fragilekeys

Nihilism’s Power
March 3, 2018

Nihilism as the fallen child of thought’s double capacity to entertain all possibilities and to doubt everything.

Given a ‘root statement’ or ‘root sentiment’ — given any belief, value system, perspective, axiom or rule for life, etc. — it seems always possible to discover or imagine a ‘world’ which corresponds to it; which satisfies these conditions. If I begin with a certain idea of what I can see/find, seeing/finding it is possible, if only in the imagination, if only by the power of belief and wanting-to-see.

But thought proceeds to check this world of its imagination — the world it sees to the extent that it sees what it wishes to see — with the world ‘as it is’, the world that often refutes, ‘objects to’, the world that we’ve devised.

Under the natural conception at least, the ‘real’ world — nature’s indifference to human wishes and meanings, to the progress of civilization, to the dialectic of history, etc. — contains no inherent value or purpose. Thus any world that we imagine as corresponding to our ‘root’ set of beliefs (about how things are, how things should be, what is worthwhile, etc.) is projected over an abyss. Thought can always find room to doubt, because the world ‘as it is’ always invites the invalidation of the world we imagine.

Any story, any account of things can always be challenged and shown to be more ‘fictional’ than ‘real’. Nihilism names a kind of ‘belief’ in this obliterating quality, the inherent destructibility of stories and beliefs. In practice it can itself become a belief in the quasi-‘natural’ view that everything is ultimately pointless; or at least that there is nothing whatsoever to lean on, outside of our own acts of fabrication and belief (thus its tie to ‘existentialism’).

Any manner of belief — any believer — can raise an objection to the nihilist’s objection. But it will require a suspension of disbelief in the gap that separates the story that gives meaning, the world we devise and believe in, and the obdurate resistance of ‘reality as it is’.

The result is not that there is no truth per se, only a revelation into the difficulty of maintaining any truth as true; the work it takes and the tests it must undergo, if it is to be believed as true because it is true, and not just because one wishes it were so. This is perhaps tied to the ‘work’ of the human — the human who, despite everything, seems teleologically oriented toward finding, creating, and seeing a meaningful world. Where the consequences of nihilism meet this task, it is inevitably up against the abyss of imminent non-meaning that humans undertake such work.

Wanting In Truth
February 4, 2018

I am entering yet again a phase in which I can only survey all my previous philosophical sympathies as “wrong, wrong, wrong,” with a rather ponderous shake of the head. This has happened enough by now that at least I’m not surprised. But I do recognize in these moments the drawbacks and even the fallacy of my general approach, about which I offer here a few meditations, with a silent note of thanks to colleagues and friends who’ve helped bring all this into greater focus for me.

The tension lies between my practical need to believe in the truth, goodness, or beauty of the form of thought I am currently ‘following’; and the inadequacies and shortcomings that always show through, once followed far. It is not enough for me to give disinterested surveys or discover basic problems to study. I enjoy too much the specificity and singularity of a given model, which, if I’m following it, I want to honor and replicate. I feel inside I must become an advocate, tell a persuasive story, and show the appeal of this particular way of looking at things, of thought and expression. Formerly, I might have said I cannot understand something without writing about it, but this isn’t exactly true. Rather, I write about it to clarify to myself why it is relevant to consider at all. Indeed, to make clear why it could seduce me, and in the process of that clarification perhaps seduce others.

Without meaning to cast my procedure in an entirely negative light, my efforts in retrospect are predominately ‘rhetorical’, borrowing the style of the thinking at hand and making it my own in the process of rearticulating or reactivating it. The result is that my treatments very often lack criticality. Instead, I dwell inside the model, run with it positively as far as I can go, not looking back lest my writing arm freeze into a pillar of salt. I play within the model and its terms, mix it in with other resources, infuse it with my own explicit or secret intentions, knowing that nothing I say aims to the absolute but only the exploratory and experimental.

Evidently, the belief never holds for long, and perhaps my trusting sojourn in its territory provokes the growing disillusionment. Sooner or later, a point comes when the limitations and biases of the model show themselves wanting in truth. This leads to outward disagreements and inner disavowals, a disappointment or even an embarrassment with the work I’ve done and the recklessness with which I’ve undertaken it. It is a point of doubt and then abandonment, like waking from a powerful spell and then fleeing the chamber where the magic happened. Then, I am so impatient to find something new to follow that the desire to return critically to old material does not occur to me. Or perhaps it is a matter of boredom creeping in to render the former love and fidelity stale. At any rate, the practical demand of work demands impetus and horizon, so if one well has gone dry, another must be sought out. It is not a matter of fetishizing variety, but of craving the absolute, though I know there is none—lest it be fabricated momentarily by this hand whose own belief in it it thwarts.

The consolation, less and less satisfying, is then to be found only in the ‘way’, the long-term trajectory I can only hope is leading somewhere despite all the detours and turns. I am not in the habit of rejecting anything I’ve written, but I also end up lacking perspective on the value of any of it, just as if I didn’t care or it didn’t exist for me. To put an affirmative spin on it, concrete products are merely “the ashes of a vital praxis,” as Agamben puts it; as good as nonentity, if not evil encumbrance. At the same time, because ‘following’ applies to my life as much as to my work―I shall not divide love from knowledge―, a feeling of having gotten nowhere, of having solidified nothing, is regular. Indeed, that I lack my own convictions; that I’m opportunistically building on things without enough reflection and distance; that I’m not situating anything properly in known contexts; that I’m not strong enough to follow something through to the end. The inquiry then appears to turn entirely upon passions and flights of imagination. I am aware of how all this could then appear, and perhaps could be: little more than a hobby, a series of personal projects almost not intended for anybody, save for me, in whom the entire endeavor is consumed or, as I fancy it, ruined.

My point here is not to earn encouragements, but to frame a problem I have a hard time even calling a problem. This is more a confession of floating in an empty space of emotion and mentality in which nothing I’ve said up to now seems to hold or needs to. Most of it I do not remember, nor feel obligated to stick to, unless it supplements a new excursion. Where is it anyhow, if not vanished in the virtual? At the same time, I cherish jealously the whole process, as if it were inseparable from myself. I take every discussion of approach and fundamental stands personally and fight for them as for my form-of-life. For I believe above all—and perhaps here I betray my core ‘following’—in the fluidity of writing itself, in the surprise of the unexpected voice that rises from the unfinished lines I crave. In poetry, if that is what is. For better or worse, I’m describing a ‘desiring-machine’ in my life whose fuel and engine sustain themselves quite on their own, somewhat impervious to suggestion and feedback, including my own, without any exclusive priority on content, though obviously I am far from indifferent to what I say. It is a compulsion to enter a creative space where I might be graced an utterance I never planned and which, departing from whatever I think I know, nonetheless embraces all the loose ends of my thought in a credible construction whose ultimate lesson, despite its shortcomings, is love. The prospect that I am deluded about all of this is insuperable.

Where truth is always wanting, always begging the sentence to differ, the scene is one of fickle beliefs and touchy directions threatened by imminent abandon or an immediate about-face. In the past, I might have fancied this a virtue, but sometimes now it strikes me as vice, excuse, or evasion. And yet, barring the appearance of something that could be followed and lived out without reservations, I don’t see this how this could change. I imagine in the end ‘being a writer’ means just this for me: with blindness and naivety to strike out with hope into language a few sketches of existence that may be believed, but never demand a following, not even on my part. There is freedom in that, but also dissatisfaction. And although I am far from illogical or random in my understanding and organizing of things, whether my inquiries adhere to any standard of philosophical or academic proof, rigor, balance, objectivity, or fairness, I highly doubt. Does it matter? So nags conscience: creation is good, but all hitherto held views are “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Engage overwrite protocol…

Ultimate Concerns
January 6, 2018

It continues to frustrate me how, when faced with something that is clearly impressive, inspiring, innovative, far-reaching, thought-provoking, etc., the tendency on the part of many is: 1) to deliberately not understand it, its perspective, the goal toward which it strives and how this goal catalyzes all the elements in the construction; and then 2) with a willed myopia, to divert our attention away from any novel elements (the goal and desire behind the construction, the unthought it hides, its capacity for development, etc.) toward those elements which can already be understood within already-given coordinates and meanings and thus readily dismissed. The diversion works to tamp down the fire of novelty which risks consuming us in the unprecedented, focuses ‘critical’ attention on some generalized objection, sifts through for minor mistakes, or worse, makes it all personal and launches a character attack. Once enough of this goes on, it’s no surprise that the novel element can no longer be seen; it is covered over by petty worries, pink slips, nit-picks, ‘gotcha’ moments.

The negative consequences of this tendency are multiple and I can only name a few. It functions in effect like the police and has all the features of accusation, tribunal, defense, verdict and punishment. Also similar to the legal system, it slows everything to a blindingly boring pace. Instead of running fast ahead with the novel element, thought grinds to a halt in evidentiary hearings and grand juries. This is elevated as criticism or deconstruction, but in the end it waves the banner of non-creativity and resentment. In another way, it tries to cast a spell of doubt and aspersion over whoever was behind the novel creation: to paint them as a charlatan, a deceiver, a fake, derivative. My suspicion is that this obsession with the other’s strategy always contains something perverse. Why is so much critical effort exerted to pass judgments on others? Often these judgments are flung out into the void in a pathetic fashion, almost like pleas for help. And to anyone who has dealt with the novel elements, or at least understood in a fairer way where they’re coming from, such judgments are simply wrong and cannot but appear vindictive or jealous.

But what is most frustrating is how much time and energy it wastes. We all have a singular voice, a singular thought to think, just as we have a singular life to live. We would agree that a life spent thinking constantly about the mistakes or virtues of others would be a wasted life. But then why attend to such thoughts at all? Why do we not choose, instead, to do what we can with what we encounter, ‘take it or leave it’ according to the measure that it can be incorporated into the truth-procedure we are undergoing with our lives? Granted, this makes our output less ‘matchable’ to the current given coordinates of situations. And it opens us to the risk of being misunderstood and judged poorly. But what of that? At the end of the day, it is we who must render accounts for our thoughts, words and deeds; we might as well save ourselves the burden of obsessing with evaluations of the thoughts, words and deeds of others. The intentions of the other remain impenetrable to us anyhow. No one has a magic ball through which the other’s life’s worth of emotions, desires, hopes and dreams could be seen transparently and judged―and what hubris to think we could.

One could easy accuse me of not doing enough to evaluate the ‘claims’ that people make, not paying close enough attention to the ins-and-outs of argumentation, not doing enough to interpret and so on. I do not deny these activities―obviously not, since this is a part of thinking. But the ‘truth’ by which I measure my own thought ultimately is not dependent upon the truth claims others make. Truth is much too intimate of an endeavor to let anyone else invade its ordeal with some concern that is not of ultimate concern. Years and decades can be spent dealing with smaller points that are of some concern, general concern, critical concern, and so on. But behind each of those moments, I fear, an ultimate concern was ignored. If we could see the scales more clearly, perhaps we would be terrified at how much time we squandered needlessly on secondary concerns. A similar terror is at stake in Nietzsche’s thought experiment about the eternal return: if you had to live every single moment of your life over again and again, in exactly the same way, for all of eternity, would this terrify you or bring you joy? In other words, did you honor, in each moment, your ultimate concern?

The “impressive, inspiring, innovative, far-reaching, thought-provoking” things I brought up at the beginning can only themselves be by-products of a subject’s ultimate concern. Ideally, when I engage something I should always exert myself to discern just this, the ultimate concern at stake. That element is undeconstructible; it cannot be criticized or judged. Why? Because it remains a secret in some fashion, like the truth of a soul. At the same time, I know I probably have most in common with the undeconstructible or indestructible element I find there, to which I am exposed to through my engagement. What I should look for is the ultimate concern I share, making no compromise and recognizing it at stake in everything I engage. Then I will be sure to never overlook or usurp the novel element, for I will know that I myself am implicated in its existence, its coming-to-be. I am called upon for it to exist. For who on earth could ever guarantee me that someone else had also seen what was of ultimate concern? I may find encouraging signs, people with whom I can share important matters, but in the end even that does not save me from one bit of my own responsibility or the solitude of the task.

I can never know for certain if what is of ultimate concern will matter―unless I make it matter, put it in play in every judgment I make. That is what is my concern, which for better or worse is unknowable to anyone else, and often even quite secret to me.