Truth: An Existentialist Rant

I suppose this post will be little more than an extension of my previous post. Previously I had said that the truth sometimes just sucks because it doesn't always, if ever, hold that mystical element we value in the meaning we construct for our lives and the things in our lives. But I found a quote from Jorge Luis Borges that I believe sums up, more or less, what I was trying to get at:

"...Reality has not the slightest obligation to be interesting.... reality may get along without that obligation, but hypotheses may not."
~Death and the Compass

And I suppose that's what the truth really boils down to: it isn't obligated to be interesting, and perhaps that is why the truth doesn't always seem as meaningful as we would like. The fact of the matter is that more often than not the truth seems to lack any sort of meaning for us, which is always unsettling.

Think of truth and its concern for our search for meaning as Lovecraft's monsters and horrid alien civilizations: they could easily exterminate us all without even breaking a sweat, but we are like an ant mount in Africa: it's too much effort for something that doesn't concern it. That is what really makes Lovecraft's monsters so terrifying: they don't actually care about the human race. I mean, if we get in their way, sure, they'll destroy us, but it isn't really worth the effort. We are not the center of the world. We really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Such is the the case with the truth: it isn't obligated to fascinate us and fulfill those hollow searches of ours for meaning in our lives. Mostly because nothing really has any meaning in the first place. We construct the meaning in things to make ourselves feel better, which is more or less the basic principles of existentialist philosophy.

Nothing has any real inherent meaning unto itself. We might imagine that the Pyramids of Giza were quite meaningful to the Egyptians, and we will speculate on what the shape of the pyramid meant to the Egyptians. Some have speculated that they represented mountains that were a sort of gateway to the heavens, or that they mimic the shape of the top of an obelisk - an obelisk being a sort of petrified ray of the sun - and as such represented a ray of sunlight. But this is only what the pyramid meant to the Egyptians. They completely made that up. In reality - that is non-obligated reality to be interesting - the pyramid is a meaningless shape. The shape of a pyramid is nothing more than a solid with a square base and four triangular faces with eight edges and five vertices. It is meaningless unto itself. We are the ones who construct the meaning and apply it to completely meaningless things.

But that's the trick: we construct meaning for truth to be as interesting as possible to make up for how completely meaningless the truth actually is. The truth doesn't have to be meaningful. Our hypotheses and explanations for the truth, however, do have to be meaningful.

This is what I think Julia Sweeney was getting at when she said, "The truth is a poor competitor in the market place of ideas." Ideas have to interesting and meaningful. The truth doesn't give a shit about what is meaningful or interesting to us.

Reality is a lot like the Pyramids of Giza, really: it's just a great big heap of meaningless stuff that we constantly try to attach some interesting explanation to.

Truth: A Poor Competitor in the Marketplace of Ideas

It isn't uncommon for me to reread parts of the Bible. There is a great variety of stories and teachings in that book. Want a story about war? Rape? Decapitation? Zombies? The apocalypse? Genocide? Read the Bible. Want a love poem? Read Song of Solomon. Want a lesson on why everything in futile and pointless? Read Ecclesiastes. But for me I was recently drawn to rereading the writings of the Prophets (e.g. Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, et cetera). I don't know why. I suppose I thought the Prophets held some superpower and I do not, or they can magically see farther than I can, and I just had to know! Well I never found that secret something, but I did find myself particularly disturbed that in nearly all the writings of the Prophets it is said that God decides to leave the Jewish people forever. In Isaiah he just up and leaves the Temple. The same for Ezekiel (I mean they did kill another god, Tammuz, in the Temple). In Amos God just tells Amos that the Jewish people better get their shit straight, because He's not looking after them anymore.

All I could think was: why? I thought they were His chosen people. Call it Synchronicity. Call it fate. Call it pure chance. Call it what you will. But a week later I found myself perusing some used books and Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise literally fell off the shelf, and I thought: why not? I picked it up off the floor and bought the book, and started to read it, and what do you know? Spinoza talks about this very subject! But Spinoza's reasoning isn't exactly the great mystical answer I was looking for, even though his reasoning is by far very convincing. Essentially Spinoza says that God never favored the Jews more than he favored any other nation, but for a temporary length of time he helped them out and gave them direct guidance. With other nations God would just send an angel to assist (as implied in Exodus 33:2-4), rather than His own awesomeness. Spinoza, admittedly, has very sound reasoning concerning God, His relationship to the Jewish people, His covenant with them, and His ultimate departure. But I found Spinoza's answer to not be the grand, awesome answer I was hoping for.

In a way, I suppose this is the way it is for many things... that is that the truth (or at least the best answer) sometimes, if not oftentimes, really sucks. I can recall a few relationships in the past where the girl asked why do I love her? My answer: I don't; I just do. One girlfriend demanded of me a logical and rational answer as to why I liked her. Really? "Logical" and "rational" explanation for affection? It's like asking why 2+2=4? Because it equals 4. Sure Bertrand Russell spend three hundred pages trying to prove 1+1=2, but even Godel turned that one on its head. In reality, affection is sort of silly for how much we hype it up to be something awesome. Relationships are little more than an exchange of goods and services based on incentives. We maintain friendships because this particular friend makes us laugh, or this friend never asks for gas money and always wants to hang out, and this friend is essentially a convenient scapegoat, and this one is my own personal therapist, this one lets me borrow his movies, et cetera. That being little more than what friendship really is, friendship doesn't sound so awesome anymore. What's more is that intimate relationships are little more than friendships with sex. And what about love? It's little more than a chemical and hormonal reaction that creates a bond between two sexual partners to increase the likelihood of the survival of each other, their offspring, and hopefully their species (I would say homosexual love is little more than the same as heterosexual, except for the offspring part). Love doesn't sound so grand and mystical anymore, now does it?

Pets are little more than animals with Stockholm Syndrome. Prayer is talking to yourself. Meditation is trying to not think. Yoga is holding bodily positions to get high. Life is an accident. And you are an insignificant speck of carbon and water on a tiny little planet orbiting around a small, insignificant, yellow star that's swirling around a collapsed star that destroys other stars, all floating amongst many other stars and galaxies in an endlessly expanding universe that has no divine or grand purpose for existing. Everything is meaningless. Even you are meaningless.

I know, I know, I sound like a warm ray of sunshine right now. But the truth is this: the truth sucks. Oftentimes the truth doesn't seem to hold any meaning at all. Objective reality is kind of lame. We can find some wonder and amazement in it, but it still seems to fall short. I mean a circle is so simple and elegant, but pi is irrational and chaotic. Sure, it's cool that you can find your telephone number somewhere in pi, or your zip code, or your mother's birthday, and probably the super-secret nuclear access codes somewhere in that infinitely long and irrational number. But why is the circle simple but pi is not? Because that's the way it is. Circles are simple and pi is irrational. Order and chaos (whatever that's suppose to mean). There is no natural meaning to it.

I'm reminded of the talk given by Julia Sweeney, Letting Go of God, in which she gives her confessions and stories of growing up Catholic, wanting to be a nun, losing faith, trying to hold on to God, trying other religions, and ultimately renouncing her belief in God. Her story is emotional (both joyous and sad) and hilarious. But in particular what I found compelling about her talk is her conclusion and closing remarks. One remark that I enjoyed was how she wished that she could build a temple to her experiences and transitions in life, like others had done with temples to their gods. There was one remark that has long resonated with me more than anything:

"Let's face it, the truth is poor competitor in the marketplace of ideas."

Damn right. Even though Julia Sweeney no longer believes in God or the stories of the Bible, she comes to accept them later in life. Before she lost her faith she found the stories to be appalling (which they are) and disturbing, and many times completely unbelievable. After losing her faith she found a sort of peace and ultimately recognized that there was a comfort some people find in fantasy, because many times objective reality is a hard thing to swallow. That's because it is.

The truth is out there, but you're probably not going to like it. I'm starting to suspect that this is Mulder's problem.

The Divided Self

The problem of evil has been on my mind considerable lately, so this will be my topic for my first post in a long time. Generally the problem of evil centers around God, and why a benevolent deity would allow there to be evil. The problem usually goes as such: if there is evil, then God doesn't know about it, rendering Him not omniscient; if evil exists and God does know about it, then God can't do anything about it, making God not omnipotent; finally, if there is evil and God knows about and can do something about, then He doesn't care or doesn't want to, which leaves God's benevolence open to question. A number of philosophers have toyed with idea, such as Plato, Saint Augustine, Hume, et cetera, but their discussion always centers around God. What I am concerned with is not evil and good concerning God, but rather concerning people. In my experience and thoughts, and even in myself, I find that evil and good concerning people is rather like a divided self. I suppose the best way to express this idea is a line from Apocalypse Now! (1997 director's cut) with the French plantation. The French woman tells Captain Willard: "There are two of you: one that kills and one that loves."

So what do I mean by divided self? The aspects of the human self, mind, soul... whatever you want to call it, has long been considered to be constituted of parts. The Egyptians had nine aspects of the soul. Freud broke the unconscious mind into three parts (Id, Ego, and Superego). Jung divided up the unconscious mind into a pantheon of archetypal psychic entities, many of which mingle with others. Aristotle said the soul was divided into two parts (rational and irrational). So forth and so forth. Julian Jaynes even discusses a theoretical second mind within our own conscious minds, a thought experiment he called the "bicameral mind." In many ways there are, indeed, two minds: the conscious and the unconscious, and both can interact together or independently of each other.

So why wouldn't we have a dualistic nature concerning ourselves with being good or wicked? Perhaps some fictitious examples might suffice to express it better. Take for instance my favorite monster: Frankenstein's monster. He is made of all bad parts, give the brain of a criminal, and I suppose ultimately designed to be evil and wicked. But Frankenstein's monster only wants to be good. But all his acts of kindness and goodwill ultimately end in destruction and ruin. How is it that a monster made of all bad parts could try to be good? Similarly, there is Stitch from Lilo & Stitch, who is quite the same monster as Frankenstein's. Stitch wants to be part of a family, try to be good to them, and defend them from aliens, but he always ruins everything. Is it possible for one aspect of ourselves to be wicked and another good? Can anyone ultimately be evil, but want to be good (like Alex from Clockwork Orange... or was he ever really good or wanted to be good?), or vice versa?

Perhaps an even more perplexing example is 3:10 to Yuma (2007). Ben Wade is an evil man: he steals, murders, robs, and is completely unjust. Escorting Wade to prison is Dan Evans, who is a good man and is doing this deed to make money for his family. There are a number of moments concerning aspects of what makes a man wicked in this film. For instance, Dan's son tries to tell Ben Wade that he's not wholly evil and that there's a person in him somewhere. Or another moment when Ben Wade says, "Even bad boys love their mothers." But the scene that best demonstrates the divide of good and evil in this film is the ending scene: Wade, who is conscious of his own wicked nature, agrees to go to Yuma Prison so Dan can get the money for his family. He does it because he knows Dan is a good and just man and deserves it. How?! How can an evil someone know what good is? So he murders his own men because they killed a good man.

This is, more or less, my point: how? I suppose it's something undefinable or misunderstood by us. While I recognize that that is a bit of a cop-out, the answer concerning the divided nature of the self between good and evil is beyond me; much like the problem of evil concerning God has long eluded philosophers. I can't imagine this problem of evil is any different. Perhaps it's biological: the animal instinct in us battles with the human side of us. Perhaps it is a gift and curse from God. Maybe it's just who we are and what we do; it's neither good nor wicked, but just the manner of being human. Maybe it's the body that's corrupt and the soul that fights for virtue. Maybe the soul is helpless to the body and can only observe the drama of justice and wickedness exhibited by the whims of the body. Who knows. All I know is that it has been on my mind, and I can only seem to understand it through a few films I am fond of.

"There are two of you: one that kills and one the loves."

The Mask Part 8: Good and Bad

The Mask:
Introduction: Masks and Masking
Part 1: The Metaphor
Part 2: The Mask that Fits
Part 3: Ontology
Part 4: Masquerade of the Gods
Part 5: Mask of Sanity
Part 6: The Material Mask

Part 7: Revealing and Concealing

It occurred to me the other evening while enjoying my New Years Eve celebration that I have completely forgotten to discuss the most iconic set of masks in human history: the classic image of comedy and tragedy, the mask that laughs and the one that frowns. To the Greeks there were three types of plays: tragedy, comedy, and satire. Aristotle felt that all Greeks should attend theater as a civic duty, but should primarily go to see tragedies, occasionally see comedies, and rarely, if ever see satires. Ignoring satire (what most Greeks considered to be a very barbaric play type, as the word comes from satyr), we will look at how tragedy and comedy reinforce the concepts of the mask as fuzzy logic, and ultimately lead up to the question of whether or not the mask is a good or a bad thing.

There are only a handful of examples of ancient Greek masks, all of which are on pottery. No actual masks survive. The earliest example of tragedy and comedy masks come from ancient Rome, in particular a theater in Ostia, in which three (two comedy and one tragedy) are carved on blocks of stone, and a mosaic at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. Comedy and tragedies are reflections of each other, companions, if you will, in the dynamic of human nature and civic life. As Aristotle deems a proper citizen should do, everyone should attend theater as a civic duty. This wasn't just entertainment, theater also illustrated life lessons, important philosophies, ideology of what it is to be a Greek, illustrations of civic life, as well as accompanied by public service announcements. The theater originally evolved from sacrificial rites, particularly around the mystery cult of Dionysus. The word "tragedy" comes from tragos, meaning "goat," and ode, meaning "song." It is the sacrificial goat, which is torn apart like Dionysus was, but also related to the satyr, which was a sort of barbaric goat-man. To witness a tragedy, to see human suffering, was a catharsis of sorts. It is much like the Romans found relief by witnessing the horrors of the Colosseum, and we do today by watching horrors of world events unfold in the news and petty human suffering in reality television (panem circensesque - bread and circuses).

The theater illustrated something about ourselves, and these were done via the masks worn by actors. There was something divine about the theater, the masks, actors, and plays. The term deus ex machina, Latin meaning "the gods out of the machine," or in Greek apo mekhanes theos, comes from Greek theater. The gods we brought on stage via a crane that would lower them onto the stage, as if from the heavens, and fly them around. While its literal translation is "god from the machine," the more proper translations of the Greek suggests that it means "the god of our making." Like Latin (i.e. face - facere, actor - agere/actor), in Greek many words have multiple meanings that are not reflected well in our common derivatives of these words. Mekhane (machine, crane) is related to poiesis (poetry, to make, fabrication) and techne (craft). To Heidegger these words were all related to the idea of revealing and yielding truth. Techne was a revealing, by technique or production we are not just making something, the thing is revealing itself to us through our making. The word legein, or logos (logic, truth) is rooted in apophainesthai, "to bring forth into appearance." The Greek word for revealing is aletheia, has only one close Latin equivalent, veritas (truth). Is it any wonder that Heidegger talks extensively about these things when he discusses the essence of technology and our relationship to it?

Enough with the etymology. The point is that to the Greeks there was a correspondence between the theater, the gods, the actors, masks, and making these things. The masks and the actors were, in a sense, the gods. They didn't just pretend to be the gods on stage, they were the gods, embodiment of the divinity when they wore the masks and acted on stage. Jung makes a similar point about this when we spent years researching primitive African tribes. In Man and His Symbols Jung illustrates that a man wearing a lion mask doesn't think he's pretending to be a lion, he believes he is a lion.

This brings us back to our fuzzy logic: there is the mask as an object, and what the mask does. Since I began this study it has been about understanding the essence of the mask, and in the last post I concluded that the essence of the mask isn't about the mask as an idea - that is the mask as an object or a metaphor, or what the mask conceals or reveals - its essence is that it conceals and reveals. It is about what the mask does, not what it is. The mask is a face (facere) that is made to reveal truth (aletheia, veritas) by concealing. So now for the biggest question of them all: is the mask good or bad?

The last post illustrated that it isn't really respectful at all the wonder of the mask to fit it into such binary terms like good and bad. But this is where fuzzy logic can help us once again if we were to try (a sort of contradiction unto itself to use fuzzy logic and categorization of binary terms simultaneously). So let's ask a different question: which is better, comedy or tragedy? Aristotle thought tragedy was far superior to comedy, at least as far as what survives of Poetics (Aristotle does say that he will discuss more on comedy in Poetics, but never does, and has often been concluded that the portion on comedy was lost). But Aristophanes felt comedy told more about human life and nature than tragedy. It has been an age old question as to whether Jesus Christ laughed or not. This is one thing that separates the monastic orders of the Benedictines and the Franciscans (that and the poverty of Christ), the former believing laughter is close to sin and makes a mockery of all things, the latter believing there is truth in laughter. But what did the Greeks feel about these two play types? Besides comedies being usually depicted in a poor part of town or out at a villa (out in the country at a farm), and tragedies usually took place in a palace or town center, there is one other difference that should be obvious. In tragedies everyone dies at the end. In comedies everyone gets married. To the Greeks there was little difference between marriage and death (just ask Spartan men, or Athenian warriors or philosophers).

Such a paradox should enlighten us on the duality of comedy and tragedy, good and bad. Watching a tragedy was cathartic, a means of salvation (i.e. health and sanity). So watching a comedy was like laughing at tragedy; death and fun. They were two ways of finding the same thing: catharsis through death, and laughter in marriage. We must keep in mind we are dealing with some fairly primitive cultures here, no matter how advanced they were. We have a hard time letting go of our modern Western ideals, which relies heavily on categorization and binary answers. But unlike Eastern cults, which rely heavily on paradox, neither-either, both-nor, the Greeks went further and used both binary categorization and paradox simultaneously (probably the biggest paradox of them all). What mattered to the Epicureans was not what is true, but what is truth. Big difference there.

So what about good and bad? Well there is three parts to good and bad. There is good, there is good bad, and bad bad. Good is simply a good thing. Good bad is a bad thing that clearly presents itself as a bad thing, which is a good thing because it in no way tries to conceal its bad nature. A bad bad is a bad thing that tries to masquerade as a good thing, when it is not, which is a bad thing. (Corinthians II 11:14: "And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light" a bad bad).  It's very elementary, but that's what makes it sort of hard to wrap yourself around. A mask that clearly manifests itself as a mask is a good thing (a good bad). It's only when the mask tries to present itself as a true face and not a mask is when we have a bad bad. This the truth of the mask in the Epicurean sense of the truth. The mask cannot be good because it isn't the true face of the actor. Nonetheless it is a good thing because it isn't trying to be good. 

This is how the actor can be the actor and the god at the same time by wearing a mask. The actor is not a god, but the actor is a god by not trying be a god when he/she wears a mask. The actor is the idea of the god when wearing a mask, but still an actor. It isn't about what is true, but what is truth. That it is an actor wearing a mask is true, but that is not as important as the truth that the actor wears a mask. In a way this has been our other primary question: which is more important, the mask or the actor? Is the person who walks into his/her boss's office more important than how that person presents his/herself to their boss in the image of the company? If you walk into an interview dress in raggedy blue jeans, a Judas Priest shirt on, with double-0 gauge nose ring, and dirty hair, is that superior to dressing in a fine suit? Though this person may like wearing old blue jeans, listening to heavy metal, and tattoos and piercings, and this person may be a good person and extraordinarily qualified for the position, nonetheless their mask is not appropriate to the stage. What is true is inferior to what is truth. The suit is a mask, but it is a good bad, regardless of who the actor is in this setting. The mask is a good thing because it isn't try to be good, instead it is clearly saying, "I am a mask! I am a lie!" I am a lie is the paradox that constitutes the mask. It is what it is because it isn't what it's supposed to be. It is a face because it is a mask, but it is a mask because it isn't a face.

This concludes my little mask series. I would like to reiterate some things as a summation and conclusion. The mask is a metaphor for our faces, and faces are tangible notions that we can attach to abstract ideas. The mask expresses (signifier) those things that cannot express themselves due to their abstract nature (signified). This being so, the mask is not our face, but it is a reflection, an imprint of our faces. What is concealed by the mask is revealed by it being able to fit our faces. It is not the truth, but it reflects the truth. This is how the mask reveals by concealing, and conceals by revealing. It is "the lie that tells the truth." The truth is expressed by a lie, because the truth cannot express itself on its own terms. The mask being a tangible concept for abstract notions is how we engage certain ideas such as dreams, gods, fear, and ourselves. The self is probably one of the most abstract ideas we have ever created, and the way we approach ourselves is by identities that we define for ourselves. The mask is a means to approach ourselves, discover and define ourselves. It always leads back to us. To engage the mask is also to engage what supposedly lies behind it, which is always some idea we are not privileged to witness. Because we cannot access this idea behind the mask, we are really searching for the essence of the masks a person wears; which ones, when and where, how do they use it, et cetera. Because of this the essence of the mask (persona) has little to do with the mask itself or what is behind it, but rather the actions done by and with the mask. It is more important to understand that the mask conceals and reveals, rather than what it is concealing or revealing. The importance lies in the difference between the authenticity of ideas and that of action. If we are not privileged to the ideas, then we must face the actions of masking to gain the truth. There is a wonderful quote from Nietzsche I think is fitting for the conclusion of the mask, identity, the essence of it, and how it defines:

"All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity."

Michelangelo Buonarroti's death mask: