{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

This "theme" ought to get a chuckle or two:

The Antechamber of the World Potentate

Grumblings of a Pessimistic, Atheistic, Misanthropic, Antinatalistic Arch-Miserabilist

Like Cioran, there are days when I can do nothing but lay in the bed & groan. Groan continually.

Does this help?   Groaning must give some kind of relief.  At the very least, one is, for the moment, in touch with reality.

I did try to study a bit of math. I have to say that a certain kind of math can be very ugly & yet some of it can be very sublime indeed.I intend to focus on the latter & try to not focus on the continual mayhem that is biological life.

Yes.  Some math is ugly.  I try to return to things again after many years of not thinking about it.   Give yourself time to just drift through this life.  Only look into ideas that are of interest to you.

Some of the algorithms for solving systems of equations are kind of interesting.  I know this is just algorithmic computations, which is why we can program computers to solve systems of equations so much more rapidly; but do you find this at all interesting?

I mean, sincerely.  Are such calculations part of the mathematics you find to be ugly?

I am curious.   I go through different phases.

By the way, do you really think "The Antechamber of the World Potentate" is an appropriate title for this message board?  We have to be joking, right?

It is some kind of joke to think we possess any kind of real power.  Or is it a case of "Nothing that is so, is so"?   Is it meant to challenge the illusions of the phantasmagoria?

Perception does not equal reality.

What I mean to say is that the only way "The Antechamber of the World Potentate" makes sense is if we consider the first statement in The World as Will and Representation:  The world is my representation.

If we consider this, then each subjectivity is the world potentate,or, as Schopenhauer might call it, the inner kernel of omniscient nature.

The world is my representation, and yet perception does not equal reality. 

Are we to conclude that the world is not really the world at all?

What is the world we perceive if not the world as representation, which surely is different for each sentient creature according to its perceptions.

So, the world itself that our heads are in, the world our feet are grounded in, is a representation in our heads.   Our feet are in our heads?

The world as our very own body extends into space, but space is a mental function, part of perceptions, the world of appearance.

I intend to focus on the latter & try to not focus on the continual mayhem that is biological life.

I also try to remain focused on mathematical abstractions ... and I understand by now that the images of the young fertile women with the long dark hair and bronze skin are just the echos of the programming left in my blood by the great omniscient Mother Nature, the World as Will.   The images are fading and I am rarely totally under the spell.

Schopenhauer compares this state of sexual frenzy with something on the level of insects.  It helps to keep things in perspective.  Don't be too hard on yourself. 

We are all here by an act of copulation.  Just think about this.

Do you think I may be attempting to block out the continual mayhem of biological life by giving so much of my attention to "intellectual life"?

It is not natural to wake up thinking about mathematics, and I suspect I am consciously blocking out the programmed biological drives.  Of course, i still have to eat and protect the body from the elements ...

Maybe my obsession with mathematics is my way of throwing a monkey wrench into the great Meat Grinder.

Of course, Mother Nature is the Great Meat Grinder.   She is the ultimate mass murderer. 

And yet, every cradle is a grave, so the generative promptings that are aroused by Nature's fertility dance, by the shaking tail feathers, are the source of the grave-filling fodder.

The biological mayhem is directly associated with death.  Death exists because we are biological creatures.

This might be why I cannot take The Antechamber of the World Potentate too seriously.  The forces of nature can tear us from limb to limb ... you know ... the Great Meat Grinder, or, what the indoctrinated call "God" ... or the "Creator" or "Destroyer" (Vishnu?)

Anyway, I guess I will stop here before one of the offended deities decides to put me out of my misery.   Actually, that would be fine by me. 

I only study mathematics as a kind of project, something to do with my time while getting through this existence.  When the creeks rise or the wind rips the roofs off, well, I won't need to understand anymore.  It's no wonder so many people kneel in terror trying to invoke the hidden forces ... Qualitas Occulta.

“Bitter” is almost an honorific to me.

This is a great relief to me.  You see, as we have been engaged in this long conversation, I have come to admire your fearless revelations, of openly displaying your bitterness.

You just may inspire me to once again explore the realm of literature.   I had wrote a lengthy message requesting your advice about what literature you think I might find worth reading.  Since I do most of that kind of reading after midnight when my brain finally gives up on whatever math problem it might be stuck on, this is when I could really appreciate some literature that cuts close to the bone of our human experience.

I never sent the message.  I had a change of heart.  Well, you see, all the shelves are filled with technical or mathematics texts (or physics, computer-oriented ... programming, etc) ... besides the Schopenhauer and Cioran collections ...).  Most my other kinds of books are in boxes and I hardly read any of them.

I had considered searching for a refurbished ereader which would eliminate the tension I experience about aquiring novels and the like.  For whatever reason, I seem to have reserved shelf space for only math-oriented stuff.

And so ... without trips to the library (I used to go every day in my drinking days), and with my daily routine of filling the entire day into the night with math, math, math, well, I figured I can just live without such literature.

Besides that, I did not want to take a chance on spending too much money on ebooks.   Even if I were to find an ereader, I would not want to pay $15 to read Houellebecq's "Atomised" (Elementary Particles) or whatever.  I would still try to use a library.

Anyway, finding out that Gorky left such an impression on you makes me curious to read Gorky.  I have always been curious.   I searched and found there are many free ebooks by Schopenhauer, Christopher Marlowe, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and, yes, Gorky too.   Maybe I would be able to use an ereader while resisting the urge to collect too many books that would cost money.

I know I can track down PDF files of books and read on the computer, but, after midnight, which is when I would be most likely to surrender (giving up on math), by then I can't seem to focus on a book ... You see, the Internet becomes a distraction ... I end up browsing through the Ligotti forum or reading old comments on say no to life.

So, "Gorky" means "bitter".

This is interesting, indeed.

Well, my "pops" is stopping by here this morning on his way to Philadelphia for some installation job.  I offered to cook him up a big breakfast ... so I am up early.  The peppers, garlic, onions, mushrooms are chopped, and I have the potatoes ready.    And the chicken menstrual cycles.

I got up at 4AM with a certain math problem in my head.  The way the solution manual was solving it made no sense to me.  I gave up before midnight last night, and called it a night.

This morning I said, "forget that solution manual method".  I will start from scratch and do this my own way."    So, I just used my own intuition (and some hints on the Internet), and it turns out my intuition was more on point.   I solved the problem in a way that made more sense to me, and the end results were the same as the solution manual.  I did not want to try to make sense of how the solution in the manual went about solving the problem since it was kind of haywire.

I mean, when I solve any problem involving angles and directions, I like to have "positive horizontal" facing east, and "positive vertical" facing north.   Once I started with this orientation and used good old vectors, the problem made sense and I understood it quickly.

That's one thing about a solution manual.  Every so often, you will find a way to solve a problem that makes more sense to YOU.  You can document your own solution.

I better get into the kitchen.

Take care, Gorky Holden.

Post Scriptum:  While searching to see how little it would cost to fill a used ereader with Schopenhauer's life works, I saw a comment that you would appreciate.  It reminds me very much of this paradox/contradiction of you identifying yourself as a "bitter man".

The one solitary comment says, about Arthur Schopenhauer, "He is a very thoughtful and caring man.

Surely Schopenhuaer may have been argumentative, opinionated, and even arrogant at times, but his condemnation of existence is motivated by great sypathy and compassion for all creatures born from womb or egg.

The same can be said of you, Holden, regardless of your bitterness.  I am also reminded of the essay I put together years ago:  The Tyranny of Public Opinion,  where I quote Bertrand Russell at length:

    Many people who have ultimately escaped from the tyranny of ignorance have had so hard a fight and so long a time of repression that in the end they are embittered and their energy is impaired. In general, there is too much respect paid to the opinions of others. One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Note that I have located a used Kindle, and I am keeping my eyes open for some quality literature.

There is a way send pdf files to the device, I guess using my email address.   There is a book I have had my eyes on, but it is too expensive in the "Kindle Edition" (just as much as hardcover - $50!!! - and available in PDF format on Library Genesis:  Schopenhauer's encounter with Indian thought : representation and will and their Indian parallels)

Supposedly, there is software to convert PDF to a format that the Kindle can read.

I had been holding out the last couple years, thinking the larger Onyx Boox would go down in price, but this is not going to happen.   I don't mind.  I like working with hardcopy texts with notebook and pencil handy.   

This revived interest in an electronic device for reading has more to do with the fact that I realize I no longer read much literature at all.  I thought I would be able to work my brain like some kind of machine, day after day, hour after hour, math math math math all the time; but ... with my peculiar taste, I should be able to put together a decent electronic library, especially if I can convert the PDF files.

Another reason:  Even though I found a huge collection of Lovecraft stories, and I have read nearly half of them, I had stopped many months ago and placed the book in one of the "attic boxes".  The print is too small.  With an electronic device I should be able to read some of those books via increasing the font.

I can see why you rely on electronic devices for reading literature.  There was no way I was going to want textbooks on such a device.  I collected many older math books for relatively little money; and it is pretty much done, packed.  I'm good for ten years.

Since the library is too far to walk to, and I don't like the 2 week time restriction, if I am ever going to allow myself to get into some literature again, I am afraid the ereader is the solution.

I have stubbornly resisted for two years now. 

I was disappointed when I found out these devices aren't capable of translating since there are a few books in other languages I wish I could read.  It's just as well since the automated translators surely can't be doing justice to the original meanings.

PSSS:  Behind link number [1] at Library Genesis, there is a new book by Dennis Vanden Auweele that you might be interested in devouring:  Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root, circa 2017.

Auweele is the author of the unreachable The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessimism, also cirac 2017, but not yet available at libgen.io

(Ahhhhhrrrr ... grumbled the scholarly pirate ...)

Thats my problem with bare maths equations. Equations out of context mean very little.

The equations out of context may mean very little, but isn't this the power of symbolic algebra, that we abstract away the "meaningful" details so as to work with purely abstract symbols?   

Myself, I rather enjoy working in that realm, with symolic algebra, that is, when what the symbols represent has been removed from the equation.   Although, in physics problems, one is encouraged to keep the units of measurement in place, and to manipulate them as though they were alagebraic variables, so that, in the end, one can verify that the solution makes sense in terms of the units of measurement.

There is a definite feeling of detachment from the Will.

For instance, while trying to resolve a dispute with a seller on ebay, where a Kindle was advertized as having "No Special Offers" (no advertisements) but actually has ads, while waiting to hear from the seller about refunding the payment so that I can look elsewhere, my impulsiveness wants this resolved as soon as possible, and so I experience a little agitation when the seller does not respond as quickly as I would like.

When haggling over prices and the like, the Will makes use of the intellect to calculate the cost of having "Special Offers" [ADVERTISEMENTS] disabled, and it concludes that, ethically, that cost should be deducted from what I was charged, since my expectation of the ads already disabled was calculated into the price.   These kinds of calculations are directly chained to the Will.  They are MEANINGFUL.   

In order to minimize the discomfort anxiety associated with such transactions, I simply return to working with the old c.1984 textbook with discolored pages and the 50 cent notebook.  It is quite significant that my instincts were drawn first to the old hard copy math textbooks, putting literature and "the power of ereaders" on the back burner.

As it turns out, there are in fact no ads on the device.  They have already been disabled.  This is the main reason I chose to pick up a used Kindle through ebay rather than order a refurbished device through Amazon.  When they recycle their Kindles, they will require the ads be removed each and every time, whereas, if we recycle outside the realm of Amazon, then the ads have to be removed once and only once, not repeatedly after each time the device switches hands.

I find that, if I am able to continue to work through "meaningless equations", this act helps me detach from whatever it is the Will is preoccupied with.

The neocortex has to step in.  Even though the Will is the boss when it comes to being able to make us feel miserable until it is satisfied (the Will is insatiable, and by definition, is never satisfied), there is a part of the brain that can confront that lower part of the brain (the Lizard Brain).   I think these anologies fit in well with Schopenhauer's project (denial-of-the-will).

It gets very ugly, but we witness it play out all too clearly in cases of severe drug addiction.

Of course, the advertisers most likely aim their hooks at the Lizard Brain, which is the lowest common denominator.

As an aside, I want to thank you for your sincere articulations about your ambivalent feelings towards certain aspects of what we call "mathematics", whether it is arithmetic or symbolic algebra or rigorous proofs, be it the formality of the theoretical or the drudgery  of the error-prone computational.

You will have been partly responsible for bringing literature back into my life.  You are right about pure rationality's impotence when it comes to coping with the agonizing screams of the existential "I".

Sometimes engaging in mathematical-theoretical ruminations, and even during performing mathematical computations, I feel perfectly calm and at peace.   At other times, my heart may rebel against all rationality.  It resists.  So much has to do with what kind of mood one is in at the moment.

Note that several of the comments in this post overlap with what we were discussing here.

What I do really get is horror-relentless and agonizing horror. Yes,that is about the only thing I can relate to quite well. I have something like this in mind:

https://www.amazon.com/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/0375703764

I see human being around me very clearly and most of all myself-what I find is something wicked,ugly and Evil(with a capital E).

What I see is boundless deserts with solitary lost souls wailing and weeping.

"The House of Leaves" is better than many horror books out there. I was reading "The Outer Limits of Reason" ,the book you once told me about.I think ,what we can know is really very limited. Like a dimly lit oasis in the midst of dark desert all round.

Mathematics certainly proves how limited human reason can be. How limited my reason can be.Maybe because my brain is perpetually depressed that I find it hard to detect much mirth in anything. I mean,some would call The Confederacy of Dunces a sort of comedy but I find it very difficult to look at it that way,given the life story of its author and the similarity of my own life with it.

I recognise that my life resembles that of Kafka to a very large extent. I can tell you that the office as an institution has not changed at all since him era,since the early 20th century. There is a sort of discord ,a feeling of menace which pervades the office.As if it were not a place where people go to work, but a place where people are buried alive, or to be more precise, the place where souls are put on funeral  pyres.

Finnegans Wake is very ,very elaborate. Beckett knew that it was impossible to go beyond Joyce ,and even if it is possible,it is pointless.
Maybe Beckett has something to teach us. If one cannot be have a Hilbert program, maybe one needs to go into the opposite direction and just list out all one's difficulties with mathematics..like Godel.Yes, this is something I need to think about more.Joyce,Herbert. Beckett,Godel.

I have not read Dreams of a Spirit Seer, but I did find a digitial version and have added it to the ever-growing digital library of books I shall explore into my old age.  Even though I do not have an employer or a wife, I am still kind of hen-pecked first thing in the morning with my mother's agenda; hence, when I am free to follow my bliss, I definitely have my own agenda which I have been trying to devote my attention to.

The more I am prevented from doing what I am inclined to do (studying math), the more determined I become to stay focused, the more jealous of my own time I become.  One really has to become a stubborn little bastard if one wants to learn anything.   There comes a point when we have no choice but to demand to be left alone in peace.

I don't think I can help "refine your judgment".

Eventually, I would like to help you find some delight in committing yourself to a math textbook and sticking with it even if it takes a year to get through.  You know, you could spend an entire day just working through a handful of math problems.

There was an exercise in coordinate geometry that I wanted to post here, but I think it is probably best for you to find a text with solutions manual that you can really get into on your own.  Then again, I understand if you "would prefer not to."   

The ironic thing is that the kind of mathematics I would hope to inspire you to study would not help you feel more "refined," but would do quite the opposite.

It may sound like a great paradox, but one may desire to become less refined so as to experience a little delight in learning what is fundamental.

By the way, I found a digital copy of House of Leaves that I am able to read on a computer.  I began reading it late last night and got to the part where the story kind of splits in two, one written by this S character, the other by the guy telling a story at the bar.  Anyway, I lost patience with it, but I suppose I will surely return to it.

I am not committed to any specific books at the moment, so I am bouncing from one book to the other.  As for math, that is an altogether different story.  I have been working diligently through 2 different Geometry texts, working through the more challenging exercises in each.  As you must realize, one does not "read" a math text.

One works through the exercises, and this takes you through several seasons.

Sometimes I wish I had just continued with computational physics and had not chosen to go the route of revisiting high school mathematics, but I do believe this is definitely going to strengthen my problem solving skills.

I would like you to become LESS REFINED and more willing to commit to learning the basics in algebra and plane geometry, coordinate geometry, and eventually analytic geometry.

Then again, I also commend you for your study of Kant.  I will be giving that some attention, but I personally prefer a very slow reading.  This is what i like about math textbooks.   One has no other choice but going through it slowly with pencils, notebooks, and even computer support.  With your access to the Internet, you can aks the questions you need to ask, all in privacy.  You do not need me to help you learn some math.

As for Kant and Schopenhauer and metaphysical problems, it is you who will become far more knowledgeable.

As I age, and after having experienced the nearly brain-dead existence of daily alcoholic oblivion, I am content to be somewhat of an algebraist and geometer ... who hopes to study computational physics before he loses his mental capacity altogether.

To each his own.   I have no problem with becoming less sophisticated and less refined.  I like to calculate, compute, and apply a little logic to solve fundamental and elementary problems.  I do not care if I appear to be some kind of caveman to others.   I just want to spend my life studying things that I stand a chance of understanding, and to shamelessly put on the shelve things that are too far beyond my mental capacity.  There is a chance that many have spent their lives making painfully clear the limits of reason, and so there is this endless stream of words circling around the perimeters.   

I do not want to spend too much time learning the terminology of such thinkers, but prefer to work on my algebraic skills ... and my geometric understanding ...

I don't care if I appear stupid or seem like some kind of knuckle-dragging technician to the all-too-refined Ontologists and Epistemologists striving to attain Buddha-awareness.

To reiterate, I want to be able to solve many diferent kinds of fundamental problems in mathematics.  We only have so much energy or time.  Even without an employer, my devotion to mathematics has required that I remain focused and committed.  I have chosen the path of computation and calculation.  In a real sense, I have given up trying to understand the metaphysical, accepting that this is beyond the capacity of our mental apparatus.

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Now I have to go help The Mother plant "mums" (flowers).  The week ahead is filled with her agenda ... doctors' appointments, I also have to clean the carpets before a visit with my sister next week ... car inspection ... grocery shopping ... Meanwhile, I am anxious to continue working through the math textbooks.  Sometimes I become frustrated, but at least I do not have to fight with a wife or an employer.  I hope you can find a little humor or comic relief in witnessing my petty annoyances in the politics of everyday life.

It is what it is.  Take care, my friend.  Study or read whatever you want to whenever you are free to do so.

Question:  Who is the real villain in A Confederacy of Dunces?