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

While researching an essay by Schopenhauer called Transcendental Speculation on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual, I also found an article, Schopenhauer: Causality and Synchronicity by Scott Horton, where, at the end, he suggest, "Listen to Ludwig van Beethoven’s “große Fuge” movement in B flat major, op. 133.  Think of this as an exercise in the Schopenhauerian perspective—the fugue form is radicalized, turned elliptical and fractal. It assumes a relentlessness pessimism well measured to Schopenhauer."

At about 12 minutes in, it gets interesting, I think.  I'm no expert on classical music.



Actually, my cousin had inquired about the essay, Transcendental Speculation on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual, but I do not remember ever reading it.   It seems that this is from Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume One, beginning on page 199.

As I explained to my cousin, I do not own a copy of Parerga and Paralipomena.  The reason is that, back in 1991, I had paid $160 to have "Out of Print Books On Demand" print me the two-volume 800 page PESSIMIST'S HANDBOOK, which I figured contained everything that was originally published in Parerga and Paralipomena.   So, I think this is the first time I am reading the essay, Transcendental Speculation on Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual.

I read this essay back  in '16.Left a profound impression on me.I am been thinking a great  deal about the causal nexus.I think  of the  how  the gravity  feels on my body, the atmospheric pressure,how my  head is balance on my neck,which in  turn is based on my spine..

At the end of the first paragraph, Schopenhauer says that he is not to be taken seriously when he adopts a positive or dogmatic tone in the essay.   Are we to conclude that the belief in Fate or Determinism is wishy-washy at best?

It is the offspring of our miserable state, simply a way human beings have tried to make sense of their lives.  Still, we all seem quite powerless against what is called Fate.   Many are drawn to believe s strange and mysterious power directs the events of an individual's life, such as when people like my own mother say, "God has a plan," as though chance and error are the mere instruments of an invisible hand.

No matter what we think about the events of our lives, throughout our moods will be determined by whether our will is satisfied or not.  This is why there are such paradoxes as a prisoner experiencing more genuine gratitude while eating food or lost in contemplation than a king or emperor, since it takes a great deal more to satisfy the latter.

Whether one's fate is to be a lunatic in a mental asylum or to be the head baboon in charge of a nation or corporation, our fate is the same as all animals on this earth.  We will face the moment of death.   That is our fate.   It is no mystery, and yet, it still is a mystery.

As with much of what I have read by Schopenhauer, this essay provokes thinking and reflection, but I do not feel any obligation to commit to any particular view, such as transcendental fatalism.  If I were to walk to the liquor store and imbibe alcohol, one could say that this was my fate, that I am destined to do so eventually, and it would not surprise me in the least.   After all, I've been drunk before, and there is a good chance I will find myself drunk again.   But, for the moment, in this period of "harm reduction," where I have been abstaining, I have quite a different view of the nature of this thing called fate.   

Maybe I am not cut out to fathom all that much of mathematics, or my fate in this respect is predetermined by my intellectual honesty.  That is, no matter how much I learn and understand, due to the nature of my "honesty," I will always feel that it is all a farce. 

I often reflect upon the stories I hear of the Natives (the people indigenous to North America) who, when they become so old as to be a burden to the tribe, would walk alone into the mountains to die peacefully in the snow and ice.   I imagine that the only way such a death would be peaceful for me, personally, is if I were accompanied by a large bottle of hard whiskey, and maybe even some hard drugs like morphine.   With such chemical assistance, I believe the death event might not be so horrific at all.   None of us can forever ignore our common destiny.

I like the way Schopenhauer mentions in passing the nature of nocturnal emissions (wet dreams).  Things like that impress me about his honesty.   It is quite refreshing, indeed.

So, I can't help but be sexually attracted to young Lolitas, what is the name for them??? I haven't used the word in quite some time ... nymphet!   Crap.   The thing that would have me reciting the Lord's Prayer, "Lead me not into temptation ... and deliver me from evil."

It's all very interesting, yes, how our head balances on the neck, how the atmosphere has just enough oxygen for us to sustain our life, until we breathe no more.   We are quite powerless - our egos, that is.   And yet, as Schopenhauer often hints at, are we not this inner kernel of Nature?    Are we not Fate itself?  Maybe we ought not identify so much with our individuality ... but the entire essay is concerned with the apparent design in the fate of the individual.

It is still difficult for me to fathom how i lost my job with the park service.  I thought I would be working for the State for life, like a prison sentence; and yet it is now over twenty years later.   It was not to be my destiny, after all.    What appeared to be such an awful thing (losing the job) may not have been such a bad thing.  After all, I now identify myself more as a scholarly inmate in an Open Air Prison than as a "janitor for a park."

I enjoyed the essay, but as usual, as I am just this animal who must eat, I have an engagement with destiny to chop carrots and potatoes before placing the carcass of yet another chicken in the oven.

I've recently been thinking and making brief notes in a journal about reconciling Determinism and Fatalism, that is, the objective Determinism and subjective Fatalism of my outlook.  Not a fatalism where some deity or "intelligent design" or mythical what-have-you is pulling the strings, but the fate of a living organism bound by the shackles of blind, indifferent biological, chemical and physical forces (forget about consciousness!).  Our "fate" is such that, no matter what happens, we are subject to a chain of causality (deterministic) and the physical "stuff" we, our urges, emotions and minds, are "composed" of.

I understand the distinction.  In fact, isn't this in agreement with Holden's comment that "true knowledge speaks only of inevitability" and that "this very realisation - that we are puppets who dance according to the laws of determinism, brings  about an alteration."

We are subject to the stuff we are, the urges, the Will - and this includes the stuff of the atmosphere we exist in, since we are certainly more than just that which is inside the skin.  We are the air and the sun and all the rest.  We are defined by this stuff.

What is called chance and accident, even as the entire cosmos might be the result of such a chain of accidents, that we are who and what we be is completely dependent upon that chain, what Holden refers to as the causal nexus. 

Scientists in Canada who study addiction to substances theorize that nearly all who become chronically dependent upon the hardest of illicit drugs do so as a reaction to trauma experienced in childhood.   

If we accept a kind of transcendent fatalism, does this mean that we do not think we can do anything to improve our situation - our personal situation or even our predicament as a species?

I certainly don't think there is anything we can do to alter the course the species is on.  We're doomed.  That's the good news.  As for my personal situation, I also would like to become more objective.  I observe myself as though I were a laboratory experiment, but I can't help being me ... there is the ever-present burden of one's own existence, where everything seems to be a drag.

There's no "snapping out of it."

What is this alteration that takes place once we accept our condition as puppets?

I know that when I fill notebooks with "mathematical work," I am indulging in a grand illusion of security.  It's like a security blanket ... a pacifier.  In a way, it's a kind of experiment in a laboratory, where I am curious to see if there are any serious inner transformations after studying intensely for about ten years straight.

If at the end of ten years I am stupider than ever, then I will have a hardy laugh!

The level of mathematical understanding I imagine exists may just not be my fate to attain, and I will just have to humbly embrace the tip of the iceberg that I have been able to grasp.

While I am interested in the kinds of things Schopenhauer discusses in the essay, I have become more than a little indifferent - RESIGNED to live as a member of the slave class who is curious to behold the so-called mysteries conjured up by the "intellectual class".

There's another can of worms:  How might these metaphysical ideas about determinism and fate play into the hands of those who benefit from social hierarchies, where the fortunes are inherited and passed down through the generations?

Sorry if I am rambling on.

Thank you, Holden, for your thoughtful contribution to these questions.

I will also give this more thought.

I found an essay from 1966 that may be related, The inconceivability of pessimistic determinism by J.E. Llewelyn:

http://booksdescr.org/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1093%2Fanalys%2F27.2.39&downloadname=

It is only 6 pages but I did not find it very interesting.   Schopenhauer makes a lot more sense to me, especially as he cites ancient texts and attempts to show how things that may not necessarily be "facts" can be "true" in the way they are experienced.  In other words, he explains the way human beings, including ourselves, may find themselves thinking about the events of their lives, especially when looking back at how we have come to be "where we are at" in the present, although the present is always turning instantly into the past.

Perhaps the general aim of mathematics is to make the complicated simple by discovering its pattern.  I understand that underneath everything there must be states and conditions, causes and effects, which determine how everything unfolds, so, I see that hard determinism is not "wishy-washy" at all.   Maybe when I wrote that, I was thinking more of the way some may believe everything is for the best, no matter what, only because we do not see the bigger picture.

Still, though, I do see that we all must wonder about such things from time to time.   

Whatever happens can, in retrospect, be called Fate. for Fate is just whatever is.  As in, it is what it is.

It's after midnight and I want to peck away at some notes on finding the inverse of a matrix ... I am keeping the pencil well-sharpened, and this is a "special notebook."  --- it's a monk's life, really.   While I do not spend much time consciously reflecting upon these deeper ideas, I do think that, on some deeper level, perhaps the mind goes about thinking on a subconscious level, if that kind of thinking can even be considered thought at all.

As always, I apologize if I am not going out of my way to make sense.  I know that, with you, you will forgive me if I write in a kind of stream of consciousness manner.

I think that my confusion over Fate and Determinism is rooted in the two very different meanings of "reason" when we speak of the principle of sufficient reason.   There are reasons (causes and effects), but there are no Reasons as far as higher meaning or purpose.

Yes, I think this is key to our understanding here.  It is important to remember Kant and Schopenhauer at a moment like this, and, even more importantly (to me personally, at least), when living in a culture of "everything-happens-for-a-reason"-ism, that unfortunate vestige of magic/religion/psychoanalysis/self-help.

At the core of Schopenhauer's philosophy is the basic intuition that we do not so much live, as we are lived.

  ~ from Infinite Resignation

Nations exist merely in abstracto;  individuals are what is real.  Therefore world history is without direct metaphysical significance; it is really only an accidental configuration.

~ Schopenhauer (Transcendent Speculation)