Die Erinnerung

Last week, I read a letter from a poet who was lamenting to his friend about how nobody understands him. The letter ended with him lamenting about this very lamenting, about him confessing to his friend about his weakness. I recreated the suffering of the poet in me as I read the letter and for a brief moment relived that pain.
Yesterday, somebody told me about a French philosopher who killed herself on the birth anniversary of her master, who was her favorite philosopher. I tried to freeze that perspective of hers within me that drove her to suicide. I upheld this perspective for a short while to indicate to her that her life was not in vain, that I see what she did, and that, in one sense, this whole world ceased to exist after she died.
And this morning, as I woke up, I imagined a picture of a still unborn child smiling. I understood that innocence, and the untainted purity with which the child saw the whole world. I smiled with the child.
I wondered if the poet, the philosopher and the child were looking at me from somewhere as I was doing all of these things. And the sight of the moon indeed reminded me of the night when the four of us had a great feast together.

Sobriety

Drunk are the waves of the ocean that topple and fall on each other in revelry
Drunk is the wind as it blows its howling secrets on to the trees
Drunk is also the comet that traverses headlong through time periods unawares
And drunk is the shame that hides itself in new attires everyday

Drunk is the statue that strikes your head when you kneel before it
Drunk is your heritage that seeks its origin in an unknown destiny
Drunk is also your solitude that never parts your company
And drunk are all your truths that dress themselves up as lies

Are you not too drunk to even recognize your drunken brethren?

On our Zeitgeist

1. Any existence that does not come to terms with the spirit of its times - however monstrously chaotic this task might be with respect to our times - is nothing but idealism, however 'profound' it may otherwise think it is. It would be pure escapism -- 'all thought, no action'.

2. The peculiarity of our Zeitgeist is its unprecedented greed, its fleeting memory: it devours unabashedly anything that touches its base and strikes its chord, unless it does not confound that thing to hide in the pretext of its own shadows. So who is capable of satisfying this monster of greed? -- Only someone who refreshes every moment with cheerfulness by receiving his energy from an unknown future, and in doing so, submits to the hungry present. He interprets the lack of memory of the Zeitgeist as the eternal youth of the future.

Recipe for the re-born II

Autumn approaches when visions, sounds, language, human beings and culture itself lose their symbolic, metaphorical character and tends towards the literal. Although this is an asymptotic tending, never entirely synchronizing with itself, thus never accomplishing death. But can there be a re-birth, if death itself has not been fully achieved? Whence comes this "re-"? How can one will oneself to life, if there is no blindness? How can the will be blind?
Symbolism is the work of the culture in which one finds oneself. One takes and gives without worrying about the rules of economical exchange. Truth plays with blindness here. Frivolity and squandering are not forbidden.
But the asymptote can be diverted to carve out a new ascending path, by borrowing energy, in trickling units, from the depths of its past higher moments, which are now in a state of limbo, not lively but not dead either, and by refracting this energy into new shades and shadows. This is an economic exchange with strict rules of transaction, involving tabulation, interest and surveillance: the most difficult task for a human being! One has to drag one's broken legs across the desert to learn the art of forgetting! Nuances and subtlety are now in the greatest demand. But as the journey wears on one builds one's credit more and more, and there is a gradual loosening of the economical grip. Perhaps spring is on the horizon? Perhaps a new language, a new "sine", new symbols, new culture? And no one has to know about this secret path. The same settings that confronts one now in the boredom of one's limbo will be re-born later into a revitalized life, as if there were no previous descent. This "as if" of the new blindness!

This is the experiment

I have often observed, to my wonder and delight, that my handwriting changes in very subtle ways depending on the kind of pen I am using: Whether it is an inkpen or a ball point, or again whether it is a gel pen or a pencil even. Even within a certain class, say gel pens, my handwriting takes to some kinds and not so much to others. The r's and s's and f's get their own flair and pointed intentions with the right kind of pen.
So too with us. What we are is intricately bound up with whom we are around, where we are, what we give and what we receive. There, some style of ours is taken up and immortalized by someone, here an intention that we made is covered over and reinvoked at a different time, thereby lending this intention a new, hitherto unanticipated meaning, and some times a proposal of ours is rejected initally but sharpened into a more disciplined, self-conscious command by the other, and at other times what we offer is completely overlooked or rejected by the world. What we end up inscribing on the tablet of life seems to depend entirely on the surface of the tablet itself! This dark uncertainty that belongs inescapably to our lot seems to be a sort of weakness. Nietzsche implies so much when he writes of the German that he "cannot be judged by his actions and [that] as an individual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted." Our actions do not reveal who we are for these actions only manage us to recast us into a new light, which we ourselves were not privy to before. Like a fallen leaf we get whisked away, trampled over, flown across lands at the mercy of uncertain forces and winds, or we remain in some corner withering away and forgotten.
But this injustice that we suffer at the hands of life is also our path to glory and redemption. To be sure, one must limit oneself and possess oneself in a self-contained way. But this self-enclosure is only possible by an occasional will to stupidity, as Nietzsche might say. In the end, by wrapping ourselves with our own skin we deny ourselves the possibility of a new meaning, a re-birth, a future, however dangerous a game one is now playing in choosing to remain in this open uncertainty. It is in this future that our greatness and glory lie. Life's theatre of cruelty is not revealed in that one is fluttering at the mercy of natural forces one cannot gain control over, but in the challenge to repeatedly submit oneself to this flight and fluttering all the while preserving oneself in the act without losing balance. To speak through Nietzsche again: "How much truth can one endure? how much truth can one dare? This is the real measure of value. This is the test. This is the experiment."

The joyful signs!

After the victory is won, one always feels one has expended more energy than was actually required for the task. But strangely, this insight is unavailable when one is actually going through the process, as one always feels pressured to spend as much effort and energy as one did. (The growth of the child or any process of self-overcoming has this peculiar structure of strife and pain).
However, the seemingly excess energy that appears at the end of the process will not have gone to waste. It shows up as the profound joy and power of the conquerer!

Tip of the tongue

It does not have to be this way, but language in many cases emerges as a back-up for instincts that have corrupted. The sure sign of corrupted instincts is that one does not trustfully believe in these instincts anymore. Believing is no mean task; we are all bad believers insofar as we cannot tiptoe on a tightrope without being sucked in by the vertigo of the abysses. To save oneself from the fear of perishing one seeks a cushion, a back-up. Language then emerges as this emergency solution. It acts as the depository reserve, the "savings account," in which one hopes to translate the sublime and fluid language of instincts for the sake of assurance and guarantee.
Writing (book-keeping, journals, etc.) and technological innovations (day-planners, computers) have this interpretation of language guiding their development. Nay, the whole of Western-dialectics develops out of this feeling of vertigo. The root of American capitalism is to be found in words that have rigidified themselves into fixed meanings: a clear sign of disintegrated instincts. No wonder Americans are inclined to "talk about" anything and everything that appears to them as a problem as way of solving these problems. America: the most scholarly culture that has ever been.

Misunderstandings

1. The quality of consistency may be taken to be a symptom of boredom and repetition. Alternatively it may indicate, in some very exceptional cases, the sign of bright awareness and openness to the world. It would be a great injustice to confuse the latter for the former. Who would call the patterns of sun, the sea, the birds and the trees boring?

2. I once said this. But also: to think that thought which is unthinkable, unaccessible to others -- it is the secret strength of the one who marches on without forerunners!

Limits of logic

The world has the character of .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... with the future terms in the chain expressing the reality that takes shape and is created only at that moment (this reality being born out of an indeterminable array of factors). What comes to be, therefore, is the greatest testament to its itself, to reality. It sustains itself in absolute freedom, and is answerable only to itself.
Even the logician has no say in what comes to be, but on the contrary, he adjusts his theory of contradiction depending on what peculiar form reality dishes out. It would be ridiculous for him to say, "reality cannot be that way because my theory forbids it!" since his theory is parasitic on reality and not viceversa. (All the shocks of quantum physics and old age must bear this in mind for insulation). Hence, the best the logician or the phenomenologician can do is to faithfully describe, not predict, reality. But what else is this best description, besides that which repeats or mirrors the sequence of terms? : .... if a then b then if c then -a then d if b then -b ... Granted that this rote repetition can be therepeutic at times (for example, by clearing up one's own confusions about reality (Wittgenstein), or by acting as the seat for the confessions of one's sins), it is still always uninterestingly modest, self-preserving and meek.
If on the other hand, one confused the nature of logic and professed to predict reality, all one would have done is glibly short-circuited reality or generalized it. One's immodest theory then turns to be hopelessly abstract that seeks to grasp the skeleton of reality with pincers after it has sucked up its blood. A great way to counter this abstraction is to use logic against itself: to wit, show that the real terms contradict each other (say, by juxtaposing b and -b) when they are taken out of context (an operation that is needed for all generalizations), in order to, of course, not show the deficiency of reality, but rather that of logic. (It is by this method that Nietzsche effects a releasement of logic into life).
But releasing contradictions into the flow of life: by this are we not taking the basic steps of the creative life itself?

"I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal" --Nietzsche

Thought of the last few days..

We do not really know who we are or who we could be; 'self-determination' is but a false slogan; all we can do is create relatively stable selves for ourselves. And even that too depends on the people we are around, the climate we are in, how we are dependent on others, how we let others see us and determine us, what we would like to project upon others, and what we take to be our joys and sorrows.
We are unknown to ourselves; we cannot fathom our own depths -- and who knows whether there is really anything to fathom at all...

Conversation with the ladder

'My lows are lower than you, but my highs are higher than your highs...whence comes your peculiar midwifery?'
'What? Are you implying I am not higher than myself?'
'Is that not clear?'
'So be it then.. I hold the right to speak as long as you are below me. For this is my secret desire: that you can bring me to silence!'
'You speak the truth... the contradictions of your being are but beyond you.'

Ode to solitude

How much adjustment and good will is required before one can see one's own reflection in the mirror! One must drop what one is doing, walk up to the mirror, open one's eyes and look at the mirror for the mirror to look back at one.
How one may choose not to do some or all of these things! How much the mirror is not helpful in this regard -- a testament to the profound solitude of one's individual existence! Moreover: how superficial is the image when the mirror does reflect;for one sees what one wants see, what one has given oneself to see. How much is left unsaid! Isn't all showing a deceiving?
But if the mirror is the best we can hope for, then who wants the mirror? Bury youself under the skin! For the treasures of your being lie there uninstantiated as the great germs of the your solitude!

Buzz word

'It ain't true until you do it; make it explicit!' This is how the fly reasons and continues to buzz around you, knowing perfectly well that it is not supposed to do so, and that it could get killed for its incredulity. But this is the covert, shameless hope of the annoying creature: that you may feel too lofty to be a swatter of flies, too pure to soil your hands, even if that means you suffer the vexing sting of the parasitic fly. And in this way it takes advantage of your magnanimity and lives on for another day!

Life's plenum

The world is not my image of it, and yet the world is alive only through the images I create.

3 levels of absurdities in Nietzsche

I.
1) The objectivity of truth or that of health is vehemently denied. The truths of each body - whether a culture, an individual or a genre - is localized and given a legitimate sphere, where the tyranny of their specific perspective has the sole right.
2) It is still maintained, in apparent contradiction to the above, that there some healthier, more truthful bodies in comparison to others. The passions, the sufferings, the desires, the needs, the joy and happiness of these nobler entities must be preferred - since they have a greater purpose to them - to that of the lower beings.
3) However, an unequivocal rule is denied, which gives one access to a method by which one can discern which body is healthier or stronger than some other bodies. The knowledge of the criterion of what counts as healthy is known only by those who possess this health! It is not accessible to everyone. This is the tragedy of the healthy ones!

II. This movement from 1) to 3) is that of the 'objectivity' to 'subjectivity'. But not in the Hegelian sense, where the movement gains momentum in this very movement. It is rather the movement from 'will to truth' to 'will to power.'

III. But at the same time, this movement is perhaps the closest one gets to having a genuine sense of objectivity. Or the closest approximation that the motion of becoming can have to that of being, as Nietzsche puts it somewhere. For, even the noblest one's claim to his health, in the end, might be another form of delusion and dogmatism. A cave which hides another cave within its abyss. The spectre of Hegel in Nietzsche.

3 purposes of art

1. Art as fantasy: Here art plays the role of an outlet for the masses, who generally live oppressed lives (like in India). Art takes people to that fantastic realm, away from the harsh reality that the common man faces. A little bit of nitrous oxide, a little tickle and run, a little dancing-around-trees - and the working man is convinced that he should go on toiling more and more: art for the sake of the common consumer.
2. Art as the mirror of reality: A more refined sense of art, dominant mostly in the western intellect. Art has a function of mimesis: to reflect back the reality to the oblivious thinker and scholar, so that he can keep tabs on it, so that it does not get out of his hand. He needs art to control reality or to make a satirical caricature of it! Art - almost like a diary that chronicles one's inner feelings, so that one does not lose oneself in one's own depths. Art as the effect of the command: "Know thyself!" Art for the sake of the sophisticated consumer.
3. Art: not for the sake of the consumer, but for the sake of the artist. Art - not for the sake of purpose, but to create purposes: falsifying, but also transforming reality, and thereby creating the audience too, the consumer! Both a satire and fantasy - a midway between the first two senses of art, but neither the first nor the second. Art as the rare rays of the comet following its own path in the night's sky.

The philosopher as a dancer

Often I am asked which philosophical problems one must take up, and which ones one must set aside as confused or paralyzed or unproductive. One does not need a critique of faculties to answer this question. The answer is quite simple and is given in its very givenness as a philosophical question. One does not "take up" a philosophical problem, but to a philosopher philosophy is given in a singular, nuanced way, which is particular to the shape and contours of that philosopher's life paths and idiosyncracies. The philosopher meets philosophy half way, and then he defines and determines the exact way in which his philosophy is unfolded by deepening or altering the forms of these contours.
But existentially speaking, that decisive moment when a person "becomes" a philosopher, when a philosophy "comes" to him, can be described as the pleasure of a bitter-sweet pain at the ever-so-slight loss he feels in his world, with which he had hitherto been completely at one. It is the sweet pain one experiences when one lifts only one toe off the ground, even though one is in every other way grounded in reality: the bitter pleasure of "metaphysics." The subsequent challenge for the philosopher is to maintain a sort of balance so that on the one hand he does not abstractly try to remove himself off the ground (lest he wants to get caught in the entrapments of false philosophies), and on the other hand not to induce himself with a narcotic which makes him again "one" with the world (unless he wants to end up being a self-satisfied mystic). Balance is the key for a philosopher.

Right to neologisms

Those of us who have good taste and also a taste for freedom and for light air prefer to read a philosopher who does not use too many dense and techincal terms in his works. Generally these terms are borrowed from everyday vocabulary (or these everyday words are lightly modified, usually coverted to an "-ism" or "-logy" of sorts) and are elevated into central concepts or principles of thought around which, or rather behind which, the philosopher hides a wealth of presuppositions, contradictions, modest confusions and stupidities. Despite what the philosopher likes to believe a conceptual term (contextualism, relativism, pragmatism, Dasein, Spirit, realism, compatibilism) is, therefore, a grand metaphor of a not-so-talented poet. This conceptual philosopher is usually a stuffy person who makes way for the special term he wants to create by chopping the life out of the usual meanings of this term. He is like the hiker who is keen on leaving his pathmarks for the rescue team to follow, as if he is inwardly sure that he will lose his way in the wilderness! He thus invents a metalanguage, the language of languages, the essence of language. Such immodesty, as I said, must offend our taste.
But on the other hand, the philosopher with a more sublime taste, who in acutely observing the world he lives in, refuses to invent neologisms, but rather inventively and endlessly distributes the currencies of language already at his disposal, not wishing to rise above it once and for all, but swimming in it, going beneath and above it alternatively -- assuming that this philosopher performs this duty with great diligence, he will not only reveal that he is a wonderful writer, but soon will earn the noble and rare right to coin neologisms: it is as if life itself rewards him for his terrestrial struggle! With what? With philosophy! With the right to philosophy! And these newly coined terms would then be the pearls grown on earth, although they would resemble the tears of a god! These pearls of philosophy, then, would transfigure the very meaning of current language, extending its boundaries. But who has the strength equal to this task? Besides say Nietzsche or Kierkegaard?

Semblance

The wonderful way in which people with similar facial features also tend to have similar hand or expressive gestures!

Kant's invention of the metaphor

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant notices that the only way reason can hope to fulfill the completeness it seeks for, besides in a constitutive way, is to employ reason regulatively: to proceed in the employment of reason 'as if' there is unity or purpose or completeness in this world. At first glance, this solution seems a little ridiculous. And it is, if one understands this philosophy of the 'as if' narrowly, to be performing a designated technical function of creating illusions about things which are not really there for reason's apprehension. Indeed, this is precisely the function Kant requires of it. But at the same time, setting aside the actual job of the 'as if' in Kant's system, I note that Kant discovers the metaphor by discovering the as if: as if he is saying, "completeness" but not literally, but metaphorically. He thus interprets the metaphorical use of reason as its central and definitive employment, and therefore puts the "scare quotes" around completeness. It is, a "so to speak" completeness - a "so to speak" philosophy.
And this is no mean achievement, for by doing this, Kant recaptures the very gesture of philosophy: philosophy as solipsistic self-stimulation, as speculation (as Hegel reads it), or (as Schopenhauer reads it) atheism and non-meaning (if by meaning we mean something literal), or as a tragic abysmal view of life that sees no secure ground to stand on, as the non-belief in the grammar and logic of language, as the free license to express even the minutest thought and experience as hiding a wealth of debris (the last three as Nietzsche views it), or the play of interpretations (Gadamer/Derrida), or as the concern with art, beauty, imagination and free-play that tip-toes above all the seriousness and gravity of analytic salvation-seekers (as the entire post-structuralist movement). Kant's metaphor reveals the complete lack of a language that philosophy can call its own, that it had been parasitic on a scientific language that has now claimed its independence. In short, Kant's invention of the metaphor shows the inevitable truth: the flickering existence of philosophy, which nevertheless refuses to extinguish itself.

First & third world

In today's world, the mark of self-sufficiency, growth and economic maturity and independence of a nation is indicated by two factors: (i) whether a large number of foreigners wish to visit or settle in that nation - either to make a living or for business purposes or for spiritual excursions or to explore the nation's cultural richness or for other reasons that a tourist might give; ii) whether the nation has earned the right to say that it does not want foreigners on its soil, if it wanted to.
Even if many of the African and Asian countries, like India, satisfy the first condition, they fail the second. They fail the second condition either because they cannot reject foreign infiltration without risking economic loss and alienation, which is always an impending threat in today's globalized world; or because they feel the need "to be told" what to do, what to aim for, which direction to take by the leading first world countries; (or both). This latter dependency is a strange one since it is a sort of cultural slavery on the part of these ancient, albeit now, "dead" cultures, making them look up to the "master" western cultures as the leaders of this culture of globalization that began in the last century. The reason why these ancient cultures end up being slaves in this game is because they feel that only by being so they can hold onto the nostalgia of a lost cultural and spirtual greatness. The choice is straightforward: either be a spiritually bankrupt, barbaric nation without this nostalgia or be a barbaric nation with this memory attached like a parasite. The more a nation belongs in the former camp, more is its self-sufficiency and potential for leadership. Hence, America.

No thing-in-itself

We always project ourselves onto everything: what we believe, what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we think and what we sense are discoveries of our own projections. That tree there, that building here, this God above me, this person below me : all my projections of my own inner alleys and secrets. This is how we carve out our space in the world, however fluid and mobile this space really is. We discover only what we invent, and then our eternal stupidity never ceases to be surprised at these very discoveries as if they were given to us by an external source. Eternal naivety - that's behind this wretched Unheimlichkeit!
There is an outside world - the great seducer - which is forever beyond our grasp. As the wanderer proclaimed: We are always in our own company...

Echoes

The discordance of the self sends out ripples of reverberations and interruptions over the indefinite fabric of ether in such a way that it opens up an infinite field of contradictions, odd mutilations, shameless corruptions and conspiring stage-plays. May this self still seem surprised about the gaping chasm between itself and the world? Does it still have a right to plead innocent?

The Night-Song

Aber ich lebe in meinem eigenen Lichte, ich trinke die Flammen in mich zurück, die aus mir brechen.
Ich kenne das Glück des Nehmenden nicht; und oft traümte mir davon, daβ Stehlen noch seliger sein müsse als Nehmen.
Das ist meine Armut, daβ meine Hand niemals ausruht vom Schenken; das ist mein Neid, daβ ich wartende Augen sehe und die erhellten Nächte der Sehnsucht.
O Unseligkeit aller Schenkenden! O Verfinsterung meiner Sonne! O Begierde nach Begehren! O Heiβhunger in der Sättingung!
Sie nehmen von mir: aber rühre ich noch an ihre Seele? Eine Kluft ist zwischen Geben und Nehmen; und die kleinste Kluft ist am letzten zu überbrücken...

Wohin kam die Träne meine Auge und der Flaum meinem Herzen? O Einsamkeit aller Schenkenden! O Schweigsamkeit aller Leuchtenden!
Viel Sonnen kreisen im öden Raume: zu allem, was dunkel ist, reden sie mit ihrem Lichte, - mir schweigen sie.
O dies ist die Feindschaft des Lichts gegen Leuchtendes: erbarmungslos wandelt es seine Bahnen.
Unbillig gegen Leuchtendes im tiefsten Herzen; kalt gegen Sonnen, - also wandelt jede Sonne.

-- Also sprach Zarathustra

Out in the open

It is astonishing how much value we place upon external evidence! For instance, consider a relationship between two parties involving a strife where one knows exactly what the other is thinking and feeling; what the other person's plans and secrets are, what the motivations of deceptions, defenses and attacks are, what is veiled and what is revealed. And moreover the other person knows that one knows this about the other. But since all of this information is hidden under the carpet, as it were - due to whatever reasons - the interpretative games continue to go on as if both parties were oblivious of these various facts and knowledge about the other and about oneself. These facts still do not count as evidence. The balance of this struggle is tempered with, and consequently shifted, only if one of the parties decides to break the rules of the game, and call out the other, and bring out all the motivations and secrets into the open. Only then both parties acknowledge what they already know - as if they were standing before a 'judge' before whom they must confess. (This happens even if no one else is involved or cares about this struggle except the two parties). The specter of the 'world' itself stands as the judge before whom the two witnesses appear. So much for our belief in the external world!

Two sides of the same coin

i) What the stars must learn: That recognition is different from understanding. Many things recognize the star: the planets, the comets, the meteors, the asteroids. Some revolve around it, some avoid, some fall into it. But none understand its solitude and the inner necessity of its radiance. And so the star must learn not to place too much trust on these recognizers. The latter have a taste for the star's radiance, but this does not mean that they themselves can radiate or can fathom where this radiation comes from. If anything this taste is an indication that one does not and cannot possess this radiance. So the star must maintain its distance from them, at the same time go on shining for them -- i.e. it must maintain its solitude.
ii) The difference between a scholar and an original is that the former has not yet acquired the right to be obscure, and probably never will. He speaks like a slave as he demands for clarity. He demands clarity because he himself does not shine.