I summarize the project that the following is taken from here: https://tildes.net/~talk/1yr/are_you_writing_a_diary_if_so_in_which_ways_does_it_help_you#comment-kuy Some of what's discussed below...
I summarize the project that the following is taken from here: https://tildes.net/~talk/1yr/are_you_writing_a_diary_if_so_in_which_ways_does_it_help_you#comment-kuy
Some of what's discussed below builds on ideas familiar only to my friend and I, but the gist is probably understandable enough, and as the occasion for my writing this is a momentous one, I want to share and see what people might think of some of my thoughts on it. Some of the language is probably a little flowery or seems silly, but that's okay—who has time for shame?
Feedback, questions, discussion, etc., are all welcome.
. . .
Something you may have gleaned by now from my entries and our private discussions both is that I've been wondering for a while at the sheer scope encompassed by the whole of life's perspectives taken together. Something you said to me tonight seems particularly acute in relation to this thought:
"but it makes sense that anthony bourdain could kill himself
to us he represents just a random facet of the universe
but to him he was the universe, painting it with his eyes, and he hated his eyes."
The Universe is made in the eyes of its beholder. The philosophers (and the philistines alike) have been making that observation for a long time now; they call it solipsism, or subjectivity. So I'm not unique in my also identifying it. But that's okay, because the idea is as valid as it ever was. If there's anything our recent discussions have made clear to me, it's that we can believe in nothing but that, and can't but trust in the Universe in its every moment of presentation as a mirror.
In my saying "wonder" above, I mean just that; it is wonder which I feel towards this thought. Life as experienced in the moment is ossified in the next; as soon as an experience is registered it is passed and past, becomes one among many tomes relegated to the bookshelves which fill to the brim the expansive vault called Memory, and with time it and its shelf are pushed further and further into the ever growing obscurity. One can walk those halls again, venture far into those depths, but with distance one finds the shelves dustier and the names of the tomes which line them more difficult to make out.
In such a recognition everything has become compressed (but wasn't it so all along, and it's only now that I've come to see it?). Life is become compartmentalized, broken into bite-sized pieces for its more comfortable consumption. Everything is a mood, a color, a sound, a smell. The terms 'synesthesia' and 'aura' become interchangeable. Part of the difficulty in trying to retrace one's steps through that maze of shelves—and most frustrating is to set out in search of just one particular tome among all the multitudes, some of which cry out like sirens in hopes of diverting one's attention—is that all the colors which mark each shelf are so easily mixed up, confused with each other, and with that of the present moment, that their being received just as they were in the moment of their edification seems probably impossible; and should one come to the right shelf after all, where is the book that shines with just the same sheen with which it shone upon its binding? There's a great deal of work to be put in, it turns out, in seeing in Shrek exactly what one saw in watching it as a child.
By "consume", as I use the term above, I mean just that. Life is consumed in the moment of its passing, just as experiences become memories and thoughts are born and die in the same moment. Everything is in constant movement (remember Heraclitus? A man never steps in the same stream twice). Enter the importance of momentum. Momentum can now be better defined than it was when first I dealt with it (and we can do away with the whole discussion around dialectic, though that doesn't preclude taking what is useful from it—a kind of [auto-]cannibalization). We can call it a refusal to linger on suffering, a choosing to embrace rather than curse the inevitability of movement, of passing, of distance. In movement of this sort is to be found the Promethean, if that term can be recycled also. Love flowers in a maintenance of momentum; love is the seed, momentum the water.
In memory, too, can we find ourselves renewed. An aura lost is not lost forever, and part of the thrill of retracing one's steps is in the search itself. True, the shelves become dusty, the tomes decrepit, as towards a more distant past one reaches; but what child loves not to get lost among old sheafs and musty stacks, places of secrets and lost knowledge? And is it not taught, and can we not agree, that there is far more to be said for a reader's interpretation of a text than for the text itself? One must remember to chew mint from time to time; it can make a big difference.
On this day I graduate from high school. The following pledge is my choice of commemoration in marking that accomplishment: I choose to look towards the future with as much optimism and positivity as can be mustered, to spurn resentment and suffering, nostalgia and hate—the last being permitted only in its manifestation in opposition to all things anti-life. We must remember to remain lovely and loving beings, to take things seriously enough to be able to take things easy, to appreciate as beautiful what is foolish, but ours in its foolishness, and to love delirium of the sort known by the psychonaut convinced of the profundity of a truly meaningless revelation. We must in our approach to life in all its majestic whole say as Nietzsche (and, more recently, the writers of Futurama) would have said if asked to go through it all again: Fuck yeah.
I care a lot less than I used to both about what I say and about explaining myself afterward, because as individually intelligent as somebody may be, we all have different ways of looking at the world and processing ideas, which are principally formed through our individual experiences, and I don't think there's much I can do to convince any given person of what I perceive to be the validity of my beliefs and way of looking at the world. I believe, for instance (and these are controversial asertions, but bear with me), that all cops are bastards and that the state is evil and that capitalism is inherently oppressive and exploitative, but how can I expect to make this—this set of conclusions which I have reached after years of research and personal study and dialogue, both with myself and countless others—all understood through simple and fleeting discussion with somebody who has not gone through the very specific journey of personal development which led me to those conclusions and to the intersecting and interrelated understandings which justify them? It's too much.
It's not that when I say "ACAB and pfft I don't need to explain myself to you" I don't understand very well what I mean by that myself, that I don't have an explanation to provide that makes sense to me. The problem is in making that explanation understandable to anyone else. Concepts like that, I think, are best understood as being difficult to isolate for themselves, instead connecting and intersecting with related ideas and one's general worldview—all of which constitutes the sum of a long train of personal experiences and development. My view of cops is informed by my view of the state and of violence and of natural rights and of capitalism and so on. And of course I'm incapable of relaying all of that at once, my entire worldview, to you or to anybody else simply through a moment's dialogue. So, this being the case, what good is an explanation? I can state my opinion, and it can be taken as it will, but I can't make you understand intrinsically my position and why I believe it. Therefrom comes my pessimism as to the efficacy of debate.
For instance, if you were to ask me why I believe—or rather, why it is true, for I believe it is—that all cops are bastards, I could bring up any of a variety of reasons. They are tools of the state. They exist to protect property. They maintain systemic racism and other mediums of oppression.
Each of these facts is well and good, but they stand for themselves no more than the original statement, that all cops are bastards. They require further explanation themselves. How are cops tools of the state and, for that matter, why is that a bad thing? What is the state? How do cops serve to protect property, and why is that bad? How do police maintain systemic oppression? How do state, property, and oppression correlate, and where do police fit in between them all?
You see the problem. The final conclusion, that all cops are bastards, rests on countless smaller conclusions, all of which interconnect and intersect like a web. The more you break it down, the more answers are begged and the more constituent conclusions must be made to be understood. It is impossible to understand the rationale behind why all cops are bastards without understanding on at least a basic level a plethora of further conclusions upon which the simple adage rests.
The reason I and others have come to agree at all with the conclusion that all cops are bastards is that we've gone through personal journeys of understanding regarding all the various conclusions which lead up to it. Without these intersecting understandings and the guidance of our personal experiences, we couldn't and wouldn't have arrived at the resultant final conclusion.
Where in the past I went wrong was in believing that others can be made to understand these conclusions without undergoing similar journeys of self-information and analysis themselves. I used to think that I could prove to everybody that I do have some justification, some reason for believing, everything I say. And I would waste hours debating and trying to make the lens through which I see the world understood. But for some time now I have come to recognize that as an exercise in futility, as evidenced by how few out of how many discussions actually resulted in somebody changing their mind or understanding some small part of my perspective.
That was probably an overlong explanation of the same things other people have been saying, but it about summarizes my perspective on debate and its general futility.