The Obverse Observer
(Nihilism and beyond) serves to explain issues and elements of nihilism only summarized or missed entirely
elsewhere in Nihilism's Home Page.
Nihilism and
Religious Fundamentalism
The interesting article
'US exceptionalism meets Team Jesus' consists of an
interview with James Carroll, a former Catholic priest and
anti-nihilist, who grew up in the halls of military power in the
Pentagon. The interview is certainly worth reading for the
revealing discussion on how militant evangelical Christianity
has infected the United States military from top to bottom. For
instance Carroll points out that,
“At the Air Force Academy, "Team Jesus"
was one of the nicknames for the football team and one of the
most vociferous evangelical Christian proselytizers was the
football coach.” And not only
that but a screening of Mel Gibson’s fundamentalist slasher
flick The Passion of the Christ was force-fed to cadets
as an official Air Force event! The consequences of this
development aren’t hard to calculate, just consider the current
military ‘crusade’ against Muslim Iraq and Afghanistan, but the
focus of my criticism here has to do with something else of
strategic significance, Carroll’s conflation of nihilism with
religious fundamentalism.
Is nihilism the
same as religious fundamentalism?
Catholics seem to have a particularly
intense dislike for nihilism; remember ‘Nihilism
- The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age’ by Fr.
Seraphim Rose? Maybe Catholics are better educated than their
Protestant counterparts; they must read a lot of Newsweek.
Seriously though, whereas Rose equated nihilism with moral decay
leading to evil in the 1960s, Carroll in 2007 equates nihilism
to religious fundamentalism … leading to evil, of course.
Carroll is an apologist for
Christianity. His basic message is,
“Don’t surrender religion to the wackos.”
But the cynical retort that
instantly flashed in my mind when I read that statement was:
what’s there to surrender?! The reason Carroll makes this
point is fairly clear if you think about it. In order to make
his mainstream version of Catholicism safe for all the believers
he has to attack everyone on the fringes. But this arbitrary
differentiation is the crux of the problem with Carroll’s
reasoning. By maintaining that some religion is good and some
religion is bad and the difference is based on how the holy
scriptures are interpreted it creates a serious schizophrenic
contradiction within the belief set. As Brian Flemming realized
in his documentary film The God Who Wasn’t There the
religious extremists and the fundamentalists are actually the
only ones that have any internal consistency in their reasoning
precisely because they take the scriptures in their Holy Book
literally, instead of trying to modify it to fit it into reality
while rationalizing and apologizing for it to the world as the
moderates like Carroll try to do. In response to the simple
question, if you really believe that your faith in God will get
you to heaven and that the world is evil than why not kill
yourself and go to heaven now? The fundamentalists follow the
scriptural reasoning and reply, yes I will! James Carroll's
convoluted response for moderate Catholicism is that our
belief is good because we aren’t extremists but their
belief is bad because they take it too far by actually believing
what’s really written down in the holy book.
A mark of a fundamentalist mindset is
that one's own personal virtue is the ultimate value. The
American fundamentalist ethos of the Cold War prepared us to
destroy the world. In other words, a world absolutely
devastated through nuclear war was acceptable as an outcome
because it reflected the virtue of our opposition to the evil
of communism. Better dead than red. … Better the world
destroyed than taken over by communism. It's profoundly
nihilistic, which is also one of the marks of the
fundamentalist mindset.
Carroll views fundamentalism and
nihilism as the same because, in his view, both are
apocalypse-seeking. And since religious fundamentalism is just
extreme religious belief then extremism is the same as nihilism.
In fact most all religions have a
salvation / redemption / change element within their set of
beliefs, not just Christianity with its ‘born-again’ mythology.
Most religions seek a salvation and redemption through radical
change. So to equate salvation with nihilism is simply to state
that both seek a change in the current state of events! So
what?! Nihilism and fundamentalist religion both seek radical
change, even though it is for completely different reasons.
Carroll is clearly using nihilism as a pejorative association
not a substantive one; the connection is purely illusory. Change
is sought by many people, ideologies, and beliefs so without
including the reasoning motivating it this just leads to a
fraudulent association.
Carroll unintentionally reveals, once
again, that the real problem has nothing to do with nihilism or
even destruction seeking motivations but it has everything to do
with belief and religion, be it fundamentalist or otherwise.
Foolish beliefs and unchallenged assumptions pervade an American
society that prides itself on ignorance and religious
righteousness.
[I]f Americans are upset with the war
in Iraq today, it's mainly because it failed. If we could have
"ended evil" with this war, it would have been a good thing.
It goes back to the joke you began with: [How many neo-cons
does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: Neo-cons
don't believe in light bulbs, they declare war on evil and set
the house on fire.] if we have to destroy the world in order
to purify it of evil, that's all right. It's the key to the
apocalyptic mindset that Robert J Lifton has written about so
eloquently, in which the destruction of the Earth can be an
act of purification. The destruction of Iraq was an act of
purification. Even today, look at the rhetoric that's
unfolding as we begin to talk about ending the war in Iraq.
It's the Iraqis who have failed. They wouldn't yield on their
"sectarian" agendas. These people won't get together and form
a cohesive government. Now, we're going to let them stew in
their own mess. We're going to withdraw from this war because
they're not worthy of us.
Willful
belief-based ignorance is easily exploited by venal authorities
to gain popular support for launching wars based on religious
symbolism, all for the most crass and materialistic of reasons
like oil, power, and money. In this kind of environment
characterized by the moral nose ring Nietzsche warned us about
it’s impetrative that, once and for all, we finally cut the
strings of belief that corrupt authorities use to bind and
manipulate the people like marionette puppets, so the super-rich
can't sponsor wars and trigger conflicts for private profit
while using their wealth and special influence to insulate
themselves from the negative consequences everyone else has to
suffer through. 30.09.07
Should I Vote?
Is the glass half full or is it half empty?
Deciding whether to vote or not is the same sort of question –
the answer depends on your perspective and sentiment at the
given moment, but the short answer is yes; let me
explain.
Politics is the shit in life you can’t escape
from
so even though the dominant
political parties that almost always win the elections (Democrat
& Republican, Labour & Tory, etc.) don’t represent me or my
interests, and probably don’t represent you either, the
decisions they make in office will still affect us nonetheless.
That leaves us in a quandary. If we don’t vote at all they will
definitely win the election and can claim a mandate based on the
sizeable majority of the votes that put them in office. If we do
vote and participate in an election system that is a sham we
risk justifying it but can at least exert a small influence upon
the outcome while at the same time gaining a legitimate
allowance for criticism by virtue of participation. I like to
think of voting as renewing my license to criticize the
democratic political system.
If you look at the low voter turnout in the
average election in the United States, for example, the
pseudo-democratic system doesn’t need mass participation to
justify itself. So I think to criticize voting as simply
supporting a broken system is misleading and perhaps even
over-simplified. Everyone is told that what we have now is
representative democracy and it’s the greatest thing invented
since slice bread so very few people are willing to take the
risk of openly criticizing it. Consequently the most practical
and rational option is to vote in a way that maximizes the
message being conveyed to the elected officials. The two ways to
do this are:
Many have rued the truism that if voting
changed anything it would be illegal. But we have to put
voting in perspective. Don’t expect radical change to occur but
don’t completely discount the impact that your vote can have –
it may not be much but it is there if you want to use it. This
brings me to another major question.
Why are voters so afraid to vote for a minor
party candidate even though the two party duopoly is so
obviously corrupt, useless and even outright malevolent towards
the public?
I don’t have any exact answers but I think part
of it is a generational gap. Voters that are middle aged and
over are still convinced that they can elect Party Left or Party
Right and solve everything. Conversely, skepticism and cynicism
towards the two party duopoly is widespread among youth today.
Another major impediment to seeing what’s really
going on is the sports spectator effect – the popular
desire to be a part of the winning team through vicarious
association, in this case by voting for the candidate that gets
elected. People have to stop thinking about ‘winning’ in the
election. Nobody is really winning anything in this
system except the candidate that gets their meat-hooks into
office and the lobbyists and special interest groups they are
funneling the kickbacks too. Voting just to be a vicarious
winner, instead of voting for the candidate that really
represents you, is about as asinine as you can get, yet that is
exactly how many voters behave!
Finally, the people that vote most often are the
ones that feel they have something invested in the social and
political order and as such they tend to not want it to change
radically, or at all, because that could negatively impact their
interests. This is why the richer the voter is the more likely
they are to vote for a conservative, and vice versa. People that
are disenfranchised and disaffected have much less invested in
the status quo and thus they typically see no benefit to
participating or supporting it and so they don’t vote.
Unfortunately this short term self-interest only serves to
justify and perpetuate the status quo creating a self-fulfilling
prophecy. 11.09.06
The U.S. presidential race, impassioned almost to the point of
hysteria, hardly represents healthy democratic impulses.
Americans are encouraged to vote, but not to participate more
meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is
yet another method of marginalizing the population. A huge
propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these
personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, "That's
politics." But it isn't. It's only a small part of politics.
The population has been carefully excluded from political
activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has
gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst
of popular participation in democracy terrified sectors of
privilege and power, which mounted a fierce countercampaign,
taking many forms, until today.
Bush and Kerry can run because they're funded by similar
concentrations of private power. Both candidates understand that
the election is supposed to stay away from issues. They are
creatures of the public relations industry, which keeps the
public out of the election process. Their task is to focus
attention on the candidate's "qualities," not policies. Is he a
leader? A nice guy? Voters end up endorsing an image, not a
platform.
The regular vocation of the
industries that sell candidates every few years is to sell
commodities. Everyone who has turned on a TV set is aware that
business devotes enormous efforts to undermine the markets of
abstract theory, in which informed consumers make rational
choices. An ad does not convey information, as it would in a
market system; rather, it relies on deceit and illusions to
create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices.
Much the same methods are used to undermine democracy by keeping
the electorate uninformed and mired in delusion.
From: Interventions, by Noam Chomsky,
pages 98-99, 2007.
Film Review:
Flight from Death
Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality
(2003) is a documentary that uses stock footage, vague location
backdrops (usually cemeteries), and brief interviews with
colorful professors you’ve never heard of in schools you didn’t
know existed to attempt to answer the inveterate problem of
cosmic meaning and human mortality. Although the film subtly
presents itself as an independent and objective analysis this is
slightly misleading because it actually approaches the issue
based on the fringe psychological theories of author and
cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. Yeah I never heard of him
either. Becker, and thus the film, basically believes that
everything humans do is about death denial.
 To
the credit of the researchers and philosophers behind this
effort they have attempted to find quantitative evidence to
support their contentions. However the results of their one
study conducted on college-age volunteers seems dubious
considering that multiple conclusions could still be drawn from
the facts. But anyway, Becker and the film conclude that
violence and the worst excess’ of human behavior are a product
of death anxiety. Religions are personalized death denying
illusion. Evil is created by the attempt to form a utopia
free from evil.
The answer to all
this trouble, and I’m using the actual words from the film, are
to practice tolerance and kindness towards others. Further,
illusions are necessary and unavoidable so we must therefore
strive to create life-sustaining illusions rather than to
overcome them. The seemingly obvious fact that this is simply
yet another effort to form a utopia free from evil, and is
therefore evil, is not addressed. Indeed the film delivered a
rather stunning conclusion considering the fairly reasonable
intellectual buildup preceding it.
In fact illusions
are not necessary; illusions are intentionally
manufactured to mask things that people don’t want to perceive.
Differences of perception certainly do exist within the realm of
human consciousness but that should not be an excuse to
disregard the much more considerable common elements, indeed the
very common concerns that the film used to construct much of
their views! The flaws in Becker’s views are more than benign,
they can become a very harmful way of thinking because it leads
towards an obsession with physical life extension, as the film
mentions. In fact death is just as important as life and most
people live too long as it is – that’s a major problem we are
just now facing as individuals of the human species are now
living longer than ever before in history. The most reasonable
answer to draw from Flight from Death is to simply
recognize death as an inevitable part of life, free from
exaggerated mythology and excess fear.
 The
film is, in my view, overly philosophical and not materialist
enough in approach but it is intellectually compelling
nonetheless. Unfortunately the film does not address or offer
any explanation for suicide actions, only for the common
responses to the violence. Discussion of the topic of suicide is
conspicuously absent from the documentary.
I found the film
difficult to pay attention to mostly because the topic does not
lend itself well to a cinematic format for delivery. The vocal
portions are complex enough that it takes effort to interpret
what is being said while the video is often showing extraneous
stock footage barely related to the narration so it becomes
distracting towards the effort to digest the concepts in the
film. Note: the subconscious message content (possibly) included
in this film has not been rated or reviewed.
As an example of a contrary, materialistic,
argument that is at least as intellectually compelling, but
probably not any more accurate in a holistic sense, read this
one:
It's the money, honey by Chan Akya. I've encountered
fairly convincing views that human actions are all motivated by
a desire for sex; Chan Akya thinks it’s money but the point is
it could be sex, death avoidance, money, genes, memes, or
something else. Human actions are driven by a multitude of
factors, it doesn't have to be only one and it's probably a
combination that depends on circumstance as well as historical
and cultural influences. 06.01.07
|
"What makes being a soldier great is
the nobility of it — good fighting evil. If you lose that,
all this sacrifice is for no good reason."
- Maj. Peter Kilner, West Point. From:
Combat stress takes toll, June 14, 2006. |
 |
Philosophical versus Political Nihilism, or why can't we all
just get along?
When it comes to the realm of action and thought
there are two attitudes that characterize a categorical
breakdown. One group is convinced that ideas are all that really
matters, that theory is of prime importance over substance –
this is why it is referred to as philosophy. And then there are
those that are convinced practice, substance and action, are
what really matter. These two attitudes are what characterize
the views of philosophical and political nihilism.
The philosophers don't want to get involved in
seeing the notion turned into practice because it fractures all
their pretty beliefs and ideas with messy realities and
pragmatic compromises. While the practical builders don't like
being slowed down by dogma and theories that look nice sitting
on a shelf, like a book or a trophy, but can't be integrated
into real life. They are aware that without a test the
hypothesis is not any more useful than the paper it is written
on. Argument between the two is mostly a waste of time because
no real ground for compromise exists, for as adamant as the
pragmatists will state that the practice is what matters, the
theorists will maintain the opposite. Consequently, most of the
philosophical nihilists don't want to see nihilism turned into
Nihilism because the process is messy, it's dirty and it
inevitably ruins many of the cherished notions they hold dear.
Far too many of them treat their conception of philosophical
nihilism as a dogma that cannot grow and evolve because that
means accepting change as well as a past, a present and a future
that operates independently outside of them.
For a historical example of this conflict compare
Karl Marx to V.I. Lenin. It’s ironic that Marx was so concerned
with the struggles and triumphs of human labor but never worked
a day of manual labor in his life. In fact his family nearly
starved because he wouldn’t get a paying job. His ideas written
down had a significant impact upon millions of people, but that
impact was largely a result of the efforts of organizers like
V.I Lenin. Marx would no doubt have criticized Lenin for
corrupting his beautiful theories but nonetheless Lenin turned
Marx’s writing into reality.
Another example, a perfect contemporary example,
is that of Jeffrey Skilling architect of the new energy trading
techniques at Enron incorporated. Skilling was, and still is, a
firm believer in the concept of the idea in primacy, that the
idea is what really matters not the practice or execution.
Skilling came up with a new form of accounting that allowed him
to book profits now on the predicted future
revenue from his ideas. So in other words if the concept of
trading energy futures cannot produce a profit today because it
is too new to have an established history but five years from
now it could be worth, say, one billion a year, then we can
count that profit today on the company books. It’s a new economy
after all and don’t the brilliant people deserve to get paid for
the brilliant ideas they come up with?! Skilling and others in
the top management at Enron thought so. Now several years later,
after the multi-billion dollar meltdown of their corporation,
Skilling still maintains his complete innocence while on trial
for financial fraud so massive it broke records. For a much more
detailed explanation of this astounding process watch the
documentary Enron: the smartest guys in the room (2005)
DVD ², and find out why they didn’t ask why enough.
Please don’t misunderstand my intent. Ideas are
important, theory is important too, and it would be fantastic if
we all could book revenues on our expected future profits or
change the world with just a graduate level philosophical
dissertation. But there’s also this other force at work known as
practical, functional existence, i.e. reality, and it has a
nasty way of devastating anyone foolish enough to ignore it.
Nearly all philosophy if adopted literally necessitates the
contravention of known reality. Take, for example, the
assumption that nihilism rejects all forms of organization and
authority. Even if this was an inextricable tenet of nihilism,
(it isn’t) such a notion simply can’t be internalized. In fact
no human individual or endeavor can survive well or do much of
anything without organization. We are social creatures and
organization is what we do. That is why the second definition of
nihilism is in the dictionary, the one that many of the
existential nihilist types either refuse to recognize or simply
ignore outright. Not only that, but as hundreds of participants
at the Symposium forum and Online Nihilism group demonstrate on
a daily basis, one can be a member and a supporter of a group
and still hold independent thoughts. Imagine that!
Theory and practice can assist each other but sometimes they
simply have to agree to disagree and allow evolution and the
testing process to deliver a verdict. 16.04.06
Circumventing the Charade of Philosophy
The human mind is
not so simple that it just seeks happiness in every action and
decision. Many people seek things that don't make them happy,
power for instance. Many people seek to become Presidents, Prime
Ministers and dictators but look at how much trouble they get
out of the bargain when and if they arrive? Or what about fame;
the famous say ‘don't be famous - it isn't worth it’, but who
listens? Something deeper is going on here...
In reality the human
mind and the body supporting it is enmeshed within a complex
system of relationships, connections and interactions and we
have to very carefully, continually and with great effort, map
out a path and measure our actions against the consequences and
impacts our actions will have upon the people, objects and
connections in our environment. Unless they are woefully
dysfunctional psychopaths people are not little atoms bouncing
around trying to feel good all the time and the few fools that
try this don't last very long! It seems surprising how few seem
to recognize this fairly simple concept of interconnections and
perhaps because it's so difficult to quantify this is a
misunderstanding especially common to the male mind.
Most important to
recognize is that humans are not living beings that can exist
independently; humans are not one-celled organisms, they are
highly networked, social creatures! We all exist inside and
because of a complex network of relations formed between
objects, individuals and an ever-changing array of groups
composed of both. Our goals and values, if any, are a result of
that system we are enmeshed within.
Hypothetically the
choice of which value system we adopt depends on what kind of
goal we want to achieve but in practice we rarely know exactly
what we want and even less often how to get it. So the entire
argument that characterizes philosophy and metaphysics, as a
dissection of the individual human mind and body, is a charade
and it just ends in the same dead-end of argument because it
doesn’t aim towards or find the root of the issue.
The message
emanating from the reduction-oriented methodology of nihilism
concerning values is simply that because of our tenuous and
constantly changing situation our values and goals are not
absolutes but are in a continual flux. Consequently our values
are not fixed but actually quite relative. For various reason we
typically use great effort to hide this value ambiguity by
concocting false absolutes, such as through myths and religious
beliefs held together by dogma, but in the end our actions
reveal this for the delusional foolishness that it is.
The fully and
properly developed human mind and body is seeking more than
simple short-term self-interest but is also seeking to better
fit into the vast and often complex environmental network
surrounding them. This entails a constant process of adaptation,
questioning, solution seeking and struggle while continually
creating and destroying the networks that characterize our
social and physical environment. Because of this, in this
struggle called life the Nihilist has a profound awareness to
not hold anything sacred and never get too attached to
anything. 05.02.05
Ethics & the Belief Need
Reading an article
about the cancerous corporate growth patterns of
Starbucks coffee made me
think about a contradiction between words and action that seems
quite common. Why are stated values and the subsequent actions
of individuals so often contradictory? For instance, why do
people rail against a company like Starbucks but then turn right
around and buy over-priced coffee from them? Or another example,
and I’m sure the reader can imagine many more, why do people so
often complain about the quality of television programs but then
spend hours watching them anyway?! Why does the public patronize
their own self-described ‘evil’ institutions purely out of
choice and in blatant contradiction to their own expressed
values? Clearly something is going on here that’s deeper than
appearances suggest.
It seems likely that
either impulse continually overpowers reason or many people are
simply making complaints and criticism not based on their own
reasoning but rather on group-think - attempting to ascertain
and adopt group values. But whatever the reason for it,
hypocritical behavior as compared to self-expressed personal
values cannot be psychologically healthy for it leads the
individual into a chronic state of self-debasement.
The disconnect
between words and action carried out over time leads to a
perpetual state of hypocrisy and wears down the subconscious
rendering the individual a floating, baseless consumer that says
whatever others want to hear while attempting to sound logical
but acting purely on whim and impulses. It’s not surprising that
so many people turn to religion in this kind of environment, a
veritable sandstorm of hypocritical values and action
rationalization.
Religious based
morality provides a sense of center and focus, an ethical
context with which to reference throughout daily life. It
doesn’t matter that the beliefs are based on archaic fantasies
and have little or no bearing on modern life, or that one
believer is just as happily deluded in their faith as every
other regardless of how and who they worship. The beliefs are
not what matter, rather it is the framework and sense of context
that creates a structure for the adherents to base their daily
lives upon. This code of ethics leads to psychological health by
eliminating the internal and external value-action hypocrisy.
Everyone needs a
code and structure for living that they can aspire towards but
also one that they can actually follow in practice, not just
desire to follow, so that their words will match their deeds – a
critical element of mental health. This is also why religious
believers tend to be more honest in daily interactions and more
likely to follow through on their promises. Success here means
making a conscious effort to always match words to actions.
Doing this empowers the individual as well because they gain the
authority of coherence and the mental stability of consistency.
This is all the belief-need really is; many people think it
requires faith and attachment to arbitrary rules from mystical
deities but in fact it’s simply an intentional effort by the
individual to act on what they speak and speak to what they do.
This is also why it’s so important to recognize the limitations
placed upon action by human nature because ignoring or denying
the limits leads to a perpetual state of defeat in mind and
body.
To construct this
necessary framework for daily life one must first have a solid
awareness of what they can do meaning one's own practical
capacities for decision-making. In other words simply stating
that Starbucks is a rip-off is not enough if one drives past one
of their stores every day on the way to work and has a coffee
addiction because they will soon find their best plans foiled by
need and impulse! Something has to change, either the impulses
are curbed, redirected, or one’s words change to match the
impulses.
Say what you do and do what you say. 08.10.04
Where’s the Truth?
The primary process
under the rubric of nihilism is skepticism, it is to take as
little for granted as possible and that includes nihilism
itself. Philosophical nihilism is inherently contradictory, for
instance to state that ‘no truth exists’ is just as rigid and
principled as the more common assertion that a singular truth
does exist. Nevertheless some people still try to use one or the
other. Both are absurd, although the philosophical nihilist one
is more obvious. Now, absurdity can be entertaining and
enlightening but only in the way that outdated fad becomes
kitsch and is therefore ‘cute’ and collectible. A message is
contained within it all but it’s not a facile one. Absurdity
really indicates a lack of complete information; absurdity is
an error message.
The fact that some
people attach so strongly to either one I think demonstrates
that an irrational undercurrent runs through human nature. In
the case of ‘no truth’ (anti-science) it is part rebellion, part
ignorance and part fear: fear of order that might defeat their
own beliefs in self-determination, or more specifically the
belief in the right to ‘do whatever I want to do’. In the case
of the other pole, the ‘one truth’, it’s a wish to have
everything taken care of and the belief in a holy deity that
controls everything and all blessing will follow from obedience.
Science originate
from the ‘one truth’ view and not too surprisingly it generates
some intense antagonism in the public because it doesn’t make
either group happy, it undercuts free-will and also God. But the
ideas behind science are completely sound: to try and find some
pattern in the disorder, to try and employ some kind of
consistent algorithm to find consistent results. I think the
scientific method is the best tool of its kind around, so far,
but it has its limits. Mikhail Bakunin once stated,
"Between
thought and life there is a wide abyss."
Science can generate completely accurate and truthful statements
but upon application in human society they can fail miserably.
Even more, technology often fails even after science succeeds.
Everyone wants to
find ‘truth’ but it can’t be found like a search for a singular
entity, like some jungle explorer searching for a legendary gold
idol. The search for ‘truth’ is the search for a definition. As
humans we all start from a very distorted perspective because in
order to exist we must value our life but the continuing order
of the universe cares not a bit about us one way or the other
and suicide changes nothing. But the universe is definitely not
irrational; in fact if anything it is maddeningly predictable,
at least on the size-scale that we exist at. Humans live by
values but the universe does not – it offers possibilities but
does not favor one over the other. Ultimately moral right and
wrong are products of the ego, after all no one wants to be
‘wrong’ and everyone wants to be ‘right’!
Even amongst the
disparity a common element can be found and I think that the
natural survival instinct will suffice. It creates an internal
sense of true and false but one that is not necessarily
transferable to others. Nihilism can state that the overall
picture does not create any absolute right and wrong, true or
false, but the concept is nonetheless quite significant to the
individual. So it could be said that true and false are both
absolute and relative at the same time. The interface between
all of the viewpoints creates a deceptive complexity; our sense
of reality is the interface between all of them perpetually
interacting. Indeed trying to find a truth here is an atrocious
calculus problem! This is why scientific reduction often fails
in deciphering human actions and living reality but adding it
all up also proves problematic because it’s never accurate, only
an estimate. Truth, at least on the social level, and perhaps a
universal level, is statistical. 20.06.04
The Decay of Chinese Culture: Nihilism Goes to
China
As any linguist will
tell you studying a language can generate significant insights
into the nature of the culture and people using that language.
In this case I’m referring to the Chinese written language.
Whereas western culture and languages are digital and stemmed
from a deconstructive worldview, the eastern languages,
particularly Chinese which is the forerunner of most other East
Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, are self-contained
and result from a fundamentally holistic worldview. In other
words instead of breaking things down in order to understand
them, they see things as static without further need for
understanding. So it shouldn’t be surprising to find out that
Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian – don’t question
authority or the Party line – just do what you’re told. The
implied duty of every child growing up in this culture is to
obey authorities and conform to their expectations.
In Chinese writing
the meaning has to be extracted from the relationships between
the component symbols, and because many Chinese characters have
multiple meanings, context is imperative to communicate in any
useful manner at all! This creates a language that is complex
because it relies so heavily on a shared understanding of
cultural history to create meaning in the sentence. Chinese also
seems ‘poetic’ and ‘mystical’ because it is so fundamentally
limited in its ability to convey a concise idea or concept
unlike a letter based alphabet that can be used to create an
almost infinite array of new words and concepts to communicate
new ideas and thoughts.
The greatest fear in
Chinese culture is that of chaos. Part of this fear is based on
a very unstable history – foreign invaders, collapsing
dynasties, famines, and so on. Because Chinese culture relies so
heavily on centralized authorities to dictate orders and policy
for the people to obey it creates an inherently temporary
situation since it’s based entirely on sycophancy and blind
obedience rather than questions, thoughtful criticism, and
adaptation to new situations. This is not to say that the
Chinese can’t take advantage of an opportunity for after all
there are quite a few newly rich entrepreneurs in China today,
but it does mean that the Chinese authority system is very quick
to usurp the motivation of individual effort in order to
maintain its dominance over the country. In fact the communist
party in firm control of China today is downright paranoid when
it comes to challenges to their power – economic, political or
religious. Even a cult as seemingly innocuous as the Falun Gong
generates the most repressive and severe police reaction from
the Chinese government. The Internet is tightly monitored and
censored, just as all the news and information is filtered
through the lens of official opinion. Official statistics are
created based not on what is really happening but on what the
Party wants to see, indeed this is the perfect example of how
China is run today and has been for time immemorial – Chinese
authorities are motivated and supported in all their endeavors
by willful delusion.
This is important to
recognize amidst the current hype over the rise of China as an
economic, military and political power. Although the Chinese
people themselves have immense potential and can and do express
it when given the opportunity, the present Chinese communist (or
some say quasi-fascist) government will not allow this to
happen. China will not become a superpower or indeed any power
worthy of global respect as long as the Communist Party remains
in control. And the Party has no plans to rescind power anytime
soon, so do the math on that one. This is another tenant of
Chinese authorities - never give up power and never face reality
because criticism is the enemy. China’s grip of world trade is
not nearly as solid as it may seem today. There’s nothing that
China exports that can’t be made elsewhere and China’s cheap
labor is simply a result of government subsidies. Even
regardless of this the massive overproduction going on in China
today is flooding world markets and will eventually initiate a
deflationary spiral downward in price and profit.
So even though
Chinese culture has thousands of years of history that compel
obedience to official rules and precepts and negates independent
thought, the Chinese people nonetheless remain thoroughly
self-centered and as the flow of information leaks into their
closed society new ideas are changing their attitudes. Things in
China today are beginning to change because the social hypocrisy
has become unsustainable. The distance between the Party’s
version of truth and the truth of actual reality is a rapidly
widening rift fracturing Chinese culture.
Young people in
China don’t believe in the Communist Party, they don’t believe
in their vaunted leaders and their self-congratulatory charades,
and increasingly they don’t buy into the archaic culture and its
values that are continually claimed so superior to the rest of
the planet. Many of them still remain ardent nationalists though
and this is one tool the Central Party can still use to whip up
enthusiasm for their projects and control the populace by
directing their boiling anger over internal problems against
foreigners. Nationalism is one of the last vestiges holding a
broken China together but a corrupt regime can’t exploit that
sentiment forever. All the old gods in China are dead or dying,
communism killed religion and now communism is dying too. A
rising undercurrent of nihilism exists in China today, an
inevitable result of blatant social hypocrisy, egregious
government repression, abuse and authorities attempts to control
the minds and bodies of their subjects. 01.05.04
Total Extremes – A Thought Experiment in Nihilism
To understand the
middle it helps to study the extremes. This being the case just
what do the extremes look like on a universal scale? It seems
that the two extreme poles are difficult to describe because
they bear no resemblance to anything we experience on a daily
basis or indeed anything in the known universe, they are
theoretical but extremely simple constructions.
One. The first pole
is that of complete sameness in everything. Imagine looking at a
metal plate painted white and perfectly smooth – try to
distinguish anything from anything else – you can’t. This
universe is a one, no values can be formed here because
everything is just one-thing and it’s all the same so distance,
time, all values used to describe it are completely
inapplicable. In this realm of the singularity the individual is
useless or more accurately, just impossible.
In 'the one' parts
of nihilism in the philosophical sense would be applicable
because no values can be employed to describe anything inside it
and no choices can even be made, indeed everything here is
completely frozen, static, timeless.
Infinite. The
opposite extreme is one where everything is different from
everything else and no order or pattern can ever be discerned or
extrapolated – it is pure chaos. In this universe forming values
would be possible, indeed any action would be possible, but at
the same time completely useless. In other words if you eat a
sandwich today you might feel full, but tomorrow if you eat a
sandwich it might make you feel hungry. Values are useless in a
chaotic realm because consequence doesn’t follow action on a
consistent basis so any action taken now to serve a single
purpose may or may not generate the same result later. The
individual here can act but they are powerless nonetheless
because they cannot predict or generate any consistent results.
This is a bit of a cheat for purposes of visualization because
in the chaotic universe no individual could exist since stable
form requires a consistent pattern. It's interesting to consider
that even this chaos can still be rationally described (because
of the simple physical laws governing it).
Obviously we exist
in a universe that is far removed from either extreme,
convenient for us because we wouldn’t be around otherwise. Our
universe is somewhere on a scale between the two extreme poles,
it is finite and thus a distinct and discrete range of options
exists. Anytime a limited range of options exists so does the
necessity of choosing, some options will be better than others
but here the trick is determining that value. This is the
universe we live in, one of order and often murky but still
discernable patterns. Our universe is consistent but large
enough to still feature unknowns and limitations beyond which
are impossible to perceive, generating a small but still
significant amount of randomness.
It’s quite possible
that both extremes are attached to the life cycle of our own
universe. We can extrapolate the past by rewinding the detected
expansion of the universe to a singularity (the sameness of one)
and possibly predict the future as a progression to chaos, just
random energy.
Although in this
universe it is possible to have a functional value system it may
not be a sound one! What matters is the criteria used, the
perspective – this is a universe created from the product of
multiple, complex interactions and relationships. Our present
universe is one of relative values overlaid on a substratum of
inviolate physical rules. From an objective and cosmological
perspective no set of adopted values is any better than the
other since none can change the ultimate confinement of time and
space within the universe – the original existential dilemma.
Reduction to the
simplest form generates clarity but one that is often misleading
because of its distance from the everyday complexity we
actually experience. Practical reality is subjective, it
dictates a continual need to judge, act and react. So just as
entropy is so often misunderstood to mean chaos cannot be
avoided, so is everyday life an exercise in erroneous
contradictions. The existential dilemma can be broken because
human life is not infinite but highly proscribed – this is what
creates order out of the disorder. The 2nd law of Thermodynamics
which defines entropy is not an absolute but merely a construct
of averages, it merely states the most likely outcome;
allowances exist for localized and temporary contradictions of
entropy. Not only that but the equations only pertain to closed
systems, Earth for instance is an open system because it gains
energy, mostly from the sun. We actually live in a very dynamic
setting where things really do change. Order can and does
emerge from chaos, but it's an order that needs to be questioned
for even the values behind it can be changed. Actually, if I had
any point when I started writing this I can’t remember it, but
that one works as well as any. 07.01.04
Acting Out
As a kid in school I
was so fantastically bored the only way I could survive was to
escape into my own mind and imagination. In middle school, while
on the interminable bus rides I was always stuck on, I would
imagine blowing things up with my anti-matter gun. I’d build and
perfect the gun in my mind and watch the destruction. In
elementary school I wrote and illustrated a little book based on
the ‘Mr. Men’ book series; the character I created was called
Mr. Destruction.
Not surprisingly my
teachers were always on my case and this was before the panic
and fear today with the school shootings. If I were a kid in
school today I’d probably have my own dedicated security camera.
But it was quite unnecessary and actually had the opposite
effect because it just heightened the sense of antagonism
between authority and me. I get twitchy thinking about what a
kid like me has to go through in public school today.
It seemed like
anytime I expressed myself in a genuine way I ended up in a
parent-teacher conference! I got the message real fast, act
yourself and get punished. But in retrospect I don’t think my
case is really all that unusual. This learned disingenuousness
is widespread. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance,
the act of holding two contradictory beliefs at once, and it’s
pervasive as it is insidious in modern culture. This is the root
of schizophrenia because the mind literally develops a schism,
it's split in two and reality assumes two forms - the part we
know is true and the part we have to act like it is true. So as
a kid grows up they continually want to act in an instinctive
and internally motivated way but can’t because morality and
culture constrain them. When compelled to obey flawed beliefs
and wayward ideologies, anger, resentment and even insanity will
ensue. The social psychologist John Dewey was on to this and his
conclusions actually got him called a nihilist.
So people are
suppressed and stifled all the time, they have to release but
don’t know how; they beat up their girlfriend or yell at family
or just kill themselves slowly with a TV remote and a beer or
fast with a bullet and a gun. This is one of the main reasons
behind recreational drug use – it’s a pathetic way of stripping
off that shell and being free to act as we really want to and
the drug effects are used as an excuse so it becomes socially
tolerable behavior. I once made a not-so-funny cartoon about
this called the
Marijuana Effect.
Drug abuse increases, senseless violence increases, anger and
hostility increase, all in conjunction with the rising levels of
hypocrisy, double standards and forced behavior patterns within
society. The coercion of conformity weighs down on everyone like
a ton of bricks: you have to act this way, you have to look like
this, you have to want these products, over and over and over
until people crack, they blow up. Then the pundits wonder aloud
‘how could this happen, we need tougher penalties!’ Or ‘why does
everything seems so phony and shallow in society; we need more
old time religion!’
Shakespeare once
wrote (As You Like It , II, vii, 139-143),
"All
the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
A playwright would say something like that; still the
sentiment has a significant amount of truth to it. Pretending
you are something that you're really not is a human capacity, it
allows for greater depth of character. But when it is forced
rather than just play it assumes a very sinister role in human
development. The fear of being controlled and losing your mind
are two themes that recur throughout contemporary literature and
movies and other forms of discussion. In fact the story Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most used and repeated
themes in all of cinema; the human mind is split and behavior
follows suit. Eventually the schizophrenia gets so severe that a
person loses any ability to distinguish between what they’re
pretending to be and what they really are (or were). So, much
like an actor that does a single role so much that they become
the character rather than themselves, the line is not just
blurred but erased in the mind and one finds that they really
have been taken over; they have lost themselves only to become a
clone and a slave to something they don’t even understand.
They’ve lost all freedom and their freewill has been usurped.
Life becomes worse than a living hell because once original
identity is lost no viable way exists to regain it!
Sometimes the
chokehold of oppression is so strong that the only outlet is a
mass hysteria whereby individual suffering is projected into
collective behavior. These epidemics of insanity are more common
than might be thought; Nietzsche mentions some of them in
Genealogy of Morals, III, #21. Any culture, even archaic
ones, are potentially affected by mass insanity so long as they
remain rigid and incapable of accommodating human behavior
driven by innate desires or individual, independent expression.
The bottom line is
that in order to be mentally healthy everyone must have two
things. First they must have at least part of their identity set
apart from everyone and everything else around them; the freedom
of self-definition is crucial to human mental health. We all
have to have at least a corner where we don’t have to pretend,
where we don’t have to lie, where we don’t have to always act in
the ‘appropriate’ way because without it we’re slaves. Second, a
person must have some control over their physical surroundings
as Maria Montessori very wisely surmised. But this is just a
derivative of the mental independence already described for the
mind reaches outwards; human behavior crafts the outside to
reflect the inside. 19.12.03
"All
human victories, all human progress, stand upon the inner force."
- Maria Montessori
Existence is the Cruelest Joke
Life is a diversion
from the inevitable ending, ideally in a constructive way but
often not. After all, isn't it ironic that the more free time we
have the more we try to escape it?!
 Everything
beyond survival consists of the search for escape; collecting
money or toys, mindless entertainment, drugs, etc. Artist Ed
Kienholz called a bar a ”sad
place, a place full of strangers who are killing time,
postponing the idea they are going to die."
That pretty much sums it up.
Boredom is Hell
Nietzsche saw
meaning through the continual process of valuing; an intriguing
notion. However since 'good' and 'bad' can only really be
applied retroactively it would seem to be a faulty one for
guidance. I have a sneaking suspicion the insects and Fascists
are right on one thing: life is just about doing things, even
regardless of the point or value of that action. Simply doing
things together creates community and camaraderie, it's not
complicated! Life is action, death is inaction.
Peace is Non-Being
There is no such
thing as nothingness, meaning that the abstract concept of
nothingness is a religious (primarily Judaic/Christian) fantasy,
for all absence is relative. Something will always exist in some
form in some place. Non-being is another issue; once you’re gone
you’re gone forever but parts of you can remain physically
through genetic continuity and memetically through fame and
ideas.
Forcing the Creeping
Inevitable
All
existence is struggle, life is war and peace is death; suicide
is just getting there prematurely. Not considering the act of
dying indicates a lack of consideration for the process of
living. So, to all those who've sought peace, even bliss, in
non-being - this glass is for you. 14.10.03
Downward Spiral America
Anti-American
sentiment is on the rise worldwide, a predictable and
understandable product of federal government actions and rampant
cultural misunderstandings. The way in which America functions
is something Americans themselves are often in the dark about
because they have no other references, and outside audiences
have a difficult time figuring out just who is in charge and
what the motives are because they use a traditional domestic
template to understand a unique foreign occurrence.
America is a vastly
misunderstood paradox for many reasons, mostly because of media
distortions but also simple cultural misunderstandings. I think
this is a bit tough to adequately convey to external audiences
and perhaps explains much of the antipathy towards American
society, but we have no core constituencies. All the power, all
the resources are divided up according to who has the greatest
influence at present within the spoils process. Conversely the
European system for example is much more academic, much more
let's be nice and we can agree upon a method of making everyone
happy, the socialist model has immense public appeal. But there
you have a core interest, a consistent, singular culture and
ethnicity. Hell, even Mexico has this. Everybody understands
what to expect in Mexico, the culture, the people, etc. But what
is America?! It's Mexico on this block, it's Greece on that
block, it's China on that block...
Consequently
revolution and direct social action is viewed in radically
different ways between America and the rest of the world. In
Europe these people are usually seen as either communist
agitators or fascist thugs both of which want to take over the
government so they can tell others what to do. Most Americans
couldn't care less about the damn government, they're concerned
with their own interests. Europeans see that aggression and
interpret it to mean "believe what I do or I beat you up". In
America this process isn't for fun, this is for survival. We
can't kick back and collect unemployment for years like some
European welfare state, if we get sick or injured there is no
health care, and the ones with jobs do 40,50,60 hour work weeks
not 35. If you want anything here you have to fight for it and
all you get is what you can take. This isn't a demo-cracy it's a
mob-ocracy! Welcome to the Balkanized America 2002.
Community is
destroyed and undermined by good intentions and flawed planning,
zoning laws, inconsistent building regulations, layers and
layers of government all trying to regulate a huge country of
vastly disparate norms, cultures and standards. Federal and
state policies carve everything up into districts creating
ghettos and ethnic enclaves coupled with the rise of commercial
professionalism and the erosion of traditional private and
informal social ties, wreak havoc with community and
connections. This is America turned fully into a business and
not a nation. Asian gangs, skinheads, crips, bloods, I mean I
don't like gangs but I can completely understand the reasoning
driving people into them. They're trying to protect themselves,
their friends and their territory. The structure of U$ politics
and how resources are apportioned creates this mess because it
doesn't address their needs. It gives them no jobs, police
harassment, discrimination, and lip service to their deeply
rooted problems. Then wages a narco-war against it's own people
and whines about drug abuse. No shit these people are selling
drugs, what the hell else can they do for income?
Today we've got
middle-aged people reaching retirement but instead of the
pensions system their parents had they have stock market
portfolios. The stock market has crashed and now they can't
retire. The generation of my parents will be working until they
die because they have no money. This means people my age can't
get jobs, can't break into the marketplace and start a career
because all the open slots are filled.
We've got a 'Social
Security' system that is nothing but a sick joke and everyone
knows it will be gone by the time my generation reaches that age
but we've still got to pay a big chunk of our wages into it! We
know this because we see how the resources are funneled off, we
see how the government steals from it's own and how they do the
exact same it now accuses private corporations of doing -
cooking the books, lying about income, and defrauding customers.
Back during the Clinton years, magically the budget went from
deficit to surplus because of a cute little accounting trick,
counting Social Security money as income even though it has to
be paid out again later!
If you
wait on your ass here the avalanche will bury you.
One has to be an activist here, you wait in one place long
enough and you're dead meat. So to survive one has to fight for
what you need and the bigger you are the more influence you have
and the better your slice of the pie so to speak. It's an
ominous commentary on society that the AARP (American
Association of Retired Persons) is the largest interest group in
the U$A now. It will only get bigger as the population gets
older. Leftists like to talk about 'unity,' 'solidarity' and
similar ludicrous fictions. How can we have unity when
everything you get is at my expense? One can't
co-opt this type of a system, a system where equilibrium is
maintained by the frantic distribution of dwindling resources
amongst competing factions, it can only be exploited until it
collapses. 24.07.02 [Reprint from
Holology]
How many killed by
the Church?
How many killed by nihilism?
Any questions?
An
Analysis of Meaning and Identity
15.08.03 All meaning is relative, it is relational. Take
anything out of context and it loses its meaning and becomes
absurd. This is why meaning seems so transient and difficult to
define, it is not a 'something' it is a 'because of'
(derivative).
Morality
A man stranded alone
on an island cannot act immorally for there is no God, there is
no posthumous judgment of deeds except by earthly survivors.
Similarly as Ayn Rand once stated, no situation without a
decision can have a moral component. So if you have no choice or
context, or if an outside value system is imposed on you, then
you have no morality - you can not be moral or immoral in action
or thought. Indeed morality itself is a product of society, of
interconnections, of social bonds and the inevitable search for
a power equilibrium between individuals. Further, moral codes
serve as tools of control but not necessarily always as a
top-down imposed authority force but very often as a means of
balancing power between individuals, of keeping 'them' from
getting more than 'me'. Morality changes over time and indeed is
itself largely relative, culturally derivative. But the social
and psychological effects are nonetheless quite real even if
inconsistent and plagued by chronic efforts to 'cheat' or for
'me' to get more than 'they' do.
I remember an old
episode of the Twilight Zone where a crew of space
explorers crash land on what they think is a distant, desert
planet and precede to battle each other over their diminishing
water supplies and thus personal survival only to find out
eventually that they actually crashed in the Mojave and
civilization was just over the hill. I think the implied,
made-for-TV feel-good message was that one should always value
human life and not be greedy. But on a practical level the true
message is that regardless of the pre-existing cultural and
moral overlay, ultimately human behavior, meaning 'right' and
'wrong', is contextually defined and founded upon the basal law
of personal survival and propagation.
Island Morality &
Ethics
Using another
fictional example, the island of Dr. Moreau where the doctor
tortures animals using the excuse of scientific progress, what
moral position does this have? None? But the doctor could not do
this without continual assistance from the outside world through
supplies, food, and so on. So Dr. Moreau is not isolated, he is
connected to a larger society and can be judged by its dominate
moral codes. Regardless of the morality of his actions, the
ethics of his research are easily criticized for the wayward
results that were produced, not to mention the Doctors original
motives that were based purely on faith in achieving a
questionable goal. So now that he is connected to the outside,
most would consider Dr. Moreau's acts morally wrong. Here is
where Nihilism enters for it argues that 'wrong' or 'right' are
secondary not primary as most, especially religious views, would
hold. Right or wrong are irrelevant if in this case Dr. Moreau
can get away with what he's doing. This is why using morality as
a social security system is one very dangerous way to live and
why authority must jump in like an 800 pound gorilla and take
over to hold a society together with an outcome that is more
vast and convoluted than the original simple problem could have
possibly ever produced on its own.
It should also be
noted that identities also get wrapped up in culture when that
is what one is born into and all one knows. However, if that
culture is dying then the individual's identity bound to it is
doomed as well. The outmoded or future-less culture is now
effectively marooned along with the individuals encased inside
it. Life becomes absurd and the values of death become more
desirable than those of life (they get to the inevitable
conclusion quicker). Collective suicide ensues, for without a
cultural vehicle to perpetuate the self, life for the individual
becomes meaningless as it lacks any future. Native tribes and
similar archaic cultures are much more susceptible to this than
modern cultures because they've been isolated and insulated from
change for thousands of years. For a much more detailed
explanation of this read
Mass Suicide.
I think that the
problems here boil down to at least two deficiencies residing in
the individual and at least one can be corrected. The first is a
lack of power. The core problem is lack of personal efficacy
and those who perceive themselves as powerless selling freedom
to authority for a sense of security and an equilibrium at the
bottom where if 'I' can't have it 'no one' can. Fear of loss,
also fear of the other, fear that others will gain at my expense
hence the desire to submit to social conformity and specious
rules just to try and hold on to what little 'I' have now.
Especially in a transitional society people are very insecure
and they will cling desperately to whatever scraps they've
already acquired in life.
The first deficiency
is largely an issue of education and the things people learn as
they grow and develop. For instance if growing up you are always
told what to do, criticized for minor details and had parents or
authority do things for you or to you, then a lack of efficacy,
lack of self-worth and a need to strike at something inside or
outside can result later in life. In this case perspectives of
power become perverted and appeals to authority forces may
appear the only way to rectify internal deficiencies; if enough
individuals are this way they form a society of concomitant
character. The second deficiency is partially a cumulative issue
stemming from the first and also external large scale factors
such as environmental and economic instability.
Nihilism & Meaning
But all of this
analysis resides outside the scope of our immediate concern of
Nihilism. Morality is relative and meaning is contextual. Our
own meaning is encapsulated in personal identity and identity is
the interface of our own self value / worth and the outside,
others. An individual isolated on an island can have no
identity, or maximum identity which is effectively the same,
zero or infinite. But they have no future as well so everything
they do is ultimately meaningless although not necessarily
immediately meaningless since survival is an immediate need and
everything which works towards fulfilling that need is
meaningful, it has value. But since this poor lonesome being is
doomed to die anyway and they have no social context to create
meaning for everyday life then their sum is zero. Life for one
stranded alone and destined to die alone is thus absurd, it's
meaningless. Everything is absurd without a society to
contextualize action and value as well as a future to perpetuate
the self. Similarly if reality is solipsistic then it is
absurd since we (or just I) are all stranded alone on islands
metaphysically speaking.
But now we can see
that meaning is a two part issue consisting of the immediate
personal and the strategic non-personal. Long-term meaning can
only come through perpetuation of the self in some form; it is
an extension of tactical meaning. Although tactical meaning is
more important it is not what one considers when philosophizing,
it is not what obsesses philosophers and theologians. Strategic
meaning is the age old question, why are we here? Does anything
matter? And so on. Although one could logically argue these
vague issues don't even matter, there seems to be a fundamental
psychological need to be convinced they do. While it's possible
to explain this desire as just an extension of the instinctive
survival motive being projected through an intelligent mind
attempting to find a means of lengthening existence, it probably
has something to do with the human body being a vehicle for the
genes to perpetuate on a time-scale far in excess of any single
person and human nature evolving within societies.
Both strategic and
tactical meaning is firmly rooted in the genetic core of every
living being. This is not fanciful but quite real even though
widely misunderstood and misinterpreted and thus abused and
perverted in practice. This genetic drive is clouded in
euphemisms and mystique, the soul, the spirit, love, and so on.
The simplicity of meaning, life and everything is its own
deception within the intelligent and introspective human mind
and further people tend to manufacture complexity to mask
responsibility. Maria Montessori one of the most profound
genius' of 20th century social science (because she operated
based on observation not assumption) once wrote,
"A
great deal of time and intellectual force are lost in the world,
because the false seems great and the truth so small and
insignificant."
Meaning in Mind
Meaning truly is
'all in the mind' for your own personal perspective and attitude
literally determines whether you live or you commit suicide; the
physical universe doesn't care at all one way or the other and
will continue humming away long after you are gone just as it did
long before you were around. Our very identity is defined by
relative connections. If you want to alter who you are you
must control what surrounds you, what the inputs are.
Identity just like meaning itself is largely (but not completely
discounting genetic origins) relative to surroundings.
The simple truths
can be difficult to accept. Many people choose to believe in
fantasies and get high on the veritable buffet of pop-drugs from
God to TV to heroin (it's all the same) in order to escape this,
but the price they pay for a temporary feeling of happiness is
going though life wearing a thick blindfold and both arms tied
behind their back, metaphorically speaking. In truth most of
humanity is far, far too weak to accept anything but
Cultural Narcotics
and self-delusions.
Yet for these sad specimens in a very dangerous world where
intelligence and cunning are your one true ally, suffering,
confusion and anguish are their only rewards. As Nietzsche said
through Zarathustra, "To many men life is
a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them
see to it that their dying is all the more a success."
Let the dying
begin.
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Laughter is a necessary defense mechanism against absurdity.
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Finding Personal
Meaning
Ultimately the
reason we seek meaning is to find happiness, or at least a sense
of momentary ease. The existentialist position delves into this
and eventually concludes that happiness is impossible. This view
satisfies no one and only highlights the flaws of the
existentialist position, for although they are correct in
realizing that conflict is inherent in all social interactions
they are not correct in concluding that harmony cannot emerge
from the fracas of life.
Obviously no one
wants to be redundant and feel useless or that their place and
potential is a waste. Marx was closer to the truth by realizing
that human worth is connected to what we do, labor is key to
happiness. Marx erred in translating this need into a
collectivist solution, although in historical context it did
make a certain amount of sense. Nietzsche was closer still by
connecting values to the internal will-force.
If you look around
you'll find that some of the happiest and most optimistic people
are those that own their own business. They work hard but remain
upbeat and I think there's more to this than just personality.
Any healthy person will put enormous effort into an endeavor if
it fulfills at least two qualifications:
1. It is something
they are interested in and enjoy dealing with.
2. The rewards from the endeavor are unambiguously returned to
them personally, preferably with a direct connection between the
effort input and the reward output.
The third
qualification is the frosting on the cake so to speak,
3. Other people also gain from the endeavor.
If all three are
met, that is a generally happy person.
Further the
happiness principle involved here has nothing to do with
Capitalism since profit in terms of money is a secondary issue.
Profit is just a means of perpetuating the enterprise and
quantifying the reward. After all, many people work in
non-profit business' that serve the community and take little or
no pay for their often very significant personal efforts;
they're rewarded through principle three. Indeed selfishness and
the inveterate need for personal profit in life is a vastly
misunderstood concept that muddles some critically important
aspects of human nature. Ayn Rand recognized this and wrote
about in The Virtues of Selfishness. The real question
here is, are we gaining from taking or gaining from giving?
An interesting
example which demonstrates the importance of principle two is
that of video games where the connection between action and
reward could not be more clear - and that's the appeal! Even
deeper than that is the action, the 'labor' part. Being
productive (or at least active) does two important things, it
occupies the mind with concrete and substantive issues and it
connects the physical world with the mental being. 16.08.03
Pitfalls of Philosophical Nihilism
To take a position called 'nihilism' and proceed to make such
bald statements as 'nothing is real' or 'nothing can be known'
defeats the proponent as soon as they start. After all, how can
one assert that 'nothing can be known' without some means of
knowing that statement to be true?! This is stillborn
philosophy.
In this nebula of philosophical nihilism, meaning becomes
absurd through a willful ignorance, a manufactured mono-pole
reality of idealistic constructs with no bearing on real life.
False absolutes only mislead rather than edify. A steady diet of
air or rhetoric they'll both starve you to death with the same
rapidity. Reality and the meaning extracted from it are
relatives not absolutes.
Pitfalls of
Universality
Another flaw of this idealistic, philosophical nihilism is that
of universality. If nothing is the same or capable of being
compared then it leads to an inability to form any conclusions
or predictions because everything is unique and totally
different. Noted crackpot Charles Fort wrote on this view in his
Book of The Damned; but try proving it! Some have gone to
the opposite extreme and concluded that everything is the same,
a basically equivalent statement. Electrons for instance are the
same no matter where we find them. Certainly given modern
research the 'everything is the same' conclusion has more weight
to it. But ultimately neither one is adequate because both are
misleading, unreal perspectives; not to mention the fact these
distinctions are based upon artificial and usually arbitrary
categorizations. Nihilism on a solid basis has to be beyond
this, it has to be deeper.
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The 'universalist' position is easily demolished, just
look at a pair of dice. All dice are (meant to be) exactly
the same but take two and roll them; the part that
concerns us is not that we have two of the same dice but
that we have two numbers and a relation between the two.
Differences can occur from a combination of similar
elements. |
The universalists
have used nihilism to break it down but missed the message in
the fragments. We have to shift perspectives, universality
misses the point for it's not what separate entities are in
themselves it's what's between them that matters. It's the
relationships and the interactions that form meaning and the
substance we deal with on a daily basis. 15.08.03
UFO - Alien Salvation
Nihilism is
reduction as an action - and a powerful action it is. By breaking
things down we can gain a sense of what works and what doesn't,
what's faith-based and what's self-evident and eventually even
get a grasp on what exists independently of the human mind and
what is merely an illusionary product | 
