WARNING: Long-winded post.
I hope I have not become a windbag.
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I have also experienced the pain of defeat in matters of the heart, repeatedly; hence "the Jaded."
It's as though I am living in the realm between the living and the dead.
I appreciate your view of what the world considers "real work," that is, being a lackey in the employ of some sadist ... do this, don't do that, etc and so forth --- subjecting yourself to to the will of another; obedience - something held in high regard by the likes of John F. Kennedy (the saint?) ["It's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."]
(WAY OFF TOPIC, sorry)
It's all in vain. Political leaders rely on people's gullibility, whereas police are trained, I suppose, to curb what they see as "man's natural tendencies."
During hurricanes or other natural disasters, one hears the officials speak of "people reverting to their
natural state."
So, there is a huge gulf between the image of the supposed audience of John F. Kennedy [cult of personality] who are supposedly prepared to contribute to this abstract concept of "a country," you know - a nation, the masses of other human beings, each of which is likely to call the police should you approach their domicile asking for some food or money AND "the natural state of man."
We can imagine masses of hungry bodies ... dangerous situations ... the ugly reality.
And even in ideal conditions, where mostly everyone is well fed, then there is all the vanity. Like the Hollywood rewards ceremonies. What a ridiculous spectacle of blowing smoke up their own asses! Wooooo-Hooooo!
Yes, Schopenhauer is one underestimated
bad ass, par excellence. Some of my favorite truths from Schopenhauer jump out from the incidental comments, such as his view of there not being such a thing as "the white race," that all human beings born out of the womb of nature are dark-skinned. Having depigmented skin is a mutation of some kind, maybe having to do with climate, but, regardless, not a trait found in "the original prototype."
In matters of the heart, countless will endure defeat. Nay, even those who have been fortunate in this regard, may suffer from heartbreak still. No one can know what another has endured.
There are the deeper truths as well. I found Kant's work confusing, but Schopenhauer helped me decipher it by saying, "Before Kant, we existed in time. After Kant, time exists in us."
There is no need for me to compete with Schopenhauer or to be his "successor," nor to even become some kind of half-crazed apostle. I am content to be a self-ordained disciple. And, yes, I am comfortable using the kind of terminology normally reserved for the religious.
In the introduction to the English translation of Mainlander's, "
Philosophy of Redemption," in the very first sentence:
Schopenhauer is not merely a figure in the history of philosophy:
his philosophy has the potential to replace religion. Mainländer wants to be his “Paul” and saw it as his life-task to purify Schopenhauer's immortal thoughts.
Mainländer saw his philosophy of redemption as timely, as the solution to the most urgent problem of modern humanity. This problem came from a terrible tension in the modern soul: on the one hand, a deep need for religion; on the other hand, a loss of religious faith. Since suffering is the eternal fate of mankind, there is still the great need for deliverance from it; but the traditional sources of religious belief are no longer credible to the general educated public. No one believed anymore in the existence of a heaven beyond the earth where a paternal God rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked. Hence Mainländer saw the purpose of his philosophy as the formulation of a modern doctrine of redemption, a doctrine that should be completely consistent with the naturalistic worldview of modern science. His philosophy, he was proud to say, would be the first attempt to ground the essential truths of salvation on the basis of nature alone.
Myself, I do not wish to be such an apostle, although I suspect that you, Holden, might be well-suited to the task of constructing such a doctrine. I am relieved to know that you have been leaning in the direction of giving up hope on salvation. I mean, it would be great were we able to appreciate Schopenhauer's attempt to satisfy man's metaphysical need for salvation, while at the same time, being able to come to terms with the absence of such salvation in the Natural World.
Maybe it is as simple as imagining that the materials constituting our animal bodies return into the earth and air, and our ego-identity is no more, it vanishes, it is annihilated as it had only been a narrative constructed by the living organism to unify its imperative to sustain itself as an organism-as-a-whole. That could be seen as a kind of salvation, that this ego-self will be annihilated, and that, just maybe,
we might
return to an inorganic state, more fit for enduring itself than we presently are as these
bundles of nerves, these anxious nervous wrecks ...
It is easy to speak of such things as if "I" know, as if "I" even could know.
The truth is what we stand in, and it does not depend on being known in order to be; and yet even our own bodies, according to Schopenhauer's doctrine (via Kant), are experienced as representations extended in space, and so, in effect, are known. We stand in truth, we do not know truth ----- AND YET! Do you notice the circle of thought we get trapped in? This animal body I experience as myself, extended in space, is a representation (in my head, which is on the shoulders of and part of the body extended in space). Can I have that drink now?
It is great for all those who find in Schopenhauer's work something that may be considered their own personal and private non-religious religion, which is what I have found.
On the other hand, as far as my own personal contribution to "the future" goes, as you know, I am only trying to reach those who, like myself, may wish to make mathematics a life-time study, as opposed to how it has been presented to me, and most likely will continue to be presented, as training for the scientific professions.
Schopnehauer was interested in physics, as he is usually referring to the problems presented in physics when he talks about Qualitates Occultae (plural of qualitas occulta?).
I always write as a layman, that is, I fully concede that I am neither mathematician nor physicist. Hell, even though I have written some beautiful computer programs, I still consider myself a novice hobbyist programmer. Consequently, my notes to the future may be cherished by certain like-minded individuals, mainly adults, who may wish to make the study of mathematics a lifelong passion, even when their formal education leaves them standing in line at the unemployment office or even at the food bank.
Come to think of it, this encyclopedic series of notebooks might be embraced in the future only by an older, more tired version of myself. The secret to the riddle of existence will certainly not be found in its pages; but, taken as a whole, there will be evidence of one man, one non-professional, non-academic man, who approached the foundations and fundamentals of a vast discipline, and attempted to leave organized notes of the process of covering a small amount of material, which, in effect, takes many years, even decades. This might serve as some kind of example of how an autodidact might stubbornly pursue self-education even long after being processed through compulsory education to be fed into the wage-slavery market of lackeys, gofers, and general maintenance "employment opportunities" available.
None of my math notes include any reference to the work of Arthur Schopenhauer. I only wish that he would have written a little more about basic mathematics and what he referred to as "the drudgery of arithmetic."
You mention the agony you have been experiencing. I wish there were a way to sneak into the margins of my math notes some comments concerning the agony of day to day existence, or how sometimes everything seems to be done in vain; but, as you know, it is an art form just to keep one's "work" organized, and, as it is, much verbiage is left out, using various notations which say a lot in the shortest amount of space.
When writing computer programs, I inject many lengthy comments which the machine ignores. These comments are written for others, but mainly for myself so that I better understand what it is I was doing, what the code "means to do." Unsurprisingly, we forget what we were up to even after a week or a month passes, let alone a year or two.
The manner in which we express ourselves is significant. Just maybe, writing in a free style, allowing ourselves to speak plainly, has been "inherited" from the master, Schopenhauer. What I mean is, even if we are not able to defend, justify, or "purify" Schopenhauer's main doctrine (as some kind of apostles), it may be enough that we have picked up his habit of writing as naively as possible, that is, in an opposite way that one would present oneself to a potential employer - frankly, as brutally honest as possible.
Maybe this is exactly how I am constructing "the encyclopedic series of mathematics notebooks," naively ... as an old-timer novice, as a mere mortal, as a non-mathematician, non-academic, as a non-professional. I am not of a priestly class, not in the Priest Caste.
Thanks to the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, I have, over my lifetime, developed the confidence to apply myself to what interests me. There was a time when I applied myself strictly to drinking alcohol and going on long philosophical rants (with background music, of course). Similarly to Doug Standhope, I drank because I was me. The implication is that others would also seek inebriation if they found themselves with this contradictory and chaotic brain inside their skulls.
Now that I am able to hold a pencil and write legibly, and think coherently for this long stretch of time, I am glad I have been compiling these notebooks. I can look at them and know that I have been up to something over the past few years, something quite different than reading book after book on critical social theory or "phenomenology."
Don't get me wrong. I have been reading some phenomenological writings on depression, and I am always interested when Husserl or Merleau-Ponty are mentioned anywhere. It's just that, well, the epoche (the phenomenological reduction) seems almost quasi-mystical ... a suspension of believing in the objective "world." It's interesting, yes; but there is an entirely different kind of thinking required to, say, apply a matrix to a vector space, as in a transformation. The first is rather vague and even might be called "touchy-feely," whereas the latter is "hard" --- that is, as abstract a notion that a vector space is, it still has the feel of something SOLID ... a space with a certain number of dimensions.
Thanks for the interaction, Holden. It is no little blessing to have someone in this mad world who takes some kind of interest in what our personal and private "irreligious religion" is.
As Senor Raul has pointed out: re- (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully".
Unfortunately, the common understanding of the word religion would forbid me using it since I am pretty much against what most would consider religiosity. I do, however, CHOOSE to GO OVER AGAIN and CONSIDER CAREFULLY, not only the writings of Schopenhauer, but some fairly fundamental and even elementary ideas of mathematics as well.
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a collection of portraits of "the master"