Determinism, Sound

There is the notion, a rampant ideology even, that everything is determined. What does 'determined' mean here? That everything is determined by something else. Nothing stands alone. You could hear some sound, and that sound is, say, a bird singing. So then the proponent of the idea will say that the sound is determined by the existence of the bird and its biological capacities for making sound, and the existence of the bird is determined by the existence of reality, and reality is determined by ... what? How can it be determined by something other than itself, since itself, reality, what is real, is all that is. But ignoring that contradiction, this is determinism. Nothing is to be experienced as or in itself; its higher truth is that it has been determined by something else preceding it. And naturally with sound, it is true that something else is causing the sound, but just because something is causing it, what difference does that make? You might imagine yourself at a music concert, complaining that the music is determined by the sound-making capacities of the instruments, and so . . . So what? [ Though, and it would be too involved to go into now, I think it would be far better to say that musical sound in music, has been initiated or preceded by a physical instrument rather than 'determined' by it. ]

But allowing that sound is determined, or caused, and so this world of determinism holds true; and if it is to fully hold true then all must be able to be described as determined. Well, what about silence. Silence is not determined by anything other than itself. It is meaningless to try and assert that silence is determined by lack of sound, as lack of sound or lack of something doesn't exist, and so how can something that does exist, like silence, be determined by something that doesn't exist? So in silence is truth beyond determinism.

Though silence cannot be experienced as an idea but only as itself, and so it becomes clear how much of an enemy this silence is to to the likes of this determinism. For determinism, materialism, etc are creatures of language, thought; manifestations and lures of an atrophied, sickening state of consciousness, and their intellectually self-contradictory claims to life's 'meaninglessness' betray themselves as just such false manifestations. True thought is intrinsically & tautologically true and meaningful, so the very notion of life's being meaningless is a parody of thought. The word 'meaningless' means without meaning, and so if life is without meaning, then it contains no meaningful statements about life, and so cannot contain the statement of its being meaningless. The idea of life's being meaningless is tautologically a meaningless idea, i.e. not an idea at all. Identically notions like Camus' idea of the absurd. If life were genuinely absurd, it could not contain the idea of its being absurd since true ideas depend on life's being meaningful and not absurd.

A true idea is or exists, is a genuine manifestation of reality; while a false idea is a sequence of words which offers the illusion of comprising a genuine intellectual structure, but if examined properly is shown to be an illusion, unreal.

A Start

You have to make a start somewhere, and so here’s as good a place as any. And having made a start, who knows where you might get to? And wherever it may be you get to, without the start you certainly wouldn’t have got there.

That’s the recommendation so, is it? – to get somewhere you need to make a start, and so it’s good to make starts. Well, what if this somewhere you get to isn’t at all the kind of place you’d want to be getting to? You’d be better off without your start. It might be good so, you might think, if say before making your start you could look down from above, abstractly, at this place you’re going to get to, give it a good look, and having given it this good look, you might end up thinking, no, that doesn’t look like the kind of place I want to be getting to, and so naturally you don’t go there.

But that’s not really the way it works – looking down from above abstractly. You only get there by following the path that gets you there. And once you’re on the path, you can’t really go separating yourself from the path, for that’s where you are. You might try and think yourself somewhere else, but that’s only all in your own head; and if you stop thinking it, then it won’t even be in your own head.

So where you are is on the path, the path that leads you there, and once you’re there you’re not really in a position to go questioning this there, for this is where you’ve got to, on your own steam. It’s no good saying, no, I want to be somewhere else. Close your eyes, concentrate and visualise all you like, open them again and you’ll find yourself exactly where you already were and still are. If you really want to be somewhere else, you’ll have to go there; you won’t be able to think yourself there. And who knows, this too may turn you to be a very different place when you get there than what you’d hoped and imagined before getting there. You thought you were heading for some heavenly vision, but it turns out to be something else altogether, this destination at the end of the path you’ve been taking. You should, it turns out, have been paying more attention to the path you were taking rather than thinking about the destination towards which you thought you were heading; for whatever path you take, whatever is on the path is where you’ll end up going. It’s no good moaning afterwards that you thought it was going somewhere else.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky, starring Jeremy Irons.

History or Memory

What is history but memory, a kind of bureaucratizing of memory rather, a rendering it official; though perhaps at times, or even often, the substance of this history just fabricated or warped memory, some story convenient for the teller, his story; a nice, simple version of events whose bold, clear lines and elegant delineations others go on to inhabit in all innocence, convinced by these smooth clear contours and the desire to be just so convinced - for who doesn’t yearn for smooth and clear contours; and so, all in all, a geometry of certainty invoking, most convenient for the teller, actions, logical ones, seamless extensions of those bold historical lines, and onwards these lines push out into the naked spaces beyond, facts built on fictions, the conjuring of the future by fraudsters of the past.

Too abstract? Well let’s say you want to undertake some actions, vile ones, and, however it relates, you have something or other damaged, or say knocked down. You claim someone else did the damaging or knocking down, someone nefarious, and now you want justice and to tighten up security, so this way in come your actions. Everyone, or as good as, believes you; and who wouldn’t, for you’re one in a position of authority - and what is authority? Something to which one stands in relation - and where is it one stands? Most likely beneath it, unless, that is, you’re the one actually with the authority. So there it stands above, authoritative, commanding; and so naturally everyone, having understood where they stand, believes you.

And also, along with all this authority, you have in your possession a whole army of storytellers, and all they’re ever waiting for, this army, is a story to tell, and now they’ve got their story and off with them - it’s your story and it’s they’re the ones who’ll tell it. And each of these storytellers seems to think himself an island, an autonomous kingdom, attached perhaps yes to a remote control, but at one end is truth and at the other end himself, and in whose hand anyway is it, this remote control, but his own, so of course he’s an island, independent and autonomous; and so he tells his story, his version of events, and it’s all about the way he tells it. Thus reality is presented - in black and white, or perhaps in colour, but all the same, in black and white.

A man weaves a basket, takes a good look round, steps into the basket and sits himself down. There he is, curled up, delighted with himself and his basket. He nods and smiles at passers-by.

Whatever about the basket, whatever that’s all about, the story flourishes, whole books are brought out, films produced. It’s evolving in all kinds of ways, growing ever more elaborate, organic, its dubious roots unnoticed - even if they are at times sticking out all over the place.
Masterpieces are produced, or at least proclaimed. ‘Chillingly prescient,’ ‘Deeply relevant,’ ‘A voice for our times,’ variously pronounce the various critics, those other members of the storytelling ranks. ‘The lives we live now’ is mentioned in some or other context – the masterpiece some invaluable help in this area. Oddly enough this ‘lives we live now’ seems to imply a singular phenomenon rather than a plural; that is to say, us collectively living this one life we live now. You might be at one end of this life, pulling away; but there’s someone else at another end, and he’s also pulling away; and so we’re all pulling away madly together, wherever it is we’re pulling it. There must be somebody somewhere overseeing it all, making sure we’re all working together, in tandem, and not some of us pulling against each other, in opposite directions, the whole thing being pulled God knows where.
But anyway awards are offered and accepted for these masterpieces, speeches made, photographs taken. There’s no stopping it, it seems, this story. Where is it all going?

How Much

You wouldn't believe how much research has gone into writing this.