It Was Raining

It was raining, what more is there to say. . . . But maybe there's  plenty more, and where would we be if our writers were content to just say it was raining, what more was there to say, and leave it at that?
"Corrugated tears, molten, involate, were voicelessly descending with all the unceasing and pitiless rhythm of an African demagogue, bloated and gorged on the accumulated fats of his tarnished and burnished native lands."
That's the kind of thing you could say - and people would thank you for it. Why wouldn't they? To be honest though,  I admit I'm a bit lost as to the sense of that revised or alternative sentence, but that's just me. And anyway where would our writers be without vagueness, that is I mean the most refined vagueness, and within those vaguenesses lying hidden, or half-hidden, or maybe fully hidden, the most precious metals, so to speak, whose invaluable essences are discovered by only the most civilized and penetrating of readers, who can then reward themselves, if they want, mentally, with the thought that their achievement in the discovering is as, or at least nearly as, great as the writer's who hid them there in the first place. And who's to argue with that.

Life and Meaning Again

There's a couple of issues from Life and Meaning I should maybe look at. One is that this concentration and value judgement on life based on meaning,  and that necessarily being the primacy of words over life, leads back to Plato and his strange idea of the world of ideal forms, and within that intellectual world the absolute primacy of the idea of the Void. To quote from that piece:

The Greek void is specifically a language form, an intellectual creation or form, and revels in the fact of its existence as such. Why are the likes of Plato drawn to this concept of the void as an absolute - the thought which sits atop all other thoughts, the ascendant within the mental hierarchy? It is because, as said, the world of the senses has been decided to be unreal, and so what is most real should partake least of all of the sensory world, and what partakes least of all being apparently an idea. Ideas are stated to be the purest of substances, and the most pure of these substances is an idea which is utterly self-referential and distinct from the debased world of external reality. And so the void: a pure self-contained idea without reference to the debased world of sense perception. Hence through the ages, and still, the exaltation of the imagined holy landscape of Pure Reason.

And so the stress on the meaning of life, and the judging of life on that basis. So this is the historical basis of this false judging of life on the basis of its meaning, that notion of life being debased and fallen, split somehow from the perfectly spiritual, and Reason offers an escape route, though this idea is much older again than Plato, but it is through his  medium that the idea has been refracted on into the subsequent 'European' intellectual tradition, and into such modern inevitable rivulets as material atheism and life's declared meaninglessness.

The other thought to look at more deeply is that of accidental meaningfulness, which I mentioned in the Life and Meaning piece. Evolution is a scientific theory or fact that is falsely imagined to possess of some philosophical significance, that is that it negates the viability of an architect of life and renders valid the judgement of the human condition as being accidentally meaningful. As shown, the intrinsic intelligence of the human condition, as with any structure, cannot be denied, but even this is apparently not enough for it to be meaningful; instead it has to be connected directly to an external element to life, an architect or God - and so the depressing arguments about Intelligent Design. As described one cannot talk of anything as external to life or what is, and so this is invalid discourse to begin with. This is all an existential failure where life is not being accepted as is, intrinsically intelligent. With the evolution argument, and other 'scientific' stances is the attempt to posit the intrinsic intelligence of life as accidental, that things were senseless and unintelligent, and through chance and time eventually structures of accidental intelligence ensued, and so while offering the impression of being 'meaningful' these structures are only accidentally so.

But as written earlier: "Every structure that exists is intrinsically of an intelligent order; if it weren't internally intelligent it wouldn't cohere as a living/real structure. The fact of its existence, be it an atom, a stone, a bird, insect, human, etc. is absolutely dependent on its being intelligent and in itself meaningful."

There is no point within existence where this intrinsic intelligence of life's or reality's structures is flouted. The existence of every millisecond of being and the existence of everything that exists within every millisecond is inseparable and absolutely intwertwined with and dependent on this intrinsic intelligence. This intrinsic intelligence doesn't enter the equation of reality accidentally somewhere down the line of existence. Every atom, every gas, everything that can explode leading to further refinements of structure, an explosion itself, time and existence itself are and can only be because of their being of an intelligent order.

That this intrinsic intelligence is unarguable and present at every point is perhaps best illustrated when we consider what the ground of intellectual analysis or penetration of any 'structure' is based on. In this sense of intellectual penetration of structure I am including phenomena from atomic particles to phenomena like gravity, light, sound, etc. And what this ground is from which intellectual vision proceeds is that the structure observed and analysed is of an intelligent order. If it were not intrinsically intelligent then the discoursing intellect could produce no results.

And so again is shown the falseness of the notion of accidental meaningfulness; there is no point where an observing intellect can declare that this meaningfulness is accidentally introduced into the system of life as there is not and cannot be any point at which the meaningfulness can be said to be absent. The entire basis of the intellect being able to state anything about any system is that of the system's being of an intelligent order; thus it can meaningfully yield meaningful statements. If a system were declared devoid of intelligence, well then it could not be a system in the first place and so the statement self-contradictory.

 Thus anyway, all in all, the obvious truth of WIlliam Blake's line: "Everything that lives is holy" - holy here in an intellectual sense being life's unarguable nature as being intrinsically significant at every point of itself.

[This is all a bit dashed off & lacking in elegance but twill have to do for now.]

Sign

A travelling man came to a sign which said 'Beyond this point you may not go', and so what did he do but he didn't - go that is, beyond.
"'What was there to stop him going beyond?"
 The sign.
"That's all, just the sign, nothing more?"
No, nothing else, just the sign.

Creature

"There was a creature . . . "
"Night or day?"
"Hmm?"
"A creature of the night or of the day?"
"Both."
"God help him."

bluewhite

Life and Meaning

Every structure that exists is intrinsically of an intelligent order - if it weren't internally intelligent it wouldn't cohere as a living structure. The fact of its existence, be it an atom, a stone, a bird, insect, human, etc. is absolutely dependent on its being intelligent and in itself so, one would imagine, meaningful.

But what are people generally talking about, or think they are talking about regarding life’s 'meaningfulness ' or ‘meaninglessness’?  If 'meaningful' were to signify being possessed of intrinsic intelligence and so internally significant, then every structure, as said above, is in itself meaningful - the fact of its existence inseparable from its internal meaningfulness. Is it so instead the attempt to say there is a greater purpose beyond these things themselves?

The talk of life's meaninglessness seems based on the assumed absence of God, and in this absence life's coherent, intellectually sound structures are then senselessly declared meaningless. Identically life's meaningfulness tends to be seen in terms of the presence of God, and the meaning of life's structures resides in their connection to this external element. 

This is all the opposite of true existentialism; rather than being appreciated as internally meaningful structures, the  meaningfulness of these living elements is perceived as external to themselves and instead dependent on their connection to an absolute, external to life - God.

When using language as an intellectual truth-tool, if that language is to produce the correct results, then it must be used properly, not in a self-contradictory manner. And so it makes no sense to introduce within intellectual discourse elements within life that are external to life. This can only falsify life. Life is what is, and if God is, then God is inseparable from life, or what is. To say that God is external to life and what is is to say that God, being not part of what is, is not, and so does not exist. If something isn't part of what is, then it is part of what isn't! which is to say there is no 'it' to speak of.

So to talk of God or anything as outside of life is senseless language, and so the notion of life's meaning as being dependent on its connection to something external to life is impossible to sustain. This is not all though to say God does not exist, but to treat God as an object of intellectual discourse is necessarily to falsify such an absolute. Firstly as shown above, God cannot be treated as external to what is, and secondly, God cannot be treated as an element within life; this is the attempt to turn an absolute into a relative, i.e. God has somehow become submerged within God's creation, and so is another object of creation and a lesser being than life.

So on an intellectual level is seen the logical coherence of all the genuine religious stressing that God is only to be met with in silence. Language necessarily cannot cross the divide to the absolute, and to think otherwise ends, either by falsifying the absolute, ending in a false, relative concept of God, or in the declaration of God's non-existence; or the two simultaneously, i.e. declaring the false concept to be the nature of God, and then going on to say that this falsified notion of the divine does not exist. It is again an instance of Wittgenstein's line, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...."

Repeating myself: instead of this 'meaningfulness' external to a living structure, every living structure is a living structure because of its cohering as an intelligent structure, and one does not need to go beyond this existential state to adjudge its meaningfulness. It is in itself meaningful. Consider a crossword puzzle. There is no need when concerning oneself with solving a puzzle to trouble oneself with the historical matter of the author compiling the puzzle as if this were the essence of the matter; instead the puzzle is treated existentially, i.e. one takes as a given the 'intelligence' of the puzzle, considers the given clues and that is all.

We could imagine a sect of puzzle addicts who take to arguing that the puzzles are 'accidentally intelligent'; that given the existence somehow or other of the letters, these letters through some mysterious (but senseless!) compulsion towards order arrange themselves in haphazard sequences, and so on till we end up with these puzzles before us. The puzzles are intelligent structures, it is, as it must be, admitted, but this intelligence is claimed to be 'accidental', and so the puzzles, while genuinely meaningful, are still declared to be ultimately meaningless.

This is all utter nonsense not primarily because of the ludicrous nature of the theory but in its failure to appreciate or understand reality in the flesh, that is, existentially. Accidental significance or meaningfulness is a false category; something either is or isn't of an intelligent order. That a puzzle works is dependent on the fact that it is intelligent and meaningful. If the clues and answers didn't match up then it would not be an intelligent structure, and so wouldn't in truth exist as a puzzle. For instance, a clue went: "Four-legged animal that barks/ Man's best friend' - but the desired answer was Worm, then this would be senseless. Contrarily any structure that truly is must be internally intelligent and meaningful - its meaning being itself. And as an extension of this, a human being is a living structure of more internal intelligence and significance than an amoeba, and within the domain of humans, the consciousness of a Leonardo da Vinci, certainly within certain fields, is far more internally significant than that of an average person. Also a great work of art, say Hamlet, is a structure of immeasurably more internal significance than, for example, Police Academy 6.

But to look closer at this word 'meaning' and its extensions of 'meaningfulness' and 'meaninglessness'. What is it to say something has meaning? It is to say it means something else. The meaning of someone's strange, tetchy behaviour may be that for whatever reasons he or she is enduring a period of extreme stress. To go back to the crossword puzzle: the clues have a meaning, the meaning being the correct answer. Essentially the clues are questions with single implied answers. So the clue's meaning is equivalent to itself but perhaps in more succinct form.

Meaning so is a matter of language; it is a linguistic equivalent to something else. Words mean something - they are purely intellectual entities with reference to a combination of objects of external perception and invisible inner realities. The word 'sun' without a sun to which it refers wouldn't exist in that sense, though it might exist as a word referring to something else. 'Happy' refers to an inner state, and so on. Language can become much more apparently subtle than when not concerned with matters of 'external reality', but the words still always can only maintain their nature as signifiers. Words mean things, they are not autonomous structures. One could say that a colour or sound is sufficient to itself, doesn't refer to something else, but not language. Take a word from a dead language, or written words seen by a baby - here the words do not exist in an intellectual sense, for the baby simply part of the visual field. This again shows how language must by its very nature be insufficient to experience reality in an absolute, naked or ultimate sense; language by its nature must be at a remove from it. And so again one is led back to the importance of silence and intellectual humility. This is very different by the way from saying that language is a flawed tool. It is if used rightly a prefect tool or instrument, but even still it is what it is - a world of symbols.

And back again to the notion of supposed question of whether life is possessed of meaning or not. Stressing that what tends to happen here is to leap to the imagined answers to the question without properly considering what actually is the question. This 'meaning' is to try and say that the living structures of life do not really in themselves matter, but that life means something else, and this meaning is its essence. As described, this something else external to life is a senseless concept. Even with mystical truth, this is still not external to life! (But to the reasoning intellect, of course it will due to the nature of language, remain external.) Then we have the very bizarre thought that with the tautologically inevitable failure of this Something Else apart from life to appear within life, life is declared to be without meaning.

The very wording of the question attempts to deprive life of internal existential significance. Life's significance is instead in its meaning something else. To look onwards a little, a meaning is a matter of words, an idea. And to take from an artistic piece I wrote previously Rooftop:

So the essence of all matter it seems is words, ideas. In the beginning was the word. Matter was behaving in such and such a manner because it was conforming to an idea which was the truth of the matter. But what is an idea but words in someone’s head and words in someone’s head is a very recent phenomenon, so in whose head were these words to which matter was conforming before there were any words? A mystery.

So anyway, interest flagging, the notion again of life's meaning is to say that life's entities are not possessed of primary reality in themselves but that instead they have to be judged according to their meaning something else, some kind of ultimate language equivalent - this being the nature of a meaning, it is a matter of words. But as shown this is self-contradictory as the primary reality is necessarily at a remove from the symbol world of language. As for the idea that the meaning equivalent of life is that it is without meaning! This is simply laughable. Well if this is its meaning - that it is meaningless - then naturally it is not deprived of but possessed of a meaning, and so its meaninglessness a self-contradictory notion.

Enough.

innoughsccent

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Dimensions

"Congratulations sir, you are the father of a beautiful healthy boy."
"What are the dimensions?"
"Sorry?"
"The dimensions! the dimensions! I must know the dimensions of the boy-child!"
"Oh sorry, you mean his weight?"
"And the length!"

Encasement

A universe, all of it, was encased in glass. However, those dwelling within a certain world within this universe did not know they were so encased for the glass was perfectly transparent and gave away at a distance nothing of itself. If they had been less unaware, who knows, they might have been blissfully so.

“In glass? Wonderful!”

But if over time, gathering dust and various wandering rubbish to itself, the glass becoming muddied and the universe within compelled to become dimmer, would the inhabitants begin to guess at all the glass? “The light is fading,” some wail. “We must be displeasing the gods!” Others: “We are polluting the atmosphere,” whilst others again, thoughtful, deduce the sun to be consuming itself, drawing low on its own reserves, and so this fading a precursor, in itself harmless, of the real disaster to come.

But it's much more likely I suppose that instead this dimming, if there was any dimming, would be both so slow and so faint as to go altogether unnoticed.

Something though that didn't go so unnoticed was the appearance of a crack in the glass. Why a crack? Because a stone had been thrown from somewhere effecting this crack. Thrown from inside or outside? Outside. The glass was of a scale that anything hitting it from the inside would have been far too weak to have caused a scratch, never mind a crack, and so it must be from the outside it came.

And so a stone was thrown, accidentally or malignantly, or maybe just unconsciously, that is inanimately, an unthinking movement of unthinking matter, and regardless, however, a great big crack appeared, clearly visible from all points within the glass, or at least visible whenever and wherever whoever was looking from was immersed in night and the crack above unobscured by clouds, and so, whatever the source, shafts of light could be seen striking the edges of the crack, creating an incredible, fearful, even mystical effect.

And with this immense, obscure appearance across the night sky, confusion, terror, people on their knees, floods of prayers sent into the void, and amongst whatever else, a great rush to interpret the appearance, but none in their interpreting proving inspired enough to surmise either glass or crack.

“My God! What is it?”
“Nothing to worry about. Something to do with the sky.”

One of the less impressive offerings. And so anyway, there it was, this wild, jagged line, unexplained across the heavens. “Heavens”, by the way, was enjoying a renaissance, and you could even, if you wished, make a case for now dividing people into two halves; one for those still using the prosaic “sky” when talking of such, and the other for those now saying “heavens” when talking of same - this use maybe natural or innocent at first, but pointedly soon enough after, autobiographical. There were also though a few of what you might call agnostics, who found themselves in the awkward position of not knowing what word to use, the use of either seeming to place you firmly within one of the two camps, and so they tried to intersperse both equally, but rather than being applauded for their delicacy, they ended up more or less just annoying everyone.

So the archaic style was back, portentous and poetical; in some hands serious, unforced; in others a fashion accessory; perhaps in others again sarcastic - even if this sarcasm might now seem a bit unsure of itself. Phrases like, “The starry vault has been sundered,” became almost a commonplace; things you might hear, never mind behind closed doors, out on the street in the middle of the day.

The likes of Nostradamus was poured over; lines produced, discussed, even thought about; perhaps the biggest fuss made over the following:

A jug spills, milk disappears.
A horseman descends, fearsome and hungry.

Whatever about the Frenchman's disappearing milk and descending horseman, that this was the kind of thing you could now mention in normal life without fear, or much of it, of being thought mad was, you could say, an emblem of the times, the times distilled.

And so now, on the cusp of these strange times, there they were, waiting.

But what happened in time with this waiting but more or less nothing - no Apocalypse, no dawning New Age, as said - nothing. And back out from the shadows began to emerge the sarcastic, slowly at first and looking about them, but then, growing more and more sure of themselves, in a surging rush. “Go on with your Apocalypse!” they jeered, and began, with an awful lot of noise, to enjoy themselves. Whether there was really any enjoyment at the other end of all the noise I can't really say, maybe just a lot of noise signifying enjoyment; but that's the theory anyway: In the absence of an apocalypse you enjoy yourself. There may have been some still waiting, but if they were, they were keeping their waiting to themselves.

So a return to something like normality; the crack becoming part of the furniture, no longer so novel, soon to be not novel at all; its prolonged existence proof of its banality. Relief, disappointment, a sense of futility and emptiness - all mingled. The coming time hadn't come, the great harbinger had foretold nothing, and the archaic style faded back away. You might still hear something like “The starry vault has been sundered,” but this time in a certain tone, followed by laughter.

Interpretations became more a matter of idle intellectual musing than apocalyptic sooth-saying; money still being poured into scientific alleyways, the crack had become, one was given to understand, the personal property of the learned, debated in smooth, antiseptic tones, and in a leisurely manner. It was, they might concede, yes, for now, genuinely quite interesting; a bit of an anomaly, but we had all the time in the world and there was nothing particularly at stake - or if you like there was something very particular at stake, the anomaly bit, but it would soon be an anomaly no more and no rush about it.

From those exalted and intellectual quarters, stern or amused looks arrowed themselves downwards now towards any remarks about the crack rising up from regions beneath. If someone from below had for instance insisted on the great thing across the sky's still being a deep mystery and was honoured enough to receive in response to these words other words coming back down rather than just a descending look, those words would probably go something like: “A mystery? Only because we don't yet know what it is.” If this someone beneath were stupid enough to persist with his mystery, not realising he'd been crushed, he would probably find himself enclosed in a silence hard to get out of.

And so, all in all, the crack in the distant glass still a riddle, but people a lot less concerned. Many disappointed, many not; tension eased but things a bit boring.

This relaxing of tension was dealt a very cruel blow though when another stone struck the outside of the glass, sending another, but this time far larger, crack scything across the surface. If in their observing our people had been anywhere near the glass, they would have experienced a sharp, very audible crack more or less simultaneous to the appearance of the visual one, but being so far away they didn't. Light informed them of the frightening event long before any revealing noise, but the noise didn't just lie down, and instead rumbled its immense way across space, gaining if anything it seemed rather than losing in mass, before finally rolling hugely over the humble world, flattening all other sound and terrifying everything upon it evolved enough to have got as far as experiences like terror. And, as if this weren't enough, as the huge roar slowly moved off on its way, fading at last to a low rumble, up struck across the continents a chorus of howling dogs, accompanied in places by howls more primal and awful again, human ones, pouring themselves out of abysses deeper than history - pardon the poetics.

When terror subsided enough to allow thought pour back in they tried to make sense of what had happened, to fit it into some conceivable map of existence; many even still in spite of all hoping this map could somehow be a reassuring one. Even the cynics though were shaken very deep.

“Now this is serious.”
“Yes, this time it really is serious.”
“I thought it was serious the first time.”
“But” — some other exchange — “you don't think it could have been some kind of thunder?”
“Thunder? That was no thunder.”

And so religion on the rise again, more floods of prayers, a sense of impending doom, some souls strangely exhilarated, more terrified, some few even trying to let on to be amused by it all - the cracks, the noise, the howls, the terror - but these efforts now all too obviously strained, and inclined more towards the hysterical in the mad sense than the humorous.

“Who knows what will happen next — the sun might explode.”
“Still, we might get a tan. Ha ha!”

And still they hadn't figured out they were encased in glass. But then another stone struck the outside of the glass, and this time the glass shattered outright; great shards descend upon the formerly enclosed spaces, sending everything - suns, moons, planets - that they smash into flying; and finally, the shards descending, the now horrifying, previously harmless truth of the universe's crystal encasement begins to dawn.

And . . . Apocalypse? But the strange truth is, no matter how doomed our planet appeared, however certain various collisions appeared, it defied perhaps all logic and escaped without a scratch. All shards and splinters passed it by.

And so, the danger passed, aware at last they had been encased in glass, they were encased no more.

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Charcoal Unfinished

The Twentieth Century

"The twentieth century . . . "
"What about it?"
"I don't think much of it."
"But two world wars! . . . "
"I didn't think much of them."
"The Wall Street Crash?!"
"I didn't think much of that either."
"You're a hard man to please."

Schrodinger's Cat 'Paradox'

For some reason the thought-piece known as Schrodinger's Cat came to mind last night, and  and with just about enough interest to set to virtual ink the arising thoughts, here I go. I have no knowledge of the scientific background that brought the idea into existence in the first place, and if you want to familiarise yourself with it that's up to you, but for all that's really necessary here I've copied the following from elsewhere:

The Schrödingers cat consists of a cat in a box. The Schrödingers cat paradox is based around two events and a state.

The first event is a random event. This is the release of a poisonous gas by a radioactive particle, which will kill the cat.

The second event is an observer who will look inside the box.
The state considered is the state of the cat: live or dead. The paradox is: the cat is only in a particular state after "you" have opened the box and looked inside. Before that moment the cat is not in one or the other state.
 
So it seems to be saying that the act of human observation creates or is alleged to create the inner state of the observed creature, and prior to the act of human observation the cat is in a state of unreality or perhaps two mutually contradictory states simultaneously.

The essence of all the confusion here is all a matter of bad language, and comparable to an earlier post Russell, Berkeley, There is a House. There I looked at a thought, or attempted thought, of Bertrand Russell:
 
'"There is a house which noone perceives." Whether this proposition is true or false, I do not know; but I am sure that it cannot be shown to be self-contradictory.'

So here it is stated as an objective fact that there is a house which exists but is unperceived. This, to emphasise, is stated as a fact, not as a possibility. And for it to be declared a fact it must be known to be so, and how is the existence of this house known to be a fact but only through observation. Without this observation or perception it cannot be a known fact. And so it makes no sense to say there is a house which is unperceived. To assert that the house is is to say it is a fact based on observation; so by stating that there is a house that is not perceived, one is stating as a fact that which one is simultaneously stating cannot be a known fact.'

So the essence of the above is that one cannot make statements of fact about unobserved phenomena. If I put a coin in a drawer of some piece of furniture, the Schrodinger's Cat variation is to say that the coin both is and isn't in a state of existence within the drawer until the drawer is again opened and there it is, or less likely, isn't. This though is parallel to the Russell piece above. There is a famous line by Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...." and this is the problem here. One cannot legitimately talk of the unobserved phenomenon in terms of fact or precise argument. One has denied oneself the necessary act of observation but instead of shutting up about the unobserved, as one must do, one talks on about the coin being in some twilight zone of existence until the drawer is opened. I am not, in terms of absolute logic, at liberty to say anything about it and my theorising about the cat or coin is worthless.

With the coin in the drawer, which is perhaps a much better and simpler case than the needlessly complex cat notion, one might speak as following: I put it in the drawer, I do not take it out, I later open the drawer, there is the coin. So it might be claimed I knew all along it was in the drawer, and there was no increase in knowledge when the drawer was opened and there it was. I merely continue to know what I knew all along: ie that the coin was in the drawer. 

However this is never a matter of knowledge. I may have left the room whereupon someone quickly steals in and takes the coin, and so when I open the drawer the coin is no more there. Then again that someone may five minutes after taking it have replaced it and so when I re-open the drawer and there it is, in truth it was not there all along despite my imagining.

 If I do not leave the room perhaps it slips down some crack in the drawer and so despite my certainty it remains in the drawer it has departed. When I re-open the drawer when a coin is there where expected perhaps it is a different coin. Perhaps there is a secret panel enabling someone access to the drawer. . . . 

And so on.  One can say whatever one likes about what is going on in the unobserved drawer, for example that the coin has been transformed into a goose and then just before the drawer is opened it transforms back: all such statements about the unobserved coin are equally valid in the sense of being equally worthless - stressing that this is language being used in a scientific or absolute intellectual sense rather than an everyday one.

So in essence, I am not in a position to say anything as a matter of truth about the unobserved phenomena, and this talking of the cat or coin as being in this or that state of existence is all a matter of illegitimate language; illegitimate because one cannot attempt to make statements of fact whilst simultaneously denying nseself the necessary foundation to make such statements. There is no paradox with Schrodinger's Cat. It is not a case of creating the state of existence of the observed phenomena; it is merely that with the renewing of observation upon looking into the box or opening of the drawer one is now in a position where definite statements are again permitted one. One is now again in a state of certainty regarding the observed phenomenon, and the 'paradox' amounts to having not accepted the fact of being in a state of uncertainty when this was the only legitimate intellectual position - instead waffling on about what may be going on in the unobserved box.


To add: in my 2 minute reseach into Schrodinger's Cat I saw that Schrodinger intended his piece as a Reductio ad absurdum; i.e. form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence. And so Schrodinger is alleged to be disproving whatever the relevant theory because of the absurd implications. This however seems to me utterly inadequate, and that the final arrival point of an argument leads to a destination one finds untenable is in itself no disproof. This is an example of the appalling vista argument - whether the phrase is simply my own or in use I'm not sure - but in short Schrodinger's thought piece, even if its logic made sense, which it doesn't, despite perhaps his imagining, disproves nothing. All he does is to take the presumed logic of some theory and alleges it shows it to have very odd implications.

A further look at Schrodinger's idea-piece here.

Science & Language

Science, in all its manifestations, is not an autonomous or 'pure' discipline, but is encompassed within, or is a branch of Language. This can't be stressed enough though prior to this I'm not sure it's been stressed at all. What science, or true science, consists of is true language statements, and so the first principle of science is the innate and intrinsic meaningfulness of correct language; and science in all its applications also demonstrably shows the intrinsic truth and power of correct language, while also emphasising the absolute necessity of the language's correctness and precision.

 'Meaning' never soars free from the language, contrary to what seems to be often imagined in the field of language termed philosophy, as shown for example in this look at the notion of Eternal Recurrence. Again to stress, philosophy, like science, and as with all language disciplines - history, etc, is existentially a matter of language.

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Genius

"There was this genius - "
"Oh great, I love geniuses."
"You're in luck so. So anyway, there was this genius and he - "
"Does he have to be a genius?"
"Sorry?"
"Why can't he just be an ordinary person?"
"I thought you loved geniuses."
"You can have enough of them."
"Well he was a genius because being one that's who he was."
"Right so, right so. Go on."
"There was this genius - "
"Just to say this is really good stuff."

'Abstract Art' Considered

According to Wikipedia, "In 1913 the poet Guillaume Appollinaire named the work of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Orphism. He defined it as, the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art."

So the notion is of an art abstracted from the world of reality, and in the process becoming pure. To look at the logic of this: what are these art works composed of in the most existential form - ie what are the artistic materials themselves? On paper or canvas or wooden board, etc, which is to say elements of the world of reality, are pressed colours or charcoal or inks etc , again extracted from the world of external reality. So on this most existential and fundamental level 'abstract art' as a philosophical concept is nonsensical.
Beyond this, has the artist somehow conjured up of himself the world of colour? Obviously not.And how specifically are these the images of this 'abstract art' unrelated to sense perception? Does the artist enforce a kind of self-lobotomising where he forgets the existence of forms like circles in nature or all the rectangles and various lines and shapes he has witnessed in his life?

The use of the phrase "pure art" is interesting here, in that music is seen as this pure abstracted realm towards which the other arts enviously aspire. This all relates to this post where I write of Plato's basically gnostic attraction towards the notion of the void as reality in its purest form:

The Greek void by contrast (to the void of Eastern philosophy) is specifically a language form, an intellectual creation or form, and revels in the fact of its existence as such. Why are the likes of Plato drawn to this concept of the void as an absolute - the thought which sits atop all other thoughts, the ascendant within the mental hierarchy? It is because, as said, the world of the senses has been decided to be unreal - this in itself of course an idea - and so what is most real should partake least of all of the sensory world, and what partakes least of all being apparently an idea. Ideas are stated to be the purest of substances, and the most pure of these substances is an idea which is utterly self-referential and distinct from the debased world of external reality. And so the void: a pure self-contained idea without reference to the debased world of sense perception. Hence through the ages, and still, the exaltation of the imagined holy landscape of Pure Reason.

And so the exaltation and attraction of the senseless concept of Abstract Art as a pure art, having supposedly escaped the world of impure matter. This pessimistic gnosticism - in its damning sense of physical reality might be imagined, by those relative few who even know of it, as an ancient way of thinking, long irrelevant, an intellectual fossil, but it is the essence of modern material atheism, where reality is asserted to be meaningless, ie fallen, but now unlike the gnostics there is no escape route from its hostile clutches, though tellingly with the same emphasis on Reason as Plato in his 'intellectual' version of pessimistic gnosticism - not of course that emphasising reason is in any way a guarantee that one's own 'reasoning' is anything but facile.

Titled

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Banal But Persistent

Yes, they were banal, but in fairness to them they were persistent.
"But mightn't their persistence have been just another attribute of their banality?"
Yes maybe, but still,  you have to be fair.

b&w

intersection

Art Perception

Static two-dimensional pictorial art - traditional drawing and painting - is the only art where the whole can be perceived in a single, simultaneous  act of perception. With literature the mind scans along some point within the whole, as with music, film, theatre, ballet, etc. The act of perception with those forms is time-bound or related. They could be likened to streams progressing from A, the start, to B, the finish, and both the piece and one's mind are progressing together along the journey. Perhaps one can form some kind of inchoate sense of the total form after the event, a bird's eye view of the whole, but this is obviously not a direct act of perception. With these time forms all kinds of digressions are possible to the artist,  harmful or not to the unity of the whole. but with the traditional pictorial forms, since the whole can be perceived simultaneously a greater rigidity is required, there is more absolute necessity for unity. Just to add that this simultaneity of perception of the whole is no longer there when the viewer focuses in on certain details and, because of the nature of perception, attention is now centred on aspects of the whole. In the creative process this focusing on details is where the artist may lose himself in 'digressions' - at the more obvious levels, say very intricately painting an eye but not standing back from his work to see that that eye is not positioned correctly.

That the static visual  forms may be perceived directly as a whole is not meant as a value judgement - it is simply the way things are, though there is certainly an aesthetically satisfying aspect to this. Just to mention that the three-dimensional forms of sculpture do not quite exist in the same simultaneous way as objects of perception as naturally if one is looking at the front of a piece one cannot simultaneously be looking at the back of it.

Language and Life

As written previously on the nature of language, the meaningfulness of this language if correctly used is inescapable, and to even attempt to question this involves the acceptance that the language used in the questioning is a meaningful act, and so to question language's meaningfulness is a self-contradictory, false and impossible act. This is in the same sense that to involve oneself in mathematics inescapably rests on the intrinsic truthfulness of the language of mathematics.

It would be wrong so imagine that this meaningfulness of language is at any point a subject of debate, a rational truth towards which one reasons, and once if successfully done, the point from which one can then meaningfully proceed with further reasoning. One doesn't need nor ever needed to prove mathematics to be true before engaging in it; instead its meaningfulness is an inescapable given, and it is the same with this language of words. The argument as to its meaningfulness has already proceeded as a matter of course from the imagined conclusion, that is, its meaningfulness.

It might be argued that language is true because it mirrors external life. To look at a case of a farmer with two fields in which are cows. In the first field are 35 cows, in the second 42. If all those from the second are brought into the first, one knows for certain if no cows have been added to or departed from their fields, that there are now 77 cows in that field - as a matter of language, one comes to this conclusion, since 35 added to 42 comes to 77. To stress also that this truth is not a servile but an autonomous one, by which I mean it is not some historical matter of observed truth that 35 and 42 are 77, and we then proceed into future time with this realised. Instead it is purely a matter of language. Language needs no observation of external reality to make such deductions; instead such truths are embedded within language. People might balk at this as mystical, but that would be because they are at odds with the intrinsic meaningfulness of life, have painted themselves into some false corner.

So the internal laws of language reveal this unquestionable truth, and if subsquent to this mental arithmetic the slightly sceptical farmer, to be asbsolutely sure, then counts all the cattle, the pleasing truth that external observation and logical deduction will be seen to correspond perfectly. Language and 'external truth' correspond as a matter of course. In this above instance though things are perhaps a little subtler than superficially appears, as the 'observed truths' of there being 35 and 42 cows are themselves matters of language before any arithmetic occurs. Obviously perception is the first mover of this process but to count to 35 is itself a linguistic matter. Perception is not able to stand alone in the matter of any observed truths. Language is always involved in matters that end in linguistic statements!

As a general and absolute principle, the perfect correspondence or co-existence of properly functioning language and life is not an idea regarding which one has an opinion. It is not up for debate, the same as it is intellectually impermissible to question 2+2=4.  Any engagement in language, such as the attempted cannot but accept itself as a meaningful act within life. As I wrote here "The position of Doubt is a nihilistic intellectual proposition in the true sense, within the framework of which one cannot grant oneself the liberty of believing language to be real and intrinsically meaningful. And so, within this framework of doubt the question of doubt cannot be asked, as to ask the question requires an acceptance of the very reality or meaningfulness of language which Doubt, if true to itself, must doubt. And so, since the question of doubt cannot be formed, then doubt cannot exist, as doubt requires a mind utilising language so as to doubt."

The mathematical scenario with the cows is a very simple and clear example of this correspondence of language and truth, but this correspondence extends without limits, though of course with absolute dependence on the correctness of the language. Again to illustrate using mathematics, this world of numbers 'invented' in and by our minds, at no matter how seemingly abstract and complex the levels, always corresponds to internal truths of the external world. And why? Because life is not self-contradictory but intelligent, and seamlessly so. And this is where the relationship of life and language begins to deepen. This language of words is far subtler than the mathematical one, but if correctly used it will inescapably correspond to some truth of life. Though on the one hand language can be autonomous, self-sufficient as a truth-tool, it does not exist autonomously; that is, language dwells in life and without life naturally there would be no language.

However, a rampant mistake is to talk of life, or reality, and language as distinct.  Reality is all that exists within itself, and in fact there is no within itself - what is 'within reality' is reality. And so language as dwelling within reality is inescapably part of reality, and thus the perfect correspondence of the two, if correctly used - for language is apparently capable of error and so creating illusory 'realities', things that seem to be but are not, even if believed by any numbers of people. Also, pedantic as it might superficially seem, 'reality' or 'life' are themselves words, and one cannot talk of these as though they were not words, nor pretend that the total realities to which such all-inclusive words like 'life' referred even somehow excluded those words as comprising inseparable aspects of those realities. There is no life existing independently of language, the same as there is no life independent of anything that forms part of the whole that is life, including for example the glass near my hand, or my hand or you yourself. To talk of life as though it did exist separately of the words being used to talk of it is meaningless language, where the integral relationship of words and that to which they refer has broken down, and one is merely left with linguistic unreal illusion.

So language and life are not distinct from each other, in fact there is no 'and' about it. Instead language - mathematical and linguisic - are extensions and deepenings of that life, and thus the lack of inner contradiction between them. Language does not dwell in some compartment apart!

Headache

"To have a headache a man must have a head. Am I right?"
"Certainly."

Trapdoors

Trapdoors, the place was full of trapdoors; and the funny thing was that even after placing oneself unfortunately right  above one of these trapdoors and the trapdoor swinging open and down one going, one didn't even notice it had opened nor down which the going. And as for the odd and unpleasant place one had gone and ended up . . . one didn't seem to notice that either.

slowtocomeout

Art

"Tell us about your art."
"They're pictures that you look at."
"But what are they about?"
"Themselves."

grass

Had Nothing

He had nothing to say and so -
- He said nothing?
No, he never shut up.,

redye

On the March

"They were on the march again."
"Again?! They'd never stopped."
"True, but now they were visible in their marching."
"Visible? They were always visible."
"Yes, but now they were more visible."
"And where were they off to this time?"
"The same place as always."

face

Any Good

"Someone else's words - what good are they? No good."
"Well what about your own words? Are they any good?"
"No, they're no good either."

textured

andagain

lotsofred

Undone

THe Less

"The less you have to do, the less likely you are to do it."
"Why is that?"
"Mathematics."

A and B

A man was in the habit of travelling from A to B. A little later he would follow this by coming back. Time spent in A, then back to B, and so on.The pauses between movement varied a little but not greatly, as did the durations of travelling between each. If when on the journey the man was asked where he was, say he'd been phoned by his wife, he would promptly respond, 'I am between A and B', or if on the return journey, 'I am between B and A.' Where on the journey he might be was irrelevant, near the start or finish, the answer would always be the same: between one point and the other. If his wife rang when he had arrived at B, 'I am at B' is what he would happily inform.

One day he set out from A, informed his wife along the way where he was - between A and B - but when he got to the place where B always was there was no B. B and the place had of course been inseparable, one and the same, but now there was only the place, though in the absence of B you could hardly recognise it, and with the difficulty in recognising this was the unconvincing solace he tried to offer himself, that he wasn't in the right place, and B was in truth somewhere else around, in the spot it always was. His wife called in the midst of all his perplexity - 'Where are you now?' she asking, but there was no response. From his end just quietness. Baffling.

Though he wandered on and around, hoping that he had indeed somehow erred, there was no mistake and B failed or refused to surface. Finally and disconsolately he turned to return to A. Again while in transit his wife rang, asking the usual question on the way but again, stymied presumably by the impossibility of telling her he was between B and A, she met with silence. He did though, to her relief and perhaps his, arrive home, and the first thing he did upon entering was to say, was it with a little defiance and without his customary lightness of tone, 'I am in A!' He knew, whatever you tried to claim, exactly where he was. He hadn't even been asked.

Full Stop

A man reached a full stop. 'And what did he do when he got there?' He stopped, what else could he do. 'He might have tried to climb over it.' No,there was no climbing over. He accepted it.

unbroken

Generous

They were very generous: they ascribed greatness to those they perceived as precursors to themselves. They had shown, those precious few and however dimly, the way.

Vacuum

He imagined he lived in a vacuum, but it turned out, and of course, that he didn't..

onwords

Square

A square.
'And inside the square a circle?'
No, no circle.

scratched

Sticks

A long path led away from the town and up a steep climb; not the most well-trodden of paths especially the further it went, but still far from unwalked. It continued on up to the top of the climb and, while the path became fainter and fainter as the climb progressed, its existence could still be discerned, even if fading as it progressed to little more than the steps themselves - that is the steps and path became one and the same.

A man appeared in the town, seemingly more used to urban living, not the most physically imposing or impressive, glasses beneath which greedy, bird-like eyes darting about him. He had a kind of carnivorous look of trying to extract some inner marrow of whoever he was talking to, though given the nature of himself and his staccato, disconnected attempts at conversing, I don’t think he was having much success with the locals in that line, though you never know, maybe he was penetrating them to the core.

He came across the path one day, by chance or however, and it seemed he grew very excited by it. He was soon to be seen coming and going from the town, and on his goings carrying bundles of long pointed sticks, atop of which he had managed to tie flags, and it turned out he was sticking these flagged sticks into the ground at regular intervals, or at least what was probably meant to be regular intervals, up along the ascending path. Back he would come to the town and then away again with another bundle atop his obedient if not very sturdy back. He had the look, it was said, all this time of someone who’d been awaiting all his life for something special, some great moment, and now it had arrived, and so now there he was merging with it for all he was worth.

With word of what he was doing when I next went along that walk I expected to see it indented from start to finish with his flagged sticks, and indeed for some distance it was heavily scoured. The sticks though tended not to be much in the way of being particularly upright, instead at odd angles to each other creating a haphazard rhythm, while quite a few were already perilously close to toppling over outright and a few having already done so. At times the sticks departed the path and struck out at some tangent for a few yards before these digressions coming to abrupt halts, occasionally one or two sticks then making unconvincing looking efforts to bridge and rejoin the apparently re-found path a little further. Maybe he thought he was effecting some short-cuts or, unused to such uncivilized terrains, his eyes simply found it difficult at times, say of fading light, to discern what was path and what not.

At first the disfigured vista seemed to me a bit amusing but then I began to get annoyed at the thought and sight of this wild, quiet place being made look ridiculous, and by this stupid outsider - not that his being an outsider probably made any difference, though of course only an outsider would have behaved like this in the first place.

Walking on after a while just where the incline began to get a bit more serious I came an end of the sticks, and a few yards further on lay the very man, stretched out and gasping, still with a couple of sticks in the bundle tied to himself. I’m afraid he didn’t provoke much in the way of compassion in me, he’d be all right in a while, but I could hardly just walk on, much as I might have wished, and so having asked him was he all right, to which he was unable to reply, I stayed by him a bit, and with the help of a drink of water he slowly began to recover himself.

“Are you feeling better now?”
“I am improving. It is the same every time.”
”What is?”
”This is as far as my body goes. I cannot go myself any further. But you, you don’t think you could . . .”

In short what he was telling me, while not losing that greediness to his look though with now I thought an added tone of some secret comradeship, that his path-marking was coming up against something of a brick-wall and that being his body’s collapsing in exhaustion somewhere around this point. The walk was bad enough, but with the weight of the sticks added to the load . . . But me, might I not wish to involve myself, to mark out the rest of the path? … ‘I’m afraid not.’ He seemed to find this incomprehensible - not to be a colleague in this great work - but rather than explain myself,  I said good luck and headed off up the path.

I came across him similarly stretched out and gasping over the next few days, back or forward a few yards from the same point, but usually back a bit: the weight of the added sticks he’d added to his pile and having to carry the entire already attained distance presumably too much for him. He didn’t ask me again to help him, but added to his embittered looks me was some latent pleading along with, deeper again, some uncomprehending sense of betrayal, whatever mystery about which he must have thought we were in league.

I suppose you had to admire his efforts with these flagged sticks, at least in theory you did, but in practice to be honest I didn’t. He failed to ever manage to get much farther with his sticks along the path, and soon, these limits to his endurance unsurpassed, he disappeared altogether. In his absence quite a few more of his sticks he’d stuck in the ground toppled over.

It wasn't the end of things though and soon enough other men, diluted versions you could say of the first, began appearing. And why? To see The Sticks for themselves (their pronunciation somehow included the capitals). Sent on their way up the path, they were as excited about what they came across as the first man had been, and in their own ways turned out to be just as busy – this time not sticks but maps, measuring tapes, graphs, cameras . . . If in the midst of their activities someone happened to walk past them heading off up the incline, out past the limits of the sticks, these men wouldn’t it seemed even notice him. Even if said hello in passing he still wouldn't appear to register.

Their activities proved endless. You might think they’d soon enough exhaust all they could do but there was no end to distances and angles of and between sticks that could be measured. Incidentally any stick that in the meantime fell was left where it was and no more interest paid it.

As time went on the fame of the original man and his sticks, and some of the later men, grew and grew. No mention though ever seemed to be made of the path.

KLF

Madrugada Eternal Club Mix

And in its album form.

scrawled

Seated Venerables

As a child I was shown into a dimly lit room, where sat several elderly and unhealthy looking men in differing armchairs - some elegantly upholstered and in quite good condition, others threadbare, even if also perhaps at one time elegant.I was ushered in, in hushed voices, entrusted by my elders with the apparently important and honoured task of bringing these gentlemen – for men seems too prosaic – their afternoon coffees.

They were all silent; some reading, some writing - though doing more in the way of looking seriously at the facing page than actually writing, and some merely staring into space, whether purposefully or purposelessly I had no idea and, being a mere child, the purposefulness or lessness of adults' staring mightn’t have been the kind of thing to set me wondering.

I noticed a circumference of chalk around each armchair, and asked the adult accompanying me what was the chalk about. “If they rise and step beyond the chalk, then they will perish.” Why that might have been the case I didn't think to ask; I simply took it as truth, which maybe it was. There was space for the sitters to take about one step forward from the chairs before meeting these chalk boundaries. There were several strong types standing around on guard, and with these precautions I expected to see sudden stirrings, risings of these seated gents, and then these guards springing into action to offset calamity. However, though I came daily for quite a while, and though the guards were ever poised and alert, nothing remotely like that ever occurred. In fact, they hardly stirred an inch - little movements of hands and even less of heads the only contradictions to immobility. To be honest, never mind the guards, I don’t know why they even bothered with the chalk.

hierarchy

Was Out

The word was out. What word? I don't know, but whatever one it was, it was out.

3

Positive

"Have you anything positive to say?"
"Yes."

Cutting Edge

"And what do you think of him as a writer?"
"He's at the very cutting-edge of modern middle class art."
"You'd go as far as that?"
"I would."

This

This is irreducible.

Outside

They were outside but thought they were inside.
"How was that done? Mirrors is it?"
Yes, it might have involved mirrors.
"And an artificial roof - was there one of them involved too?"
There could have been.

There Was

There was a great darkness, and only those who entered this darkness got to traverse it and come out the other side - that is if there was an other side. Perhaps there was only darkness.
And then again there were some who even denied the darkness. "Darkness?!" they would exclaim, "there is no darkness. It's all well-lit."

Midgets

There was a room full of nervous and excited, or at least excitable, midgets. They kept jostling and bumping into each other, and there seemed a psychological mania - though perhaps all manias are psychological manias - for measuring each off against each other to see who was the taller. So, once a third party acceptable to both parties had been requisitioned, back to back two midgets would place themselves - not though that it could be in any way certain that they could be relied on to stand still long enough back to back to effect the measuring, and even when they could remain roughly in the appropriate geographical spot, the third party, whoever he may be, still had his work cut out, as each tended to engage himself, when that is a little restraint governed his behaviour, in thrusting a little skywards by means of standing on his toes, and when unrestrained, by positively hopping, constantly battling gravity in the attempt to prove the victor.

In the rare instances when a decision could, with alleged certainty, be offered by the third party, awarding the height advantage to one or the other, then accusations of partiality, stupidity, blindness, littered the air, shrill words would be sent hurtling back and forth; but soon enough the squabbling parties would find themselves split apart by the ceaseless movements of the wider buzzing throng, ensuring by a kind of accidental but certain logic that things never got too serious . . .  and so on things went.

Happily though, relations between the midgets weren’t always so, if not hostile at least, competitive. Sometimes two midgets would be arm in arm, even at times hand in hand, expressions of bliss across their slightly oversized faces; and, if one asked why the pleasing comradeship, they would be delighted to inform that "We are exactly the same size!" - perfect equals, and what’s more might be intimated, the greatest of equals. If one asked whether they had measured each other to ascertain whether this perfect equality was certain, the answer would be that no, there was no need. If one pushed the point and this equality were then ever put to the test, sadly, after initial laughter, the earlier described scenario would unfurl itself and the brief friendship dissolve.

An odd room, a bit exhausting after a while.

2 pieces

Education of a non-Revolutionary

I found this in a trunk somewhere, whoever its author is. But maybe its author in turn found it in another trunk somewhere else:

I am, in some manner, educated, but only in some manner, whatever manner that may be and, whatever manner it may be, I’m educated in it. Or at least they tried to educate me in it, to submit me to its rigours, but while I may not have kicked and screamed in revolt of it and its manner, I don’t think it would be much in the way of true to say I submitted myself to it. Maybe there was the vague appearance of submission, but only vague - not that there was even much if any of an attempt to impart this vagueness.

 No, there wasn’t really any genuine sense of submission; just the absence of any particularly pronounced appearance of revolt, which I suppose was worse again - I didn’t even care enough about it and its manner to bother revolting against it. They had nothing to grab hold of – submission or revolt, and so, naturally, animosity mounted. On their part that is. I didn't care enough to rise to animosity

 And who is it in any case needs to go making a drama of his lack of submission? Someone I suppose who needs to make a show of not submitting now so as to submit all the more later - the formalities completed, dignity intact, now we can proceed . . .

The young man revolting and the people trying to harness him and his revolts - they're intimately bound, you can be sure there's an affection in there somewhere, maybe even the most intense of ones. With me though there were no such bonds.

A Row of Steps

There was a row of steps which led upwards or downwards, depending on which way you looked at them, or which way you were going. If going upwards they led upwards, if downwards downwards. But the steps themselves of course didn't go anywhere. They were entirely stationary. It was merely the beings who used them who would be going up or down.
Though given the modern world, perhaps there should be no ‘of course’ about these steps' immobility. But anyway these were old-fashioned steps and didn't move about.

But these steps were not quite what one might wish them to be, for though they looked solid enough, as soon as one put one's foot on one it would begin to crumble, and so one would have to move quickly onto the next which in turn would behave in the same disintegratory manner, and so on and on one would be forced so as to avoid collapse with the crumbling rubble. So if you intend on going upwards, that is the direction you had better set out in, lest having gone for some reason downwards- perhaps on a whim - you find
between yourself and your destination only the memories of steps, as it were, rather than steps.

t would of course be much easier, in this absence of steps, to descend from above to below rather than ascend from below to above; descent merely involving a movement into freefall whilst ascent involving an altogether moreinvolved and arduous process, and the deeper the descent the more difficult the upwards journey becomes, perhaps even to the ultimate point of absolute impossibility.

Do the steps downwards and upwards continue infinitely or at last end in a final step which crumbles beneath one's weight?
I can't say as I know.

His Thoughts

His thoughts were apt to travel in a direction harmful to himself. Though someone else might wish to say that instead it was he who was apt to travel in directions harmful to his thoughts. But whichever, either way, it all amounted to pretty much the same, maybe even exactly the same.

Rooftop

People crawling up out of the chimney, then onto the roof, then sliding down it and off over the edge disappearing from view.
Followed by – a thud?
It would make sense, round things off nicely: over the edge, an interval, a thud - a succession of thuds rather, for there’s a constant supply of these people sliding off and over. So a thud, a scream, a moan - perhaps, but no such sounds reach my ears, but then again my hearing's not great and on top of that the wind is howling, and howling the wrong way, not that there’s a wrong way for the wind to howl, but the wind is carrying those sounds, if they exist, away from rather than towards me.

Is it the same people vanishing from view off over the edge making their way back up and crawling out again the chimney a little later?
It could be, but I’m at too great a distance to make out. They look all too alike from here.
But if they’re not the same, where could they all be coming from? It’s not as if it’s a particularly big house. Well maybe there’s a queue, a great big stream of individuals coming up from down the street, all very ordered and mannerly, all in a precise order, dignified, mathematical . . .
Or why not in an imprecise order? - people changing places, jostling for position, to get to the front of the line the quicker, or maybe to get to the back of the line so as to get to the front of the line the slower, if at all.

So voluntary or involuntary, a queue perhaps, that’s where they’re all coming from, these hordes spilling out the chimney - not that I'm in a position to know. Why not in a position to know? Because my view is restricted. I inhabit a point of perspective, and that point is up here amongst the rooftops, nestled as I am next to a chimney of my own, whatever the hell I’m supposed to be doing up here . . . observing I suppose. And unlike that distant chimney there’s smoke spilling out of this one. It’s nice and warm, despite all the cold and the wind. You can see why the likes of jackdaws are attracted to such spots.

What kind of chimney is it these people are crawling out of?
I see. Not why are they crawling up out of it and why sliding down off the roof, but ‘What kind of chimney is it?’ What a gift for the banal.
It’s a chimney big enough to crawl out of, that’s what kind of chimney it is, and other than that - ordinary. Maybe it’s ordinary even including that - it’s not the being able to crawl out of a chimney that’s unusual but the actual crawling out bit.

That may all well be but it’s vague – about the ordinariness or not of the chimney. What of the chimney besides which I am nestled: would one be able to crawl out of this chimney?
I won’t answer that. Why not? Because I’m in no position to go inferring general conclusions about chimneys based on the solitary one I happen to be nestled up against – whyever it is I’m nestled up against it. And so, rather than invite what may be utterly false inferences about chimneys, it’s better instead I just stay quiet.

‘But what kind of research is this? You go on talking about chimneys while knowing nothing about them, and what’s worse, the one you do know something about you refuse to talk about. You’re not serious at all.’
Well that’s just the way it is, and if it was research I was interested in why would I be up here amongst the rooftops? Admittedly I might be interested in researching chimneys and rooftops, but take it that I’m not. It’s bad enough being on a rooftop – not that it’s actually that bad – without being expected to do research.

But the stream of people so crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof – why?
We’re back to that again. If you really are demanding a why, I suppose I could falsify proceedings. In truth all I am in relation to these crawling and falling people is an eye. I see them in the not-so-great distance, and all that unites me to them is this eye. Seeing is the beginning and end of my knowing, but still, I do possess a brain – I could hardly be writing this otherwise, and what kind of seeing would I be doing if my brain didn’t register the seeing? - and so with this brain I could falsify proceedings; I could let on to be perfectly aware of all that’s going on with all these goings-on.

Like so: look out your window and see a woman passing by on the street below – assume a window, a street below and a woman passing by. That woman is a perfect stranger but you know all about her; where she’s going, why, when, all the details. But what if she doesn’t even know herself? She may be only walking into town on a whim, even if a daily whim, has no set plans, doesn’t know herself where she’ll end up. But you know – in advance. You’ll even provide a why, a why she couldn’t.

And so similarly I could let on to know all about these people coming out the chimney – they’re still coming by the way. I could falsify proceedings, provide an explanation . . . Not that this explanation need necessarily be false, it might coincide perfectly with the reality. I am very intelligent. Such an explanation shouldn’t prove too difficult.
 But if I’m so intelligent what am I doing up here on the rooftop? That could hardly be described as intelligent, could it?
- It’s not enough to look to provide a why for the people crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof, I have to provide one for myself too, do I?

And so why - not my why but their why. An account of the facts, and what matter as long as it’s an account, someway plausible. What is desired is certainty. One can proceed forward with certainty from certainty. One can’t proceed with certainty from uncertainty. There is some gaping void which we’ve been encircling and re-encircling with much anguish, asking only that we could close in this void, this absence, render it an absence no more, so we can step over it with confidence - with such confidence as to be altogether unconscious of this confidence, so certain are we that the ground beneath won’t give way with us disappearing unhappily into the void below.

Some brave souls, so they told us, crawled towards the edge of one such void, peered into it, crawled back again, stood up, felt dizzy, got back down again, crawled a bit further, dizziness subsided and away they rushed to tell us what they saw. “I crawled up to the edge, nearly, and I saw . . . nothing! It was extraordinary! I fled in terror.”

And so rather than such a void, an account of the facts. Why the crawling out the chimney, sliding down, falling off, disappearing, perhaps coming back again?

A why - is that the essence of the matter? Of any matter? This happened. Okay, of mild interest, but why did it happen? The crux of the issue. A why, or if not a why, a how. Provide one of the two and a void no more, the matter closed. If one wished one might put up some kind of plaque to commemorate the occasion: “On such-and-such a date, such-and-such a void was filled in. So-and-so did the filling in. This is what so-and-so did the filling in with” – the how or the why.

So the essence of all matter it seems is words, ideas. In the beginning was the word. Matter was behaving in such and such a manner because it was conforming to an idea which was the truth of the matter. But what is an idea but words in someone’s head and words in someone’s head is a very recent phenomenon, so in whose head were these words to which matter was conforming before there were any words? A mystery.

So anyway, men and women crawling out of that chimney on that rooftop over there, sliding down off it and disappearing from view. Why?

Why the disappearing? - because of the lines of vision open to myself up here by a different chimney, whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing up here. We can probably assume this is as far as disappearing went. Now for why the crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof bit. Not so mysterious as disappearing, if disappearing it was, but in all probability disappearing it wasn’t. The disappearing has been satisfactorily explained: lines and nature of vision. So the rest of it.

But isn’t it a good thing, before we get onto the rest of it bit, that they were sliding off the roof. Imagine if they weren’t. The roof would
be soon so crowded that they’d have to start sliding down off it anyway, willingly or unwillingly. Pushing and pulling, screeching and screaming, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Would the roof be able to take all that human weight?
One thing I can’t claim to be is an expert on the weight-bearing capacities of a distant roof in relation to ridiculous numbers of people perched atop itself. But anyway, we can with good reason divert ourselves from pondering the implications for this roof if they weren’t sliding down off it since they were and are sliding down off it, even now in the fading light.
They’re sliding down off it . . . with pleasure, in fear, trepidation, from a sense of duty, the fulfilling of some arcane purpose, a ritual, a blind urge, a desire not to be different, to follow the one in front, to display one’s community spirit, one’s lack of cowardice, one’s fearlessness with regard to heights, through some mass hypnosis . . . It could have been any of these, a mix of a few of them, many of them, all of them, none of them, something else altogether.

But I’m supposed to be offering a why, a rigid and specific why, not a whole host of possible whys, some perhaps more accurate than others. I claimed, I think, a while back, I could offer such a why, or a how or both, and how: by falsifying proceedings, by pretending to the possession of unpossessed knowledge. But I now see I can’t. Only the most flimsy why could I furnish, despite all the impressiveness of the foregoing. “Why the people crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof? Oh that. It’s an experiment. What kind of experiment? Oh emm . . . logistics.” I’d be a laughing stock. So no, I’d better return to the truth, the known truth.

With all this the extent of my knowing is limited to my seeing. I see them carrying on now as before, their visible forms dissolving in the ever more fading light. The wind is still howling. If they’re making any noise as they make their descent I still don’t hear it. It’s getting colder. I’m thankful for my warm chimney. Whether they’ll stop when the darkness has altogether conquered the light, I have no idea.

But then again only a fool infers a night has to equal impenetrable inky blackness. Maybe they’ll wait to see and assess the darkness as it happens:

“Not so dark, we’ll keep going.”
“Too dark, we’ll stop.”
“No such thing as too dark, we won’t stop.”

I’ll have to wait and see too – depending that is on the depth of darkness and my ability to see within it. If it’s too dark I won’t see regardless.
And what about my willingness to see? I might just have enough of being up here and come down myself.