Ok, so I will admit this: tonight to blow of stress from thinking about the insanity of grad school applications and to actually celebrate something positive–my upcoming birthday and good GRE scores–my friend Nichelle took me to Monterey’s Mexican Restaurant. Since I never have had a margarita she ordered us both one. Pretty good, although I still state that alcohol is never as you imagine it to taste. But maybe that was because this was cheap tequila.

Anyways, that was a good 5 hours ago. We watched a movie (The Cell–crazy but brilliant film) and talked forever then she left because we both need to do some homework (and look what I’m doing instead…) Right after she left I was grabbing some water from the fridge and my roommate walked in. We started talking for a second then he asked “Dude, are you high?”

No, I wasn’t, I said. I did drink a little but that was 5 hours ago and it surely has worn off by now. But, I thought, I do feel a little high.

As I said to Nichelle as she was leaving “Good conversation, that will get you higher than anything else.”

And I don’t use that as a metaphor of some sort. I mean, literally, it will induce in me an actual altered state of mind.

I got to talking to my roommate about this for a while and he found the concept quite odd.

Listen. For 21 years of my life I lived without any perceived or intentional mind-altering substances. I stayed away from alcohol, drugs, cigarettes–even caffeine, avoided taking tylenol and limited my sugar intake (never drinking sodas).  I was under the illusion for this time that I had one single state of mine that was my state of mind.  To alter would be to alter who I am. To speak or act in such an “artificial” state of mind would somehow not be me.  I say illusion because it is just that: you don’t have one state of mind, but it constantly changes and is affected by any number of factors: time of day, amount of sleep, allergens in the air, mental and emotional state, food that you eat–and the list could go on.  It is ridiculous to think that you have one state of mind which is undeniably you. (However, I would suggest that you would have a state of mind that you feel most you, but this idea admits that some so-called “altered” states of mind can acceptably be your personally “correct” state of mind, such as is the case with potheads–I accept this conclusion, you may not) (continue reading…)

I’ve been reading a couple of Plato’s dialogues for my Ancient Political Rhetoric class and it got me thinking that that is a really cool way to do philosophy. Other philosophers have done it as well; Thus Spake Zerathustra is sort of a dialogue of sorts. And I’m sure there are others.

Anyways, I thought it’d be cool to put together a book of dialogues that address more practical philosophical assumptions of our world. Here were some I was thinking I could include, questions that would be worked out through dialogue:

1) Is beauty derived from fragility? (the blog entry I just wrote)

2) What is happiness? (Curt and I had a good dialogue on this before)

3) What would we do if we lived forever?

4) What does it mean to be something?

5) Is it possible to self-induce altered mental states? Do we only have one mental state? (From this blog entry)

6) What is the value of depression? Emo-ness in the face of an absurd world

There are a lot of other stuff too. I was thinking it’d be cool to do these in a casual sense that would be accessible to the everyday reader. I don’t want to be Plato–I could never dream of writing with such depth and genius. I was thinking of it sort of as a “Dialogues from a Suburb”. I think that would be a good title.

Towards the end of the movie version of  Aeon Flux (not a bad movie), Aeon has this line where she says that “Life only derives meaning from death”–or something close to that. That idea got me squirming in my seat.  Why should it be the fact that something ends that we find it valuable, worthwhile, and purposeful? To make this claim about death is a very strong claim and would say a whole lot about our existence as human beings. I also think it is not true.

My friend Nichelle and I had a long conversation about it afterwards and she took up the side that death does provide us with meaning. She put it another way: it is fragility that makes us value things and consider things beautiful. For example, if you got flowers every day they would not have the same value. In addition, one might find before you a real flower, a stone flower, and a well done fake flower. We might appreciate the real flower, valuing it above the others. and, although all are beautiful, we would say the real flower is the most beautiful.  But why?  Because one is temporary?

I countered that most likely we value the real flower because of concepts of authenticity, therefore the comparison may not be the best.

But if you get them everyday, either way, you will appreciate them less and they will appear less beautiful.  Therefore fragile things, things which are temporary are the only things that we can appreciate. If things are around all the time or even often, then they–in a sense–lose their beauty.

This got me thinking back to a blog entry Curt wrote back when we had TheAscendant blog (a very short lived little project of ours).  Its no longer up but the gist of the entry was that things, as we get used to them, fade from our attention and we are less able to appreciate them.  He used this as an argument for searching after the permanent and staying away from material types of joy (especially consumerism).

Alright, well to make a full assessment on all of this I’d have to really explore a little more of the philosophy of art and the philosophy of value (axiology, it is called). Values have been core to a lot of the ideas both Curt and I have had, but I don’t want to speak to prematurely on these things.

I will venture an assessment only tentatively. I would say that what this question reveals is not something about beauty but about human being’s capability to appreciate and value.  We don’t need life to end for us to appreciate it, but the recognition that life ends is a violent way of forcing us to face life, to really pay attention to it, in the same way that finding a lone tree in a burned forest will make one really look at the tree with appreciation. The lesson is this: beautiful things are around us all the time, we just don’t seem to appreciate them. I characterize this best, if not somewhat poetically, by one of my mantras: “The sky is always beautiful.” It’s always there and, no matter the time of day or weather, is incredibly beautiful.  Yet how often do you stop and really look at the sky and appreciate it?

In the end it turns out that things are fragile–even a beautiful sky (as it gets clouded with pollution…).  But they do not derive their beauty from their fragility. Fragility merely forces us to confront the beauty within them. In reality, value and appreciation comes from within each of us.

Those are the best terms I can put it into at the moment.

I am going to brag for a moment, but not to suggest that I have some superior intellect–I boast only in amazement at the places I have come that I didn’t realize. Because there was a good period of my life where I committed myself to philosophy with out actually studying philosophy I came up with a lot of good ideas that–go figure–have already been thought of. Many of these are astoundingly close to things that we attribute to great thinkers. I do not suggest that I am a great thinker, only that I am astonished to find my thoughts confirmed by the great figures in philosophy. Oh look, I am not crazy! And as it turns out the satisfaction of coming to them myself was both intellectually important in developing those philosophical capacities but also allowed, I think, for a potential ability to reorient some classic ideas in a possibly new perspective. At least this is my hope. Also, it has allowed me to situate them in a way that is highly applicable and personal to my life.

Anyways, I ramble on and verge on a conceited thought that somehow I could compare myself with them. I am not so far.

And what I sat down here to discuss was the concept, of all concepts, that I found myself with in almost exact manner as a few philosophers and even used the same term without ever hearing it. That is, the idea of “philosophical suicide” as defined by Camus (in Myth of Sisyphus) and exemplified by Kierkegaard.  I was going to do this! Not only this, but I actually called it philosophical suicide!  It is incredible that I struck on the same idea and gave it the same name. Kierkegaard didn’t think of his position as philosophical suicide when he, according to Camus, committed it. But I was going to commit it with full knowledge of what I was going to do! How is this possible? Well it wasn’t–I failed to do it.

But for those who have no idea what I am talking about–and I’m sure no one but me does–let me explain.  At the end of high school I made the choice to do two things: 1) To pursue my life with a great deal of thought and to steer my own life this way and 2) to determine what my life as a religious life would mean. I thought the two things went together and spent a long time, especially with my good friend Curt, exploring the two questions simultaneously, in a manner that was impossible to untangle.  But, in the course of this process I was struck with a life-changing realization: I didn’t naturally believe in God. I say this in the sense that, for a great deal of the populace, the question of the existence of God is not a question at all–it is only a matter of who is God and what manner of worship the belief warrants. For me, I was stuck on the question itself: does God exist?  As far as I could tell I could only posit an agnostic position: it wasn’t that there was no evidence as the atheist might claim, but that there was equal and opposite evidence for every claim for and against God. Inspiration and the Holy Spirit as evidence? Sure, that could be true. But it is just as likely that it isn’t God, but just natural mechanisms. There is absolutely no way to tell.

From there I realized one thing for certain. When one comes to this realization of equality of arguments between God and atheism–and if it wasn’t the case then the question wouldn’t be so troubling–it leaves one with the impression that there is only two choices: either 1)  to make a choice about religion, what to believe, and, more importantly, forgo this sense of uncertainty–to, in a sense, deny uncertainty and embrace the absurd, the impossible (that the question is decided and clear), and accept God and, with it, the structures and purpose found in religion. That is, to sacrifice one’s reason, which says that the question is forever an unknown (and therefore, as I’d say now, even absurd to consider!). To sacrifice this obviously logical conclusion for the sake of God, and continue forward believing where there is no belief to be found–this is the philosophical suicide both I and Camus speak of.

And I spoke of it in these terms in the months leading up to that moment where the suicide was actually to take place: my going on the two year mission for the Church (LDS/Mormon).  Granted, the only person who could really confirm this would be my girlfriend of the time, Kayley, to whom I tried to explain the reasons for doing what I was doing. I spoke explicitly to her about philosophical suicide, describing it as forgoing all that I knew and could say to jump off the cliff of rationality so that I could see what the realm of the religious would provide for me.

I thought that this was the only way to truly understand the religious–and I think that this was correct. All religion is in some way a philosophical suicide, a rebellion against reason–either in not thinking or in denying the uncertainty that exists. It is to suffuse oneself in the realms of the unknown, to completely submerge into the abstract and the unknowable and the, to a large extent, arbitrary realms of  ideals and religion. Hence, Kierkegaard says that faith is the belief in the impossible, the absurd.  This completely fits.

Of course I didn’t go through with my philosophical suicide and I don’t see how I could have. Everything that defines me is this insistence on guiding my own life and in finding the path, however blindly at times, that I want to tread. In the end my two goals came in conflict with one another.

How did I come to choose between one or the other? I originally thought I would chose merely out of utility–which choice would provide me with the more interesting life and where I could do the most good? This was not exactly the case, however. I was, in the end, incapable of committing this suicide. Why?  Was it my insistence on reason and rationality? This cannot really be–seeing that I am a relativist in so many things, and embrace uncertainty and complexity. Ah, but there is the answer: I embrace uncertainty. That is why I didn’t go through with it. I saw that the agnostic position is ultimately the more powerful one–or at least the one that I desired. I could not go on pretending that things were certain. In fact, I relish in the uncertain and the complex. Why? Because it is interesting, that is why. Perhaps I’ll have a better answer to that question later.

In this later part Camus and I diverge. Camus suggests that to maintain purpose of existence that can exist without committing physical suicide (to banish the absurd world) or philosophical suicide (to banish a standard that allows it to be absurd, by accepting the absurd and believing in it) is to live in the absurd–no in acceptance but in defiance of the absurd and in a way, thereby, accepting the absurd. Did I come to this point? I do not think so completely. I do live, to a large extent, in defiance to the absurdity. I definitely know I’ve felt that and expressed the sentiment on many occasions (only now do I have terms, thanks to Camus, to describe it). However, I feel like there is something more to what it is I am doing. Because it is as if I defying in a different sense–in the sense of insanity that I spoke about yesterday. This insanity fits with Camus’ defiance, yes, but I feel it goes somehow further. But I do not know enough about Camus or the rest of existentialism yet to say exactly how. I must figure this one out though.  I am incredibly fascinated by it. And in the end it connects very heavily with all of the other work I am thinking about in relation to technological development–quite clearly (Camus, after all, spoke of our modern day Sisyphus situation as the “mechanical life”). But I’ll save that for another day.

You know. Sitting here just getting over a nice bout of depression and my mind has done the thing it always does in response to feelings of worthlessness, pointlessness, and lack of motivation. It goes into overdrive. It makes me want to laugh at everything, to flout…not necessarily just tradition, but everything. Suicide, says the existentialist philosophers (I am currently reading Camus’ Sisyphus) is the ultimate question. Nietzsche also says the thought of suicide is the ultimate comfort. But that’s so lame. The illusion of meaninglessness and anguish and suffering is all born of a world where we are completely consumed in ourselves. It is a conceit to suggest that the absurdity of life is built from existence itself. The absurdity of life comes from what we’ve built out of life. The absurdity comes from humanity, from the artificial (and everything we do is artificial, by definition), and from the intelligent–but only a weak form of intelligence, one that lacks rigor to see past its own conceit.  What we have built is absurd–but it is most absurd in the fact that we do not see it as such. When we wake up and see it as absurd, by God! says the existentialist–what is this planet we live on?! Now I must consider suicide for I see that there is no purpose because in the midst of creating a world we forgot to create a purpose for it.  Woops.

Here is my response, however: By God! What a strange world we have built! What odd customs! Look at so many creatures who create shallow purposes for themselves! What fun it’d be to flaunt those purposes, to push existence!  What is the value in pushing existence? Well the engineers know this! It is in the mere value of creation. What do we create? New purposes, new identities, new experiences!  The intentional insanity I speak of is the sort who can say “Ah, screw this, I’m going to take a year and live in the Caribbean. Why? Because this existence will let me.”  But this is only the beginning form of intentional insanity and any of us who may recognize this capacity for insanity within us are afraid to take it far–because to take it far would be a form of suicide or at least to the same effect. Plus you might get mistaken for being actually physically insane. In which case the nuthouse might  not be the most interesting place for such an intentionally insane person.

But what am I saying? What am I promoting? Insanity? Kehe, but what I mean by insanity is this: insanity means going against rationality. But we also use it in the sense that we dub insane those things which we, as a society, do not understand and deem aberrant. So partially I speak of insanity with irony: the intentional insanity rebels against the logic of a system that is itself insane: lacking reason, rationality, and purpose.

This is only just a thought that occurred to me in what I will now deem my post-depression euphoria. Its the best frikin drug I have, ok!

Another note: Camus speaks of the point of life that one creates to be the defiance of the absurd, sitting between the point where absurdity is recognized and where you must leap from the cliff of suicide (of either sort). But I do not like to think of life as a defiance. Instead, the insanity I speak of is different…somehow. I think.