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

“Original Sin is the crime of existence itself”

source:  The Power of Schopenhauer
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When Hegel witnessed Napoleon riding through the city of Jena, he wrote to a friend:

I saw the Emperor — this world-soul — riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

Schopenhauer’s philosophy, written in the shadow of Hegel’s work, is notorious for its pessimism. For Schopenhauer there is no spirit in the world and in the grand scheme of things there is no “progress”. Of Napoleon, he wrote:

He was possessed of the very ordinary egoism that seeks its welfare at the expense of others. What distinguished him was merely the greater power he had of satisfying his will.

Napoleon didn’t embody any kind of spirit, he was just fighting wars and killing thousands for his own gratification. History, as far as Schopenhauer was concerned, was meaningless. All the trials and tribulations mankind undergoes come ultimately to nothing.

The universe is one of horrific suffering. Out in space there are unimaginably vast and ultimately meaningless cycles of creation and destruction. Great explosions, collisions, and implosions on a cosmic scale simply happen with no reason at all.

Here on earth nature manifests as an appalling competition. Creatures survive by hunting and devouring other creatures. Every creature dies, more often than not in agony. There’s no God in Schopenhauer’s view.   As the philosopher put it himself: “Original Sin is the crime of existence itself.”

Schopenhauer’s ideas offer no consolation in themselves, there is no redemption in his world view, only relief. Instead of placing hope in a God or progress, Schopenhauer believed that we should look in two directions for peace of mind: compassion and art. To understand how he came to this conclusion, it’s worth unpacking his philosophy.

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I think that if one approaches mathematics with a certain amount of humility and great patience with the limitations of our mental capacity, a lifelong devotion to it might offer peace of mind similar to that attained through "compassion and art".   

Life is unpleasant.  Anyone who says different is a liar ashamed of their own hidden misery.  Why are people ashamed of a misery which is built into the fiber of every breath they take?    Also, existence is a sin AGAINST us, not a sin we have committed.   I always resent when ignorance, parading around as authority, insinuates that we ourselves have committed the original sin in having been born.   We have been sinned AGAINST in being created!

(At this point, I feel I am repeating myself too much here).

I apologize for not being able to think of anything original to post here.   I am going back and forth between programming and mathematics.   I think that the main reason math and programming are more like "arts and crafts" to me has to do with the role my devotion to it plays in my day to day existence.   It's almost comprable to the role of philosophy in Schopenhauer's day to day existence; that is, I have to find sustenance by any means necessary (not too proud to beg the government for assistance, no inheritance for He Not Rich), and my devotion to this mathematics (and mathematically-oriented programming) has more to do with "spiritual/mental health" than it does with any kind of preparation for "employment opportunities."  [they always hand me a bucket and a mop  ].

Don't be too concerned if I do not post as often as I used to.   It's an unusual sensation, this not having much to say ...

Note that I often will post to a very old thread as a way to motivate myself to REREAD the original post. 

The original post of this thread asks us how do we manage to live with such intense philosophical illumination.    It's like Doug Stanhope claims:  "My name is Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink."

How often might such philosophical illumination be crippling?

 

Life just happened to evolve and mammals just happened to inherit the faculties which made them more intelligent. These are accidents of evolution, but they have the monumental consequence that through an enlightened soul’s cognitive faculties the cosmic zombie, the natural universe, is equipped to know itself for the monstrosity that it is, whereupon that doomed creature must decide what to do with such accursed knowledge.

This may surprise you, but most biological humans aren’t persons in the existential, spiritual sense. Psychologically, they have minds or selves as well as a capacity for self-control, compared to nonhuman species. But they’re also antiphilosophical, meaning they don’t undertake the promethean project of inquiring into the objective truth; instead, they succumb to delusions, noble lies, and bodily distractions. These are the beta herds, the human animals that grovel and scramble and otherwise debase themselves for fleeting advantages in our dominance hierarchies, blind to the philosophical significance of their actions and to the universe’s aesthetic status—which is to speak of the horror within all things that leaves intelligent creatures dumbfounded until they devise noble means of coping.

That's what we are doing:  coping with the horror within all things which leaves us dumbfounded.  While I do experience a certain inner peace throughout the day, there is also an ever-present hostility and irritability within me.   When I am interupted constantly, I sometimes really have to control the temper lurking just beneath the surface.   

There is something within me which is continually frustrated and dissatisfied.  Alas, this is no "personality disorder," but how our inner machinery is wired.   We are hard-wired for misery, it seems.

By contrast with the extroverted tempters and rulers of the beta masses, there are the introverted omegas, the outsiders and outcasts who practice asceticism, rebelling against nature instead of excelling at being animals.

That's very heavy ... rebelling against nature instead of excelling at being animals.   One thing I particularly admire about Schopenhauer's philosophy is that his worldview invites us to rebel in such a way, to cease being the dupes (gorts) of nature .... the gorts of nature.    Is it possible to defy Nature?

So whereas the alpha uses her enlightenment to build an outer world to match her deranged self-image, the omega retreats to her inner space, having been cast out from society and from the natural cycle of life.   Alphas build material worlds through industry and sociopathic techniques of population control, while omegas beget worldviews and oeuvres, not biological heirs to empires but brainchildren that testify to their creators’ existential awakening.

Alphas become living gods, introducing an element of psychology to nature’s undead divinity, whereas omegas neurotically linger over the existential problem itself, overanalyzing it and becoming less and less capable of normal human functioning. At the end of omegahood sits the hermit in her cave, the reclusive genius who knows the world as her foe and who tragically battles it by not participating in the more egregious or optional natural processes.

That's very clear to me:  the recluse who knows the world as his foe ... that's us.  That's Holden, that's me, that's raul ... Is this the case for Ibra and Silenus as well?    Do we all perceive the world as our foe?   I am not just talking about the socio-economic world of war, passive entertainment, and diminishing resources, but the world as Senor Raul often writes about it, the inner subjective world of our own animal bodies, and how vulnerable each creature is to having this animal mind-body break down:  broken meat?   

Noble ascetics have been badly represented by their theistic counterparts that practice only an instrumental kind of detachment. These unenlightened pretenders believe they should renounce nature because a greater, supernatural world awaits them so that earthly defeat is only a prelude to victory in God’s eyes. By contrast, enlightened ascetics understand the horrifying fact of divinity, which is that nature blindly and dumbly creates itself for no purpose whatsoever, leaving us with no redemption or prospect of everlasting glory.These omegas, then, renounce the world not as a means to a crass end, but they do so aesthetically, severing themselves from nature and society as an end in itself, for the sheer thrill of doing battle with the cosmic leviathan.

I thank each of you for your honesty in communicating the conclusions you have drawn through reflection and contemplation on these distrurbing truths.  We may never  "work it out," but I think it's almost heroic just to harness enough intellectual honesty to actually come to some kind of terms with "it," - IT, as in, "IT is what IT is."

That Mr. Cain, he is giving away his writings in PDF format:  PDF Installments of Rants Within the Undead God