite of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl and friends. I want every philosophical idea to be coated with blood, joy, suffering, hope, despair, love, loss, etc.I do not believe in pure reason; I believe in pure life.This is very dangerous because all thinking gets amplified, thickened, swollen, and dragged into the gutters and elevators of life such that one cannot think without the thinking referring to living beings of some kind. Thinking can be airy and take flight sometimes, but for me it always comes back to earth. I am quickly bored with pure philosophy just like I am bored with pure statistics. I need meat and potatoes. When people talk about “pure spirit” I go outside for fresh air. – Yes, I finally understand my place. It is to throw darts at all systemizers who write books that are supposed to explain the world. I am rather allergic to these books. They seem to assume that the world can be understood, whereas it appears to me that the better the philosopher the less the world fits into a system of any kind. As an old friend said, “The deeper one digs, the bigger the hole.” The more I think, the more existence seems infinitely complex and the more ridiculous and useless it is to try to “explain” or “understand” it. Of course we can try, and of course people are constantly breaking the world into puzzle pieces that they will eventually put back together into a whole. But they will simply have simplified things to the point of making them seem understandable. A geographer will say, “There are seven continents in the world” and this will appear to make sense. But it tells us absolutely nothing about the world or the continents. A psychologist will tell me that my ego needs to be repaired, but to this day, no one – absolutely no one – has given me a definition of “ego” that holds up under examination. A dentist can pull out a rotten tooth and I will feel better after perhaps, but I will never understand where that tooth came from, where I came from, the nature of pain, exactly why it was rotten, etc. If we dig, there is always a mystery behind everything. Though no one really knows what matter (being) is, we all talk about the world (and “life”) as if we know what we’re talking about. Of course we have no choice but to talk about things (if we want to talk), but we could all be a bit humbler when it comes to our avowed “understanding” of things. As Emily Dickinson said, “Forever is composed of nows”, and every now is infinitely complex and impossible to understand…. – I also have great difficulty reading are serious “history books” that condense what happened to millions of people over vast periods of “nows” and which pretend to explain what happened in “World War II”, “The Renaissance”, in “Ancient Egypt”, or in “The Life of Mark Twain”, etc. How can anyone know? It is all so infinitely complex… “Yes, perhaps”, you say, “but it is better than nothing!” And you might be right. But my fear is that we end up thinking you know things that we really don’t know, and we form erroneous opinions about people, places, and reality. Just like smoking cigarettes…it might feel good while one is doing it, but in the end it is very bad for one’s health (and the health of the world)…Ah! perhaps all history books should have “warning” messages like packets of Marlboro and Lucky Strikes, i.e. WARNING: Reading this book can distort reality and give the reader a false sense of understanding and knowledge. Reading should be done with caution! – Of course human beings should be “educated” to understand “where they come from” (or at least to entertain possible explanations), to see and appreciate that much has gone on before them in this world, that they are born into a particular historical context with language, values, beliefs and technological advances that greatly influence their lives, and that the same is true for people all over the world. I am in no way against teaching history; but I am against closing minds with the teaching of history. -Books are like windows…they allow us to see parts of the world outside, and open ones hopefully let in fresh air.
The human – “philosophical” – way. – Causality and language are born of the same mother…the human way – the “philosophical way” – of breaking the world into pieces and seeing things happen, “one moment after the other”. But if all Being is connected and there is no time and there are no pieces, then there is no causality. This might be one of the most difficult thoughts for a human – or a philosopher – to grasp (in the Western world at least). It goes against everything that our philosophy and science preach, against every way our minds and consciousnesses work. We see causality everywhere. We see things everywhere. We see seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years everywhere. As Walt Whitman said: “Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.” Phantoms, phantoms, phantoms…Phantoms of truth…Phantoms of reality…Trying to write ‘history’ was perhaps the biggest mistake man has ever made. By thinking he could write ‘history’, man so totally deluded himself that everything he touched after that turned into a delicious lie. He thought he could make ‘everything’ understandable, when – in fact – he was making everything a lie. We do not blame man for this; we simply observe what he has done. We observe what he is. Man is the creature that separates Being into things, situates those things in time and space, gives names to those things, and in so doing, thinks he has made the infinite finite, the incomprehensible comprehensible. But because men – and philosophers – have books, they are absolutely no guarantee that we humans are bathing in the waters of truth any more than birds having a nest means they are flying across the sky of truth. We humans – we philosophers – do what we do; other creatures do what they do. Our world works for us; the birds’ world works for them. None of the workings of these worlds guarantees an understanding of existence.
O mystery. – O mystery o mystery hear my voice and lend me an ear as I am feeling very alone When there is no guide we must find our own way We must be brave like the explorers who thought the world was flat and went looking for the edge We however think the world is infinite and we can never get to the edge so we go looking for something to keep us grounded and alive Heretofore man has always had explanations and answers but we have none We have no gods or gurus to tell us what life is and how we should live it We have no psalms or truths or commandments We must write our own Bible and books of law and science We must carry ourselves for there is no one to carry us But wait Look What is that on the misty mountain in the distance A hand A human hand Could it be a loving hand I ask because if I have learned one thing in this life it is that love is worth more than all gods and gold and royal ideas But it is rarer too and the only thing that can keep one from going mad O madness O mystery O mad mysteriousness