Conclusion Regarding the Fallibility of the Formal.

Conclusion Regarding the Fallibility of the Formal.

 

I have defined the Formal as that which is a relationship directly between Mind and Word, in the absence of Being. I affirm Heidegger’s notion that Truth must be dependent upon the Comportment of not only Mind and Word but also Being.

The Process of Thought may be carried out calmly and with freedom even whilst vigilant of its shortcomings. Yet because of these shortcomings, one must note that simple logic, which belongs to the Formal, can never allow us to arrive at Truth; the moment that we try to, we are overcast with the Black Void of our own human fallibility and the black-light of Doubt is shone in the Darkness as a challenge to the sanity of Common Sense.

For this reason, Rationalism will always fail, except where it is used dynamically in conjunction with a specific circumstance or vague Universal or constant.

For my sources: Try playing an instrument whilst thinking quietly to one’s self, but never daring to speak aloud one’s thoughts. One may get the impression that the music lies on one axis of time and the process of thought, having BEEN thought to have been nearly instantaneous, actually stretches out over indefinite time, is only understood at intervals (like Lincoln-Logs), and fails to create the clear picture or even the (sensation of a) completed structure, either never coming to fruition or, if it has, never making that fruition certain, apparent, or distinguishable from any pre-existing structure.

Thought definitely is happening, but this “Clear and self-evident Truth” is no longer available outside of one’s own comfort zone. The process of thought can only be carried out calmly and with security if there is NOT the vested interest of finding some reliable Authority within it.

Dm.A.A.

Conclusion Regarding a Sense of Accomplishment.

Conclusion Regarding a sense of Accomplishment.

 

In all matters where one’s intellectual acuity is concerned, Truth is determined finally by the sense of Accomplishment created by Novel break-throughs, as opposed to the sense of Failure which is nothing more than the hurdle of Repetition that is simply waiting to be broken down.

 

Dm.A.A.

On the Process of Thought.

When we think verbally and logically, we construct a mental image in a fashion not unlike the systematic stacking of children's 'Lincoln Logs'.
At every instant, with each log, the Mind refers, by immediate, short-term Memory, back to the thought that was just thought, becoming Cognizant of it.

The problem with Repetition is herein: That during that brief interval betwixt thoughts, it becomes equally probable that the mind is referring back to the Original Thought as it is that it is referring to the Repetition. So long as they are indistinguishable (which they must be in order for the Repetition to be successful) there is Absolutely no way of knowing that the Repetition was successful unless it was somehow Outwardly Expressed. This is why, once an Original Thought has run its course, it becomes impossible to distinguish a Successful Repetition from the Intent of making that Repetition (which may in fact stem simply from [trying to re-live the Glory of] the Original Thought).

This seemingly crippling condition in fact cripples only Common Sense and Prejudice. So long as Thought is Fresh and Novel, sprouting from a healthy, Active relationship with Being, the Sinking House does not occur.

dm.A.A.

On Thought.

 

At every step in the mechanical process of thought, one’s Unconscious Mind checks that what is being thought is relatively unprecedented. This is why thinking the same thing over and over is fanaticism or obsession, whereas doing the same thing over and over in the physical world is madness.

 

In this sense, any house we construct may become a Sinking House. The moment that the construct is no longer novel to the Unconscious Mind, the Unconscious withdraws all support holding up the structure.

Dm.A.A.

Conclusion Regarding the Sinking House and Standing Reserve.

Standing Reserve, in the Heidegerrean sense, depends upon a Truth being drawn NOT from the comportment of Being, Mind, and Language, but upon fairly feeble connections betwixt these three points.

If our senses are fallible, then we cannot rely upon them entirely, as in the instance of Empiricism.
If our minds (especially insofar as they depend upon Memory) are fallible, then we cannot rely upon them exclusively, as in the instance of either Rationalism and Platonism.
If our language is often inadequate in relating to our minds and senses, then we cannot rely upon either Rationalism nor Common Sense, for either is constructed from it or in some way limited to it.

When I look at the computer, I am confronted with information being transmitted through wires, depicted in pixels, and published by other individuals. At any point therein, distortion can occur, and I am aware of this, even if I am Unconscious of it.
I was listening to a song by Missy Elliott, wherein I suspect that she reversed the entire song at a certain point, playing it back at intense speed, and then rhymed the following line with the reversed audio sample.
Nothing on azlyrics.com could corroborate my theory, yet neither could it dissuade it. All that it took note of, to the knowledge of my senses, were the two lines, adjacent to one another, that had appeared to border the reversed part. I found no evidence from Standing Reserve, therefore, for either the reversal having been a reversal or a misheard lyric. The absence of a third line betwixt these two lines would suggest that, to the best of my guesswork, the writer had not been able to distinguish a lyric during that brief stretch of time either, and so the ambiguous sounds were probably a reversal. (The line immediately preceding the reversal, "Listen up close while I take it backwards", corroborates this, and it is a matter of common knowledge among audiophiles that the remainder of the song employs this reversal technique repeatedly, even within the very chorus.)

It may have been a reversal of the entire song or just the lyrics that followed.

I have three reasons to believe that it was a reversal of the entire song:

1. The peculiar quality of the sounds would suggest that it was the entire song.
2. The fairly contrived feeling* of the following line.
3. The improbability that the following line was in fact auditorily palindromic.

Yet what interests me is not so much whether or not what she had done WAS a reversal or not. What interests me is this: Can I trust my senses when I am staring at that screen? If Unconsciously I am aware of the probability of distortion, then I do not see within my Mind's Eye a Truth, and so distrust occurs. and Uncertainty becomes apparent.

The immediate but tentative evidence of my senses would account for the relationship between Mind and Being, accounting for the Practical. The relationship between the Words and the Mind, the Formal, becomes feeble when I become aware that the Words I comprehend are NOT the words that were written and conceived by the writer but the words I imagine when I trust my Mind. The relationship between those Words and the Being, the Artistic, is absent.

Therefore, in the absence of Comportment, no Truth can be derived from Standing Reserve that cannot be deconstructed.

*Albeit after I had all ready developed the prejudice that it was written to rhyme with the reversed section.

dm.A.A.

On Academia.

 

 

My favourite character from the problematic and difficult outing with Kresten and his friends was Nelly. At one point, as we were arguing about Greed and Money, she looked me in the eye and said, “That’s just your opinion. That’s not a fact.”

I was given pause. I could think of nothing more obvious. Yet why was she bringing to my attention this fairly self-evident fact?

I probed her for answers. Eventually, she seemed to suggest that she knew “facts” because she learned them in college, whereas I only had opinions because I heard them by word-of-mouth.

Undoubtedly, the most well-read of my peers was John the Hitchhiker. He was also the one who had the most time available to dispense in conversation and disinterested* learning. It was his insight that I had made reference to, in the context of a larger argument. As far as I was aware, practically speaking, we might call what he told me (about the three-level theory of the Human Brain) a tentative “fact”, whereas my own applications in the argument were my subjective “opinions”. Just to underscore, however, the tentative nature of the fact, I had prefaced John’s argument with an emphatic “from what I heard”. Apparently, this humble concession was the crux of her entire attack. Yet were the things she “learned” at college not equally what she had “heard”? Why should I value the “authority” of some professor I have never seen over the authority of John? Why should I confine myself to a curriculum when the curriculum encroaches upon the learning that I do naturally in quest of answers and not only answers but deeper questions?

I hear people quite frequently parrot that “everything is subjective”. Yet I did not LEARN that from a curriculum. It took me years of arguing painstakingly with my peers in middle and high school before we arrived at the age when they stopped lording their own “facts” over me as dogmatically. Too sore are the wounds of bullying from someone with no imagination who hated me for challenging his or her dogma, if I approached him in a group, or who scoffed at me within a group and left me to grovel and wonder how it could be that someone could be so CERTAIN of anything. Personal Subjectivity had been something more or less intuitive to my mind, and I deplored the educational system for not introducing it more thoroughly in its education curriculum until high school. Yet now I seem to encounter the phrase “everything is subjective” as though it were something read from a book – yet it is STILL TREATED as an end-point. Most people who make the claim that everything is subjective seem to be relativists. But what lies beyond it?

Nelly said that we cannot make decisions according to opinions, and that we had to make them according to facts. Yet WHAT ARE FACTS? It was merely Kant who drew a line between the Phenomenological and the Objective. Yet not only Nietzsche or Shestov but experience itself seems to lay this abstraction to waste.

The point is not that I was smarter than my peers; that is somewhat of a leap. The point is that something as basic as the relativity and subjectivity of experience was not taught to me within the confines of a classroom. If anything, I only found words for it from books that I had read in my free time, but the mystery of what other’s lives were had always been what cast doubt on any kind of Absolutism.

Of course, if one supplements** a curriculum with one’s own studies, one will sooner or later call the curriculum into question. But even within the CONFINES of the curriculum one must call the institution of Academia into question! Did Nelly not read Hugo, or Salinger, or Emerson, or Thoreau? I might imagine that any serious scholar, unless he or she had a really brilliant argument otherwise, would enter into college with immense tentativeness and humility, and my ideal would be, should I choose to return to school, to ALWAYS keep an eye open for what the Hitch-hikers of the world are doing.

Yet if one has no intrinsic interest in Truth but simply a vested interested in “Education”, then one can entertain the pitifully fossilized notion that one in-group has the Truth and the other does not have it. Yet this is not only unsubstantiated but impractical, because WERE THAT SO, then only individuals within a given system would be of equal intellectual merit as individuals outside of it. This kind of thinking leads to Fascism, typically. How can a learning person possess oneself of such a pretension or prejudice?

Yet of course not all students are scholars; many are simply parrots who employ the educational system in order to gain social status, to climb a social hierarchy, and to put down others on a lower “rung” of the hypothetical ladder. Education is supposed to teach humility – not timidity, but humility. Nietzsche may have written in a vain tone of voice because he was unintimidated by the masses, but was he not intimidated by the Universe? I may write as though I “know everything”. Yet I do not make that claim at all. I know a good deal. The more that I know that I know, the more I know that I do not know, and if I did not make clear what little I do know, even if it is never Certain, I run the risk of forgetting not only the answers I have found but the multitude of questions they imply.

 

*Learning without a vested interest, such as social status or some goal.

** And of course, once the curriculum has become voluntary rather than mandatory, a more appropriate term would be to “supplement one’s own studies with the curriculum”.

 

Dm.A.A.

On Friendship, Utilitarianism, Sexuality, and Evolution. (F.U.S.E.)

On Friendship, Utilitarianism, Sexuality, and Evolution. (F.U.S.E.)

 

In retrospect, I can find some argument in Evolutionary Biology for Michael’s assertion that any relationship between a man and a woman, at least outside of the immediate family, is sexually motivated at its radical core. This assertion usually clashes with my conscious ideals, but in the absence of any clear “evidence” from the Unconscious (chiefly because it IS Unconscious), I will entertain the evolutionary argument.

The argument is thus: You can study the behavior of apes and see some distinctly human-like behaviours. The adult males typically hunt together as a pack, and this would thus engender friendships amidst them. This makes sense because of the utilitarian advantage of forming such bonds. When the apes are not hunting, but they are out in the clearings, they have been known to play primitive “war games”. If we are to presume that our ancestors did something like this, we can guess that similar games were the origin of our modern games, sports, and even warfare.

Meanwhile, the adult women spent their days at home, caring for the young. They were of a markedly introverted nature, and this would explain the tendency for modern women (according to the theory) to tend more towards introversion, whereas men tend more towards extraversion. The relationship between Mother and Child thus developed, yet there is no reason to presume, by common sense, that anything like that would have been the relationship between Father and Child, because quite obviously at one point it was the Father’s biological duty (for the survival of the species) to tear the male child away from the comfort of home and to introduce him to the hardships of hunting. We do not know, to my knowledge, if the father had anything to do with his daughters.

So it would seem quite probable that friendship has traditionally existed as a utilitarian relationship between adult males, and we might presume based upon this that any relationship between an adult male and adult woman was sexual in nature. After all, what purpose would a Platonic relationship serve?

 

I have several problems with this:

1.       IT IGNORES THE SUBJECTIVE FACTOR. We know from our experience that there is something distinct about how we see ourselves when we describe ourselves as subjects as opposed to objects. When one writes a poem or even just a description of what a day in one’s life is like, it does seem to paint a picture of what it means to be human, yet this is quite distinct from the picture painted when one is asked to describe one’s own characteristics, such as one’s skin colour, one’s ethnic background, one’s social status, et cetera. This distinction Sartre pointed out when he spoke of “non-reflexive awareness”: The tendency to see things without making reference to one’s self in the process.
We do not know about the subjectivity of apes. We can only regard them as Objects, and in describing them, we may draw parallels to our own “objective” views of what it means to be human, but we totally efface the subjective factor.

2.       IT COMMITS THE PATHETIC FALLACY. When we presume the experience of apes to be in some sense either identical to ours or motivated by a common motive, we anthropomorphosise them. Because of the first point, there is no evidence that this is not a huge leap of faith.

3.       OUR ANCESTORS WERE NOT IDENTICAL TO PRESENT-DAY APES. In truth, I am not certain of this fact, yet it seems as if not more probable than the alternative. Were our ancestors apes in the modern sense, then why did these apes that we have available to study not evolve as well? One may presume that only certain apes broke off and developed into human beings, whereas the remaining apes remained unchanged throughout those thousands of years of human evolution. What right do we have to make this guess? Is it not totally improbable, given how much our species alone changed during this short time?

4.       EVOLUTION IS A THEORY. It may be, to my mind, the most coherent theory that we have yet. (I know little of Creationism, and usually my schooling and upbringing have dissuaded me from doing studies into Creationism; I simply don’t find immediate interest in studying the issue at present.) Yet there are no facts in Science, only theories, and these theories glaze over several problems which are only called into question in the other schools of thought, such as philosophy. It is time that we reconcile these schools of thought.

5.       IT NEGATES FREE WILL. Any statement of the “nature” of something has been regarded as silly by the existentialists when applied to a human being, because, according to one’s individual experience, one seems to have Free Will, which means that even if one has a set of predispositions, be they genetic or cultural (and the line betwixt these two influences is not clear as we might hope) one can always choose one’s behavior and therefore determine one’s Nature. Modern science seems to corroborate this.

6.       IT UNIVERSALISES INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE. Mike may very well have found, giving his memory a cursory glance, that most of his relationships with women were sexual in nature. Yet I can personally say that I have maintained very close friendships with girls who I was either not attracted to or, if ever I was attracted to them, eventually sexuality became an absurdly marginalized factor that never entered into our conversations again except in pure theory (such as the consideration of this very philosophical question).

Personally, I never tended to find the same enjoyment in conventional Games, Sports, and any semblance of Warfare as did most of the other boys on the playground; I preferred to write, draw, and invent games imaginatively. Does this mean that I am superior to those boys who, growing up, showed a marked close-mindedness and anti-intellectualism, except where they saw the advantage of studying someone else’s work in order to attain social status? Not necessarily. Yet it certainly always set me apart.

7.       FRIENDSHIP IS NOT UTILITARIAN. Here again I must appeal to the subjective factor. From my experience, the distinctly delightful thing about Friendship is that, while it may fulfill needs, a good friend will not keep track of such things. When I use the expression “friend”, I refer to a kind of unconditional love.

8.       ONE CAN IMAGINE OTHERWISE. So what if we can find no empirical evidence for early man having Platonic friendships with early women with whom he was not sleeping? One can barely find objective “evidence” for this in modern life, yet subjective accounts seem to suggest that it is possible and maybe even common. Simply because we cannot conceive of a Rational REASON for such a thing occurring in early, prehistoric society does not mean that it did not. The very fact that we can imagine it seems to suggest that, whatever the case may be, modern man is different because he or she can at least picture such a situation and desire it despite all Utilitarian pragmatism. The argument against this imaginative faculty (which seems to define, as far as I am aware, the Human Experience) serves only to underscore our Rationalist and Empiricist prejudices from the Nineteenth century, which only incidentally was Darwin’s time.   

9.       WE ARE NOT APES. We may have, theoretically, DESCENDED from Apes, but we are not apes. The modern adult male may very well be a home-maker, whereas the modern adult woman may be a businessperson, lawyer, or politician. It is not uncommon, and psychology seems to tell us that each of us has both feminine and masculine traits, whereas gender roles are conditioned. They may have been necessary at one point in history for survival. Yet we have come a long way; no other animal we can think of has produced civilization on such a large scale. Is it not possible that we evolved Free Will, or that if our ancestors had Free Will, they simply did not find it profitable to employ it yet, for survival depended so much on their being practical? This is not difficult to imagine when one examines the modern individual who stifles his or her creativity for practical purposes.

Joseph Campbell distinguishes the birth of the “Human Human” as the earliest instance wherein man appreciated Art. There was a stone found by archaeologists that had supposedly been hoarded by an early ancestor. The stone had no conceivable practical purpose (or if it did, the process of hoarding it did not). What set it apart was that it had a zigzag pattern running along it. Anthropologists have speculated that this was one of the earliest instances of an ape appreciating Beauty. Does this not suggest, therefore, that the essence of what it means to be Human is not only to be Free but to Use that freedom in service NOT of self-preservation but of something more vague and mysterious, be it aesthetic, idealistic, religious, mystical, or otherwise?

I am reminded of a quote from the film Waking Life: “The gap between a Nietzsche or a Plato and the average human is GREATER than the gap between a super-chimpanzee and the average human.”

One needs not any empirical evidence, so much as simple day-to-day experience, to corroborate this. I always seem to hope that it is not true, yet my experience definitely lends meaning to this statement. And Michael himself admitted that I might be an exception to his generalization.

 

Dm.A.A.