Rising Tide

Thought Experiment Series: The Experience Machine

2011-08-26T17:59:00.005+10:00

Picture from http://tris31.deviantart.com/art/The-Happiness-Machine-193647769

Those of my readers who have - to some extent - perused the world of philosophical thought experiments may be familiar with the ideas behind this scenario. If not however, I would ask you to imagine that, by some greatly advanced technology (magic works too I suppose, not to get caught up in the form of the construct), you find yourself in a position in which you are able to hook yourself up to a 'machine' which will simulate life to an exact degree, the only difference from reality being that the machine will guarantee that you will experience happiness for as long as you are connected to it. This thought experiment is usually utilized in order to figure out to what extent, if at all, we can rationalise why we would not want to be connected to the proposed 'bliss machine' as would be in tune, as is suggested, with the intuitions of the majority of those who consider this situation seriously. To put the idea into another frame of relation, and to utilize an obviously relevant pop-culture reference, imagine whether you would want to be put into The Matrix given that it was programmed correctly and actually gave humans the happiest of possible lives (and no, before you ask, the 'real' world isn't being destroyed by mechanical hive-mind insects).

There are many intuitive reasons why we might not want to engage with the machine. Our natural use of the concept/word 'reality' alone can give us some indication as to the problems that one might have with this endeavor. The idea that what we perceive is something directly in our grasp as physical agents is a deeply held foundation for the way that we operate, particularly in relation to our ways of knowing the world and the universe. To think that what makes up our reality is mediated by some unknown factor obscures knowledge and stands as a threat to the very stability which we depend on to engage further with our lives. This obfuscation of epistemic knowledge gives rise to an ontic catastrophe and we are caught in the clasp of Cartesian skepticism. 'Mond Dieu!!' I hear you exclaim. Much like Descartes, I would suggest (although without reference to a being explicitly termed 'God') that it is perhaps most useful simply to take our direct relationship with reality for granted - so we are not to assume that we are already connected to a machine or simulation, mainly because to assert such a thing is only speculation and not able to be explored in any sense. Of course, you can remain sceptical if you like, perhaps just for fun, but just remember you might want to review your stance when trying to convince others without any sense of evidence.

From this perspective, it is unclear to me what would be gained by plugging oneself into such a machine. Given the abstract nature of the concept 'happiness', it seems that it would be strangley defeatist to plug yourself into something outside of your control that is purported to create ultimate happiness in your life. To me, there is no rational reason why you should think that the 'happiness' that the machine would create was any different from the happiness or enjoyment that one is able to cultivate in the Universe as we already experience it. Sure, we may find ourselves currently unhappy, but it seems rather odd to think that our happiness would be more absolute from cutting out other emotional affects, all of which are surely interconnected and vast in scope. To put it in simpler terms, without any sorrow, the joy we experience would lose its allure. It seems more likely to me that we must model the terms, not as binary opposites, but rather as two inter-relating aspects of life.

From the perspective of Eudaimonia (Greek term translated roughly to something between 'happiness', 'flourishing', and 'intellectual reflection') we can not be certain of any form of happiness based on the ideas of others. Instead we need to mediate between the circumstances of the Universe, and our own respective places within it. Whether being deceived by an evil demon, or stuck in a cave of shadows, this life is the only one that we are - collectively - able to experience. I think it best that we start to work from there.

Music; Cycle, Repetition and Finitude

2011-08-16T23:28:00.001+10:00

The Mission, M is for Milla Mix, by Puscifer
https://store.puscifer.com/frameset.html

I often find myself thinking about music, and why it is that I find it to be such a strange, albeit amazing phenomenon. So far my mind has semi-constructed three aspects of music which, for now, I will term; cycle, repetition, and finitude. I'm thus far not sure whether these are termed correctly, or whether they overlap, or are completely un-related, but so far they seem to be three aspects which are common to any musical composition.

Cycle represents the song as a whole, including the sound that makes up its structure, the physical elements that allow the music to be felt and heard by bodies. We look to the cycle of a song to determine its form as a whole, its feeling as a piece of music, its style, its flow. I imagine that when we fit a piece of music into a genre we are concerned with its cycle, this is a way we can easily compare and relate between different songs. In terms of cycle we could say about this song that it has a duration of four minutes, uses drums, vocals, guitars and synths as its compositional parts, has a 4:4 beat, is made of two verses, an interlude and three choruses, an outro etc. In a way this is a top-down approach to the piece.

Repetition pertains to the aspects within the whole which repeat - certain notes, structures, melodies, or perhaps even ideas in the form of differing elements. A clear example of this in the song above would be the phrase 'what do you know?' which repeats almost unchanged throughout the whole song and acts as a foundation for the linguistic semiotic presented by the words used. It also relates to the way that the different sections (choruses, verses, etc.) are done to similarity, how they differ. Important to note that a song may have very little repetition such as jazz, or even classical music. Nevertheless there is a relationship established between the parts of this music which establish a dynamic which we can relate to as listeners. This would be a bottom-up approach to a piece of music.

As for finitude, I feel that this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of a piece of music. Finitude pertains to the momentary nature of any song. This is what makes it a reflection of 'sound in reality' which has no (conceivable) beginning and/or end. This finite nature of song is comparable with all other forms of art as reflections of reality. The beginning and end to a piece alludes to its infinite scope, almost as if the piece is a universe within itself, its own beginning and end, its own existence. The finitude of a piece, while pertaining to its self-regulation, or self-existence, is paradoxically placed as the song invariably points to things in reality which it attempts to reflect, and synthesise these elements into a new meaning. This would be an outside looking in, or meta-experiential approach to music.

Now, not having studied music in any sense, and not yet being able to appreciate the thoughts of anyone else regarding the subject, I imagine that there are far greater and more intricate theories regarding music. Nevertheless, sometimes it is important to map out one's intuitions regarding a subject, and in this way try to determine how it operates in your own world view. This is just a small thought which I hope to expound on later.

Tell me what you think makes music so amazing, and, if you feel like it, link me to any other videos which you think might either support or discredit my philosophy of music as it so far stands.

500 words on Adaptation (2002)

2011-08-05T12:17:00.002+10:00

Spike Jonze (director) Susan Orlean (original author) Charlie/Donald Kaufman (Screen-writer)

Adaptation is, in my humble opinion, the ultimate meta-fictional film (thus far). The film's screenplay, written by Charlie Kaufman (and his imaginary brother Donald Kaufman) is largely based around the attempts of Charlie to adapt for the screen, a book by Susan Orlean, The Orchard Thief, which itself is a piece of 'new journalism' (imaginatively dubbed) which concerns a man who is searching for the legendary ghost orchard, believed to be an extremely rare and unique type of orchard. The original work took what was a small story in a newspaper about the topic and added a personal element of intrigue and romance as the author observed the central character, John Laroche, and his ability to be passionate about things, almost to a point of obsessive single-mindedness.

The narrative follows Charlie in his attempts to turn this strange, captivating piece of journalism into a story that will work for the silver screen, believing that fidelity to the original work is crucial. This puritan drive to stay true to the original is constantly challenged as the audience witnesses Kaufman navigating his way through the pressures of the film studio, his agency, and probably most interestingly, his own legacy in the form of his success from his prior screenplay, the critically acclaimed Being John Malkovich. Aided (indignantly) by his brother, Charlie finds inspiration in places or sources that he would usually disdain.

The story attempts to place the act of creating the film in its broader context within the human world, thus comparing the process of adaptation in the natural world over the course of the earth's history with the functioning and fluctuating of human ideas and behaviours. To me, this is where the story is most interesting in that it attempts to deal with the workings and disruptions of a personality in a way which reflects and interpolates the relationship between the natural world and the strictly human world of ideas, beliefs, obsessions and much more. We see that Charlie is only able to escape his own drama by embracing the world around him, becoming part of a fluctuating system rather than attempting to revive a ghost. The film explores the notion of originality and fidelity, and challenges many preconceived intuitions regarding both, allowing the audience to take measure of beliefs about the originality and ownership of ideas and creations.

On the face of it, this film is not for everyone. Its mastery lies in the fact that it can be viewed in so many different ways; as a simple narrative, as an asexual mess of introspection, or as a cross-pollinating leap towards the evolving yet transient nature of ideas and human creations, and many other vairations, both therein and without. Adaptation is, for lack of a better way of describing here, both very like and unlike Being John Malkovich (which I also love). The amazing directing work of Jonze can be noticed in both, as can, the ingenuity of Kaufman's writing. If you haven't already, I would recommend checking the movie out.

Dr. Manhattan: Parallels of Love and Reason

2011-07-28T20:35:00.001+10:00

All pictures from The Watchmen (1986-87), By Alan Moore (Writer) and Dave Gibbons (Artist)

Dr. Manhattan is an interesting character from the graphic novel 'The Watchmen' by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Interesting I think, as are all of the characters in the work, in that he poses serious questions to the viewer, questions which ask us to evaluate or re-examine standards as to the way we exist in reality, and our moral/social convictions to those around us.

The character is a being which is able to move beyond the physical constraints that govern human existence as we know it. We see this in the way that he changes shape, his appearance and his physical structure. He is disembodied, which is to say that he is able to transgress the limitations set to us as a result of our inherent position in time and space. He can be in several places at once. He can also see the effects of any event in it's relationship within an entire physical context. He is humankind envisioned as a transgressor of the laws of physics.

In a way, this might seem like a hazardous element to place in a narrative. One might assume that if such a character were to exist, then any possible challenge would be overcome without complication, and in that sense nullify the drama and obstacle that one looks for in a fictional narrative. The novel places Dr. Manhattan in the landscape of potential agency with the aim to explore the limitations of such a character, thus contrasting his physical mastery with the realities that such a being might face - ineptitudes regarding social encumbrance and dealing with other beings on a human level. The society in which he exists dubs him as a God, but he is averse to this title, and clearly does not believe it is true.

This juxtaposition gives rise to some interesting parallels with our potency to act as individuals. The character allows us to distinguish between power over our material world, and our ethical competency. What we find with Dr. Manhattan is that although he exists in a state which is all-powerful from a particular point of observation, his ability to control and contort the physical world according to his will gives rise to a gap in efficacy regarding social ties and distinctions. He reaches a stage where he is so bound by his inferential, cause-effect-understanding of the world that he plainly states that life has no meaning at all, as in a physical sense; the structure of the elements remain the same whether alive or dead.

In talking of life as an 'unquantifiable abstract', Manhattan really shows his alienation from the human world, a world which is based on flawed understandings and emotions and passion. The reader then is forced to explore the notions of a being which in certain aspects seems to be their superior in evolutionary terms, perhaps not an ultimate being, but at least am progression from our current state. If Dr. Manhattan is the foreseen 'Overman', then why does it seem like he is completely alien to that which we value as human? Would we want to be like him? Would the world be better off? In some respects, the answer to these is (probably?) yes. There is, however, a distinct lack in his character, and thus as a goal, we are inclined to aim for something more refined.

The story becomes more interesting as we witness Manhattan being forced by circumstance to address these limitations. He is finally faced with a choice; to intervene on the basis of something which doesn't make any (logical) sense, or to remove himself entirely from the human world, given that his ability to act is outside of the realm of human activity/cognizance. Finally, he shows us that a being as powerful as his still needs to learn and to grow. His growth acknowledges the value of inter-relational understanding within our own lives.

If you haven't already, I'd really recommend for you all to check out the Graphic novel, and/or the film (2009) of the same title. They are both outstanding works of fiction.

Fiction as Conduit.

2011-07-21T08:05:00.015+10:00

Fiction seems to exist in such a strange and somewhat un-examined place in our world. Strange, I think, in that it is generally considered to reside within the realm of luxury, decadence, and nonsense. Fiction, or imaginative reflection, are all too often in our time regarded only as a means of escapism. While escape is one aspect of art, I would argue that it is but one small facet of this intricately human aspect of our lives.

We lovers of stories might suggest that fiction, or indeed artistic creation in general, is in fact something that necessarily arises from the activity of any self-reflective agency. While it is perhaps true that reflection of the sort that is constitutive of artistic creation is luxurious in the sense that it requires that one is not actively engaged in the process of survival (having one's mind constantly engaged in satisfying one's drives of hunger, shelter, reproduction etc.), there is still much in this way of thinking which is crucial to our way of operating in the world - and in that sense - worthy of exploration. It should also be fairly clear upon reflection, I think, that this imaginary capacity is able to influence the efficacy of an agent in its capacity to survive. If one was feeling bold, one could almost make the claim that the entirety of human culture is the end result of exactly this ability to sublimate and fictionalize.

It seems to me that one of the primary advantages to what we call 'consciousness' (which I describe as the faculty to observe the processes of self-mediation) is the ability to contemplate what is not directly in our physical world, thus allowing us the power to change the contours of our reality. To imagine is to contrast the range of possibilities that one can conceive of against the concrete world of phenomenal observation.
To make a story, or to imagine a scenario changes the way you think about something, which in turn changes the way you interact with the physical world. Any fiction or story, any artistic theme or notion can be seen as a mass-conveyor of this kind of imaginative exploration.
Even to theorize is to use this faculty, which is not to say that any theoretical pursuit is exactly equatable to 'art', so much as it is to say that all modes of communication share common ancestors, at least in an epistemological sense.

Fiction can allow us to explore truth. How do imaginative flights fit in with the real world which lays in front of our eyes? What is clearly untruth? What are lies? What factor is important in the illusion to the extent that we hold it as beloved truth despite discrepancy? Fiction provides us with paragons of human behaviour and thought. Playing with archetypal standards and tropes allows the audience to relate through a shared language of social norms, a language that is able to evolve like any other.

There should be no shame for a love of the exploration of fiction, nor for its creation. Rather, a competency for either ability should be valued and cultivated with a sense of pride.
The communication of ideas is not an inherently good or evil thing, these are just words and are meaningless without context. Nevertheless, the greater our ability to communicate - the greater is our capacity for unified change, or so it seems to me. What do you think?

Love in a Concrete World; Analysis of a Passage from The Brothers Karamazov

2011-06-27T17:19:00.014+10:00

Whether atheist, theist, or humanist, it seems that the idea that one should 'love' one's fellow human being is to be considered common ground in terms of an ideological standpoint. Beyond this, and keeping in mind the ambiguities involved with the concept of love, things differ fairly drastically. Nevertheless, to some extent, the idea that other people are inherently valuable to individual life is, at least as far as I can see, standard of every normative ethical system. A theist will say that this idea is necessitated by the command of a divine being, an atheist just that it makes sense and is beneficial to all. Humanists start with this evaluation (it is right to love one's fellow human) and use this as the foundation for an ideology that places it at its centre. The ideal is the basis for what is called in philosophy 'the golden rule', most commonly known in the form of Jesus Christ's statement; 'Do unto others what you would have done unto yourself'. Immanuel Kant also came up with a pretty good one involving maxims and universal laws known as the 'categorical imperative'.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law – Immanuel Kant.

While this seems convenient it also bothers me to some extent. This is not because I think that the ideal is wrong - on the contrary, I think that it is a great idea to love others and fundamental to our way of operating in the world, our process of civilisation thus far. It bothers me because it seems that the ideal is far removed from a social reality which places its constituents in constant competition with one another. These conflicting ideologies create a kind of social dissonance between an individual's beliefs and the social institutions that effect the way we live our lives. A generalised transcendental love seemingly gives rise to apathy and ignorance. The prospect is a pacifier in regards to social and individual change and seems to treat love as a wholly standardised affair – weak and insubstantial. Thou shouldst love. Well, we'd better then. This is proscriptive and antithetical to true growth, a growth that develops out of a love that is unique to every second, every new situation of a person's life.

I feel like this 'all inclusive love' is an ideal that is only applicable when everything else in the immediate world is realised. It is a teleological endpoint, a final goal. It is not something to be relied upon. It is not something to fall back upon. It is not a reason to be passive with your environment, no reason to turn the other cheek, or to look away from the world's misdeeds. It is the ends for which we strive, not a means to rest in ignorance.

In Chapter 4 (Mutiny) of Book V of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, two of the brothers – Ivan and Alyosha – converse for the first time in many years during which neither had made any kind of contact with the other. Their discussion is hinged around love. Ivan Karamazov, a purely intellectual figure, demands of Alyosha, who is soon to be officiated as a man of God within the church's institution, an explication of the concept of Christ-like love. He begins with a confession that he has 'never been able to understand how it is possible to love one's neighbour'. Through this simple statement, Ivan expresses his disdain for the hypocrisy that he sees in his society in which people use this general love as an ideological blanket whilst behaving in ways that defy any sense of ethical competence. When Ivan describes Alyosha's Christ-like love as being 'a miracle that is impossible on Earth' his words force us to question whether the ideal is merely a symbol which has no real implication on the individual in its allusion to conceptual love for the imagined human ideal over and above the actual human beings that one might encounter in one's life. 'In order to love a person', he concludes 'it is necessary for him to be concealed from view; the moment he shows his face – love disappears'. Christ's was the love of a God, but we are not gods. Sometimes we must go against our intuitions to develop a love that is contrary to standards. To become whole, we must work towards social harmony, and this work will be, at times, difficult and frightening.

I can't help thinking that if the devil doesn't exist and, therefore, man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness – Ivan Karamazov

The intellectual brother develops an argument against this common ideal based on the suffering of children. He distinguishes here between children and adults by requital to the old mythological adage that adults have eaten of the tree of knowledge and have become aware of good and evil; they are one step closer to the 'gods' and have the power to destroy and create, the power to act in full consciousness of the effects of their actions. The innocence of children in the world that Ivan accentuates is not hard to recognise. Through an exposition of absolutely inexcusable acts of cruelty towards children, Ivan declares that he does not have even the slightest hint of love for the individuals that played a hand in orchestrating those atrocities, nor should he wish to. Finally Ivan renounces the idea of transcendental justice; a hell for tortures, a heaven as compensation for those who are wronged. Any amount of suffering of children (by extension his argument is inclusive of all of mankind, though his point is particularly relevant to those who are exemplary to this kind of innocence) is too high a price to pay for a sense of other-worldly justice, and Ivan would rather surrender any sense of cosmic harmony than allow the crimes that cause this suffering to continue. Ivan expresses his love for humankind unconventionally by recognising those parts of humanity that are not to be loved. Ivan does not passively love, he loves through his will to change for the better and embody that which is able to oppose love's antithesis. This is a love that is tortured, for it is based on an acceptance that there are parts of human nature that are detrimental to the whole, there are actions and modes of transmitting 'social energy' so to speak that are not worthy of repetition. Acts of love are to be orchestrated in the human, material world and not left as a hypothetical operative outside the cognitive capabilities of humankind.

The ultimate abyss is not a physical abyss, but the abyss of the depth of another person - Slavoj Zizek, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

The reader becomes aware throughout the novel that Alyosha, who is a follower of the heart of his beliefs in contrast to many of the other 'men of God' with whom he is forced to compete, is capable of a love that harbours this kind of psychical transformation that Ivan alludes to. 'Yes, shoot them' says Alyosha in regards to the perpetrators of evil towards children. After repenting and calling his own statement absurd, Ivan is quick to reply that 'absurdities are only too necessary on earth'. Alyosha bears a disposition towards the world that is able to dynamically oppose those things which he sees as misdeeds, not through aggressive opposition, but rather through a mode of operation whereby he will only act according to those maxims which he deems appropriate to become universally applicable. The absurdity comes from the relationship humans have with conventions and in the relevant sense, moral conventions. Alyosha, it can be seen, loves humanity in the same way as does Ivan, though both come about this conclusion in different ways. His absurd statement shows that he is willing to say that the perpetrators of cruelty towards children are, in a determinate sense, worthy of repudiation and contempt. Alyosha's opinion develops however, and we see that he is inclined to separate the act of the person with the person themselves.

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love - Erich Fromm, The Art of Love, p.88

Both brothers are arguing for a very humanistic ideal. One is inclined slightly towards confusion and relativism, the other is seen as being classically theistic, but I think that Dostoyevsky in fact constructs Alyosha's character to be one of rebellion in terms of the classical religious sentiments of his time. His 'God' is not the dogmatic God of the church as it is described, but is instead a mode of relation with the physical world. Alyosha has faith, but it is his own faith in the power of humankind to transform the repetition of evil actions into something more positive. He believes, not in blind and all-inclusive forgiveness, but rather the willingness to understand the human behind the action.

There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give away any of it to imaginary beings - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human

Our society is in need, I believe, to recognise the common ideas of differing ideologies. Moving away from arguments hinged on semantics can yield a state of society in which we are able to analyse the beneficial and detrimental aspects of social life, and to open up myriad possibilities for change and transformation. When we can all agree that this idealised love is a goal which we are all working towards, then I think we will forget the minor differences, our predispositions towards transcendentalism or the human spirit. Cosmological differentiation is then personalised and our physical worlds can become the community and playground that we might wish it to be.

It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Let's all become more accustomed to having sympathy with thought. You might wonder how I aim to appropriate, with any sense of practicality, these ideas into my own way of living. I will start by recognising that I should not take love for granted, making the love I do choose to keep stronger and more able to withstand complications and contradictions as time goes on. Along with this I will question constantly the expectation that I am in competition with my fellow human beings, given that our end goal is fundamentally all the same.

Convention as Creativity. Relevance and Homeogenesis.

2011-06-12T17:25:00.003+10:00

Picture from David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997)

When driving, you stay inside the white painted lines on the road. You don't think about this anymore, you just do it, it comes naturally. When you see a red light, you slow your vehicle down until it comes to a stop. You have trained yourself to react automatically to these visual cues allowing you to drive in a way which is safe for yourself and others on the road. This is interesting to me in a number of ways.

When we think about our ability to learn and accept a system of representations and indications such as those to do with the safe driving of a vehicle it becomes apparent that this cognitive faculty to create systems of interaction with our reality is crucial to our way of life. Our ability to act and react, and our understanding of signs and symbols is inherently important for our ability to improve our systems of relation to the world we live in.

This example is analogous in many ways with our social and psychological interactions. Everyone has a unique relationship with the concept love and its pragmatic instantiations in their lives. It is interesting to think about how this relationship is arbitrary and learned in the same way as is learning to drive on the roads. While it seems, on first glimpse, that our loving lives are spontaneous and un-rehearsed, it is certainly not too far of a stretch to say that we learn and interpret modes of behaviour based on certain factors that we have come across in our lives and in time come to rely upon.

Thinking in this way, it is not hard to see how habit permeates through every factor of our lives. Think about the way we cognitively relate to others; primarily through language. Our language is a shared system. In its most elementary of forms, it has its foundation in arbitrary symbols which are taught and used to express a standard mode of representation. It refers to things in our reality that otherwise are left outside the grasp of the individual. Language, in this way, is an illusion, albeit a very powerful and useful one. It is a decision to make the unobtainable subject to our systems of control. In a very real sense, I feel that this can be said to be the most important invention of the human species; both language itself, and its connection with this drive for control that urges us to develop language. It is interesting to speculate about whether this drive is common to all organisms, or somehow unique to the human species, but that is a subject for another blog post all together.

I believe it is important to make sure that people recognize this kind of illusion for what it is. That is not to say that I disregard standards of representation. Like a game, any illusion is best applied when its players stick to the rules. Moreso, I wish that people would recognize the ability to be able to change the rules when they are in need of genesis. Not a change of the rules mid-game, but rather a redesign of the game itself, with all of the players equally informed. This is me wishing that I had the ability to do this to a greater extent than I do now, this is not me preaching that thou shouldst do this, should not that. We would certainly worry, for instance, if we started teaching in schools that our road rules were created by some divine being that laid down the law and demanded that we all stuck by them for fear of some inherent deviation from humanity. As useful as our road rules may be, it is important for those in developing states to recognize the fact that they are a human made system and are eligible to change along with the changes of the world that we live in.

It is highly important for us to understand the conventions that we use epistemologically (which basically means we understand them as a modes of conveying information), along with our ability to be able to use those conventions creatively, thus over time and experience, adding further to the standard models. Sure, you can say that everything is a copy of a copy and look only at oneself in a completely post-modernist self-referential way, but on the other hand, in a very real sense, the universe changes even faster than we can possibly calculate - the quantum movement is struggling to grasp this in its standardized scientific format. Therefore, even the same thing uttered twice can mean completely different things. You can use someone else's image in a completely original fashion. Things can be appropriated, most especially signs and symbols. As Heraclitus of Ephesus says (as quoted by Plato); 'everything is flux, nothing stands still'. He is also accredited of saying that 'no man walks over the same river twice, for the river has changed as has the man' (this is a paraphrase of a paraphrase of a paraphr...). This message is still relevant to our lives today... let us never forget this, lest we lose our way forever in the illusions of the social world or those of our representations of reality.

Tragedy and Irony, a Retrospective

2011-05-17T14:01:00.007+10:00

The Greek form of Tragedy used irony as one of its main techniques to convey tone. The protagonist is invariably led to their fate, not through action based on flaw or vice, but rather their virtue. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, as the classic example, tells of a wise man who, through honesty and dedication to his people, unearthed prior acts of rage and instinct that ultimately leads to his downfall. He tears out his eyes as he feels no longer human in the eyes of his citizens, he who was once their proud king had become a monster, threatening to devour the very spirit of humanity which he once embodied. It is revealed that he had killed his own father in instinctual rage and wed his own mother, providing her with incestuous children. This was all done in ignorance, which is contrasted with the wisdom that he gains later in the story. Moreso, it seems as though his prior state of ignorance sets the basis for his wisdom and glory in the eyes of the people that he comes to rule – his past maladies laid the foundation of his circumstance and germinated the seeds of brilliance with which he became a good and honest man. Fate was certainly cruel to Oedipus, but this of course is the basis of the tragic genre.

It seems that a sense of irony is what impelled the Greeks to enjoy tragedy, and why it is regarded as such a stalwart influence on Western culture. Watching a person slip into tragic circumstance through an exogenesis of their good characteristics seems to be heightened to the point of extreme absurdity, and bestows a heavy sense of paradox on the viewer. This paradox resounds in the lives of the audience. It asks a question; do we truly know what is virtue and what is vice in our lives? Can we ever know? Our ideals are left uncertain in the face of the tragic tale, and this I believe is a sense of religious - or at the very least cosmological - thought; that there are factors of the universe that may lie beyond our possible understanding, despite our sense of certainty, the classical categories of good and evil are left challenged and un-repaired. The irony in tragedy is woven into the dialogue and actions of its figures. There is often speech that is innocent in the context of the character's perspective, but that allow the audience to grasp a far more sinister meaning. This sense of double entendre bestowed upon the audience allows them the position of God-like beings, not just watching, but understanding, and relating to, the lives unfolding on the stage. The fate of the protagonist is portrayed in aesthetic terms, the climax (or the fall) is always foreseen in the eyes of the viewer, the one who observes from outside.

One need look only as far as the book of Job, or even of Jesus' crucifixion (Plato's Apology also springs to mind) to see how deeply rooted in our society is this love of tragic irony. Our world today seems to lack the recognition of this pillar of our thought. People today dismiss mythology because it is unscientific and therefore not of any practical value. It is almost as if anyone who thinks in these terms is a fundamentalist religious nut, and no doubt pushing for creationism or something equally as absurd (that's right creationists, please, WAKE UP!). My desire to study and understand this irony is complemented by my recent studies of two thinkers that, in many of their writings, championed the need for self knowledge – Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud – and their push to recognise the illusions with which our lives as human beings (a species with its own inheritances just like any other) are infused.

Nietzsche's prophet speaks of the death of God, but that his time has come too soon and his message is lost on its recipients. He speaks in irony of course, he paraphrases the enlightenment thinkers who revel in their disavowal of religious transcendentalism, only to create a new metaphysic in the form of Reason. God is not dead, Nietzsche is saying, it is only that our semantics are changing that we think this is so. Translated today, one might say that there are plenty of people that deny flatly any sense of other-worldliness, and yet act like a dog barking at shadows come nightfall. There is still something there that people are afraid of, and now that there is no convenient 'God' to take comfort in, people will turn to other; sometimes more creative, sometimes more destructive, world views. Nietzsche's reaction to this is most interesting. He praises humankind's ability to create illusion, and says that this Dionysian faculty should be recognised as a counterpart (note, not as a replacement) of rational – Apollonian thought.

This leads nicely to Freud, whose psychoanalysis is, in effect, a method for recognising the circumstances upon which a personality is based. It is popular today to view psychoanalysis as pseudoscience, and viewed in scientific terms it is! The value of psychoanalysis, however, is not based on any attempt to collect data or to establish reliable rules of cause and effect. It is a method of communicating, one which aims to explore possibilities that are able to identify the roots of the irony - or paradox - in our individual lives. Freud's proposal of the Oedipal complex as an archetype of human thought should be seen as just that – a tendency to experience our lives from fixed positions, in much the same way that a genre like tragedy can transmute throughout the ages of human civilisation. The Oedipal crisis that Freud describes is much like Sophocles'; it is metaphorical. It posits a tragedy that is possible to us all. It is constructed in a way that makes those experiencing the metaphor aware that they are not themselves immune to downfall. Above all, it seeks to prevent the kind of reaction in which a person decides to tear out his or her own eyes – it's aim is catharsis.

And so it seems to me that; instead of Fate, instead of God, instead of the Rational; instead there lies an eternal question - and if that makes me a relativist, then so be it.

The Dispossessed (Ursula K. LeGuin), a review in 500 words

2011-05-05T05:07:00.005+10:00

Seeing as I have been keeping up with a fair amount of reading that is not (directly) uni related this semester, I thought it might be a good idea to share some books that I think are of particular interest. No spoilers, just exposition and foreshadowing, I promise.

The Dispossessed is a science fiction novel in which there exists a society that, many centuries ago in the history of the story, removed themselves from the civilisation in which they lived and re-located themselves to the moon of the planet Urras, called Annares. The novel centres itself around questions of utopian ideals, and asks whether they are plausible if indeed possible as it follows the protagonist, Shevek, on his re-immersion back into the old world (analogous in many ways with the Earth of today in its caricature of warring nations, class division and profiteering ideals) and his difficulties in accepting the overly privatised and individualistic lifestyle in comparison to his homeworld (contrastingly driven by a kind of socialistic anarchistic ideal based on the harshness of life on a near barren planet).

Shevek is a physicist that seems years ahead of any other on either world. The story tells of his journey to Urras and his intent to expound on a theory of 'general temporality', a breakthrough that promises to change the face of pure physics, but one that is ignored and scorned by the (supposedly completely free) society in which he lives due to its lack of utilitarian application. On arrival, celebrated and honoured by those surrounding him (though now a traitor in the eyes of his own people) Shevek quickly becomes suspicious in regards to the motives of his cohorts, all the while realising that the actual people of the new world are not so dissimilar to his own people as what his upbringing - loosely based on the words of the prophet Odo, whom was the first to leave civilisation and relocate to Anarres - led him to believe.

The narrative is told in sections that jump back and forth between the 'present' of the story, in which Shevek travels to and explores his options in the confusing surroundings of Urras, and the 'past' depicting an exposition of Shevek's life growing up and becoming a physicist on the moon world Annares. This method is apt in its contrast of the bizarre and bemused views of the anarchist world and its teachings in regards to the 'crazy profiteers' of Urras, and the strangely familiar situations in which Shevek finds himself upon reaching the 'crazy' foreign world.

More than anything, The Dispossessed seeks to engage in a question that has played on the minds of social theorists since the enlightenment. In his Discourse on the origin of Inequality, Jean Jacques Rousseau opens with his famous statement; 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' Similarly, LeGuin's science fiction world asks us to engage with the possibility of freedom in a social setting, and the extent to which one can act, and can exercise individual agency for the good of the self, which is as portrayed, also for the good of those around oneself. I recommend this novel to anyone interested in the utopian genre, for a good mix of idealistic perspectives as well as dystopian forewarning. Cool ideas and a great read.

Would love to hear from anyone else who has read the book, or can recommend me fiction that is similar to this.

The Ontological Argument - Really?

2011-05-02T18:19:00.005+10:00

Like characters onscreen representing the idea of real people, anything can be imagined to have archetypal representations, be they completely subjective in the personal mind, or shared cultural systems of representation. Think of Dr. Who. He is on screen. He is like a person, but he is also a time lord. He is awesome. But then, isn't a (real) person 'better' than Dr. Who since they actually exist? So the 'ontological argument' goes. This ties in to the idea of the 'perfect' thing - something that exists is obviously more perfect than something that does not exist - or at least this seems to be the intuitive stance of the argument's foundation. The 'perfect' peanut must exist because if it did not, then how could we imagine it - after all, we did set out to imagine the perfect peanut, not some imperfect shadowy, abstract nonexistent one. Same as the perfect fig tree, the perfect day, the perfect spaghetti monster, the perfect time-lord, the perfect prisoner, the perfect orgasm, the perfect pair of underpants - I am able to imagine each of these, and if these did not also exist, then they would not be perfect (please reference Plato's forms - only now they exist in a material sense too, YAY!). Now imagine something as abstract as an (or THE) ultimate source. The same argument goes, only this time, we are talking about perhaps the most abstract concept one can perceive, seeing as it is basically proposed as an end cause and prime cause for everything. So, now, because we can conceive of such an abstract being - this has somehow willed it into existence - because an ultimate source must necessarily exist. (Yes, I am taking a bit of poetic liberty here - the argument does not suggest that a thing is willed into existence upon contemplation, rather that because we are able to imagine it, it must therefore exist. More on this later though)

I wonder how the proponents of this argument may have responded to the proposition that we may be unable to imagine perfection; if perhaps our faculties of imaging are not capable of fully realizing this perfection that it seems to take for granted. Take for instance Bob. He sits around imagining the perfect computer chip. He has no idea about what really goes into making a working computer chip, let alone what would make one perfect. Nevertheless, he conjures up in his mind what his subjective schemata tells him is the perfect computer chip. Now of course, he couldn't have possibly just imagined the perfect computer chip UNLESS IT ACTUALLY EXISTED!! Voila! Now I suppose that if this does mean that Bob's computer chip is real, it is connected to his limited imaginary capacity to conjure its attributes by being a thing that does what computer chips do in the most perfect of ways (for he has no other real understanding or knowledge of the thing). Now look at Sedrick who is a professional computer chip engineer. He is the cutting edge in new-fangled computer chips. He imagines the perfect computer chip. Voila!! His computer chip now exists as well, and, presumably, this perfect chip is the same as Bob's, despite the fact that Sedrick knows so much more about computer chips as they actually exist in the world. His imaginary capacity seems to us, far more likely to be able to connect to this proposed perfect particular - only - the argument seems to run contrariwise to this. Nevertheless, it is fairly uncontentious to think that as our concepts change, so too does our ability to imagine things to a degree of perfection. When looking at abstract terms like 'GOD' or (perhaps somewhat contentiously) the universe, its safe to say that perfect examples of these are subject to development through experience with our world and its cognitive representations. Any feasible account of imagination must allow it the role of an inspiration to engage further with one's reality.

We can see that the only real connection between the concepts of 'computer chip' in Bob and Sedrick's minds is in their common linguistic representation for the term, and to some extent the functional social role that objects known as computer chips fill - anything more precise regarding the subject is known by Sedrick alone and not Bob. They are, nevertheless, in some ways talking about the same things in terms of its concept. The argument seems to say that for any particular thing in the world that one can distinguish from other things - conceptually - there exists a perfect particular of that thing, and that different people, so long as they share the same terminology partake in the imagining of the same perfections. So, knowledge of things in the real world matters very little to these speculations, and in fact, then, almost everything is speculation - there was hardly any reason to distinguish between different things in the real world at all, given that we could very well imagine the perfect examples of things as we came across them. What is the point of advancing our concepts by degrees in relation to that perfect beginning and end to existence? Obviously there is great use for this, so now the question is, how does this fit in with the heart of the ontological argument? Epistemologically, to the primitive mind, this may have started out as something to the effect of here is my world (which is also me) - I can imagine a better world (perfection) that runs counter to my instinctual habits - perhaps not in these words, but to the same effect nevertheless. This (which is of course my own speculation) I believe, is where we find the most powerful thrust of the ontological argument, but also where I feel it has been put to the worst of uses. I would claim that the ontological argument does not actually prove that the perfections that we conceive of are actually true (existing in the extensional world) - only THAT WE (individually) WANT THEM TO BE TRUE. This is not a bad thing. Nor is it conceptually exclusive as we have discussed prior - our basis of concepts and terms are a foundation for goals with which to work with one another. On top of this, such a system of becoming encourages further separation of old and synthesis of new concepts. Because we can imagine an ultimate source does not infer its existence - it infers that we in some way desire its existence.

If the universe IS infinite, then perhaps everything that can be imagined, does exist in a certain sense, after all, in an infinite spectrum of time and space, anything that has a probability rate > 0 is likely isn't it? If this possibility is even entertaining to any of us, we should perhaps start to think about the questions; what does it mean to imagine responsibly? - and do we have an ethical need for a sense of unity in our imaginations? Nobody can answer any of these for others, only for themselves. If you believe there might be an ultimate source with which your imagination has connected you, think long and hard about what this means in terms of your fellows and what they believe. There are bridges to be seen, and built through language and further conceptualization, we can make it there together. Good luck and think well.