Essayons

Descent

On the arrogance and inherent misguidedness of this work; my disheartenment on this realization; and yet why the attempt still seems worthwhile (albeit with more humility and more recognition of uncertainty and ignorance). 

 

  
     It’s been a while since I have written here.  I have been reflecting, how could I even begin to tell others what the good is for them and for society as a whole when I have no idea what the good is for myself?  If I can’t figure out my own surroundings well enough to orient myself, it’s preposterous and embarrassing to suggest that I could do so for others and for some general mass of people as a “society”.  My awareness of my ignorance, an appreciation of how much I have been deceived and perhaps duped by our constructs (whether of the powerful, our rulers, or our society) has made me aware that it is not only foolish to suggest to others how they should live, but also somewhat horridly comical, and for those reasons I have not published much here recently.  How could I, being as ignorant as I am, possibly know what the “common good” is?  

  • The arrogance of trying to guide others, especially when I am so lost, causes me to doubt this work.
     I know almost nothing.  Most of what I know comes from books, the internet, and movies, which, even if all these were well intentioned, may be distorted and misunderstood (and likely is not all well intentioned).  I have little direct experience with which to use as a basis of knowledge (such direct experience being the foundation of knowledge).  I am likely a dupe of the authors and content creators that I have consumed over the years.  I do not know many people directly, and not deeply.  I have lived through little challenge, adversity, or periods of life that force the establishment of values.  How then can I have an idea of what is the common ground that underlies all of us if I know not myself nor fellow man in actuality but rather the illusion of man that has been represented to me through the arts and stories?  The human senses are not the only way to understand the world, but they may be amongst the better ways.  I have not lived fully, nor have I “brag[ged] as lustily as chanticleer in the morning“, so my knowledge seems shallowly rooted, based on illusion rather than reality (see the image above).  In recent years I have come to appreciate more the saying that the more one learns the more one learns how little they know.  Knowing so little, how could I possibly guide others?   

  • Challenges:  I know little; most of what I know is from the written page rather than direct experience, and so I may be very poorly informed.

 
     Yet, somewhere between all I know is that I know nothing and viewing ourselves as omniscient gods seems to be our truth.  We cannot despair at how little we know, nor let our inherent ignorance prevent us from trying based off the little we know.  We must guard against the arrogance of convincing ourselves that we have learned so much as to become gods, or to rest too heavily on any single point of learning (“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.“). This realization of all that I don’t know, how much I have been potentially misled by what I’ve picked up along the way, and therefore the likelihood that any effort I make on this site would only lead others astray has given me pause to publishing here.  At least as part of what I should do is to always enjoin any readers of the site to remember the motto of the Royal Society “Nullius in verba” or “take nobody’s word for it”, and to most certainly not take someone’s word who rambles on and whose pages are full of errors.  I do not know where we sit in the cosmos, what is the nature of the powers that be or the prime mover, nor of the sparks that give and sustain life, yet I know (have high certainty) that should I lift this pen above my desk and then open my fingers, that it will fall back down.  Perhaps knowledge is always in a fog and uncertain, but for the most immediate we can see well enough to use our limited knowledge to at least understand and predict at a functional level.  We must sit somewhere between incapacitated by our ignorance and the haughty pronouncements of gods.  If I write, I need do so humbly, and to make effort to guide others as well as possible, and where I know my knowledge is so low, to not try to guide at all.  I need to always endeavor to listen and learn from others, and to be open to better ways of understanding the world.      

  • Somewhere between all I know is that I know nothing and viewing ourselves as omniscient gods seems to be our truth.  With this we can move forward cautiously and prudently.
     A further hesitation for me is that I increasingly realize that I might not know what is good (and therefore what is evil).  In the complexity and duration of this world, how can any of us know what is good and what is evil?  “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  Can we be gods to know what is good or evil?  Or as is said “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” or similarly “Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”  Consider the nuclear bomb.  Is it evil?  It is capable of and has been used for incomprehensible destruction of life, so it could rightly be judged as evil.  Others would say the threat of such destruction has served as deterrent from the industrial slaughter of man that modern war has become by making the consequences of total war to be so horrible that few would choose to pursue it, and, these same people would argue, has therefore helped mankind to avoid a major war since the advent of  nuclear weapons.  If this argument is credible to you, then nuclear weapons could perhaps be seen as good rather than evil.  This duality (or paradox, or contradiction) seems to permeate many (perhaps almost all) elements of our lives.  Perhaps it is a balance, and only when comparing the full aspect in balance can it be determined to be good or evil.  Still, such a removed vantage point to view events “in balance” and to see how all events transpire is a luxury that we mortals likely do not have.  This ignorance of good and evil makes it difficult to steer myself let alone others towards the shores of the good.  It is perhaps in this that I need to learn the most humility and to avoid the “blinding moral certainty” that causes me to reject out of hand rather than evaluating for myself.  I will try to focus less on prescribing what is good, but rather focus on my exploration of it, and to cautiously suggest what I think I have learned along the road.    

  • Most of what I understand to be good is based off what I have been told rather than through my own exploration.  How if I don’t know what is actually good could I ever hope to guide others towards it?
     It’s been a previous critique of mine that those in power and leadership often seem to be unable to govern and manage their own lives, and yet having failed at that most basic level somehow have convinced themselves that they should be dictating to countless others how to live (and yet see no irony, hypocrisy, or contradiction in this).  My own life is something of a wreck: no understanding of my own good or purpose, bad in relationships (and therefore generally not in them) and with few friends, no particular job or occupation, nearing bankruptcy, declining health, low drive, and trapped in entitled cynicism.  How could I possibly suggest to others what the good is for them or for us collectively?  How am I not guilty of that same hypocrisy that I decry in others (that is, of doing poorly in the leading of my own life and yet still trying to lead others)?  And yet, for all my many imperfections, I still want to try, and for all my imperfection I hope to still have something of value to be able to provide to others.  

  • The hypocrisy of trying to lead others when I myself am lost.

 

 
    I have no power.  Those in power can enforce their will upon others.  Yet fundamentally we both seek the same thing: to impose our view and understanding of the world upon others.  I would do so through persuasion, they through force, but that is simply a question of methods used.  Both of us start from the same place of arrogance, namely that we have such knowledge and wisdom as to have a view for others or how we as a group may lead their lives.  How could any human ever pretend to have such knowledge and divine insight?  I draw distinctions between myself and those in power who force their will upon others: I seek to persuade rather than force, I recognize uncertainty and our inherent ignorance rather than having certainty and despising contempt for varying opinions, I recognize the arrogance of what I do when I write here rather than feel confident of being a chosen and anointed one.  And yet those distinctions increasingly seem to fall more along a spectrum rather than being strict divides.  I am also aware that even though I dislike hypocrisy, I am often hypocritical, at times arguing against previous arguments I have made (and see more the glimmer of the value of paradox).  I also have come to realize that my criticism of others can often aptly be reflected back upon myself, and is often more applicable to myself than to others.  Could I ever provide suggestions for improvement, or would I merely be rehashing and restating the evil that already exists?  

  • My attempt to distinguish how what I do is different from those I seem to dislike.  My realization that my critiques of the powerful are rightfully applied to myself as well (something of a lesson I’ve learned, that my critique of others almost always applies to me as well). 
     Another critique I have of those in power is that they incite others to throw stones without giving them the warning that those who throw stones shouldn’t be surprised to have bullets come back in return.  I also seek that my thought should eventually lead to action, so in some ways I am guilty of the same critique.  The distinction I draw however is that I do not seek action against others, but rather choice of who you support, and the provision of support be how ones action is expressed (rather than by violence against others).  I also need to recognize that for those who are excluded (not supported) by most groups will feel penned in, and this “non-support” to them will feel an awful lot like violence.  There are a few differences however, most importantly that in order for non support to do harm it relies on the determination of the many whereas violence is the determination of a single person or group.  Further, non support does not directly harm the un-supported person, who may still try to produce from nature what they may, and may search to find those few who may still support xem (which is not to say that doing so is easy, but is does reward those who have the will and determination to do so).  The line between non support and violence, between defending oneself and between offense and aggression seems to be at least somewhat blurry (trying to draw distinctions between the two is probably better handled as a separate topic on another day).  I suspect as one goes through their life the difficult situations they face will eventually lead them to places pretty close to those currently in power that they criticize (sort of like the scene towards the end of The Return of the Jedi where Luke looks at his mechanical hand and realizes he is becoming the evil machine that he abhors in his father, and for that reason takes pity on him and has compassion for him).  Am I any different in character than those I view as evil and exploitative, or do we share the same traits but only vary in magnitude?  Am I becoming what I believe myself to dislike?  

  • Be cautious of my motives, and do not let me exhort you into a situation where you will receive far more harm than you anticipated.  I propose non-violence, but every part of being alive could be considered to be violent in some small way.
     Another risk of promoting ideas and ideals is, should such ideas ever emerge as a coherent and consensus view, that the holders of such beliefs become so convinced by the certainty of them that they decide others who do not share these views are a threat.  This I believe is an easy trap to fall into.  Consider for example the belief that we should all be peaceful, non-aggressive, or non-violent.  Anyone who by their acts or words reveals themselves to approve of violence could be rightly be seen as a threat to peaceful people.  The peaceful faction could say that if they could just get rid of those who endorse violence, the world could be freed from violence, and so for this noble reason could decide that they are justified in doing violence themselves to eliminate the violent.  It seems to be on the basis of belief (and perceived threat) that many of what we would call the religious wars of history have been fought.  We can also become convinced that our ideas are such an evolution and elevation of the human condition that they justify violence as an unfortunate but necessary means to achieve these noble ends.  Such is perhaps what Isabel Paterson discusses in The God of the Machine when talking about how the humanitarian (i.e. those who are looking to help the common good), having convinced themselves that they alone know what is the good in life, then convince themselves that this divine knowledge is justification for imposing it upon others.  “It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.”  We need to have humility in our ignorance, and not become convinced that we have so great a knowledge that it should be violently forced upon others.  We (perhaps) need to take our understanding of the good and reflect it inwards first, to try it and live it as our own, and perhaps set an example to others if they see any good in it.  Like everything there is balance.  We cannot abdicate or renounce trying to help others and live only for ourselves (such would seem to be a misguided view of humility).  We also cannot say that we have absolutely no knowledge of good and not endeavor to do simple and obvious things that are good (restraining a murderer, for example).  Similar to the paragraph above, certainty of knowledge (and using such as a justification for necessary force) is probably a separate topic better left for another day.  It is likely that the topic is inherently paradoxical (and thus the hypocrisy that I dislike) due to the validity of seemingly opposite viewpoints.   

  • Do not become so convinced of the certainty of abstract ideas that it overruns your life, or that it leads you to harm others in following these beliefs.
     And yet, for all this lengthy discourse of the challenges to trying to propose ideas, I can’t see a better way for me personally to help better ourselves.  I look around at our society and see things that I think would help me (and likely others as well) if they could be improved.  I see areas where a little effort could make a large improvement, and yet instead the vast majority of us are trapped wandering in our make work pastures and pens.  I see things that seem to be fairly obviously broken that no one seems to be trying to fix.  From my limited (and biased by the lens of the internet and this device that I am typing on) perspective, the protectors of our society seem to be verging on extorting us (that is, having less legitimate need for them, they insert themselves into our lives with a veiled threat of harm if we do not continue to support them).  I see people who like myself live without purpose, understanding, and guidance.  I see people increasingly disconnected from the goods that sustain our lives, from other people, living in our cells with screens inputting into our psyches, living a life that others dictate to us, not trying to fulfill the gift that the gods gave to us.  I perceive despair in how we rationalize questions of  populations and our place or places to live within the world, and yet also perceive that out of this terror and horror perhaps come elements of life that make us human (back to my appreciation of paradox and recognition of my ignorance).  

  • If no one will propose and attempt something that aims to be better, we must seemingly be stuck where we are; and while where we are likely has a great deal of good, it also has some apparent ills.
     I want to improve my own life; I suspect many others do as well (such motivation and drive for improvement seems to be a better element of our humanity, provided that we do not intentionally or negligently hurt others as the means of our improvement).  And yet some elements of improving my own life involve choices we make as a society, as again, I suspect that for others to improve their life there are changes they need from society.  Our needs require work, some of which put us in conflict with nature and sometimes with other men.  We group together to help each other with our work, to thrive by connection.  Our creators (at the moment) have set us as requiring this connection (at least two people must come together for a short period of time) for the continuation of mankind.  Since, by this required connection dictated to us by our creators, we are at least somewhat social species.  Some things we can improve on our own, but some things likely need the change or approval of our group as well.  Imperfect as I am, as silly and stupid as my thoughts and writings are, we need to try to improve, we need to have the hope that we can improve and that there is a better life for us, and therefore I am going to continue to write this garbage here (and hopefully do less in thought and more in life, and hopefully provide better quality work here).  I know that what I write is bad, is ignorant, is conceited, is naive and foolish, and many other flaws too numerous to list.  But I look around for people who are trying to do something meaningful and am able to find few (admittedly I am not looking hard enough).  I apologize that my work is so poor, but at least it is an honest (or, I believe it to be honest) attempt at work that I believe to be attempting to head towards valuable, and for all its flaws at least provides something for others to critique, a weak and poor straw man for others to possibly build upon.  I’ll do my best to remember my ignorance and arrogance, to appreciate paradox, and the hypocrisy inherent in myself.  It seems to me to be an inherently arrogant act to do what I do here, to try to guide others, and I must recognize the arrogance in me that says I have something worth trying to guide others.  However, I do wish to provide value and assistance to my fellow man, and this seems to me to be amongst the best way that I can do so, at least for now.  I must be tempered by humility and recognition of inherent uncertainty.  No person is a god, and therefore no one can guide divinely, but that should not stop us from attempting what little we may do within our mortal limits.  Still, I must try, and not wait until the light of gods shines down, but try to move forward from the very little I might know with prudence and humility.  Essayons.  

  • We want to improve and be better, yet we can do nothing if we do not at least try.  Let us try.