The voice of the void: “Alive, I can’t die; Dead, I can’t be born.”
Author: John
On Will , Faith, Instinct, Reason, and Thought
My use of the word Real below is as an aspect, a recognizable face (facet), of the motive force, spirit, that informs all that is. One could as easily use other words such as God, the Truth, the One, and so forth. This note ties in with much of what is written elsewhere in my blog and takes a step or two towards making a case for free will.
My reading of Blaise Pascal Pensee 340 wherein he observes that animals will but can’t do math leads me to contemplate that there can be will without thought. Consider that will as principle preexists thought in that sentient life must emerge, become self aware, evolve a sense of cause and effect, and develop the use of symbols before the emergence of thinking itself. I am suggesting that thinking in the anthropomorphic sense does not occur for every order of being but that will perhaps does. The Real itself is a kind of being but does it observe the consequences of action within itself and think to affect those consequences by offering different action? Or does the Real rather through an exercise of will set creation in motion and let the consequences work themselves out? I don’t think the Real apart from utilization of the self conscious faculties of created sentient beings has self awareness. I do think it has awareness itself but in the sense that one is aware equally of all that is in every particular as well as in total, that awareness can’t be reflexive. It is only when awareness, consciousness, enters into a part of the whole and looks back on the whole from the standpoint of a separate being that self awareness enters into reality. So I think thought is an expression of consciousness in adequately developed sentient life forms. Furthermore in the Real awareness is something possessed in the sense that it exists as a potentiality awaiting the arising of conditions suitable for its emergence.
Consider also that instinct is related to will while reason is related to thought. So animal’s instinct is a more primitive expression of the principle of will than in man while reason is similarly an evolute of the development of thought.
This brings up the question of whether faith is the opposite of will. I think not exactly. Faith is not intention but the yielding to intrinsic intention, existential will. Seeing there is something in the nature of existence that in reality is beyond my understanding, while I apprehend benevolence therein, I yield, that is, suspend “my” little will to preexisting will, that exists potentially and really in the very stuff of being. That, I think, is faith.
Verbindung II
Here is a black one. It is acrylic on canvas. Something tightly bound, it is. A presentation, a setting held firmly in place, a vast mystery as to origin, as to what exactly is going on, as to purpose, meaning, emotion. Is it love? Is it not? Perhaps it works to express and expand consciousness. Maybe it is so tightly held that any such expression is futile. Is it a surd? Is it without reason? Perhaps. But how can one possibly know whether it is not some kind of heuristic energeia? My intention is that it is the latter. It is self learning potentiality embedded in the kernel of the Real itself as a kind of meaning the expression of which is an infinite ingress of fractaling purpose.
Entelechy II
Entelechy II was my recent gift for Kristi Ann Harris. It wasn’t really her 24th birthday gift but it was close. She says it is her favorite. We have had long discussions about the use of black in my art and it is of course significant that she chose a white piece for her own. I told her black represents the existential void which idea she finds disturbing. Kristi has lately taken to the path of faith so I explained that it is on faith that the void, with an infinite subtlety, becomes full of the divine. Nonetheless unless sustained by a belief system of some sort it can shift back to everlasting emptiness yawning at our feet. All creatures must cope with this teetering on the brink of meaning and not meaning, of purpose and not purpose, of love and not love, of God and not God. It is our intention that foreshadows whether our path is into nihilism or solipsism, or deism. It is our determination that takes us into everlasting darkness of the abyss or into the redeeming light of infinite bliss which is union with the divine.
Oil on canvas.
Entelechy I
Entelechy is from the Greek entelechia. For Aristotle it meant being at an end. This is oil on canvas.
Don’t know if you believe in the spirit world but those two “entities” towards the right of the painting represent “disembodied” spirits. One has a sort of eye while the other is a little vaguer but you can tell they are both “watchers”. They have their existence in subtle bodies, matter still, but more ephemeral than ours. They are mostly transparent and sort of like gossamer but they have appetites which they feed by watching, attending to, the activities of human beings. This is sort of like the vicarious experience we have watching a play or a movie. They aren’t very smart. They are just appetites. Their existence consists of parasitic attachment to particular indulgences of their hosts and in fact their hosts often do these indulgences at the urging of the watchers. Of course they are not the end within, unless you lose your will to theirs. The end within is the secret fire under the domed hierarchical form, the pyramid, and is heuristic energeia. It is eternal, imperishable, and has the quality of conferring individuality. It is existential mass. It is capable of being or not being any actuality and is continuously self learning new actualities. The entelechy of potentiality is actuality.
Ritual Object
This is a found objects assemblage I did. All of these art pieces I will publish here were done about the same time, i.e., 1970s, during the period of my life when I fancied I wanted to find validation as a visual artist. I entered contests, won prizes, and such, even showed my stuff in a museum in Austin once but my other interests trumped this effort and I gave up the idea of making a living at this. At any rate I found a certain kind of fulfillment in these creations and my attraction to them has not diminished over time. In their creation my mind was beautifully, exquisitely focused. I like reentering these states of consciousness. I have had opportunities to give these away to family and friends over the years and even to sell them on a few occasions, but the price was never sufficient to make me part with them. I am glad I still have them around but would like to share them. So I will put them here.
dense tearful dance
if can you too where want did dense tearful dance
(propensely waiting for falling me)
and little lubricant folly for hidden things,
reality slips concretely between ego’s soul
i tend to manhood by degrees of you
(wait for me please, after all)
my petty exhortation is your echofile.
generally any particular thing loving knows,
this or these that those
(where why and wherefores see
wait for me can’t you please).
while being allowed hollows hallowed thoughts
suffering goes where wild wind blows
as long gaunt ghosts before time
we tend our seems as dreaming deems
(but really is merely and lovely plain
please wait for me, and anyway)
dreaming deeds is doing
all nothing does.
Verbindung
Acrylic and found objects on panel by me circa 1973. The theme in my mind to which I was attempting to give aesthetic expression was of human life being in the grip of an infinite regress of technology where only efficiency was of value. Today we might speak of this sentiment as relating to the so called singularity.
Evolution of History
Some thoughts provoked by Daniel Boorstin*, his chapter on evolution of history.
I am rather inclined to think that there is only one absolute truth, the conditio sine qua non, though infinite approaches to that truth are possible. These approaches are mere artifacts, and this is Boorstin, “shards” of mental pottery, transient vessels of aspiration for the “Truth”. Therefore, knowledge is not constant or immutable, but ephemeral, as dew on the rose. Knowledge is a mere contemporary of its zeitgeist. It paints the way, yes, but soon along that way, there will be newer signs appropriate to new contemporaries.
Sum
When there are no clouds
the sun shines-
Is that drinking tea from an empty cup?
All historians, indeed, all artists, theologians, and scientists, sate themselves on the contents of an empty vessel. I agree with R. G. Collingwood that only philosophy, of all man’s endeavors, categories of being, Stages on Life’s Way**, provides the framework wherein its practitioners can come to see that true understanding springs from the consciousness that returns on itself. Release the dichotomies! One simply cannot be brought out of darkness into light because darkness and light are in an interesting way the same thing.
So! Jews were never brought out of Egyptian slavery into the promised land. This historical/mythological paradigm of Christian salvation, coming out of the evils of the flesh into the salvation of the spirit, is one dichotomy. Christians are never “saved” from their sins by virtue of one defining moment in history. Similarly workers never free themselves, by whatever device, be it collective bargaining or revolution, from bondage to the controllers of the machine apparatus of production. And don’t fail to note the “self similarity” of the two historical trends of Christianity and Marxism touched on here. (One is a fractal of the other.) Freedom, individuality, independence are a simple turn of the mind away for one and all. A gymnastic juggernaut is not required. Living through a hellish history based on false myths of original sin is not requisite. See that art, religion, science, history are mere preparations of the mind for philosophy. Philosophy is the culmination of the journey past or through these signposts. Their modes of consciousness are directed out from itself. Philosophy is man’s consciousness turned back on its origin. That turn of the mind is a requisite of true understanding.
Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis lays out this idea that the first signpost, Art, is expressive of the aspiration for beauty and is a search for, a longing for, the “other”, that which is lacking. But is it really? In what respect would we lose our identity in blissful union? Isn’t annihilation already and always there in that empty cup? Religion posits absolute reality in an absolute other. History posits its goal in a distant future to be achieved through evolution. The faith of science is that measurement of infinity is achievable and mistakenly conflates knowledge with understanding. All are instances of the attempt of the soul to go beyond itself, of the urge to see reality as greater than it is.
There are, of course, many other considerations some of which I have addressed previously in this space. Beauty, truth, liberty, love, and similar attributes of consciousness are, besides what I say here, I believe, facets of a divine being and are in a sense also spirits in themselves in that “their” being is added to, enhanced somehow by participation in them of sentient life. The principles grow by being called on and their luminescence increases through this use. It also bears repeating that existential mass embodies these principles as potentialities that emerge, so to speak, in the presence of sentient life. Our consciousness directed in these categories is fertile soil for the growth of these spirits. Thus it is that God has commerce with creation. Thus it is that God has self experience. For what other purpose could there be for making this being? I am here at the cusp of projecting, I see, my human nature on the cosmos. This is a conundrum that recurs throughout history. My answer is that I am the cosmos in a sense, so this projection is of the cosmos onto itself. Keeping all the caveats mentioned here and elsewhere in mind, that is how I am able to be confident in my appraisal.
*The Discoverers
**Soren Kierkegaard
Note on fractals
Yesterday I mentioned fractals in comparison to the increasing complexities of life. Creation has built in uncertainty so while every instantiation of the real contains within itself all that went before it also embraces new elements. This is why it is true that while nothing changes in reality it is also true that at the same time the real is forever new. Look closely at your breathing, for instance. Every breath is somewhat like all that went before yet if you look closely you will see that every breath is also unique. This pattern repeats itself endlessly. To know something in this environment is impossible just because of the uncertainty that seeds the new. Therefore only heuristic learning is effective learning. As we approach an understanding we see that final knowledge escapes our precision and minor flaws emerge in our calculations. On these “mistakes” we ground ourselves anew and the self learning, self teaching, continues.