Energy bursts, from each pore, he bounds, unbid
Pushing six, in his years, still growing, a kid
On the run, here he comes, like Kramer, a skid
He didn’t, jump over, yonder bench? yes, he did

He’s bored, you aren’t moving, he wonders, brows knit
Oh well, head down, he tumbles, legs split
Into your lap, he snuggles, and snorts just, a bit
Sighing softly, he’s happy, no matter, we’ll sit

He runs, cause he can, no reason, it’s fun
Life’s so good, pounds his heart, it beats like, a drum
Play a game, use all toys, sure nothing’s left, undone
His joy, fills the air, his smile like, the sun

Hey Hey Hey, Hey Hey Hey, he calls out, you listnin?
Hey stranger, come on over, be a friend, he questions?
All are welcome, all’s forgiven, would be his, religion
Life’s so short, don’t you know, we must cram, it all in

You up yet, the suns up, daylights burning, a kiss
On your eyelid, as a favor, he’s sure you’d, want this
Oh boy food, it’s the same, don’t think he, noticed
Take a walk, oh why not, through his eyes it’s, all fresh

What a boy, the big doof, daily shows how, to live
Unexpected, he joined us, and gave us, a lift
To remind us, it’s right now, doesn’t matter just, do it
More evolved, than humans,  find the fun, his gift

He’s our dog, with good luck, you have someone, like him

Smoking… The topic has been a smoky hot discussion since many years, although recently it has become even hotter in Europe. I am not a friend of discussions, because  – as I stated earlier – I am a convinced existentialist and thus I belive that perceptions could not be discussed in general, because of their subjective nature. However I want to share with you one intresting insight on this problematic topic.

There are 1000 and 1 arguments the non-smokers give while trying to justify their intolerance of other’s smoking. I don’t really care for all these arguments. I can only state that unfortunately I am a militant objector of smoking, and I can’t  help it. No amount of spiritual growth  helps me to tolerate smoking around me or especially into my face. Recently I was wondering WHY I actually do not mind seeing people drunk, under drugs, whatever – although that is disgusting but it never bothers me to such extend as smoking?! WHY? I finally asked my husband who has a special boon of knowing all the answers And you know what he told me?

“Smoking is irritating because it goes against the Collective Benevolence. If one is taking drugs or drinks, he/she destroys only himself/herself. But smoking , while affecting everyone around shows disrespect to the collective body of the humanity. It becomes not an individual, but a collective problem. And people like you, who are very sensitive about the common good, are so sensitive towards this issue”.

I found this explanation very interesting and true, and you?

LOVE, axinia

(image by me)

Here is where I introduce the characters so that you know who’s important, and accordingly, who isn’t.

The Undead cast:
Victoria – Maleficent, if she was a Vampire, capable of changing into a dragon only under very extreme conditions, such as finding a cockroach nibbling away at her morning cereal.

Jacques Le Blanc – The others may from time to time address him as “Jack the White” to annoy the piss out him, only because he is french and detests anything English or American – mostly because he thinks he’s supposed to (yes, he’s THAT GUY).

Rosette – a softy really, quiet, keeps to herself, writes alot, dreams of being human again, if only to nail the priest she left after becoming a vampire. Undead and virgin … if she still believed in God, she’d most certainly agree He has a sense of humor.

Horus – Elegant, intelligent, virtuous, a real gentlemen of person – if you can refer to a vampire as a person – he thinks and acts regally, most of the time. Well, most of the time when he’s not drunk. And he’s drunk most of the time. You do the math.

Charlotte – She goes by Claire, and if you call her Charlotte she’ll suck your blood and eat your flesh. That was her grandmother’s name. And she hated that bitch.

D – As the name implies, little is known about him. We do know, however, that he is an existentialist, which is really sarcastic considering he’s undead. Go figure.

Essence precedes meaning, not the other way around. Yes, I get that much.

Whether a precedes b or b precedes a, the former will always appear more permanent, more fixed than the latter–regardless of order.

As such, therein lies the problem that I have been wrestling with tonight.

If meaning precedes essence, then we are the items in flux. Your exhibit A: look no further than the oft-asked “What is the meaning of life?” question.

Now, if there is a meaning of life so-called, then it does not care about you and it does not care about me. It does not care about every pitstop on the number line we call infinity. Infinity only cares about infinity. We don’t figure into its equation.

If the meaning of life is for everything to eventually revert to taste like blue cheese when the clock strikes midnight on December 12 2012, there is no customer service area where we can voice our complaints. There’s no suggestion box where it’ll take our thoughts into account. Infinity’s mind has been, is and will always continue to be already made up.

In that case, we all know by now that in that basest sense, there can be no free will and no matter what we do we are turning into blue cheese as of that date. Yes it’s sad, I know (I prefer parmesan).

This is the reason why I don’t understand people’s obsession with going to heaven or hell, reaching Enlightment or nirvana or what have you. If there is a permanence that encapsulates us all, the rules are made up and the die has been cast. My choices and miniscule movements not only cannot figure into a change of the bigger picture, they will not. In this sense, Calvinism makes heaploads more sense than Catholicism.

But that’s not the problem that has irked me recently. My problem is the following:

If the equation works the other way around, then we will see that essence is fixed and then meaning remains in flux.

To be honest, I believe existentialists are not born, they are made.

It appears to be an a-ha! moment the individual experiences where they see that a walks before b, not the other way around.

But if an existentialist is then made, I feel he is utterly lost. Existentialism is a labyrinthine Moebuis-strip, forever bending in on itself where no matter where you turn, you eventually end where you began: in search of meaning. And unfortunately for existentialists, the map to way find your way around is written in pencil.

What do I mean by this? I mean that once an existentialist is made, they will always be an existentialist. No matter whether they become a born-again Christian or atheist or what have you, their life choice beyond existentialism is irrelevant. There is simply no going back. This is because then they are not subscribing to an infinite and its potency to submit to it, but rather they are instead subscribing to it so that they can force it to submit to them.

Any existentialist will always suffer this existentialist dilemma. If an existentialist is defined by essence preceding meaning, then the constancy of their body, a fixed point in time and space will be the only permanent thing they will know of the two. The fact that they choose to submit to a belief system where meaning precedes essence only further illustrates the point that they are an existentialist.

This is what I believe to be my problem. I have reached a point where I share a strong conviction in that existentialist baseline. But I am slowly finding out for myself that if I am a true existentialist, then whatever I believe in doesn’t matter. My personal codes will be in constant flux and I will never truly ever be able to be happy with my choices, since they will always disagree with each other and only answer to themselves.

I can only see it like this:

I am by the shore, running into the waves. In my hand, I hold a sieve. My task is to fit the ocean into that sieve. Yet, of course, no matter how fast I pour, I will never be able to contain it.

My body is the only permanent thing between essence and meaning that I own it seems. It begins at its own point A and ends at its own point B. Meaning, on the other hand, is indiscriminate of a value system.

Can an existentialist like me simply make their mind up? I don’t know. I just don’t know. If they can what does that mean? If not, then what does that mean?

Maybe this is where nihilism steps in. But either way, I want a better exchange rate for my beliefs.

“I watched your performance last Saturday”

“Gosh! but you said you are not coming! So why don’t you meet me? huh? you are a paranoid.”

He smiled at her.

He asked, “What happened to your performance?”

“You too noticed! oops! smart people around me!”, She faked the line.

She continued, “I hate this ice cream. When I was in Dubai I had Pistachio ice cream. I called it as heaven”

“What happened?”

She stirred the ice cream by spoon.

“Stage, Spotlight, claps, dialogues, faces…lots of faces in front me. I dreamt last night and many times, repeating dreams. Faces, faces, faces. All those faces are staring at me, laughing at me, crying faces too, spat at me, hugging faces, kissing faces. I am tired.”

He holds her hand and felt that her fingers are so warm.

“So?”

“I was planned to write a book, But I stopped writing after few pages. It was so boring. Then I thought to work with children, its not a bad idea. I want to be a kid along with kids. I want to learn their language to play with them and to teach. Planning to join in a Montessori next month, need this change very badly. And I decided not to meet you for six months. “

After a pause,  she added, “Can you understand me?”

“I would like to understand it later”, He answered without plethora expression.

“Mom called me yesterday”, She said.

“Hmm”

“She started the same story on the phone. She always insists me to go there. I hate someone insisting me”

“Hmm”

“What Hmm? Ok. Let me change the topic, How was my acting as Salome?”

“You are lacking with libidinous expressions. Salome’s eyes were tender than nights, her shyness are reddish than ruby, she walks like a wolf, her laugh jangles like thunder, her lips shows ferocious lust, her hair shows the intense love and furious, her body have the vigorous power to drag men. She tried to pull Jokanaan, her seductive voice is lighter than air. These are characteristics of Salome.”

She stared at him for some seconds.

“Thank you. I should get trained in my body language”, She is delighted.

“I will give you the German version.  Check Catherine Malfitano performance.”

She said ‘Ok’ by nodding the head.

He thought that she is accumulating reasons to get out from this life. He left her alone a long time ago, her life is not much different than his. As a fast learner, she widen her knowledge without him later. Traveling is the most wanted part for her and went to many places in the world. She returned home with flowers and wounds. But those are just short stories for her.

“I wrote ‘The Virgin delusion’ in a magazine”

“I read that. An exhaustive treatment of human mind”, He said.

“Many anonymous mails said that the virginity is only for vagina but not for penis. I laughed like anything after reading those puke”

This time they laughed together.

“Their arguments are totally otiose”

“No choice for us sweetie. We should overcome this philistine culture and they are not yet realized that an artist’s anger is more dangerous and powerful than the authoritarian”

“They will not change. I started to training myself to avoid them. An art of ignorance”, She smiled with pain.

“I am remembering a movie dialogue, “Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment”.

“Their punishments in their own deeds”, He added.

“Exactly”

Only she ordered another ice cream.

“Sometimes our hobbies are becoming our profession. Teaching kids is my selfish, to control my stress. But later it might become my profession.”

“Chances are there”

“Thank you for showing my space”

“You are my lovely daughter”

“Thank you dad”

I have been going through old classics on my shelves recently. A couple months ago, I re-read Albert Camus’ THE STRANGER and THE FALL. My own view is that THE FALL (published in 1957) is a more mature and a deeper work than THE STRANGER (published in 1946). However, reading them back-to-back enriched the effect of both. Camus was obviously influenced by his good friends Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He was also influenced by the literature of Andre Gide. I decided to ride the theme and re-read THE IMMORALIST.

THE IMMORALIST (written in 1902) precedes Camus’ works both chronologically and in the philosophical sense. Gide posed questions with which Camus later grappled. I probably should have read Gide before Camus, to follow the historical progression, but reading Gide out of order probably gives me greater appreciation of Gide. Gide’s work is outstanding.

He wrote in the preface: “One may without too much conceit, I think, prefer the risk of failing to interest the moment by what is genuinely interesting — to beguiling momentarily a public fond of trash.” Whether conceited or not, Gide did tackle the genuinely interesting. I am very glad he did.

Most of the novel is told in the first person from the perspective of Michel. However, Michel’s narrative is related to us secondhand through one of his friends. The novel begins with a letter from one friend of Michel’s to a government official. The short letter poses an opening question: “Can we accommodate so much intelligence, so much strength–or must we refuse them any place among us?”

While the question is posed in the context of a letter examining whether Michel could be of use to the state, I think this is the question Gide is really asking the reader about such supermen and society. (Nietzsche’s WILL TO POWER was written one year later.) Gide does not answer the question. He explained: “I wanted to write this book neither as an indictment of Michel nor as an apology, and I have taken care not to pass judgment.”

The text of the letter is followed by a purportedly verbatim account by Michel of his recent life. Michel’s account begins with his marriage to Marceline, a woman he did not love; unless “love means tenderness, a kind of pity, as well as a good deal of respect.” Prior to the marriage, Michel was single-mindedly bookish. He tells his friend that his “excessively sedentary life…weakened and protected [him] at the same time.” His wife, in contrast, was physically strong and healthy.

Michel describes the transformation of his life by marriage:

I had lived for myself or at least on my own terms till then; I had married without imagining my wife as anything but a comrade, without really supposing that, by our union, my life might be transformed. I had just understood at last that the monologue was ending now.

Michel’s wife seems more engaged in the marriage. When Michel contracts tuberculosis in a small desert town, Marceline dutiful nurses him. Michel is sure “that her devoted care, that her love and nothing else, saved [him].” The disaparity in their affection for each other persists throughout the novel. Marceline seems always to be trying to win Michel’s affection while Michel more often sees the marriage as an obligation. The view presented of marriage is rather bleak. But then, Gide’s own marriage ended unhappily when he eloped with the sixteen year-old son of his best man. While Gide warned against confusing Michel with Gide, Gide was at least writing what he knew.

Michel’s illness awakens him, he believes, to life.

What matters is that merely being alive became quite amazing for me, and that the daylight acquired an unhoped-for radiance. Till now, I would think, I never realized that I was alive. Now I would make the thrilling discovery of life.

Michel’s recovery is slow, if sure. In his recovery, he determined that he must redefine “Good” and “Right” to mean “whatever was healthy for [him].” This is an important turning point. However, despite his earlier assurance that only Marceline’s “devoted care” saved him, he soon sees her as, if not an impediment to recovery, then a irritant. He discovers that Marceline has been become acquainted with a group of local boys and rejects Marceline’s company in favor of the company of the boys. The boys are, after all, vigorously alive and youthful.

Michel spends the rest of the novel exploring the world and his newfound philosophy of life. For Michel, “sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts.” Gide magnificently manages Michel’s transformation from a dependable, bookish man of means to a rather self-centered, erratic, pleasure-seeker. But Michel’s pleasure-seeking is not simple hedonism, he is trying to navigate between living in the past (as in his previous vocation as scholar of history) and living only for the future.

A man Michel meets, Menalque, encourages him in his new life. Menalque explains his own philosophy:

I create each hour’s newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don’t believe in dead things. What’s the difference between no longer being and never having been?

The conflict between Michel’s “will to power” and his obligations, including those to Marceline, provides the tension for the remainder of the novel. Marceline becomes ill and it is Michel’s handling of her illness that poses the most serious question to the reader. Michel is bent on living the remainder of his life in the present, yet he cannot quite abandon Marceline, at least not completely.

For long stretches he is preoccupied with new friendships, all of which are interesting and illuminating. His obligations as a landlord constrict him and social obligations oppress. But the central pull, preventing Michel from living entirely as he would, is Marceline and her illness. By the end of the book, Michel feels he has liberated himself, but that: “This useless freedom tortures me.”

As one would expect from a writer who inspired Sartre, Camus, and many others, Gide has written a book with the power to be life changing. At the least, THE IMMORALIST raises profound questions that are difficult to ignore.

I am already partial to the absurdists and the existentialists. Gide is a necessary part of that group. If you do not have a similar bent, you may not get quite the same enjoyment from THE IMMORALIST, but it is almost certain to be intellectually stimulating. While I would not go so far as to say that I consider THE IMMORALIST to be an essential novel like Camus’ THE FALL, I do think it is one of those novels than can enrich one’s worldview and, certainly, enrich one’s appreciation of Camus’ absurdism and Sartre’s existentialism.

From Gregory MacDonald’s The Evangelical Universalist, pp.134f (italics in original, bold added):

One could argue with John Robinson that the New Testament sets out two alternative visions for humanity: eternal life and eternal damnation. One vision asserts that all will be saved, the other than many will be damned. These two visions need to be set alongside one another and taken with equal seriousness, but not as two contradictory predictions about the future of the world (this misunderstands the character of myth) nor as alternative possible futures (as if all may be saved or some may be damned).

Rather, we should see the vision of damnation as the truth from the perspective of the persons facing the decisions with which the gospel confronts them. The hell passages set forth the genuinely deserved fate for sinners – a fate that ought to be avoided at all costs. However, the universalist texts set forth the truth as it is for God and faith on the further side of the decision.

Robinson writes, “to the man in decision – and that means to all men, always, right up to the last hour – hell is in every way as real a destination as heaven. Only the man who has genuinely been confronted with both alternatives can be saved.” However, anything less than full universal salvation could not be seen as other than a defeat for the God of love. Both sets of texts are true, but only one set will be realised in the actual future.

McGregor’s assessment of this “existentialist” approach is that “it has much to commend it” (particularly since it “cannot be accused of taking the hell texts as trivial or false”), but it is not the route he himself takes. He favours a “temporary hell” interpretation.

I’m more sympathetic to Robinson’s approach, as it fits in with (and expresses better than I had been able) my own thoughts from a law and gospel perspective. The law (including the hell texts) is all the church has to say to those who reject the gospel; if you want to deal with God on the basis of law, then the hell texts tell you where that takes you, because “our God is a consuming fire”. But the gospel remains true.

HEY!

How was everyone’s spring break!!?

Did you meet anyone exciting? Fulfill any goals? Get any interesting closes?

During break I found out which personal training certification program I plan on taking,  got some extra hours in at work, hung out with my awesome friends, bought and started reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, finished up Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, sarged, ate great food, KILLED the gym, and just had the most satisfying conversation with my girlfriend EVER, just now. =D =D =D

anyway

damnit, my girlfriend talked me to death so I’ll have to write this blog tomorrow.. AH!

stay tuned. it will be worth it

     We all recognize the differentiation between the “I” in my conscious identity – that separate being who speaks thoughts silently in the privacy of one’s mind; the one who “sees” the external world, and decides upon acts and restraints of acts; then, there is the “self” which is seen by the reactions of “others” we encounter:  a friend who, upon seeing, smiles and greets with familiarity; the wife who responds differently and with intimacy; the child who treats the person who is the “I” as seen by others, in a manner differently than other adults; and through the myopic perspective of reactions – raised eyebrows; a smile; a frown; a “look” of recognition; we consciously recognize that there is an “external” world which “sees” the “I” in a manner different from the self-recognition of the “I” in my internal world of thoughts, ideas, desires and language-games.

     This is not an attempt to revisit the controversy as expounded in Gilbert Ryle’s ‘logical behaviorism’ in his major work, The Concept of Mind; I do not want to get bogged down in whether there is the infamous “Ghost in the machine,” or revisit the problem of Cartesian dualism, the pendulum of historical philosophical debates between Descartes and Hobbes.  Auguste Rodin’s famous sculpture, le Penseur, is indeed thinking; whether by words, strings of words, or in a wordless suspension of meditative cogitation, we can certainly say that, with his right hand raised to his chin area representing a universally recognizable posture, he is in a classical stance of deeply contemplative public persona.  Now, were we to ask The Thinker, “What are you doing?”  The limitless potential responses may alter our initial presumptuous view of the matter:

     “I was thinking about murdering my mother.”   Though we may be somewhat taken aback by the contemplated action (the classical posture may be deemed to be somewhat incommensurate with thoughts of pre-meditative murder), the fact that he is conceptually mapping out the plan certainly verifies a man who is “thinking” — Freudian implications aside (concerning thoughts of murdering one’s mother, which might complicate things further by bringing up the concept of a “subconscious”.  This, we will have to set aside for the time being).  

     “I had no particular thoughts at the moment.”  This might surprise the questioner, because the public posture taken would seem inconsistent with the statement, but we would generally not consider this to be shockingly disjointed; for, we might excuse the person as attempting to hide his true thoughts; perhaps the interruption of our question resulted in a dismissive response because le Penseur wanted to return to his deep state of contemplation; and, finally, the statement itself, “I had no particular thoughts at the moment” is a reflective response of self-awareness on the state of his immediately-preceding mental state, which shows a certain degree of thoughtfulness, nevertheless. 

     “A bee stung me just below my lip, and I paused, sat down, and placed pressure on my injured area with my right hand.”  Here, an apparent inconsistency develops between the acknowledged posture of meditative thoughtfulness, our assumption that one who postures in that manner reflects a depth of contemplation, and the statement by le Penseur.  One’s disapproving reaction to such a statement might, of course, be somewhat mitigated if we detected an expression of sheepishness or an apologetic tone in his voice; and some other reactions might include:  for the cynic, it would reinforce the view that very few humans actually engage in much contemplative thought; for the naïve onlooker, it might scar one for future encounters; and so it goes.

     And, of course, there may be limitless other possible responses, all of which underscore the view that there is a difference between you and I; there is a “you” that I see, and I interpret based upon an “I” which is you; and there is the “I” which is me, which I distinguish from the you which is your “me”. 

     For, whichever statement The Thinker were to make, and whatever the reaction of the onlooker, the encounter between le Penseur and “the other” only reinforces the acknowledgment of the reality:  there is a difference between you and I.   In this world of “I”, the focus in recent decades has been the increasing emphasis upon self, satisfaction of self, self-esteem, the importance of self, and the penultimate focus upon the betterment of self.  The Copernican Revolution of the philosophical stature and status of the I; the reversal of identifying the “other” as an objective being in an objective world, and recognizing a commonality of definition:  that man is a ‘rational’ animal; and with it, a fixed coordinate that all can agree upon; to the Existentialist abandonment of a recognized objective cosmos with meaning, and instead to posit that we simply are, and that there is no fixed coordinate of our essence – that the “I” of the “self” can strive to create an essence.  And so it goes, where you and I are essentially left without coordinates in common.   We have come to a point where we believe, and “feel”, an estrangement with the world.  The compass which guides the subjective being in an objective world no longer can be depended upon, because the coordinates no longer provide the level of certainty necessary for effective guidance.   And so we are left with a subjectivity within which we must find our own personal meanings.  But since most of us are not bright enough to attain a satisfactory level of meaning, we despair of the meaninglessness of our personal ventures.

     The “I” possesses what we ascribe as a “personality” – a uniqueness which is, at its most basic level, distinct and distinguishable from someone else.  Now, one could argue that the difference is of no consequence; go into any Steiff Bear store and the appearance of each stuffed bear distinguishes each from the other.  Add a sequence of recorded sounds and exclamations and growls and whistles, and we have a distinctive “personality” different from one Steiff bear from another.  And, indeed, each Steiff bear has a distinctive look; each has an outward appearance of a “personality” different from another.  As the universe of words and concepts is limited by the convention of each age at any given moment in history, so the difference between one personality from another is merely the difference of sequence and groupings of words, delivered by a changed pitch, executed by an appearance distinct from another.  There is no “ghost in the machine”; merely a machine.

     Yet, few of us accept such a conclusion.  Between you and I, we wink at such nonsense.  We know better.   The “common man” believes that there is more to the “I” than merely an automaton with the ability to mix and remix sentence structures.  A lifetime of individuals who have known me, know me as a distinctive personality; I have accumulated a lifetime of experiences which somehow makes me unique – “uniqueness” being defined merely as that which is unable to be recreated by a clever compositing of aspects which are commonplace in their independent parts.

“I” have a context    

Of course, one can always designate Descartes as the bogeyman.  The cogito encompasses the “I”, because it is the self-referential coordinate which does the thinking; the ‘therefore’ embracing the conclusory existential beingness of the I referring back to the thought process which entails the self-referential I.  But what could this mean than to merely state in tautological absurdity:  the self-referential I is nothing more than the identity learned through the learned use of language.

     Thus the frog which croaks, does the croaking identify the existence of the frog anymore than the assertion that the  “I” pre-exists a thinking process, resulting in a conclusion that existence is ascertainable? 

     Consider #257 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations:  “What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)?  Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word ‘tooth-ache.” –  Well, let’s assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! – But then, of course, he couldn’t make himself understood when he used the word.  –  So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone? –  But what does it mean to say that he has ‘named his pain’? –  How has he done this naming of pain?  And whatever he did, what was its purpose?  –  When one says “He gave a name to his sensation”  one forgets that a great deal of stage-setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense.  And when we speak of someone’s having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word “pain”; it shews the post where the new word is stationed.”

     Indeed, what Wittgenstein is attacking is the utter lack of contextual memory in the very assertion of the “I” in Descartes’ so-called proof of certitude. Look at it this way:  when a child first learns to maneuver through the object-filled universe, he is taught to identify those objects in his path which, in a very elementary sense, are everything but his “I”.  Thus, he learns that “x is a sofa”, “y is a table”; “spoon”, “fork”, “doggy”, and so on.  We don’t begin to teach a child our language by pointing to him and saying, “Now this is who you are,” and proceeding to identify the wonderful essences which make up the child, precisely because, as a young, malleable and not-as-yet uniquely identifiable personhood, there is not much to work with, at this stage in the game.  But by identifying the object-filled world around him, the very negation of the world – of identifying those things-in-the-world surrounding a being-in-the-world, which are “things” which are not the person seeing the “things” – in that life-long act of identifying everything that is not “I”, one begins to formulate an identity of the “I”.  For the relationship between the objects which are not I, gets connected to the person who identifies those objects, as in, “I want that piece of candy.”  Concurrently, in the normal course of learning about the world of objects, it becomes clear that other object-subjects who can be identified as another “I” treat the “I” who is the me as a subject-object, as in, “I love you.”  Thus, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, a great deal of stage-setting has been forgotten by Descartes.  For, in order to get to the “I”, it necessarily presupposes a lifetime of identifying, with certitude (or as certain as one could be), an object-filled world.

     Where does this leave us?  This analysis does not prove any “ghost in the machine” – that very concept which was deliberately intended to be avoided at all costs in this essay.  It does not undermine the precepts of materialism.  It does not threaten the post-modern reductionism of the world into innocuous language games which have no correspondence to an external, noumenal world.  Instead, where this leaves us is to the point of discussing the concept of shame.

     But first, let us look at the reversal of the process of witnessing the exciting, mysterious blossoming of the “person”.   In George Orwell’s 1984, Syme describes the process of reducing the “I” to Winston:  “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.  Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.  Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point.  But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead.  Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.  Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime.  It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control.  But in the end there won’t be any need even for that.  The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.  Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak.”  Language is the foundation of thought.  Language has life and vibrancy within a context of a community of language-sharing.  To have a “private language” where a sole person is the only person who understands a “language” would be an absurdity; for the meaning of language is found in its very sharing in order to communicate.  Orwell’s 1984 is terrifying in its implications:  that a dictionary (the irony, of course, is that a dictionary is supposed to be a compendium of an ever-growing vocabulary reflecting the richness of a society’s language) is now a deliberate tool of reducing the vocabulary of a totalitarian society, thereby reducing the ability to formulate concepts. 

     Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.    The process of reduction leads to a shrinking of the range of consciousness; concepts disappear; thoughts become limited, constricted, coerced into a range of repetitive slogans and meaninglessness.   But, you say, there will always be rebels.  And the rebels will always be able to expand individuality; look at the fall of Communism; totalitarianism is everywhere being shattered and broken; the range of consciousness is ever expanding because the capacity of human rebellion, emanating from man’s inherent creativity and uniqueness, will forever be successful in preventing such a diabolical attempt to delimit man.  Ah, but if only such an idealism of man’s capacity reflected reality – and so it goes.

What does it mean “to think”?

     Let us digress for a moment.  Sometimes, a tangential pathway leads to the terminal of a maze; while a straight line is always the shortest distance between two points, a circuitous route is often the solution to a problem presented by a maze.  For the very same capacity inherent in a human being – of creativity leading to rebellion leading to an ever expanding range of consciousness – is that same capacity which creates the possibility of a totalitarian state.  While 1984 recognized the diabolical nature of reductionism of consciousness, what would be the result of its very opposite – the infinite exponential explosion of the range of consciousness?

     Our digression must first investigate:  “What does it mean ‘to think’”?

     Between you and I, we both acknowledge that we engage in the process, in various ways, of this thing called Thinking.  If you disagree with such an assertion, we are probably unable to engage in a Rorty-like¹  “conversation”, because we cannot even agree upon a basic, fundamental activity.  When we speak about “thinking”, do we agree on the common thread of such an activity?  Consider the following different modalities of thinking (and this compendium is by no means exhaustive):

To ponder:  perhaps some semblance of complete sentence structures; periods and intervals of silence; perhaps some confirmation of an underlying, non-conscious (subconscious?) mechanism of problem-solving.  To ponder often involves silence without complete sentences; incomplete concepts.

Problem-solving:  Intense and sustained focus and attention; sequential thought-process; silent paragraphs; images of advanced steps many steps ahead and anticipating a maze of possible problems.

Meditate:  long periods of silence; peaceful blanks of focusing upon a word, a concept, a psalm or a touch of God.

To worry:  repetitive statements of doom; of potentially disastrous consequences and results; of often irrational thoughts and impending images of dire events and occurrences.

Playing Chess:  moves; anticipated moves; mental images of moves and potential counter-moves; fatigue and surrender.

To reflect:  quality and depth, as opposed to a scattering of thoughts without structure; a time to focus upon narrow foundational issues.

Making a list:  conscious and deliberate; constructing word sequence; recalling information for careful annotation.
 
Remembering while grocery shopping:  attempts at jogging one’s memory; looking at various food items and aisle signs to try and recollect; mental imagery of one’s refrigerator, cupboard, to pick out needs; an attempt to re-imagine the list one left at home.

Shame: an image of self; an image of friends, family, associates and how they view me; a coordinate of statements about one’s self; a collection of public statements, memories, recollections, images, from those other than I; a coordinate, and the reflection to reality.

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¹ Richard Rorty, whom I had the privilege of studying under while a graduate student at the University of Virginia during the mid-80s, was a very kind and thoughtful philosopher.  The irony was that, with all of his encouragement of inter-disciplinary conversations, the Philosophy Department (of which I was a student) looked upon Mr. Rorty with some contempt.  Though considered a “Philosopher”, he was the professor emeritus of the Humanities Department – meaning, the Department of Philosophy, Lite.  Human envy and egocentricities were common roadblocks to such Rorty-like conversations, even between departments in the same University.  But I digress from the digression.

We all like to think we’re unique don’t we?

Each one of us at some point has probably thought themselves special, the exception to the rule or outside of ‘the norm’.

Well, it’s kinda true.

I’ve never met anyone who’s been into the exact same stuff that I am and I’ve never met anyone who had the same personality as me (that may come as a relief to some, although I have been recently told I have a doppelganger in Nottingham). There will always be small differences in taste, preference, outlook, opinion etc…

In fact, if I ever did meet someone who was the same as me, that’d be a bit creepy, wouldn’t it? Isn’t it the differences, the foibles, the imperfections about people that keep us interested? I think it is, personally.

If you knew someone who was the same as you it’d probably be great for a while but, after the initial novelty wore off, it’d just be someone who always agreed with you. That’d get pretty boring after a while. You’d probably start noticing things about them that really annoyed you too. Then, because you were both so similar you’d be noticing things about yourself that were annoying too. It’s not good to be that self aware all the time.

If familiarity breeds contempt, it’s not neccessarily a bad thing, it’s how you deal with it that matters. That saying, in my opinion, owes a lot to our ancestors and their propensity for cave dwelling and tribal culture. These are still embedded in our instincts, just like the ‘fight or flight’ response to a threat. Certain things are going to take many more years of evolution to disappear or adjust to how we now live. Like the way we digest and metabolise food, but that’s a huge subject I won’t get into.

This isn’t an opinion that is breaking new ground or has never been thought of before, but, I do agree that our basic tribal instinct is the root of rascism and xenophobia throughout the world. Our natural instinct tells us not to trust outsiders, whatever race, colour or religion those people are, we haven’t been able to totally abandon that tribal instinct. In a way it’s perhaps something we’re powerless to change, but we can certainly control it in a rational way. That’s where the ‘civilised’ part of the brain can override the instinctual part.

But, again, it’s not the instinct that’s neccessarily bad – it worked well enough back then to keep the human race alive and developing to where we are now. The point these days is how we deal with this relic of the past that really has no bearing on our lives anymore.

Now we’re able to travel around the globe in FAR less than 80 days it’s brought the world a lot closer together as a community. We don’t need the tribal instinct anymore and we certainly don’t need rascism, prejudice or discrimination anymore.Instead of small townships and randomly scattered tribes, we’re now one big community of humans. These are ancient remnants of a survival technique that’s no longer valid.

So without getting too far from the point of this entry, what the message is here is that no matter how original or unique you think you are, fundamentally none of us are unique.

We all have exactly the same physical presence, be it male or female. Even the most disparate body shapes are still fundamentally identical on a biological level.

It’s our personalities and self awareness that give us this perception of individuality. While we do all have a certain level of freedom to do what we want, when we want, the only way any of us are truly unique is by the particular combination of memories,  experience and opinions. What I mean by that is only the combination of these things is unique, not the things themselves. For example, if you went to Alton Towers one day, the experience you had would be different to that of everyone else there. You were all there, but you all had different experiences.

Kind of like a cocktail. Everything that goes into creating it is off the shelf, but mixed in a certain way it becomes unique.

This is now veering perilously close to the ‘nature vs nurture’ argument about what exactly it is that makes us ‘us’ and how conciousness determines reality, but again, that’s not the point of this entry.

All these issues of perceived individuality have been in my mind for a few months now because in the last 6 months I’ve been confronted with a lot of categorisation for who I am, personality-wise, and also for the beliefs I have.

And don’t worry, before you start thinking this is a religious lecture, disguised as a blog entry, it’s not (there’s a hint in the title what this is all leading to). The personality categorisation made a lot of sense and I discovered that through the ‘Myers Briggs Personality Types’ seminar I took at work in October last year. Turns out I’m an INFP. What’s an INFP you ask? Well here it is.

I can’t remember what it was exactly that made me look up ‘Existentialism’ on Wikipedia the other day. Maybe it was remembering the Rimmer quote from the Red Dwarf episode ‘Meltdown’. He’s assumed command over the army of ‘good’ robotic waxwork dummies (Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, The Dalai Lama, Santa Claus etc…) on ‘Waxworld’.

He barks at the waxwork of Jean-Paul Satre:

“Well, Sartre! We don’t like existentialists around here. And we certainly don’t like French philosophers poncing around in their black polo-necks filling everyone’s heads with their theories about the bleakness of existence and the absurdity of the cosmos! Clear?”

Although, now I think about it I don’t think remembering that was what made me look it up.

Whatever it was, I discovered my way of thinking wasn’t some sort of radically original and hitherto uncharted area of thought (hence all the exposition above about none of us truely being original or individual). I was surprised to learn that for the majority of what I think & believe it turns out I’m an Atheistic Existentialist.

Now I can already hear you asking “But Ian, what is an Atheistic Existentialist?”

Well I’ll tell you and I’ll also explain how it applies to me, but not yet. I’ll do it tomorrow as this entry is already 1,000 words-plus and I’m tired.

Atheistic Existentialists need their beauty sleep too, y’know.

Live&Direct#2

(Fela Kuti – Mistake – Live)

Day two of the theme has an element of synchronicity for me as the performance was recorded in Berlin…what has that got to do with anything I hear you say? well not only does one of my most valued ‘brethren’ live there but the woman in my life is there today working on/at the film festival. Couldn’t resist or pass up this ‘oppo’ to throw down a second piece on themusicologist by the legend that is, Fela Kuti.

Recorded in 1978 a year after his Kalakuta Republic had been destroyed by a thousand soldiers during which horror his elderly mother had been thrown out of a window suffering fatal injuries with Fela almost being beaten to death for his non-stop scathing critique of Nigerian politics. Word has it that after the tour most of the band left him as he intended to use all the proceeds to fund his election campaign.

Perhaps THE most political musician of all time Fela was his own project and an ‘Existentialist’ in the truest sense. NEVER allowing anyone to deny him the freedom to say and do what he thought right. The hugely influential philosopher Martin Heidegger spoke about Authenticity in relation to one’s life and for themusicologist Fela lived life in a way that, (among others), Heidegger would have been proud of.

Mirroring the Light

A pure heart is as a mirror . . .

In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love . . . .

Bahá’u'lláh: The Seven Valleys (page 21) & Persian Hidden Words No. 3

I want to deal with only two more complex issues. Both of them stem from our experience of what might be our soul. The two quotations from Bahá’u'lláh give us a sense of what those issues might be. These posts could go on for a while yet!

The Mirror and the Garden

The first issue is to do with how we can feel there is an infinity inside us and how that relates to the ability of our mind to watch itself. We will be talking a lot about mirrors, hearts and minds later.

The second issue is one that Dennett raises which needs to be addressed more closely than I did last time. He states that the brain is a parallel processor of great complexity and that serial consciousness is what computing people would call virtual not real: in simple terms the more complicated parallel processor underneath, which can do lots of things at once (‘Not a man, then!’ did you say?), fakes our experience of thinking one thing at a time in a time-line.

Guy Claxton deals with much the same issue by using the analogy of interconnected octopuses to describe the brain’s complexity. Both

Octopus

agree, as I do (and Jonathan Haidt as well in his elephant and rider metaphor), that the brain, whether or not we have a soul, can do an awful lot of complicated things without our feeling anything at all and can go its own way in spite of us sometimes.

This is the issue that will involve us in talking about gardens as way of describing hearts and minds. We will be exploring whether the relationship between our conscious mind and the rest of our mind is rather like the relationship between gardeners and their gardens. You will have to bear, more than you usually do, with my limitations here: my hands-on experience of gardening is derived only from the deckchair.

In the end I hope to use all this to shed light on whether I have a soul and whether my will is free.

Mind and Brain

We have to get some basic stuff out of the way first before we tackle the fascinating surfaces of our mind’s mirrors and the fertile depths of our heart’s gardens.

I ended the previous post wondering what it is like to experience my soul. I hinted that there is something about our inner experience, something with which we are all very familiar, which might just be the end of a piece of string that is tied to our soul, the experience of soul in consciousness if you like.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, along with therapies like Psychosynthesis as well as Existentialist writers and millenia of meditators, have all homed in on the one same remarkable capacity of our minds. I can look into my own mind and watch it: we can reflect. I can see the contents of my consciousness passing through my mind. ‘Oh look!’ I can say to myself, ‘There’s a feeling of anger. There’s a thought about fish and chips. Oh, and there goes a plan to go shopping tomorrow.’ I think we all know what that feels like already or can at least confirm that we can do it with just a small amount of effort: we can separate our consciousness from its contents.

How do we do that though and what does it mean?

Some say it’s a by-product of language. That’s the A.C.T. explanation. “I speak therefore I can talk as though I am watching my mind.’ Others dress up their explanatory bankruptcy in fancier ways. ‘It’s an epiphenomenon of the brain’s complexity.’ Epiphenomenon means by-product. It also is used to indicate that this ability is accidental and pointless: all the really important stuff is going on underneath where the neurons are firing. ‘I’ve got more connections in my brain than atoms in the universe, so I think my mind can watch itself, ha, ha! It’s got no idea what’s going on.’

Some are more charitable. “Well, when you get complex systems you do sometimes get an emergent property that’s more than the sum of its parts.’ Consciousness and self-reflection would fall into this category. ‘My brain’s so complicated it’s better than its bits so I really can watch my mind working. More than that, my mind can change the brain as well as being affected by the brain.’

Now that really is something.

It either demonstrates an emergent property or suggests that the mind and brain might be different kinds of stuff. It really does happen as well. For instance, wiring a very antisocial late-teenager’s head (i.e. late meaning 18 or 19, but not dead yet or behind time in this case!) to a feedback machine, so he could learn how to increase the activity of the frontal lobes which control impulsive behaviour, led to more active frontal lobes. His grades improved, his crime rate slumped to zero and he stopped using drugs. That doesn’t sound like the brain was really calling all the shots to me.

The Spiritual Perspective

So, the mind can watch itself and also change the way the brain functions in significant ways. Why might that be more than an emergent property?

First of all, in the Pam Reynolds experience, which is not unique, we had, in my view, solid proof that her mind gathered and remembered information that her brain could never have gleaned or stored. It operated separately. The idea of mind/brain separation, therefore has evidence in its favour (See also Jenny Wade’s ‘Changes of Mind‘ for a full discussion of mind/brain separation in infancy and beyond). No theory connected with mind as an emergent property has ever predicted that. It goes way beyond what would have been expected.

That’s the kind of externally corroborated evidence that science likes to find but in this case prefers to ignore as what it demonstrates is held to be impossible.

More importantly though, there is the evidence of our own subjective experience. Remember the disparagement of free will? It’s an illusion, Dennett says. Such people also say that our experience of being able to look at our minds isn’t what it feels like. But why should we believe them about this any more than we should believe them when they say we do not really have free will? Is this another lamp post that needs kicking?

Who is it then that we can get in touch with when we watch ourselves? Who was there when we look back on every aspect of our lives at every period and feel we were the same self doing the watching then? Every cell in our bodies has since been changed. Is it really just a trick of language, neuronal connections or memory? Is there really no genuine constant sense of a real inner self observing all we do?

We all have to make our own decision about what that experience means. I think it is quite reasonable to say that it suggests that my mind is made of different stuff from my brain although it uses it. It is at least as reasonable to conclude that as to conclude that it’s all down to the neurons.

In another post there may be an opportunity to look at the work of Margaret Donaldson and Ken Wilber who both brilliantly advocate in their very different ways the value of subjective experience as data about reality. Many people can keep replicating the same experience by the same spiritual practices in very different cultures: that means something, they argue, about the true nature of reality. Newberg, D’Aquili and Rause have the humility to admit that even though we can pin down exactly what’s going on in the brain at the same time as these experiences, this doesn’t mean they’re not real anymore than understanding the neurobiology of colour vision proves that colour doesn’t exist. The fact that our brains turn wavelengths of light into the experience of colour does not mean there is nothing out there corresponding to the experience, even though green and 510 nanometres seem to have very little in common!

If I can carry you with me rather further now, let’s see in the next post where this possibility can take us. It is worth reminding ourselves again here that the word we use to describe this ability of the mind is ‘reflection.’ Next time we will be exploring mirrors, hearts, selves and consciousness. Not much to look forward to then.

Traiesc, involuntar, un experiment. Ceea ce fac in cadrul lui este voluntar, cand spun “involuntar” ma refer la faptul ca nu mi-as fi dorit sa fie un experiment, nu mi-as fi dorit ca el sa se transforme in asta. Reusesc sa ma scuz in ochii mei prin faptul ca am anuntat persoana care este supusa acestui experiment ca nu mai traim niste simple sugestii date in cadrul unei amicitii ci un experiment in toata regula. Barbatul despre care va vorbesc astazi a trait o jumatate de viata traind ceea ce trebuie trait, din punctul meu de vedere. Nu ma refer strict la intamplari (stiti ca nu am pretentii in materie de intamplari, orice intamplare e buna, important este cum te raportezi la ea) ci la stari. Exista anumite stari pe care eu imi permit sa le consider esentiale in autodefinirea cuiva din randul celor damnati ca mine si ca el, damnati la a nu se fi nascut stapani pe ei prin faptul ca nu sunt intr-un punct foarte senin al sirului de existente. Noi, prapaditii de la mijloc. In cea mai crunta zona a definirii. Nu suntem nici prostuti cat sa ne hranim cu clisee, cu speranta (despre care se stie ca este cel mai aprig dusman al actiunii si, dupa mine, cea mai comoda varianta de a trai), cu mici fericiri (si ele, alaturi de capacitatea de a-ti cicatriza ranile cu prea multa usurinta, fiind dusmani periculosi ai obtinerii marii fericiri). Diferenta dintre mine si acest barbat este cea ca eu mi-am documentat aceasta perioada dificila a autodefinirii si el nu. Am ajuns insa, aparent cel putin, in acelasi punct: la o raportare limpede la ideea de moarte, raportare care este centrul oricarei existente umane. Raportarile noastre la moarte sunt asemanatoare, cu diferente marunte care nu conteaza foarte mult. El a atins aceasta raportare strict prin instinct, eu am atins-o prin instinct ca scanteie pentru “lacomia turbata”, cum o numeste Gide, pentru a citi ce se intampla cu mine.

Prima intrebare pe care ne-am pus-o a fost: unul dintre noi a avut mai putine experiente de viata decat celalalt, adica cititul a constituit un surogat pentru actiune? Raspunsul, cat se poate de sincer, a fost “nu”. Diferenta fundamentala dintre noi este modul in care am primit experientele de viata prin care am trecut. Si o sa va explic cat se poate de simplu la ce ma refer: ceea ce lui ii parea fara sens, nepermis, eretic, contradictoriu, destructiv, haotic, spectaculos nu era, de fapt, decat un curent de gandire, o abordare binecunoscuta asupra existentei, o abordare deloc inedita. Tragica, da, insa nu prin ceea ce credea el ca este tragica si anume printr-un amalgam de lucruri care nu pot coexista ci tragica in felul sec, didactic, aproape scolastic. El era, ca si mine, existentialist din cap pana-n picioare, unica diferenta fiind cea ca el era existentialist ateu iar eu existentialista credincioasa, ambele categorii fiind definite, cunoscute. El s-a balacit in aceasta combinatie de fantezie si deruta, lasandu-se subjugat de ea in loc sa o poata considera un suport ferm, stabil pentru a trai. El a trait in subjugarea unei existente presupus misterioase si interesante, chiar daca insuportabila pe alocuri, pe cand eu am trait perfect constienta de trasaturile existentei mele, de incadrarea ei, de directia ei, de natura ei – nu m-a putut subjuga pentru ca nu avea pic de mister pentru mine. Parcurgand traiectoria existentialismului in filozofie am fost exact ca un bolnav care isi citeste atent diagnosticul.

Si aici intervine diferenta despre care vreau sa va vorbesc in mod special, chintesenta diferentelor dintre mine si acest barbat, dintre oameni care se alfa in pozitii asemanatoare cu ale noastre: diferenta dintre omul care isi cunoaste diagnosticul si cel care nu si-l cunoaste.

Cand nu iti cunosti diagnosticul pendulezi iar eu detest pendularea. Pendulezi intre fericire si spaima aia scurta ca aceasta fericire ti-ar putea fi curmata. Cand iti cunosti diagnosticul nu pendulezi. Actiunile si gandurile tale au cel putin o premisa ferma si anume cea a diagnosticului. Chiar daca diagnosticul in sine este cel care iti spune ca neantul caracterizeaza fiinta umana. Dar stii cum stai. O iei ca pe o afirmatie corecta, nu tragica. Lucrezi cu ea, nu te intinzi in pat si plangi. Iti dai seama ca tot ce se intampla se intampla din alegerile tale, lucru care pare fantastic in primele zile ale acestei descoperiri si care poate deveni drama vietii tale odata ce iti dai seama cat de multe alegeri tampite poti sa faci sau cum stai inchis in tine si eviti pe cat posibil sa faci alegeri. Dar macar stii cum stai, stii care este pozitia ta fata de viata iar asta este esential. Stii, mai presus de toate, care este pozitia ta fata de moarte. Ai un rationament logic, ii urmaresti dezvoltarea pe parcursul culturii universale, adaugi si tu la el, nu cazi in plasa comoda a faptului ca realitatea te poate surprinde oricand. Da, ea te poate surprinde oricand insa reactia ta la realitate nu te poate surprinde cine stie ce odata ce ti-ai definit perspectiva asupra vietii. Se poate schimba oricand? Sa fim seriosi. Nu prea. Asa cum spune senzational Sartre (nu am, din pacate, citatul original la indemana) unii se nasc lasi si traiesc ca niste lasi, altii se nasc eroi si traiesc ca niste eroi iar altii se nasc cu convingerea ca poti deveni din las erou si invers. Si asta e drama lor. Dar, repet, macar si-au definit drama, i-au pus un nume, pot citi despre ea, pot afla ce au facut altii in situatia asta, pot duce mai departe rationamentele pe aceasta tema, pot contrazice cu argumente, stiu pe ce fagas sunt.

Or barbatul despre care va vorbesc nu stia pe ce fagas e, nu stia cum se numeste ce este el, nu stia ca si altii au trait exact ce traieste el, nu stia cum s-au legat gandurile marilor existentialisti ai culturii pe aceasta idee, se credea original si, in acelasi timp, singur pe lume. La inceput i-a placut, dupa aia s-a ingrozit. Acum, cand citeste cuminte carte dupa carte, exact in ordinea in care ii spun eu, se considera ridicol. De ce? Pentru ca isi considera tumultul unul marunt. “Daca as fi stiut, as fi dus tumultul meu la un paroxism, nu l-as fi lasat sa ma arda la foc mic. Am pierdut timpul, asta e clar.” Ma bucura concluzia lui din multe puncte de vedere. Intai de toate ma bucura fiecare moment in care cineva ajunge la concluzia ca a fi cult nu este o chestie de statut ci o chestie de confort cat se poate de intim. Daca citesti mult, afli ca problemele tale nu sunt nici noi, nici insurmontabile, nici originale si atunci capeti ambitia de a le da un sens nou iar aceasta ambitie constituie, dupa mintea mea, o resursa admirabila pentru evolutie. Ideea de a da noi sensuri suferintei inerente acestei existente este motorasul meu preferat.

Stiti ce ma intristeaza pe mine cel mai tare sa aud? “Daca as fi stiut”. Asta ma intristeaza. Si nu se aplica doar in cazuri oarecum sumbre de genul “m-am torturat toata viata cu o suferinta care nu a avut nici o scuza, am tinut-o la un nivel mic doar din nestiinta, neputand sa avansez nici macar in ascutirea ei” ci si in cazuri senine de genul “am crezut toata viata ca sunt eretica si eram, de fapt, buddhista”.

Este esential sa-ti definesti exact ce esti. Nu e ceva grandioso-imposibil, doar pentru cei alesi, destepti, nu este o chestie de Muzeul Antipa, este o chestie organica, vitala. Iti definesti exact ce esti. Sunt optimist, sunt pesimist, pentru inceput. Sunt obiectiv, sunt subiectiv. Sunt realist, sunt idealist, sunt naturalist, sunt existentialist. In acest proces de hotarare va faceti o schema a propriei fiinte, putand astfel monitoriza si lucrurile originale, lucrurile care chiar sunt originale. Ca, daca, spre exemplu, tu iti spui “omul vine din neant si tot acolo se intoarce, de ce e lumea cretina si nu isi asuma faptul ca existenta noastra e finita, omul e inutil” iar pe urma iti spui ca “omul trebuie sa fie printre oameni, ca nu e singur, el trebuie sa se expuna judecatii permanente a celorlalti, Mitsein-ul e treaba serioasa, inevitabila si asa mai departe”  si te perpelesti intrebadu-te de ce ai chestii in tine care se bat cap in cap – nu e bine. Citind doar o “fisa” cat de firava a existentialismului iti vei da seama cum chestiile astea nu sunt contradictorii si atunci vei putea trece la urmatorul nivel al evolutiei tale, fie el si o durere mai ascutita, mai sofisticata.

Fiecare moment in care nu stim exact ce e cu noi este stagnare. Si s-ar putea sa nu vina nimeni intr-o zi ca sa ne explice ce a fost atunci sau atunci sau atunci si unde am ajuns exact, pe unde am fost. S-ar putea ca noi nici macar sa nu putem sa-i dam informatii ajutatoare pentru construirea acestei harti pentru ca ne-am complacut in deruta, considerand-o ceva firesc. Ea nefiind ceva firesc ci doar ceva statut. Acum, daca pentru unii “firesc” e egal cu “statut”, nici nu mai stiu ce rost are sa mai continui.

Nu spune nimeni sa devii instantaneu puternic, nu asta este indemnul tezist si stupid pe care incerc sa-l dau. Dar e bine sa-ti definesti ca esti slab, mediocru sau puternic, e bine sa ai o harta a propriei existente si sa incerci sa te documentezi legat de ce ti se intampla, ca sa nu ajungi sa spui “daca as fi stiut”. Important este ce se intampla cu tine dincolo de ceea ce stii, nu in mijlocul a ceea ce nu stii.

Stephen Macasil’s very short debate with Stephen Murray and Tim Keller:
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Stephen [Stephen Macasil] June 1, 2008 at 10:45 am

Hi Stephen [Stephen Murray],

First, let me acknowledge how cool a first name you have!

Second, let me express disagreement with Keller’s gospel for the uncircumcised. Although he states that there is one gospel with many forms, I find his gospel for the uncircumcised to be “another” gospel, not just another form of the one gospel.

By presenting Christ as the only hope for “freedom” (to the existentialist), Keller is offering the existentialist the right solution but to the wrong problem. If Christ is received as the source of meaning withing an existential philosophy, one can deny the truth about Christ and the eternal plan of salvation as revealed in Scripture, and like Kierkegaard (to whom Keller appeals in the CT article), end up an irrationalist that “faiths” in Christianity while not believing in it. I know this may sound strange, even contradictory. But Kierkegaard was known for insoluble paradox (possibly due to an over-reaction to Hegel and/or Marx).

Rather than deconstructing Kierkegaard and ultimately Keller’s use of Kierkegaard’s definition of sin (which is not biblical as Keller says), what we should do is look to Scripture to see if salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (Reformed soteriology) is “wide” enough to house Keller’s gospel for the incircumcised. If it is not (which I contend for), then it should be rejected as another gospel – one that does not save. If it can be shown from Scripture that it is, then I would be glad to retract my statement that Keller has “two gospels.”
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Stephen [Stephen Murray] June 1, 2008 at 9:29 pm

“By presenting Christ as the only hope for “freedom” (to the existentialist), Keller is offering the existentialist the right solution but to the wrong problem.”

Are you suggesting then that being captive to our own autonomy is not a biblical way to talk about sin?
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Tim Keller June 2, 2008 at 4:38 pm

To Stephen Murray:

To expand just a bit, on how there can be one gospel in several forms–

If I say to modern relativists “You sense guilt and shame. It is because you are sinning and must repent for breaking God’s law.” they will respond, “Who is to say what God’s law is? Besides, I don’t feel guilty for anything.” But if I say to modern relativists “You are anxious, driven, and lack the freedom you seek. It is because you are sinning and must repent for putting finite things, idols, in the place of God.” they will say, “Hmmmm,” and really think about it. Is this still the basic Pauline gospel of ‘justification by faith alone’? It is. Luther (in his Larger Catechism) shows that idolatry (violating the first commandment) is the very same thing as trusting something besides Jesus for your justification. Idolatry, then, is always a failure to accept salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. Any sermon that calls for repentance from idols and offers freedom through Christ must also call people to move from justification-by-works to justification-by-faith alone.

I hope this helps.
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Stephen [Stephen Murray] June 2, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Thank Dr Keller. That’s what I thought. I fail to see how the other Stephen (Stephen Macasil) cannot locate the gospel you present in your article within Reformed Soteriology. I have no such problem. Thanks again for your comments.

I woke up this morning in-between the dreaming and the waking world (again.) I woke up to my first alarm and i believe I might have snoozed it 7 times. Later on, i gave my phone to my littles sister, and told her to wait for the alarm, and then wake me up. She willingly did so. I rose from bed like a zombie in a B-movie and I got my caffeine-nicotine fix. I looked around my decrepit room and listened to Utomi Uehara again, with her insane but jazzy music. This is how the day begins for me. Mostly, creeping and crawling out of the cobwebs of my brain, staring outside my dusty window. There were times that I was able to say a prayer, and there were times that I was able to plan out my day. These days I’ve just been fighting demons and spitting bloody phlegm into the sink.

I thew in my boot-like footwear, my run-down jeans, and my even more run-down shirt, and walked out of the house with a stick of cigarette on hand again, lit, of course.

And then it rained. When days go on like this, it seems like a dissonant series of ugly events. No connection whatsoever.

Another existentialist masturbation for me? Perhaps. Despite the occasional disgust I feel for my seemingly self-indulgent posts, I just feel compelled to reflect. Not really rant. Self-conviction, self-deception and motivation are what I need. I hate to bum around and be another floater because inevitably, people will accuse me of being hung-up with my ex. Conversations that go towards that direction just gets my groove into a crackling bad vibe.

Last night, I had the opportunity to choose between two books. It was either I pick Nietzsche, or I pick Sartre. I have this sharp feeling that I may have made the wrong decision. I thought about it this noon while I picked the book from my backpack and I realized that I have had enough existentialist ruminations. I had the feeling that it’s not going to be healthy.

So now, I’m reading Sartre, but I’m going to live Nietzsche, and going to dodge Camus completely. I’m gonna think a bit of Coehlo to get some romantic stuff going, and maybe some Kundera for understanding happiness.

But truth is… I really need more insight than this. A lot more insight. From where? shit, i dunno, from the depths of hell perhaps?