Conclusion concerning Relevance and Truth.

If an abstraction is not Relevant, it is not True.

dm.A.A.

On the Irrelevance of Grammar.

On the Irrelevance of Grammar.

 

Grammar is used to establish a formal set of rules by which language is understood aesthetically. This allows for AUTOMATIC understanding, needless of Analysis. Yet, as with all systems of rules, it becomes confining. The excessively dogmatic use of grammar may create the illusion of clarity, but it limits us to a tribal way of automatic thinking. New experimentations in linguistic aesthetics become restricted by excessive grammatical orthodoxy. Because every language has its own fluid and oftentimes vague set of culturally recognized grammatical rules, the ability to communicate vague ideas becomes limited by the disparity of language. Yet, seemingly most important is the fact that, in the absence of an AUTOMATIC understanding of a given thought phenomenon, Analysis may be totally useless and irrelevant, as a process of directed thinking as opposed to non-directed thinking. Grammar creates the illusion of a coherent picture, yet should I want to paint a picture that is more vague or unusual, I must manipulate grammar in such a way that its conventional rules are suspended. In other words, there are certain “turns” that one can take in the construction of a sentence that are “allowed” in English, and there are others that are not. Yet this may be entirely arbitrary and dependent upon tradition. If I succeed in DESCRIBING a phenomenon, even if only in a fleeting and inimitable moment of Recognition, I have succeeded in my use of language. This is the liberty and oftentimes the responsibility of the work of the Poet, yet it is lacking in the other branches of thought.

The Natural World does not make grammatical sense. To claim that it does is to substitute for our experience of the Natural World a set of symbols projected onto it by virtue of participation mystique. To claim that it is merely non-grammatical in the sense of “lacking grammar” is to similarly anthropomorphosise it. The nature of the Universe as observed outside of the confines of grammar rests therefore outside of even the dichotomy of grammatical correctness and grammatical incorrectness, yet, because of that, when represented in language, a grammatically “incorrect” set of symbols may be just as valid, if not moreso, (simply because of the greater degree of available permutations lying outside of the confinements of Grammar) as is “correctness” in describing the phenomenon.

If any resolution is to be found between the logic employed by the visual artist, the philosopher, and the poet, then we must dispossess ourselves of excessive pride in upholding the dogma of grammatical correctness. If all artists followed these rules in Artistic methodology, our Artistry (and probably a good deal of our Artists) would suffer absurdly. Conventional conversation may be free of grammatical mistakes, and people pay little notice. Grammar, however, as an instrument of Culture, can be used to impose control on the thinking of individuals and what appears to be Sanity. This is why Artists are oftentimes mistaken for madmen, simply for seeking to be consistent in what steps they take in all walks of Life.

Dm.A.A.

On the Metaphor of the Sinking House.

On the Metaphor of the Sinking House

 

I will now coin a formal term for the predicament that I delineated in an earlier entry: The Sinking House Problem. This refers to the situation wherein, in the process of completing a calculation, one finds that, in the time that elapses, one is no longer certain, by the end of the calculation or partway through, about what the initial step(s) of the calculation were. The reason, I assert, that one would persist in performing different permutations of the same calculation would be, consciously or unconsciously, to attain a form of CERTAINTY. This would serve, though it is not necessarily necessary that it does, to justify the time spent performing the Calculation. This use of time would be consequential if the World is defined by one’s Thoughts, rather than independent of them.

Certainty would be impossible simply because of the POSSIBILITY* of distortion occurring during the time that is required to perform the Calculation. Certainty would be a substitute for ASSUREDNESS. When any calculation is performed, if it requires time (which may be the case for all calculations), one can only be ASSURED of the proper execution of the problem. This ASSUREDNESS can only be attained by attributing REALITY to the abstractions at work and their manipulation. Because abstractions are only REAL insofar as they are IMPORTANT, the moment that a calculation becomes irrelevant (not by virtue of being DISPROVEN, as by Analysis, but by no longer serving PURPOSE), it ceases to be REAL. ASSUREDNESS is lost, and we seek CERTAINTY to validate the waste of time. This “waste of time” may be illusory in some instances, however, given that we discontinue the thought quickly enough.

It is for this reason that some logical thought process may be REAL and relevant in one moment but may appear absurd the next. It is not necessarily that it was ever “false” to begin with, but the situation has changed so that the abstractions used to represent the situation are now null and void.

My philosophy of memory is not pseudo-philosophy as it is defined by “using Reason to prove why Reason is impossible or futile”. I am not attacking Reason, but, on the contrary, supporting it by describing the way in which it morphs over time. What I am attacking is the sense of constancy that we feel when we employ Reason with an excessive dependency upon MEMORY.

My philosophy is not post-modernism. Post-modernism is based in the deconstruction of language and other symbol systems. Yet this deconstruction is subliminally presumed to occur within a timeless space. My philosophy proves that, where abstraction is concerned, Time, even if it is essentially only an Abstraction, is also involved, even as only a measurement of the decay of abstract entities in the process of their manipulation. The metaphor of the man trying to construct a house from mud and then to occupy it while it is all ready collapsing is an apt metaphor. The very process of contemplation can try to approach the limit of Certainty when its necessity has run its course, but each time it will only fall further short from its goal.

The post-modernist will try to deconstruct a sentence to deal with the process of thought at work in making that sentence “make sense”. I show why even this process may be futile because of the inherent fallibility of human thought over time.

*However Minute.

 

dm.A.A.

On the Fallacy of the Conventional Definition of Sanity.

On the Fallacy of the Conventional Definition of Sanity.

 

The Conventional Definition of Sanity is that it is repetitive, identical action with the anticipation of a new result.

 

There is a fallacy therein. My heart beats repetitively, and yet I describe my experience each day as being novel. So long as there are forces outside of my control, and so long as my Will is of any merit, then it may be permissible for me to repeat the same act over and over again and to anticipate a different result because the aspect of my experience which is OUTSIDE OF MY CONTROL will always change. If Will matters, then one can conceive of a situation wherein the synchronization of Will and The Uncontrolled can produce a beneficial result. From the perspective of the Ego, I would be repeating the same act over and over. Imagine that I am playing whack-a-mole, except with only one hole. The mole is too fast when he rises from his hole for me to hit him upon sight. The only way to resolve this would be for me to whack the hole repeatedly until the mole surfaced. If he is bound to surface, then I should know that I am entirely sane in doing so. If I am uncertain of whether or not he WILL surface, then I should still be justified in making an attempt, simply because of the possibility that he might. The question is a matter of the degree to which one enjoys the game or otherwise finds Meaning in it.

dm.A.A.

On Sanity.

On Sanity.

 

What had been Sane yesterday given our frame of reference may very well be insane today. If we do not shed our cocoon, we risk death. Sanity cannot be held onto as a constant. It must be embraced as a part of the fluidity. We cannot use the same method to cope with a different phenomenon, and our experience is constantly new. A method will serve us until it is futile. Then we must take care to kill it before it usurps a throne.

 

Sanity is a deeply personal religious matter. Every cycle of discovery confronts us with the challenge of shedding the Old Ways. We ultimately fight our former ally alone. With more cycles, we may find an increasing regret for the realization that any ally we make, in the sense of a personal ego, we must ultimately slay, for it will turn against us. It will fight against us with all the ardour with which it fought for us until we take back its power. This may become easier with age, or it may become more difficult. Yet my faith is in that it will become easier, and that the people I’ve known who are less impressive gladiators than I have merely been slower to learn, or otherwise they have suffered more woundings. The greatest challenge is that we can never know HOW we defeat our foes. There doesn’t seem to be any Guarantee that we will. Yet the Uncertainty of the World would suggest that we do not need such a possibly impossible Guarantee in order to have faith. Oftentimes, it is our very absence of confidence that makes the battle more arduous for us. The Impermanence of things and therefore thoughts seems to be our saving Grace. We cannot ultimately hold on to ourselves; the illusion that we can may be our neurosis. Yet it is a pardonable illusion, for man does not live in absolutes, and to be totally without illusion is impossible. The Beast will ultimately die and the fabric will tear. Yet we can never know how we did it or how it happened, and that is the Unresolvable and therefore Sacred nature of our Mystery of Being.

 

For this reason, to make the absolute claim that there is no such thing as Free Will seems also to invest too much confidence in our knowledge of things. There may be. There may not be. Yet it is not our task to know. Scientism has obscured this basic sanity and perverted the quest for inner peace by turning into a dogma based upon the absurd notion that Certainty can be attained. Yet Scientism is merely the latest form of dogma which has plagued us for as long as we can recall. Maybe I ought not to combat it with the hopes of utterly destroying it. Yet I would be equally deluded not to combat it.

 

Dm.A.A.

On Reality.

On Reality.

 

 

Nothing is permanent. How can it be? If we attribute Reality to the world as it appears as represented by consciousness when our basic philosophical foundations upon which conscious values are established ignore Uncertainty and Impermanence, then we suffer.

 

Reality is determined by what we attribute Meaning to. Loss aversion, or attachment, as Buddhists call it, is the tendency to cling to an existing conscious set of values. The pressure to do this is great in a society wherein Freud is prevalent. Where the ego is defined as the Reality principle and its absence is defined as insanity, the latter of which is condemned and punished with the hostility of an Inquisitorial staff, ego-death is avoided at all costs.

 

Yet, for the neurotic conscious of his or her own neurosis to escape the trap of questioning her sanity, she must let go of what she values as Sanity. The alternative is to withdraw into subservience to dogma and metaphysics that will only worsen the neurosis.

 

Insanity is not a fate but a process. Sometimes, if an illness runs its course, it will heal the psyche. The notion of a “hopelessly” insane person may be phony and absurd, representing only the condition of an immensely Liberated and/or Individuated person whose condition passes the understanding of the observer.

 

Only by falling through the net of what Reality appears to be to the Ego can we arrive at another constant. There is a superior solace in embracing Uncertainty if we can attribute Reality to this Uncertainty. Once the hole in the net has been torn, the net disintegrates, as does the World as it appears from the perspective of the old Ego, given time. Yet the World Itself does not disappear. By virtue of the Unconscious and the Second Subject, we are still HERE, and we are at peace in the process of Change. We establish an expanded frame of reference. The cycle begins anew.

 

Dm.A.A.

On the Inevitability of Hypocrisy in a Post-Modern Mode of Being.

On the Inevitability of Hypocrisy in a Post-Modern Mode of Being.

 

Thought and Action can be delineated as two separate phenomena. This may be an illusory distinction, but insofar as one is deeply possessed of such an illusion by virtue of Conditioning, it may be practical to regard these two as separate.

 

Thought is not always required for Action.

Thought may have virtue until the threshold where Thought ends and Action begins is reached.

 

Hypocrisy occurs if this threshold is not crossed successfully.

 

The greatest barrier to this crossing is Doubt.

 

The greatest false justification for this sort of Doubt, which is illusory as opposed to the constructive Doubt necessary for Philosophical exploration, is Dogmatic Post-modernism.

 

If I presume that I cannot know a thing, this presupposes that I KNOW that I cannot know a thing.

 

This is a conscious pretension. It suggests that I know with CERTAINTY that I am unaware of a fact, simply because it is Unconscious. This becomes void when we consider the presence of the Unconscious as a second subject that may very well KNOW a thing, but does not speak directly with consciousness except in the case of schizophrenia and other so-called “mental disorders”.

 

This would suggest that our delineation of mental disorders is misguided when we take an attitude of condemnation towards people with them.

 

Segregation, forced drugging, and a sense of having a “superior” knowledge or “Sanity” is therefore unjust. It is a passive way of condemnation.

Dm.A.A.