| O Aipotu |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|10:11 pm] |
3/5/2008
The stories I've been most attracted to have some interesting themes lately. First the anarchy of "The Disposessed", now "Walden Two". An addictive book, that. It gets more and more addictive the longer you read. Obviously written by a psychologist, the way they portray Castle. Castle gives me the impression he's never heard of Greek philosophy, and he's supposed to be a philosophy teacher? He gave a class on utopias without understanding that "Walden Two", in many of the ways that Castle takes offense, is merely an imitation of "Plato's Republic."? The way he gets around the technical problems outlined by Plato are at once impressive, disturbing, and socially impossible. It seems that the book can only be feasible if we ignore how society came to be (as the book does quite as deftly as Frazier) and take the assumption that it already exists. It seems that the book can only be feasible if we ignore how the society came to be (as the book does quite as deftly as Frazier) and take the assumption that it really exists.
The second coming, indeed, the government Jehovah's Witnesses are all aflutter about, and the irony is that it denies God, or concerns itself now with Him rather, and as horrible as the supposedly religious might think this to be it could in fact be the greatest deliverance of mankind, and intelligent Eden. That it may also be the greatest blasphemy we could ever commit is an issue I'm admittedly ill-prepared to discuss. However, as doubtfully as the label 'Philosopher' applies to Castle, he represents the inevitable psuedo-intellectual holdouts to such a plan and, when pushed back against the holders of power and given over to their fear, together they can become a formidable opposition to peaceful existence in any form.
I think it is a difficult-to-answer question that presents itself here, very difficult at least to answer objectively because we are not objective. I'm not the psychologist here and he has some interesting arguments on perspective. He seems, however, to have as low an opinion of philosophy as I have of its fakers such as Castle, who is not a philosopher at all, as he clearly doesn't know how to argue a philosophical point with any effectiveness. The irony is that psychologists rarely realize how many of their deep reasonings 'are' covered under philosophy, and I begin to wonder, after experiences I've heard, if the philosophy departments, the philosophy teachers, at other schools were nearly as good as mine. Dr. Gene Fendt is a personal hero of mine and I hope he doesn't mind the endorsement. I understand it's a bit like a politician getting public approval from a jailed Klansman, but there it is. He is an honest hero, and if I'd paid more attention to him I probably wouldn't be in prison now. Change takes time, I'm sad to say. I took too long.
But back to the point. Philosophically I'm a rank amateur, but it's a poor philosopher who holds that democracy is essential to effective government. Once again we can turn to the "Republic", because general principles are timeless, and it is for this very reason that they are important. As Kant would say in his evolution of Greek philosophy, it it's not universal, it's not correct. Nothing based solely on experience can be universal! The "Republic" establishes universally that Democracy will have a tendency to produce bad leadership so long as most people are not good leaders, and therefore are inept to judge leadership ability. Popularity tends toward bad leaders, and so the only solutions are an improbable [one] and [a] more improbable one: to remove the powers of the people -- so that by lot or by the design of the competent leader, competent successive leadership can be secured -- or to make each person a competent leader.
But back to the objective question I left dangling. Would you sign? We are simply not objective, so it's hard to say, never having experienced a community like Walden Two. But I would not sign for two reasons that are really one: I'm a philosopher.
Pain and misery are important to me. They've made me what I am and being given the chance to do wrong, to hurt others to make the world a worse place, has been an important part of that growth. If I were not ashamed of the harm I've done, why should I care about it? If I had not done evil, experienced it, why should I be concerned with doing right. By eliminating the wrongs of the world you remove the opportunity to do, to choose right, and it loses all meaning! As Castle put it, without realizing what he had, Walden Two has shattered; it has demolished the road to the solution and put a nice level path to Erewhon in its place. To Utopia! To Nowhere! I have burnt the path to heaven once, and still pay for that sin. Now I've chosen to preserve our sinful existence, because for some, perhaps for all us mortal fools, there is no other way for our choice to have meaning, the choice between right and wrong that is central to existence.
But this reasoning was invented after the fact, after my choice was made. I promised two reasons I'd not join Walden Two. And to be honest, my true reason is simple and selfish: love.
I am not willing to limit my love to those who accept the Society, the Community, if you prefer. I am an artist AND a philosopher. Through the one, the other can reach many, and don't tell me for a moment that Dr. Fendt's pretending to be some character in order to prove a point isn't art! Don't tell me that immensely awful imitation of a Nazi to prove that culture doesn't dictate morality as to settle the question of whether there are times it's good to lie -- don't tell me that's not art!
And while I sit and try frantically to find the hole in this logic I feel certain must exist, I wonder that art may be the most powerful vessel through which any philosophy -- good or bad -- takes root. I know Plato would have agreed, at least insofar as it is understood that anything can be art. But to work with a specifically artistic intend, what does this truly mean, but to express a philosophy through your labor? A mathematical philosophy on the beauty of an arch, or a philosophy on the rightness of good craftsmanship? And what about the philosophy of the poor craftsman, that speed and saved effort is more important than quality? Indeed, one might think that the totality of human endeavor falls under the scope of this love of wisdom! But why not? After all, what man could be considered more loving of wisdom, more philosophical, that a man who wishes to know all things?
But let's not drop our digression with that trite generalization. Wisdom is not simply knowledge after all. Since a man can spend his life learning and still not be wise, then clearly he must have some discretion in choosing the most important subjects, since the wise man can recognize that he cannot know everything. Ethics strike me as an essential question, a difficult and universal one. Indeed, 'the right thing to do' seems to be a central theme in the modern study of philosophy, and I could scarcely contend that this is in error. If one is to love wisdom, after all, it helps to recognize that one 'should' love wisdom. Inextricably connected to Ethics is Politics, though the relationship seems a parasitic one; Ethics is clearly not dependent on the state, but while the state sometimes ignores Ethics, it usually at least makes some attempt toward the appearance of an ethical basis. Politics in its purest form can be seen as an extension of pure and abstract ethical principles to concrete applications governing behavior and social interaction at all levels. Of course, for a more realistic application of the form, we may simply remove the words "pure and abstract" and indicate that supposedly politics have no place in certain aspects of life, even though it cannot be denied that policy of some sort must govern them, even if it is a policy of non-interference, or not an official one. Politics, if it is to have any meaning, must mean the governance of people on all levels. To draw any more precise distinctions is then to invent subdivisions of politics, some of which are not popularly considered politics at all. In layman's terms, politics would be how to treat other people, if so defined.
A bit broader than government, but we must govern ourselves if we are to have any contact with others. Which leads me fat, perhaps not too far, from my original discussion. But then, you can go home again so long as you recognize that home is a place you have never been, right? So in that spirit, a parallel cycle, a spiral if you will, has brought me full circle to a different location. In three dimensions, friends, cycles become profound.
This story reminded me of an interest I took in "God's Kingdom" after those Jehovah's Witnesses dropped off their literature. I'm sure I spoke a bit on the literature, but I suspect I skirted the issue of the Kingdom itself, one central to the religion and, therefore, my rejection of it. I suspect there are those who disagree with me, and strongly. I'll deal with that as it comes.
"The Kingdom is among you", he said. And I think they took it too literally and not enough. They say that this means Jesus was among them, and where he is, so is the Kingdom. I'm loath to admit, especially to old friends, that I have become a man of some faith and, while I have not read The Bible, I admit to having formed some strong and fairly excitable opinions on the matter. Yes, it is in people's hearts, and yes, it is also a real government! These ideas, in fact, do not contradict. For the most important government is how we govern ourselves and that government exists here now, in the hearts (and outwardly in the actions) of every person who is governing themselves by the will of heaven. But what is that will? Are we to trust the words of corruptible men from thousands of years ago?
Why should a divine government need leadership anyway? Why, could it be anything but anarchy itself? It is the only other way, the one I spoke of to make democracy work! The ONLY way to perfect human behavior is for each person to rightly govern themselves!
And it'll never happen, and yet here and there, for fleeting moments in eternity, it does exist, it has existed on Earth, because the most important thing Jesus did was to bring the mercy of God to Man, and it is a miracle that can be repeated by any man, woman and child on this Earth. I suspect before this sacrifice, though, that it wasn't so. But no matter what you say, if he was God or just his son, he was a man, a mortal, a human being, or else he would never cry in terror at his death. He was not all-wise, all-knowing, he was all-human, and that made it an important sacrifice, for God to finally have a view of the lot of the mortal and to come to pity him. Now then, is it any wonder He's so mellow in the new testament? It's a cultural experiment. He got what he needed to know, and maybe even more than he bargained for. And then he left us alone.
This is consistent with my own religious experience, something I'm often reluctant to talk about. I almost destroyed reality. I identified with God. As in "I am the unutterable ********" and it was so. But God gains nothing by having the part of Him that was me become simply Him. While I held onto myself by the barest thread, I saw the universe trying to tear away, and I knew, I simply KNEW the lie of existence. But I was also Him, infinite patience and love, knowing that I was foolish, and why, and not even slightly resenting it.
I feared -- that part of me that still was dissolved into a hopeless fear that nothing was true -- that with everything threatening to become null that He wasn't real; He'd never existed even though the proof stood before me: that I had identified with Him and gained the wisdom of the universe and by the very act of understanding it made it cease to exist.
Why, then? I was afraid, because it was all that remained of me, the shell of fear that had surrounded my true nature. And he remade me, and left no doubt in my mind of His perfect memory, and the love with which he cared for me through such a terrible mistake. He knew precisely what I had been, and so remade me, exactly as I had been, and yet as if to secure my continued existence he made one change. Even though I had just seen that existence was a lie, I believed in it, then, more strongly than at any other time in my life. I believed in the solidity of things around me, though I knew them to be fake. Somehow, after that day, everything became more real.
I think the reason why is clear. If I had to degrade the Lord by putting it into words, I'd say He told me, "You are on this world for a reason, Ben, and I would see you complete it."
As far as a citation of Magical principles, I'd say it helped that it was around midnight, there was a rather profound thunderstorm about, I was clear-headed after a good day's work, and I had been making a series of increasingly lofty Identifications leading up to it, going from the physical properties of the storm to what it represented in the most potent aspects (i.e. lightning as the sword of Heaven bringing judgment and so forth). |
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