rainbow walking

If philosophy is suppose to be the discipline that helps man find and understand the meaning of his existence, perhaps post-modernism is the honest admission that philosophy has failed at its task. If that be the case post modernism isn't an aberration but the philosophy at its finest in deep retrospection. If philosophers have examined all of man's myriad layers of insulation he's erected to sustain his existence and found that none of them ultimately succeed to sustain it or explain it...then post modernism is the natural and inescapable conclusion. It's an honest admission of the truth.

I am no professional philosopher, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have pondered somewhat on this situation and arrived at some conclusions on the matter.

Having formed in my own mind and imagination a vision of mankinds history and layer upon layer of institutions and ideologies and philosophical criticisms of each. what I arrive at is a picture of all these human artifices standing upon nothing...that is if I give myself over completely to post modern thought.

But I have taken it upon myself to closly examine this "nothing" upon which these myriad layers of insulation have been stacked over and found that it isn't really nothing at all, but something.

The best term I can find to describe this "something" is mystery. Man's existence is a history of insulating himself from a mystery.

The mystery I speak of is death. Man's entire life is a struggle to evade this black hole that he ultimately succombs to in spite of his best efforts. And death does represent a huge mystery to man.

Then I ask myself what it is about a mystery that gives it such influence over the mind of a man as to compell him to invent a resolution when nothing better can be had. Most mysteries do not have this kind of power over man...but death has a most immediate effect and power...yes it does.

Thus, from my considerations death represents a seemingly irresolvable mystery that stands as a constant reminder to man of one thing: Ignorance.

Man is ignorant of the true nature, meaning and definition of death. We have no idea what it is beyond a natural explanation relating to human physiology. But this isn't enough. It only explains the immediate effects. We are still left with a mystery as to the after effects, if any.

So this nothing around which all of man's layers upon layers of insulation have been built is not really nothing at all, but something indeed.

That something is death and ignorance. Man invents religious explanations to thrust him beyond this black hole. He invents politics and economics and science and philosophy to further insulate him from the effects...

And that is an evidence that this black hole is something. It has a force, perhaps invisible, that creates an effect on man. Man's existence becomes a reaction to that effect. Everything a man creates is driven by the effect of that force. Man feels his ignorance more accutely in relation to the effect of that force and sets out to resolve the problem. Yet man becomes one with the problem and loses his way...forgets what it is he's suppose to be seeking, and soon becomes entangled in resisting the force...the gravitational pull, if you will, of the black hole of death. Eventually all men run out of self generated anti-gravity and get sucked back into the black hole.

Once you come face to face with these contemplations you begin to realize that none of man's current layers of insulation have the answer or the power to resist the force...but are nothing more than a reaction to it...another effect.

Thus the meaning of man's existence can be defined as finding an answer to the mystery...resisting the force until he over-comes it or is overcome by it. From this perspective I can easily see why man's layers of insulation, in themselves, have no power to save him or satisfy his deepest need for a resolution to the mystery. No matter if a man gains ownership of the entire physical universe...as long as this mysterious force looms in the background of his existence as the final arbiter...man will always be dissatisfied.

Men, down thru history, have sought resolutions by hiding in, or running to, religion, politics, economics. science, philosophy...but all of these layers of insulation are just as susceptible to the force of that black hole as man himself. As each man stumbles and is drug helplessly back into that hole, he takes a small piece of the insulation, he invested his hopes in, with him. After awhile the insulation wears thin and men begin to realize that this layer won't protect us either. Then the philosopher begins his critical analysis and either tears the layer completely down for replacement or seeks to patch it up.

Now philosophers have come to realize that philosophy is no exception so they've begun to dismantle the grand Lady in hopes of finding a suitable replacement.

But all of these reactions to the gravitational pull of that black hole are still evasions. Claiming complete ignorance, while honest in one respect, fails to meet the criteria because the post modernist is still afraid to fess up that the one thing that has driven his labors is the mystery of a force that he too is being drawn away by.

Thus it behooves us to consider the partial message of the post modernist as a genuine true account of our current status as men. But we can't stop there as if that is the end of the whole matter. Perhaps the post modernist is just shy of realizing that what we've been evading is the need to face that black hole for what it is represents...a mystery. To confront it once and for all and stop being afraid to admit that we all want to live...want to overcome that mysterious pull and drag...stop fearing to confess that nothing in our layers of insulation will ever overcome it as long as those layers are embedded with the same repressive material.

So I suggest we invigorate every layer of the fabric of our existence with a new, brave, honest injection of good old fashion admission that we don't know shit about death and this ignorance is what's really killing us all.

rainbow walking

Thus I have concluded that life is nothing more or less than a reaction to death. How each of us personally reacts will define the meaning of our individual reaction and thus, our lives. But there is no meaning to death and this is what creates the sense that there is no meaning to life.

Now either we carry on with the pretense for a few more thousand years or we decide to discover the meaning of death...to solve the mystery...or continue to squabble over whether this layer of insulation serves us best or that layer of insulation serves us best.

The fact is, all of them serve us to some degree...as stop gap measures until we can resolve the main issue...death.

Fancying up these layers, continually retrofitting them with new and imaginative artifices to make them appear more functional is ultimately meaningless until we face the reason they exist.

If I were a religious person I would conclude that God is dying and has created us as a desperate measure to resolve the mystery. If we die...God dies.

If I were a political person I would conclude that we have created the State to resolve the mystery and it has failed miserably.

If I were an economist I would conclude that we have created economy to facilitate the extension of life and it too has failed miserably.

If I were a philosopher I would conclude that philosophy too has failed to decipher the meaning of life and has failed miserably.

Since I am just another insulator, in a world of insulators, I have concluded that I am just as caught up by the mystery as all my fellow insulators. That we all live with a death sentence hanging over our heads like a cloud without rain and no one seems to care. The message of the day is, "So what?".

So if we allow this message to become our philophy, our meaning, our answer to the mystery...then we will surely die and die and die and die. As long as this mystery hangs about in our peripheral vision we are never truly living...we are just slowly dieing...some slower than others. Don't complain when you realize that your entire life is a charade...a pretense that you participate in that allows you a few stolen moments of respite from the pressure that never goes away.

As long as we pretend this is an inevitable fate and a price for living we will always be living in debt to a creditor that is never satisfied. Eventually we will be called back to the black hole and the case closed as another chapter 11 bankruptcy.

rainbow walking

So I ask myself, were I a professional philosopher, would I be able to preserve my profession by resisting the post modernist? Or would I be wise to take his counsel under consideration? Perhaps I would agree with his assessment and then remind him that he's still guilty of the same infractions to a lesser degree. He's still focused on philosophy rather then the real reason philosophy arose in the first place.

I might be tempted to taunt him with his inability to cipher any further meaning from his state of meaningless; to teae him with a rant or two about how his position relies on hypocritical hanging on to the artifices of the same insulation that I've been trying to find any meaning in.

Then I would move past him...follow his lead...and look at how the meaning of life, as it stands now, is derived, built upon the mystery of death. I would begin again, anew, to think as a philosopher, and strip away death...delve into the speculative resources of my imagination and imagine life, the meaning of life, sans death.

Would life then cease to have any meaning? If death were no longer a mystery or a threat would men then lose the impetus to live? Why should we? Wouldn't we then have a genuine reason to ascribe our OWN meaning to life? As it is, death is doing all the ascibing for us. But if we solve the mystery wouldn't that set us free in the genuine sense of that term?

Well, what of all these illusory layers of insulation? Well, what of them? What becomes of our religions and politics and economics and philosophies?

Why, they are reorganized, redefined, retrofitted to meet our needs just as they always have. Why is this so hard to imagine? That's all we've been doing anyway down thru history. Is there any reason to believe we'd be unable to do this without death hounding our heels?

No, were I a professional philosopher...I'd have to concede the post modernists criticisms have some merit, but not enough to exemplify his intentions. He still has dishonest intentions...or perhaps incomplete understanding. I could easily thrust him on the defensive...force him out of the shadows of his non-commital stance and make him squirm. But that wouldn't bring either of us any closer to resolving the mystery. Haven't we wasted enough time on this thesis/anti-thesis bullshit? Death stands as the true anti-thesis of life. The most prolific anti-thesis of knowledge and always gets the final word.

One of the things I've noticed about man is his ability to improve himself by pretension. We do it all the time. We begin to mimick some quality we've seen in someone and after a little practice we actually exude that quality in our own lives. That's the basis of christianity. Men believe if they mimick the behavior attributes of this alleged perfect man, they too will behave perfectly...and it does work sometimes.

So, were I a professional philosopher, I'd begin to study this in relation to how meaningful life would be without the mystery of death....I'd take it to the limit and beyond and seek to understand just how much of life has been infused with the ignorance of this mystery. I don't imagine it would take very long before I began to see the connections and find ways to define them and ways to redirect my philosophical approach to project my fellow man's thinking processes into a role that he isn't accustomed to playing. The role of a man living for life...rather than as a reaction to death. Who knows, after awhile man might actually begin to exemplify these roles and redirect his activities towards the establishment of insulations that actually reflect a meaning to life that is real, expressable, communicative in terms everyone can embrace and comprehend. Then I might actually see the Grand Old Lady of philosophy reborn out of the ashes.

leyline

Hi rainbow walking

Cheer up! Postmodernism ain’t so bad!

I really enjoyed your essay and death is certainly at the heart of the matter.

But what I sensed was that you consider post modern philosophy as a kind of capitulation, or an admission of failure …. Or even the death of philosophy?

I agree with Richard Rorty that redemption requires imagination. Imagination is hope, and in fact it is in this sense that postmodernism doesn’t really criticise religion, science and philosophy. They are all imaginative. It’s just that they limit imagination when they become so authoritative as to require exclusive loyalty to the cause. The cause of hope that is. I think that is what you are referring to when it comes to death?

Just as death is a barrier to knowledge it is also an inspiration to imagination. And if we can replace the fear and depression with hope, then we can get on with having a good and meaningful time.

The problem with science is that it gives no hope, but it can help give us a great time. Technology is liberating and fun. The price paid is the likes of Richard Dawkins. He posits nowt after death. Except of course the hope of his own place in the history of science.

This is why he should not be stripped of his gongs (it is his hope of immortality) but nevertheless after he has gone we should all hold a party whereby he is posthumously awarded the gold star of simultaneously being a philosophical arse (for attempting to undermine other peoples hope) and survivor of the fear of death through his own effort and imagination.

Religion on the other hand? It gives plenty of hope after death, but geez do we have to pay for it! Its no fun man.

Philosophy? …..

“ If philosophers have examined all of man's myriad layers of insulation he's erected to sustain his existence and found that none of them ultimately succeed to sustain it or explain it...then post modernism is the natural and inescapable conclusion. It's an honest admission of the truth.”

Yeh. That there is a deep mystery. Cooool innit? We shouldn’t equate a failure to find the definitive answer to death with a proof that nothing exists for us after it. Ignorance is ignorance, not knowledge of nothing existing. (see Dawkins). Our hope is our imagination because it is a creative expression that counteracts by its sheer positive manifestation the fear that nothing follows death by responding to it…… that and it also enables us to have a good and meaningful time while alive.

rainbow walking

Hi rainbow walking

rw: Hi leyline,

Cheer up! Postmodernism ain’t so bad!

rw: I guess the whole thing does sound a bit draconian but it's unavoidable. Anytime you talk about death that's the natural reaction from everyone. They think you're coming from some sort of nihilistic down-in-the-dumps perspective and need to just cheer up. This very reaction to the subject is another philosophical avenue of investigation.

I really enjoyed your essay and death is certainly at the heart of the matter.

rw: Thank you.

But what I sensed was that you consider post modern philosophy as a kind of capitulation, or an admission of failure …. Or even the death of philosophy?

rw: Actually I'm just parroting this sense of it as what I observe to be the classical reaction.

I agree with Richard Rorty that redemption requires imagination. Imagination is hope, and in fact it is in this sense that postmodernism doesn’t really criticise religion, science and philosophy. They are all imaginative. It’s just that they limit imagination when they become so authoritative as to require exclusive loyalty to the cause. The cause of hope that is. I think that is what you are referring to when it comes to death?

rw: Indeed we aught not hamstring creative thinking but we also can't follow it blindly into every crack and crevice without some formal guide. Men have imagined they have the right to squeeze their existence out of the blood and misery of others. This kind of imagination has hampered man for centureies and centuries. While man's imagining he aught also imagine how anything he posits might be taken as license to manipulate and harm others.

Just as death is a barrier to knowledge it is also an inspiration to imagination. And if we can replace the fear and depression with hope, then we can get on with having a good and meaningful time.

rw: It is the fear, generated by ignorance of death, that causes us to dangle the line of hope in a life beyond. Just as it is when a man retreats from facing it and settles for a place in history as one who contributed to the repression of the fear. Let's face death...as it is...with no illusions, hopes, fears, evasions or hands on any escape mechanism. Let's stop pretending to know anything about it. Let's start over completely free from all insulated repression. For instance...WHY do men have to die?

Take the answer in Genesis, for instance. God told Adam if you do X you will surely die. So then, had Adam not done X, does this mean he would surely live? Take that question and run through all our artificial insulations and look for all the X's and see if the contrafactual works. Perhaps we have ourselves convinced we are going to die and so...we die. Now this is just a speculative approach, but it should give you an idea of the degree of radical departure man must take from convention if he's genuinely going to examine death.

The problem with science is that it gives no hope, but it can help give us a great time. Technology is liberating and fun. The price paid is the likes of Richard Dawkins. He posits nowt after death. Except of course the hope of his own place in the history of science.

rw: Well, if you're looking for hope you've already lost your way before getting to the edge of the black hole. No hope, no faith, no tattered rags of any preconcieved notions...or at least pared down to the Plank's minimum (just to borrow a phrase).


[b]Yeh. That there is a deep mystery. Cooool innit? We shouldn’t equate a failure to find the definitive answer to death with a proof that nothing exists for us after it. Ignorance is ignorance, not knowledge of nothing existing. (see Dawkins).

rw: Yet we can't enter the matrix with this thought as a rope to pull us out if the going gets rough.

Our hope is our imagination because it is a creative expression that counteracts by its sheer positive manifestation the fear that nothing follows death by responding to it…… that and it also enables us to have a good and meaningful time while alive.

rw: I agree that hope has acted as an equalizer for a season...but only for a season. In the end...all hope follows us into the grave. If we can't strip away everything in our philosophical investigations...then we aren't worthy to see, to observe and perchance to discover something that would turn the mystery into a miniseries and then an archive in some forgotten library to be gawked at by students of philosophy some 2 million years down the road.

leyline

Ok Rainbow Walking

Excuse my ignorance I need a little confirmation here.

Am I correct in that you are saying that death is a mystery, full stop, and that we should stop consciously or subconsciously building philosophical and other perspectives on life that are in fear of/ relate to that mystery? We should brush it aside, the fear with the unknowability, stop referring to it even……….. and start building positively on what we do and can possibly know, and can share experientially?

And are you saying that postmodernism gets close to this position, by rejecting all the other bedrocks of philosophy (as bedrocks that is), but only in the negative. Ie postmodernism refuses to commit to a belief, but that only goes half way to what we really need. Ie. To rebuild with respect to life? That the fear and ignorant speculations of death run too much through of our cultural inheritance with sometimes horrific consequences? Postmodernism with its playful relativism has stopped the rot by undermining serious commitment to past paranoia, but is useless in the rebuilding process WRT life through its same lack of commitment?

rainbow walking

Hi Leyline,
All of our layers are designed in such a way as to pass the torch to the next generation. This is a tacit acceptance that our generation must die. If we regroup, and face death as a common enemy, an enemy to be studied, disturbed, unraveled...as a discipline...as a determined effort across the board...and refocus our reason for existing in that direction...even if we fail to conquer it...if we only succeed in pushing it back somewhat...we still have in place measures to pass the torch with this same focus onward. It would have to be a complete philosophical shift across the board. men have long held the belief that death is inevitable...unconquerable...something to be worked around gingerly...yet fighting it every step of the way.

The first step is admitting we want to win and live. Then to admit we've been dancing around the issue. We've had too many unfruitful distractions...and hopes and faiths that are based on anything but winning. Our philosophies and layers of insulation afford us some illusion of freedom and we work furtively to extend those freedoms while pretending not to. Why not confront this beast head on? What do we have to lose that we don't loose already? At least, even if we fail, we can say we gave it our best shot. We'll know it can't be done instead of just acceoting that unproven speculative as fact.

As it is now we just live in pretense and wonder why nothing has the power to give us the kind of meaning in our lives that completely satisfies. So I'm saying it...why not make a concerted effort, concerted thru-out every layer of insulation...to defeat death? Why is it that men are so convinced it's an impossibility? Man is so certain of this that he scoffs at the idea...ridicules anyone who says otherwise...rolls his eyes at them as if they're mentally deficient for thinking this. Yet men of the past have thought it. Remember the search for the fountain of youth?

So what if we fail? We have no basis to surrender without a fight. This defeatist attitude pervades every layer of our lives. So a philosophy of the future...one that has the power to invigorate humanity again...would have to address this defeated, whimpy attitude.

"But there are just too many obstacles."

Sure, like there was when we decided to put a man on the moon.

"It can't be done."

Same was said of man flying. Point is, it won't ever get done if man doesn't make a frontal, head on assault and stop pussy-footing around with it. Our science and medicine has been geared in that direction anyway. But maybe science alone isn't the answer.

So here we stand on the edge of a void filled with a mystery...a mystery that propels us to invent imaginary paths and ways to the other side.

A philosophy that doesn't resort to escapism but out right confrontation should offer man a different kind of hope. Not a rope across the chasm...but a destruction of the chasm...fill it in with life, I say. Bridges aren't sturdy enough and magic carpet rides are unfalsifiable fairytales. Turn our insulation into a ring...an ever tightening ring around that suck-hole until we close the pit...seal it, and walk off brushing our hands together to wipe away any residue.

Let's solve the mystery by decontamination. Purify ourselves from all illusions about what it isn't and forge ahead to deconstruct what it is piece by piece. I'm confident that it isn't really that big a mystery. I'm persuaded that convincing ourselves to enjoin it in battle is half the victory.

A philosophy is needed to arise from the rubble and point man in a direction free of all illusion. It's a fight to the death. Post modernism has cleared the way but stands undecided on what to do next.

sodium

If a car stops working, then we tend to think it has just stopped working. I suppose you could argue that its spirit, the life-force of the car has possibly disappeared to another realm. We could say that it is a mystery, since we don't know anything about what happens to the cars automotiveness when it stops working as an automobile. But there's no serious argument that it hasn't just stopped. And that's my conclusion regarding humans as well.

You can still argue about it, in the same way that you can argue about whether there really is a place called France, and whether the universe popped into existence 5 minutes ago. But I don't really consider any of these things to be open questions. But then, I'm not a Postmodernist.

rainbow walking

rw: Oh...well gee, that explains everything. And as long as they remain closed questions we just keep on working until...well, we stop.

Seriously though...this is not about where we go after we stop working. It's a challenge to re-open the question as to why we have to accept the "stop working" analogy as the only answer.

sodium

Right.

Oh, I see, irony.

Well, it isn't the only answer, but I do think it's the only plausible answer. I mean, I suspect we both think it's silly to imagine that cars have immortality. But the only difference between believing in immortality for cars, and immortality for people, is that some people desperately want to believe in the latter.