Author Topic: Contradictions  (Read 605 times)

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Nation of One

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Contradictions
« on: February 09, 2020, 11:09:29 am »
While sleeping, during many strange dreams, one in which I ask my 78 year old father what the point is to keeping the life-process going through reproduction.   In the dream, it seems that my father had never thought to wonder such a thing.

Then I recall a speech made by John Trudell in which he states that the Enemy will do anything it can to "break our spirit" and "destroy our Will to Live."

In Colin Wilson's Lovecraftian tale, The Mind Parasites, Arthur Schopenhuaer is depicted as having played a key role as "Life Destroyer."   He mentions his name only once in the entire novel:

Quote
What it amounts to is this. For more than two centuries now, the human mind has been constantly a prey to these energy vampires. In a few cases, the vampires have been able completely to take over a human mind and use it for their own purposes. For example, I am almost certain that De Sade was one of these 'zombis' whose brain was entirely in the control of the vampires. The blasphemy and stupidity of his work are not, as in many cases, evidence of demonic vitality, and the proof of it is that De Sade never matured in any way, although he lived to be 74. The sole purpose of his life work is to add to the mental confusion of the human race, deliberately to distort and pervert the truth about sex.

As soon as I understood about the mind vampires, the history of the past two hundred years became absurdly clear. Until about 1780 (which is roughly the date when the first full-scale invasion of mind vampires landed on earth), most art tended to be life-enhancing, like the music of Haydn and Mozart. After the invasion of the mind vampires, this sunny optimism became almost impossible to the artist. The mind vampires always chose the most intelligent men as their instruments, because it is ultimately the intelligent men who have the greatest influence on the human race. Very few artists have been powerful enough to hurl them off, and such men have gained a new strength in doing so - Beethoven is clearly an example; Goethe another. And this explains precisely why it is so important for the mind vampires to keep their presence unknown, to drain man's lifeblood without his being aware of it. A man who defeats the mind vampires becomes doubly dangerous to them, for his forces of self-renewal have conquered. In such cases, the vampires probably attempt to destroy him in another way - by trying to influence other people against him.  We should remember that Beethoven's death came about because he left his sister's house after a rather curious quarrel, and drove several miles in an open cart in the rain.  At all events, we notice that it is in the nineteenth century that the great artists first begin to complain that 'the world is against them'; Haydn and Mozart were well understood and appreciated by their own time. As soon as the artist dies, this neglect disappears - the mind vampires loosen their grip on people's minds. They have more important things to attend to. In the history of art and literature since 1780, we see the results of the battle with the mind vampires. The artists who refused to preach a gospel of pessimism and life devaluation were destroyed. The life-slanderers often lived to a ripe old age. It is interesting, for example, to contrast the fate of the life-slanderer Schopenhauer with that of the life-affirmer Nietzsche, or that of the sexual degenerate De Sade with that of the sexual mystic Lawrence.   Apart from these obvious facts, I have not succeeded in learning a great deal about the mind vampires. I am inclined to suspect that, in small numbers, they have always been present on earth. Possibly the Christian idea of the devil arises from some obscure intuition of the part they had played in human history: how their role is to take over a man's mind, and to cause him to become an enemy of life and of the human race. But it would be a mistake to blame the vampires for all the misfortunes of the human race. Man is an animal who is trying to evolve into a god. Many of his problems are an inevitable result of this struggle.

I want to try to get to the bottom of this evident contradiction in my worldviews, that I can at once respect both a John Trudell (Life Affirmer) and an Arthur Schopenhauer (one is points out that life itself is not all that it's * c-r-a-c-k-e-d * up to be).

And, like Thomas Ligotti, I can't imagine that there ever was a good time to be born, no matter what animal, plant, or tribe/nation of human beings.

I apologize if I am not making much sense.    I'm just trying to keep track of some evident contradictions in my brain that I will have to let rest for now.

________________________________________
I wonder why the word, "c-r-a-c-k-e-d," would be censored by the NetNanny.  Is it the word crack?  No.   And yet look what happens to ****.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2020, 11:14:00 am by Captain Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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Silenus

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Re: Contradictions
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2020, 08:31:16 am »
It's a contradiction that I share. I suppose that it may have to do with suffering being central to my opinion of existence. I don't have any reason to think that "technological progress" or "higher standards of living" are anything but destructive to ecological systems and sentient, biological life. Rather, it is but one more myth that a social animal dreamed up and sold to itself; a myth that has been taken so far that it is clearly beyond our control (it never was to begin with) and has become an entity in itself (Lovecraftian suicide-economy?). No different than the myths of patriarchal heirarchy, work, productivity, destiny, and so on.

To think that culture and civilization is sustainable is to buy in to authoritarian anthropocentrism. Who are the men that we believe the sun (that which allows us "vision" and "lights the way") beams from their minds? To think that there are answers to our questions is to presume that there is such a thing as control or stability. Turns out, the same questions that the "ancients" asked are still being asked today: nothing is solved, and there is no way to out-do our evolutionary psychology and physiology by reason alone. What we are left with is limitation: the thinking-animal DESPISES and is MORTIFIED by limitation. The Apollonian Nightmare.

So here is where I would side with the "primitive" peoples. They understood limits, from tribal size to "resource" Overshoot. Many of their "gods" were invented to humble, not to proclaim superiority. Well, at least to anyone not a "Chief." ;)

The contradiction lies in, as you quote Ligotti, that there is no such thing as a good time to be alive. I despise civilization and the dominant culture, but I don't grow vegetables and there is no stream in the backyard. Even if I did, what's to say that the climate and the soil is suitable for my sustenance long-term? We are apex predators and our craniums alone need high-energy intake. This constant NEED creates constant exploitation. Suffering is guaranteed and "baked in the cake;" transient satisfaction is not.

So I think it's a matter of degrees to suffering. Some things, like mankind enslaving mankind, are so obvious to anyone not living in denial or psychopathy that it is something to directly avoid. The bigger picture, the FEEDING nature of life, is not so obvious to many. If one were to take it so far, therein lies the contradiction and evolution seems to "defeat" itself in it's own created awareness. What is considered an example of evolutionary fitness really becomes a detriment (the refusal to create suffering and need i.e. procreation).
« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 08:34:16 am by Silenus »

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

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Re: Contradictions
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2020, 10:04:37 am »
Thank you so much for clarifying this contradiction.  Your wording is powerfully clear.    This may be the very contradiction I struggle with.  I do not want to be deluded into thinking that civilization is the cause of all our ills, and must embrace that life itself, to its very core, may be perceived (by itself) to be some kind of VIRUS.

"the thinking-animal DESPISES and is MORTIFIED by limitation. The Apollonian Nightmare."

Our consciousness allows us to detect that, through the process of birth, we are trapped in a predicament where we must eat food to survive.   One thing that stuck with me from the Upanishads, the translation I read, that is, is that we are all Eaters-of-Food.   This is not an enviable position to be in.

Your assessment is profound, Silenus:

If one were to take it so far, therein lies the contradiction and evolution seems to "defeat" itself in it's own created awareness. What is considered an example of evolutionary fitness really becomes a detriment (the refusal to create suffering and need i.e. procreation).


This actually helps me explain the contradiction rolling around in the Fire in my mind:
 
Suppose I were to flip the script of Colin Wilson's THE MIND PARASITES, and proclaim that Life Itself is the Original Virus/Mind_Parasite, and that the only real way to resist or escape the snare of Life would be to refuse to create suffering and need via procreation.  It would require an abundance of reason, an impossible degree of reason!   It is nightmarish, so intensely so as to be comical.   And that, too, is a bit of a contradiction, that any of the sickest members of our species might dare to find anything to laugh about here … Not the inane laughter of sit-com TV, but the the laughter hinted at by what Kurt Vonnegut's sister, Alice, called "slapstick" --- "so cruelly absurd as to be funny."

There may even be some humor in the contradiction that one seems to have to go mad to see the truth, or to catch a glimpse of the depths …

There are those who wish to keep it simple.  They want us to chill, to lighten up.

Lay down in the horizontal position and moan.   Curl under blankets.   Do not volunteer to join any armies.  Vow to be the last living coward on earth, the last honest thinking man standing, or just laying down in horizontal position under blanket … seeking the unconscious depths … merging with the primal, the unknowable.


« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 11:10:25 am by Captain Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Silenus

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Re: Contradictions
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2020, 12:25:44 pm »
In Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs & the Origins of the Human Mind, authors Ajit Varki and Danny Brower propose what they termed the MORT (Mind Over Reality Transition) Theory. Danny Browser asked Varki at a conference why no other sentient species, including those closely related to us genetically, have the type of sentience that we have. What is the threshold which holds so many other species back, while we crossed it? Why do we- knowing full well that others in our species think and feel as we do, and that we know that we are mortal because others in our species die- continue to procreate? Awareness of death, after all, logically would be an evolutionary disadvantage.

Their answer is, as Ernest Becker and the creators of Terror Management Theory proposed (just psychologically, without concerning evolutionary-psychology as this book does), is Denial. That a threshold must have been crossed from sentient perception of reality to reality-DENIAL, in order for a species such as ours to be able to continue the "blind" procreation that evolution "demands." Along the way, those who ACTUALLY face reality/mortality do not pass their genes; they gamed the system, so to speak. This concept of denial is explored, just like Becker and Solomon et. al. did, along all lines of human culture.

We really are the contradictory animal, lost in dreams that maintain the Nightmare. It's a fascinating read. When I can, I'll link you and any readers here to a PDF of Varki's that breaks the theory down.

Edit: Did Human Reality Denial Breach the Evolutionary Psychological Barrier of Mortality Salience? A Theory that Can Explain Unusual Features of the Origin and Fate of Our Species
« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 02:30:25 pm by Silenus »

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

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Re: Contradictions
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2020, 04:01:04 pm »
I downloaded the pdf file from the link and will explore in the twilight when my mind seems more ripe for this kind of Deep Contemplation.

Quote from: Silenus
Along the way, those who ACTUALLY face reality/mortality do not pass their genes; they gamed the system, so to speak.

I genuinely was very conscious of what I was doing as a teenage Onanist.   By the time I read Schopenhauer, I realized that I may have been figuring out how I got here and wondering if there was a way out.   In the heat of sexual excitement, we go into some kind of INSECT-MODE ...  Seeing where competition for survival leads, those who just want to get through this life without creating more NEED and WANT via procreation, may be jokingly seen as gaming the System of Nature; or, we might wish to see this as The Life Processes themselves, through the development of awareness (of sex --->  birth ---> death cycle), LEARNING not to want.

How does one learn not to survive?   Most people may be wired to reject any such notion.   I appreciate someone even attempting to articulate what they propose is the nature of this position we are in.


Just because something appears contradictory does not make it false.  That may apply in mathematics, but the actual nature of our lives may simply not be mathematizable or altogether rational.   I suppose that making sense to those in its possession is not a requirement of Life, after all.

(corrected insane typos)
« Last Edit: February 10, 2020, 07:09:25 pm by Captain Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Silenus

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Re: Contradictions
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2020, 04:15:59 pm »
Just because something appears contrdictory does not make it false.
Absolutely. The only reason many will not admit to even being contradictory is because it does not fit in with the narratives we create. We are so compartmentalized, so castrated, and must always follow a supposedly linear and chronological personality. If you do not believe what you did before, then are you really AUTHENTIC? (I've heard such bullsh*t before).

No tricks. No surprises. The Overlords love us for it.

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

Nation of One

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Re: Contradictions (Is the Earth [Mutter] Evil ?)
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2021, 05:15:42 am »


She says, "The earth is evil, and that we need not greive for it."

Dark-minded and heavy woman, heh? 





What do you think?   I am caught somewhere between John Trudell, Cornell West, Rammstein, Celine, Cioran, Schopenhauer and Ligotti ...

one confused puppy, here, fellas



Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~