The censored Chronicles

of Damnable Elation in
Flattening Madness
of Smiling Sadness
of Old Notebook Entries

Welcome to America in the year 2004. Please excuse the intrusion, but I'm no culture snob, nor anyone who refutes equalitarian rights for all, but there is an awareness many others do not either have or just care for, something that passionately comes from an interior drive towards (relative) truth and understanding. I'm certainly not alone, but at this present time, a minority by far.

The fact is that not so long ago, society lacked in technological skills, primitive in areas of science and technology. Yet despite this, the knowledge of the non-knowledge, the ability to perceive alternative philosophical ideas, the ability to intuitively experience the realm of the irrational and actually have an understanding to attempt to metaphorically convey such in symbols, in poetic and creative means was thriving the collective mainstream of society. This postmodern era or subsequent era it is, has detrimentally lost all of this, the most profound element of humanity, all so, for the advancement of technological and scientific achievements. The trade simply wasn't worth it! It is a loss of utter magnitude with major profound consequences!

Profound enough to possibly be reaching a point of no return in human societal development, as the thinkers, poets and philosophers are trashed from the respectable and meaningful, to that of old and meaningless knowledge, all so, in favor of only more recent knowledge, primarily limited to the sciences. This is a major back step in the evolution of the mind. Relativists and fundamentalists are the body and the head, retreating back to former primitive rule, all so with much higher technological and scientific capabilities. The serious consequences are enormous both now and tomorrow. To be entrusted with such knowledge and loose the wisdom, the direction, that what was so intrinsically woven throughout is more catastrophic than former eras.

And this trade, it was Betrand Russell who said, and Osho too, that "I love civilization, but we have achieved civilization at a very great cost." And that cost of half-awake living prevents us from dancing in the street, from screaming and laughing out loud from our very centers. Instead we exist, lifeless and minimal and we control and live in our safety zones, half-alive. The more dead, the more secure. You can control; then you remain the master, all so with a minimal level of energy.

I've never seen anything like it, or have I my entire life, been only asleep in the bourgeois mind melt? Faces glued to the TV's, watching what? Watching the news. And what rubbish! What amazing propaganda! Has it really come to this? The people believe with hook, line and sinker. From the mainstream, who are more concerned with Janet Jackson's boob flash than a military coo and possible overthrow of an internal dictatorship - American (Bush, Ashcroft, Powell, Chaney, Rumsfield) Style, all under the banner of "freedom," "democracy" and nauseating righteousness of the Patriot Act, one of the most harmful acts so far ever enacted from this country since its inception, a decisive move towards tyranny. Here it is, an amazing scam, countries toppled, our sons and daughters dying and flags waving, all for a cause that is sadly from an internal pre-planned arrangement from government officials with the self-serving motives of power and monetary interests (the monopoly of Halliburton oil and the destruction of Enron oil) for those few behind the appearances.

What really is the meaning of democracy and freedom? Is it the rule of the many or the few? Of Athens or Sparta? Is it exclusive or inclusive? I mean, who has time to read such things, between work, TV and reading the media, the surface journalism that is under the censorship and control of the government - at least to an amazing alarming degree. The foundation of people, the voting public, do not know the ideas of political science and fundamentals that formed our political and societal structures except a minority, the majority in such petty "last man" mentality, nihilism and the relativization of values that are floating under the control of the so called public opinion which is lead by a governmentally censored media. All of this leads to the forfeit of "rights," privacy and liberty into the hands of tyranny. Knowledge truly is power.

What is so awful, so terrible and amazingly disturbing, is the public's horridly low level of awareness and intellectual interest and lifeless passion for the bigger picture than what's merely surface and directly in front of them. No one dares, nor even has the interest, to investigate beyond the trees to see what type of forest they are living in. The masses do not know the difference from the contact paper and the substance, they can't see the false guise of stagnant, surface existence to that of living with creativity, courage, passion and the art of being. Even the white collar educated are barely knowledgeable beyond half-baked journalism, under the spell of comfort and security, devoid of all ability to walk in despair and thus transcend the situation.

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Amongst the pressure of public opinionated relativism, or in one-sided fundamentalism and authoritarian control, there exists those that transcend such value (non) distinctions with the ability of individual courage to live in insecurity and mystery, to transcend absoluteness and leave collectiveness into an awareness of relativity, in existential openness, with gratitude and awe. Yet most of humanity is still along the coinciding human inability, in stagnation, seeking to escape from individual consciousness of freedom, ceasing to move in action beyond the surface ego to deeper intuitive and kinetic awareness. Here the denial and fear of uncertainty, anxiety of freedom, seeks to escape, entering into authoritarian means, either of government, cultural, religious or the domination of public opinion found in pseudo-democratic freedom. But freedom from all objective taught history, language and concepts, this of course is impossible, though the awareness to see instability as absolute is recognizable and therefore flexible to authentic self inner direction.

Throughout history, aristocratic minorities had greater knowledge from individual autonomy, while the masses where left out, yet producing thinkers, mystics, scientists, political scientists, literary geniuses and philosophers that have shaped both Western and Eastern civilizations. Yet today, in a pseudo-democratic society, and in serious deterioration, we have reached a historical point in human development that has access to increased levels of both true (at least in some rational sense) and antiquated human empirical observation and perceptional limitation, of conceptions of philosophy, science, social science, psychoanalytical ontology and have a history of profound spiritual thinkers who both employed and rejected rational and revelatory experience, from theistic objectification and communicable literalization to pantheistic persuasions, to atheistic religiosity and artistic creativity of poetic sacred experience. And yet today we observe the extremes of nihilism, of publicly opinionated ruled societal structure, under a so-called label of "freedom," endorsed by bland relativism, homogenization of values, devoid of depth in authenticity, producing the subsequent outgrowths of shallow fundamentalism, where logic or charisma exists apart from deep convictions that are based on areas of intellectual accumulation. Thus what does exist is logically and rationally arranged in neatly or semi-complicated solved reality with solid and absolute answers, not in recognition of the mysterium tremendum, the ground of Being that is found in the irrational center and mysticism found all religious cultures. Nor the intuitive tacit knowledge found in areas of theology, science, political views and philosophy, although philosophy in this nihilism is dead book shelf material for most.

What produces such surface thinking and zero tolerance judgments appears in surface fundamental values, outer directed adherence, that of the media, or the attachment of the self to a collective group in blinding ignorance that is joined in with the failure to have found what exists in historical, spiritual, mystical, philosophical and meditative thinkers, poets and artists, all who in indirect and direct ways help individuals to find their true inner directed autonomy and centering knowledge, the place found within the deep rooted center of oneself, where collectively there is an overflowing of continual renewals of individual self discoveries. To "know thyself."

"My task is to see things as they really are! (outside the human mind) . . . My philosophy is to draw men away from semblance (bare traces of truth, copies), no matter what the danger! . . . Because you lie concerning what really is, the thirst for what should come to be does not grow in you." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power XII, 13, 18, 279 and Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche, pp. 31,32

“Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eternal fact.” Thomas Carlyle (Platonism)

The failure lies in ceasing to transcend limitations restricting the authentic self, the inner directed higher incomprehensibility and intuition with inauthentic outer directed values created from public opinion dominated in the empirical objectification of analytical science, in many cases, with unfounded surface rationalism and justifications lacking the ability to touch the fringes of the abyss and penetrate emptiness with insight of the remote center of Being and transcendent exposure to irrational, intuitive wisdom apart from intellectual, ratiocinative and discursive thinking. Mass media, corporate slanted in pseudo-democratic "free thinking," eliminates the need or the inner direction towards outer directed values and determinations, where surface taught ideas are radiated through out, as rational thinking and logic analysis dominating all imaginative perception.

"If The Doors of Perception Were Cleansed, Everything Would Appear To Man As It Is, Infinite." William Blake

This is our society today, a technological and scientifically enlightened time in frozen civilization, an elder with a communication gap, lost from the original timeless culture in its infant act of "becoming," a "becoming," that was closer to the creative center of time and movement, to now an elderly and dying, a semi-cultureless civilization that has "become," one of logic and measurement, of science and medicine, yet devoid of all passionate creative self positing center, that are tucked away in the "humanities" and forgotten shelves. In logical and definitive assessments of surface values, both in fundamental one-sidedness, that appears to be "truth," bias judgment forms on one side and ambiguous relativity that lacks any foundation of true resolution on the other. Here in such empirical consciousness it is not difficult to know what is a "perfect object, " and ideal map of the external fulfillment, prescription to so called happiness, yet who is it that desires the "perfect Atman or soul?" Where is the longing, that human tugging of desire for the internal that exists higher than the external? Where are those that communicate their existential centers apart from rational Being? One must enter the depths of solitude, alone in the bitter sweet center of one's Being to fully grasp, if at all possible, the existential meaning of subjectivity, only to submit to the limiting and devaluing form that must be taken to communicate under the historical observation of conceptual thinking and straight jacket imprisonment of linguistic definitive objectivity.

"In the usual view solitude is what liberates us, frees us from all things. Solitude, according to Nietzsche's view in 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is what happens after you post the "Do Not Disturb" sign. Yet in our loneliest loneliness, the most hair-raising and hazardous things are loosed upon us and on our task, and these cannot be deflected onto other things or other people. They must penetrate us through and through, not that we might be rid of them once and for all, but that in authentic knowing and supreme discernment we may become aware that such things remain relevant. To know precisely that, is the knowing that is hardest to bear. All to easily such knowing flies off, or creeps away, into evasions and excuses - into sheer folly." Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche, pp. 47-48

In Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom, the idea is conveyed of the emptiness of today's society, the loss of the symbolic meaning of life that lives apart from existential individualism to that of a collective belonging, that of the medieval era, part of a group, in occupation, that being self-employed in a trade, belonging to a guild and all actions in life were towards that of a collective whole, the religious meaning of life. True the church ruled with an iron rod, but one must remember the inquisition was as a later time, during the Renaissance, during the period of despairing individualism and in the prior medieval era was a peace of mind that existed from a sense of belonging. This is not the same as belonging to fundamentalist groups today with religious, philosophical, intellectual concepts that evade reality, hiding from interior fear into theological formulas for safety, for in the medieval era, as ignorant as it may have been, it was not an escape from freedom as exists today. While existential despair is the evolution of higher human conscious development, it must maintain the mysterious, the irrational, the element of truth that lives far apart from rational and logical thinking. Such logic from the Renaissance to our diminishing industrial society, now in a technological society, is what that permeates in arid and dry relativism, fundamentalism and literalism. Paul Tillich relates,

"The technical aim of education became predominant. Adjustment to the demands of the industrial society became the main educational purpose . . . In this way, the emptiness of the late humanistic education was covered up by the national idea . . . . there has ceased the education which in any sense could be called initiation into the mystery of existence and the symbols throughout which it is expressed." Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, p.154

"If anything characterizes 'modernity,' it is the loss of faith in transcendence, in a reality that encompasses but surpasses our quotidian affairs." The Chronicle of Higher Education, quoted from Huston Smith, Why Religions Matters, p. 194

It is the acts of becoming that live within reality apart from rational intellectualism, expressed only in symbolism, the true meaning of religion and in turn in the acts of "becoming." Such acts of "becoming," that of culture verses civilization, issue from Goethe's creativity in synchronized deed before thought in flowing movement apart from stagnated logic, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and the set-fast. Plato and Goethe stand for the philosophy of Becoming, Aristotle and Kant the philosophy of Being. Here we have intuition opposed to analysis. Johanne Wolfgang Von Goethe, words it as,

"The Godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and the set-fast; and therefore, similarly, the reason is concerned only to strive towards the divine through the becoming and the living, and the understanding only to make use of the become and the set-fast."

This is also much of the philosophy of Nietzsche and of the philosophical historian, Oswald Spengler, although their is a fine line between reflection and action and the degree of which results. Anotherwards, the tension arises from reflection that brings forth action to action that results apart from reflection but from impulse, the extreme in each, an undesired outcome. With Faust, the man of over indulgence, he became Frankenstein, with the man of over reflection, he becomes a passionless existence. Reflection delays and has danger, as Soren Kierkegaard states:

"The results from reflection are both dangerous and unforeseeable because one can never tell whether the decision which saves a man from evil is reached after thorough consideration, or whether it is simply the exhaustion resulting from reflection which prevents him from doing wrong. One thing, however, is certain, an increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction . . . and that no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, because they are so dialectical . . . " The Present Age, p. 42

In line with this is the classical Greek era, the pre-Socrates era of culture creating genesis. A period when time pieces ceased to exist within society. Although there was a sundial, no time pieces were used to regulate societal structure, nor daily activities. Contracts were signed without dates inserted, with figurative time periods, only to be forgotten within a short time from failure to date such contracts and the amazing ability to live in the present moment of creative activity. Spengler, in his Decline of The West - Vol's I & II, compares society to the biological structure of living beings, that of birth, growth, decay and eventual death. The validity and pattern of evolving culture and civilizations points affirmatively to such cycles as the earth rotation, change of seasons, and death and rebirth of life itself. The idea comparison I equate to culture, can be that of a small child, playing in the sandbox, the present moment ever so flowing as eternal, the mind as a timeless sponge absorbing all in a continuous progressive stream, apart from civilization, that of deductive analysis, and anxiety built formations from preconceived ideas formed on disquieted fears, but rather culture in the steady migration of shifting change in "becoming," apart from civilization's stagnating logic of structured formation of the "become."

This is not a case of "ignorance is bliss," but rather the adult prisoned conscious in frozen absolutes and dogmatic base from taught fundamentals, can find himself in ignorant bliss of the "become," that is, in false security and certitude and pragmatic realism, while the child continues movement in "becoming." All intellectual knowledge has the compromise of historicity and language, and embraces a false certitude of basics that reach limits and fail transcendence, as in one way or another, it is in denial of true openness. While culture, unlike civilization, is in touch with one's existential center of naked realty apart from historicity and preconceived reality. Infantile nature of fundamentalism is diametrically opposite from the infant who experiences the acts of "becoming" over the supposedly advanced adult who has "become." Yet maturity comes with the courage to be in touch with both one's existential center and the adult power of reason at the same time, both working within one another, reason with the content of it's chaotic existenz, existenz with it's clarification (although always compromised) of reason.

"The aeon (the whole Being, whole time, the entire course of life itself) is a child at play, playing at draughts (at the utmost angles of the world); dominion is the child's." HERACLITUS (HN, p.77)

"Everything flows." HERACLITUS principal thought and beyond. (HN, p.78)

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Beware of the man who claims to have solved the problem of life, who would explain its complexities and, with deadly logic, build a system in which all the facts of our existence may be pigeon-holed and neatly stored away. He stands condemned by his own claim. The child which sees wonder in all the world around it, to whom the shells with which it plays on the beach are objects of breathless excitement and thrilled amazement, is nearer to divine truth than the intellectualist who would strip a world of its mystery and takes pride in showing us its anatomy in ruthless dissection. For a while it may satisfy evolving man to know that the splendors of a sunset are but the breaking of light-rays in moist atmosphere; he will come to realize that he may have explained the method, but has not touched the mystery at all. Recovering from the sureness of youth, never doubting itself, awakened man returns to the wonder of childhood and once again sees a world which, as the years pass by, deepens in mystery and beauty, but is never exhausted or explained."
 J.J. VAN DER LEEUW, The Conquest of Illusion, p. 9

In children come natural philosophical questions such as "how did we get here?," "why am I, I, and not someone else?," what was here before all this was created?" And so children have this natural ability to question, to try to piece this formation of structured knowledge that our world of thinking has so automatically built to hold our reality together.

"To argue that children do not continue top philosophized and that consequently such utterances of them must be accidental is to overlook the fact that children often possess gifts which they loose as they grow up. With the years we seem to enter into a prison of conventions and opinions, concealments and unquestioned acceptance, and there we lose the candor of childhood. The child still reacts spontaneously to the spontaneity of life; the child feels and sees and inquires into things which soon disappear from his vision. He forgets what for a moment was revealed to him and is surprised when grownups later tell him what he said and what questions he asked."

"Spontaneous philosophy is found not only in children but also in the insane. Sometimes - rarely - the veils of universal occlusion seem to part and penetrating truths are manifested. The beginning of shattering metaphysical revelations, though they are usually formulated in terms that cannot achieve significance: exceptions are such cases as Holderlin and Van Gogh. but anyone witnessing these revelations cannot help feeling that the mists in which we ordinarily live our lives have been torn asunder. And many sand people have, in awaking from sleep, experienced wakefulness, leaving behind them only the impression that they can never be recaptured. There is profound meaning in the saying that children and fools tell the truth. but the creative originality to which we owe great philosophical ideas is not to be sought here but among those great minds - and in all history there have been only a few of them - who preserve their candor and independence." Karl Jaspers, The Way To Wisdom, pp. 10-11

In Goethe's Faust, similar to the biblical story of Job, the Devil's messenger Mephistopheles makes a wager with the Lord. In this, Faust sets the conditions of giving up all his practical knowledge, intellectual studies, secure life and his high status in the community, in exchange for divine powers, only as long as he remains unsatisfied. The moment he is satisfied he looses the wager. Goethe's (Faust's) claim is that real happiness lies only within the fleeting moment, in the rushing of time. Man is always striving forward and yet does not truly know what he is striving for. Happiness is never satisfied in a fixed time, as the past "good old days," nor found in a desired future time, but always fleeting, moving, left unsatisfied. If happiness were real and captured in a moment, than one would stay satisfied, something which cannot exist. The wager then Faust makes is that when he stops moving from moment to moment, and seeks to grab, hold and capture the time, when he wishes to remain in the state of love or bliss that he is in, that is when he looses the wager. In fact, two times Faust looses this ability, however it appears to have escaped the notice of the Devil's messenger, Mephistopheles, with whom he had made such a wager. Unlike Rene Descartes, in his Discourse on Method, who also left his mechanical studies to seek experience over explanation, yet eventually returned back to his fixed life, in the end, Faust will never go back to his studies, his fixed, stable self, but rather only death will bring the end to his fleeting life of momentary gratification. Ultimately, Faust found satisfaction in his death as the last word he spoke before dying was the word "moment," thus loosing the two wagers that had been made, although never acknowledged, and rewarded as the winner of the wager made.

Unlike Adam, in the Genesis account, who was administered the ultimate punishment of banishment from paradise and subsequent death, and unlike Adam in Milton's Paradise Lost, of punishment that was divinely required to receive the ultimate blessing; the Christ, it was not so for Faust, whose name in German means "fist," with overtones of force and defiance, is the hero for his lack of reflection and contemplation, employing action and deed over thought, subsequently loosing his scruples committing even homicide, and yet at the end, cheating Mephistopheles of his wager, as the angels carry him off to the Lord. He is rewarded. Such is the path that led to a misinterpretation (Nietzsche knew he would be misinterpreted) of Nietzsche's Overman or Superman* and Will to Power and subsequently to those who used their own interpretations of the Will to Power, in tyrannical rule such as Hitler and Stalin, fitting the ugly monster of Frankenstein, the book written by Mary Shelly. It appears Shelly's Frankenstein, written in the 19th century between Faust I and Faust II, as protest literature to Faust I and had it more accurate in the result, an ugly monster, who was neither a hero, nor punished, but a self created (Dr. Frankenstein's created self) who, like Adam, Faust and Prometheus dared to cross the limits, ceasing to remain in boundaries, but in their unsatisfaction pushed the limits perhaps too far.

* The Overman or Superman was the man who courageously knew and self-affirmed himself with the meaning of Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal reoccurrence and had the ability to posit values, to be authentically real, over and above nihilism and the "last man." The "last man" being a mediocre man, content in pettiness of insignificant, middling existence.

Max Weber describes the "last man" as the bourgeois, not one who is unhappy, but one whose happiness is nauseating, that is, in his rationality, which is devoid of the human good. Alan Bloom relating this fact further states, "an experience of profound contempt is necessary in order to grasp our situation, and our capacity for contempt is vanishing . . . from Nietzsche he (Weber) learned that religion, or the sacred, is the most important human phenomenon, and his further study of it was made from Nietzsche's unorthodox perspective." The Closing the American Mind, p. 195

The bourgeois and the last man represent the collapse of art, creativity and freedom, swallowed up by determinism, rationalism and petty self-interest. p. 205

"The Overman is not a fairy-tale character; he is the one who recognizes the last man as such and who overcomes him. Over-man is the one who ascends above the "last" man and thereby earmarks him as last, as the man of bygone days."

""The last man is the man of 'middling felicity.' He is incomparably sly, knows just about everything, and is as busy as can be; but with him everything peters out into something harmless, mid-range, and universally bland. In the sphere of the last man each thing gets a little bit smaller every day. Even what he takes to be great is actually petty; and it is diminishing all the time." - Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche Vol II, p. 33

Yet all humanity needs contemplative efforts, reflection as well as action and thought as well as deed and doing. Fundamental and fixed values, that of self strong holding foundational walls for both self preservation and survival as a species, yet the recognition of deductive analysis to learn absolutes, must be known in its relativity. In Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge, it is the fragile knowledge, that of Mme de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cleves and the poems of Emily Dickinson, which reveal a fragile knowledge that is destroyed upon experience and absolute realization, living in imagination and reflection. But was Dickinson diminishing her life force by living in quietistic and empty fantasy apart from productive, flowing reality? Or was she courageously enhancing her true Self, the Universal Self, by living apart from the ego, manifold of the dry reduction of rationalism and sensuous extrinsic semblance, in an existential void of reverent dread, that of the idea of the holy, the numinous and divine Eros? Unlike the Faustian Man that Spengler so advocates, there is no dangerous and thoughtless action but restraint with the ability to maintain peripheral vision. This is the fragile knowledge that can only be conveyed through the indirect words and symbols, conveyed in imaginative and poetic means and that of reflection apart from action and empirical observation. The moment one moves closer to see, to externally grasp beyond what is to perceive in the internal intuition and tacit knowing, is the moment this fragile knowledge disappears.

"Marcel Proust understood and described this higher Epicureanism, which values imagination over satisfaction. Ultimately, he appealed to a doubling of experience in cumulative time, but his point of departure lies close to that of the Princesse de Cleves and of Emily Dickinson. 'Nothing is more alien to me than to seek happiness in any immediate sensation, and even less in any material realization. A sensation, however disinterested it may be, a perfume, a shaft of light, if they are physically present are too much in my power to make me happy.'" (Bibesco 119) Robert Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge, p. 135 ftn.

I am impressed by what Karl Jaspers, in Reason and Existenz, calls the "Encompassing," which is, all thinking is done so in a horizon, where there is always transcendence in thinking in which passes beyond everything of which one thinks, as horizons of thought are all enclosed in something absolutely comprehensive which is no longer visible as a horizon at all, as in the vastness of a horizon of all horizons. It is here that must be realized, as in the origin of such, the "Existenz" - or fundamental origin of the desert, the concealed knowledge of the inner self - that deductive foundations are false, as they proceed as though they had already cognitively mastered Being itself.

"These deductions from one principle, perhaps in the form of a deduction of all categories of the thinkable and of what ever we can encounter in the world, are always merely relative derivations of individual groups in their connections. An exhaustive deduction has never succeeded and never can succeed. The attempt, however, has the value of sharpening our awareness of our limits.

Deductions of actual occurrences from theories of some fundamental reality construct models, but they never succeed in grasping anything except limited realities, mere aspects of empirical existence. They prove themselves to be functions of an endlessly progressive knowing, but they are never what in intention they might well like to be: cognition of the real in itself." p. 70

In religion, monotheism, the objectification of a personal deity, founded on deductive cognition of thought based on assumed foundations from reason devoid of irrational base, is what most encounter in the Western world. Mystics, on the other hand, go further in acknowledging the intuitive irrational base beyond intellect found in revelatory experience and transcendence of limits, using the expression of symbolic, poetic and metaphorical terms. In such monotheism, the argument for a grand designer with intellectual design fails to recognize the universe cannot be reduced to parts, nor can it be an objective reality apart from oneself.

"Every object of thought, be it ever so comprehensive, every conceived whole, every objectively conceived Encompassing, remains as an object merely an individual, for it has other objects outside it and also stands over against us." p. 70

The Universe must be recognized in terms of its thriving chaotic, nonconceptual and naked meaning, Reason must be considered from its origin, the irrational, as the universe is not so neatly designed and arranged as the theists prescribe, but rather one finds intense erratic movement both in growth and outward expansion, only to deteriorate in age and decay, along with destructive natural disasters, all compounded with the ultimate unanswered question of evil and destructive impulses. Jaspers goes on to state,

"The deduction of the whole world including ourselves from Transcendence (by emanation, evolution, causality, etc.) is imaginary. The idea of creation is the expression of a primal secret, of an inconceivability, the subversion of the question through an uncaused cause." p.71

To learn reality from analytically deducting it, as though we can learn truth by its attributes, is nothing more than whimsical imaginary idealism. For the idea of creation cannot be confined within rational thinking, but only rationalized in false security. Monotheism of a creator and grand designer who himself is without creation, is hypothetical imagery of human origin which objectifies creation in factual character, reducing transcendence to mere empirical observation and absolutism apart from limitless dimension. Thus the authentic idea of all Being disappears with every attempt to establish, isolate, and absolutize it. Any objectification is no longer true in transcendence and ceases to cross boundaries. All demarcations are relative. Only within the grounded irrational center (the existenz), can reason find content, while only with reason can this chaotic center find clarification. The error lies in trying to secure as a content for knowledge what is true only as a limit for consciousness and demand of the self.

Antiquated, superstitious and false rationalizations of time frozen ideas can hide such truths in illusionary security. The simplistic and comforting idea of a "big daddy cop in the sky" as a Being, a person, an external deity, who for mortal man, incomprehensibly oversees all activity, somehow actively involved, defining the meanings of "sin" and "good," of "evil" and "righteousness," falls into the Freudian analysis of human self conscious behavior apart from animal, which in fear of the utter meaningless, pain and existential ambiguity that the burden of existence brings on, enforces trauma that leads to hysteria. Human beings cannot survive in such hysteria and in turn create illusions for security and comfort. So it has been since the beginning of human self conscious, a tool designed by such for survival as a species. Such human self consciousness also falls into Freud's recognition of instinctual destructive nature, in need of both governmental and religious authority to enable his ability to form and maintain the collective civilization.

Here is where animism, theism, both polytheism, monotheism of matriarchal and patriarchal models, formed and where subsequent literalization of mystical doctrines with rational explicative formulations, many of such doctrines originally written metaphorically, symbolically solely pointing to subjective experience, only to be objectified in futile attempts to capture the infinite in finite intellectualism, taking on literalization from antiquated, out-dated, erroneous beliefs. Or you will find the deist, who in rejection of such mystical doctrines, will trash all mystical experience. Here the baby goes out with the bath water. Then there are those who take their interpreted version of the route of Pascal, who in ceasing to employ rational arguments, surrendering to pure faith, turn around (apart from Pascal) in half-baked awareness, accepting all mystical doctrines in literal terms, misreading symbolic stories as historical accuracy.

The idea of truth exists in two senses and has many factors that employ various facets apart from one simplistic explanation, that of dogmatic fundamentalism.

Truth is enabled to be perceived though three main modes of Being.
1. Empirical existence (the survival, instinctual mode),
2. Consciousness (the analytical, the solid observance and objectification),
3. Spirit (the idea of a whole, or completeness that categorizes or moves what is observed to a collective or universal whole).

Being is either defined as all that is and we a part, or in the case of the above three main modes, defined as Being in which we are.

The idea of truth exists in two senses.

1. Communicable form from the existential center with reason to clarify and bond the means that enables it to be perceived. It is always a moving, changing and created non absolute from the moment, always subject to change due to the time era, or moment, or due to one of the means that enables it to be perceived. What is truth today is not necessarily truth tomorrow. Truth is timeless, eternal and never stagnant in conceptual absolutivity. What is truth perceived mainly through empirical existence is not truth mainly perceived through consciousness and spirit. What is truth perceived through the existential center is not the same as what is perceived through reason. Reason without existenz is empty intellectualism, while existenz without reason is blind feelings.

2. Dogmatic, Absolute form is truth apart from all modes of Being. Here truth is frozen in antiquated outdated time stamped eras, in moments of time that no longer exist as valid. In isolated modes of Being or unbalanced modes apart from others. Absolute form of truth is no longer a meaning created from the existential center, moved by all modes of Being, bonding with reason, but rather another definition, waiting to be discovered, never created.

Truth is also changed by the unconscious motives of the prophets, the writers, the scholars, the philosophers, the reader and interpreters.

Human consciousness is incapable of knowing naked truth:

"Some information is simply not safe for us - not because there is something wrong with its possession in the abstract, but because it is the sort of things we humans are not well suited to cope with. There are various things we simply ought not to know. If we did not have to live our lives amidst a fog of uncertainty about a whole range of matters that are actually of fundamental interest and importance to us, it would no longer be a human made of existence that we would live. Instead we would become a being of another sort perhaps angelic, perhaps machine-like, but certainly not human.

There is a more deeply problematic issue, however. Are there also moral limits to the possession of information per se - are there things we ought not to know on moral grounds? .. .. . Here, inappropriateness lies only in the mode of inquisition or in the respect of misuses. With information, possession in and of itself - independently of the matter of its acquisition and utilization - cannot involve moral impropriety. Nicholas Rescher, The limits of Science (1984)

This quote brought out by Roger Shattick in Forbidden Knowledge is compared to that of St. John of the Cross who wrote of "the dark cloud of unknowing," and Keats, "negative capability." Shattick relates,

"These words, which echo phrases like St. John of the Cross's 'Cloud of Unknowing" and Keats 'Negative Capability,' locate a certain ignorance at the very seat of human nature. That fog turns out to be our nimbus and our protective veil.

What strikes me here is the ambiguity that is needed as a natural human mode for survival, a fog of unknowing that veils us from "truth." Anotherwards, like a photo that contains the fog of contrast to see the photo clearly, remove the contrast (the gray fog) and the picture is destroyed. Anotherwards, naked truth exists apart from the protective fog of ambiguous mystery that shields man from reality, a reality that would destroy human survival as a consciousness in the physical plane we exist in. This is the theme of Shattick's book. Thus, the knowledge we are shielded from, the fog of mystery that we live in, obscures us from naked truth, in which it both protects us and yet deceives us into our own minds projection of self created values, both individually and collectively, according to our perceptions.

"Everything is as it is. It has no name other than the name we give it. It is we who call it something; we give it a value. We say this thing is good or it's bad, but in itself, the thing is only as it is. It's not absolute; it's just as it is. People are just as they are."- Ajahn Sumedho, "The Mind and the Way"

Collectivization and Individual Autonomy

This following subheading is what happens when you've just come home from a entire day of hiking up mountains and reading too much Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Oswald Spengler. Take my advise: not too much of this.

Technology is the illusion of human ability to utilize the environment and external elements for the sole benefit of human development toward utopian society based on the view of individualization and individual rights. It is an illusion in the sense that we have discovered such means for both privatization and comfort, for democratic, individualization and equalitarian formation. If it is not an illusion for such, then it is at least towards such in a paradoxical structure, all so, in the means to evolution and the direction of collectivization.

In cellular formation, each cell divides, mutates and in mitosis brings new forms of Being into action. However it is the collectivization and symbiosis of such cells that form new layers of Beings, new wholes of higher conscious development. Each collective unit is then in a higher station consisting of other additional individual units of the same nature, only to eventually evolve into collectivization through the evolution of form to even higher vibrational frequencies of existence.

Along with technology, this brings forth the question of socialization, individualization and psychology of the human being. It raises forth the question of the self verses the collective whole, the so-called rights of each individual and the purpose of each distinction.

What ultimately is raised, is the question of political formation. That being of either individual democratic existence, having the mature self partake of the whole in the most mature: educated in rational intellect, in oratory powers, and mathematical analytic deductive clarity, and scientific logic, paradoxically and harmoniously coinciding with the inner directed authenticity of creative force, using only the inexpressive, non-communicable forces of the experiential and non-discursive elements in irrational dimension, expressed in artistic and metaphorical elements, all self directed submission to responsible action. Or is the means to evolutionary formation that of a totalitarian authority, forced into leadership (either that of a semi-collective leadership or an oligarchy of the few), that in turn uses the most advanced technology of "Big Brother" to remove all individual rights in collectivization of human society, contributing in a pseudo-unity, in partisan distribution to the raising of higher being? Individuality must be maintained from the authentic creative center, but non-conforming to all social and normative patterns of acceptance. True culture is that of growing in societal and collective movement, yet inspired from individual creativity. Does ultimate collectivity, apart from political science, rather in the paleontological point of view, erase all distinctions? All individuality? Into a higher frequency and spirit?

If such technology can invade the mind, and by the few, access and control all thoughts, eliminate all rights, all privacy, all individualism becomes the property of the "State" and a one-sided partisan control directs such movement will result in either growth or deterioration from bias decisions from the leadership that consists of higher ranking individuals. However, if such technology can invade the mind and eliminate all rights, all privacy and all individual holds of separate existence, and in turn, eliminate all higher ranking decision making of individual leaderships, thus in equalitarian thought pattern, all open to all others thoughts to such ideas of the "Star Trek Borg," does such collective control cease as control if each individual contributes to the simultaneously oppressive/non-oppressive control and yet dictatorial/non-dictatorial ability to act as One object in Being?

"For the artist "beauty" is something outside all hierarchical order, since in it opposites are joined - the supreme sign of power, power over things in opposition, furthermore, without tension - that there is no further need of force, that everything so easily follows, obeys, and brings to its obedience the most amiable demeanor - that fascinates the will to power of the artist." Nietzsche (WM, 803)

Or is maintaining individual rights, privacy and the comfort and security of self decision, preferences, artistic creative expressions through painting, poetry, mythology and music part of the paradox of collective growth in higher Oneness? It is ultimately found in biological function of cellular symbiosis, in that of a relationship of mutual benefit or dependence, or in interdependence. Interdependence contains both individuality yet collectivity at the same time.

Certainly the later, the (true)* democratic ability to create, to visualize apart from the other, to use the imagination in such a way as to be an individual and yet at the same time, to collectivize with civilization in creating a Whole, a One, is what to most in Western civilization has resistantly taken, only to slowly deteriorate, or gravitate, to authoritarian control. This is the individualistic symbiotic side of the yin-yang nature of the collective whole, independence and interdependence, parts comprising of the whole that take on the nature of the whole, yet maintaining degrees of differentiations, are however continually moving forward into self annihilation of becoming a higher Being, that of conscious formation. As each droplet becomes the ocean, one questions whether all droplets are the ocean or if the ocean is nothing more than accumulations of droplets and waves.

* The last known democracy that comes even close to the meaning of the word is Socratic Greece in the city of Athens. It was here the polis (government of the people) was truly practiced. Criticism of the government was constantly directed from open philosophers, such as Socrates, who in subsequent plays-comedies, (The Clouds) was openly, sarcastically and comically mocked, but all so in an accepting, true democratic openness and vulnerability, that of a non-threatening, non-controlling society.

"It was everyone's duty to help the polis. We cannot say the 'help the state', for that arouses no enthusiasm; it is 'the state' that takes half our incomes from us. Nor 'the community' for with us 'the community' is too big and to various to be grasped except theoretically. . . . How much do bankers, miners and farm workers understand each other; But the 'polis' every Greek knew; there it was, complete, before his eyes. He could see the fields which gave it its sustenance - or did not, if the crops failed; he could see how agriculture, trade and industry dovetailed into one another; he knew the frontiers, where they were strong and where weak; if any malcontents were planning a coup , it was difficult for them to conceal the fact. The entire life of the polis, and the relation between its parts, were much easier to grasp, because of the small scale of things. Therefore to say 'It is everyone's duty to help the polis' was not to express a fine sentiment but to speak the plainest and most urgent common sense. Public affairs had an immediacy and a concreteness which they cannot possibly have for us." - H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks, p. 71

"The polis was so much more than a form of political organization. It was a living community, based on kinship, real or assumed - a kind of extended family, turning as much as possible of life into family life, and of course having its family quarrels." - H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks, p. 78

Yet in cellular formation, individualization is forfeited into the whole, while maintaining individualization only in the group differentiations (again a collective) in cellular duties of particular functions in bodily/organic operations. Yet human existential despair, the mysterious and movement of reality does not equate to biological formulations of fixed structures. Or does it? We have seen throughout history the battle between the rational and the irrational, science verses art, magic verses science and fixed meanings of formulated scientific, philosophical and theological construction verses existential insecurity. And yet only in such existential despair and insecurity, outside of all comfort zones, theological, scientific, mathematical and logistic schematicizations, comes faith, and only in such faith does forward evolutionary movement progress. Faith of this nature exists in the individual, apart from the collective means, as faith itself is solely an individual act of courage and bravery apart from all others and certainly in opposition to collective persuasion, authoritarian control and pressured conformity of public opinion found in democratic society.

Faith, that of the individual, being the key factor of the individual, is the means to the dance of interdependent tension that illuminates the patterns, or parallel frequencies, or multiple universes, of life. Mystery and uncertainty that is faced, lived in continual flowing acceptance and action, brings the ability to walk directly into fear with the courage to be, the "Faust," being the primary individual factor of each Being that progresses forward. This "Faust" is not exempt from contemplative thinking, nor lives in over indulgence, and self-gratification in disregard for others, but rather in the non-Faustian compassion, yet in the Faustian courage of momentary experiential Being apart from arid, ratio-cursive form and rational analysis, which marches in relative discernment into that of a moving insecurity and ambiguous uncertainty, yet paradoxically an inner knowing, that of a higher self, or a collective self, of joyous and gratuitous existence and subsequent karmic synchronization of events (future non-accidental, but karmic driven) are ever flowing and dance of the beatific vision.

"It seems to me to be the road toward freedom—external revolt is a way to bring about internal freedom. Rather than starting inside, I start outside—reach the mental through the physical." - Jim Morrison (The Doors)

Every collective consists of smaller parts. Each fabric has its woof and warp. All matter, both organic and inorganic consists of atoms (monads), each atom standing in its relative position part of the whole, the whole being a part of a greater whole, until all is encompassed in the Absolute. It is there, as the Absolute, where no definitions or all definitive meanings are absorbed into something far beyond such relative distinctions. The question lies as to what degrees each relative part should produce as a distinctive position in relation to the whole. Each fabric plays its part in relation to the whole, producing details in arrangement and function. Such biological meaning has its relation to both human existence and subsequent relation in societal structure.

Authoritarian control acts to homogenize the individual aspects that make up the detailed beauty and strength of each unique part in contribution to the whole, where as each warp and woof contributes its own unique attribute in towards the collective whole. The diamond is worthless without its unique individual facets, each distinctive in expression. This is why true (relatively speaking) democracy brings forth the blend of free will with limited degrees of conformity without arid homogenization and destructive conformity to collective pressure ruled by public opinion. Only in pseudo-democracy, wields forth dictatorial laws such as the "Patriot Act," or the "War on Drugs," to name only two. Past figures, such as Martin Die and Joseph McCarthy and current politicians that are continually adding laws that remove personal autonomy of individual responsibility are historic and current manifolds of such a quasi system of justice. Such authoritarian rule deteriorates individuality and subsequent creativity that is needed for the continuity in evolutionary growth to rhythmical and symmetrical melody that flows in congruency where both the warp and the woof tune an awe inspiring symphony. The harmonious blend of such acts as the Yin and the Yang in perfect balance are the pulses in the dance of Being, and the rhythm of the music of life that progresses into higher levels of conscious existence.

Democratic Equalitarianism and
The Affect: Nihilism

"The West has been demythologized and has lost its power to inspire and its view of the future. Therefore, it is evident that its myths are what animates a culture, and the makers of myths are the makers of cultures and of man. They are superior to philosophers, who only study and analyze what the poets make." Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 204

In Western civilization, Europe, from its birth from the collective, the Medieval era, into the individualism of the Renaissance, the masses lost much security both religiously and financially. Separated from the working man's occupational guilds that enabled both job security and religious certainty, the masses were left in existential despair, one they were not ready to accept. With the aid of Martin Luther and John Calvin, they gained a new version of Christianity. Here the West went from the Medieval mentality, the occupational, religious and general life of security as a co-creator with God as an active part in society, as self employed artisans protected in guilds, to the new era of the Renaissance, now an employee in a capitalistic machine, a small number in the masses controlled by the minority of aristocratic entrepreneurs, lost in a vast and large world as a cog in a machine, and now with psychological aid of Luther and Calvin, a new version of theology to transmute the collective to cope with such a new capitalistic and existential despairing society. Now as Protestant Christians, they became lost sinners of no personal value, unless completely, unequivocally, dependent on God. Now apart from co-creating in certain purpose and having the safety in the fold of the church, they now became existing as weak parts, as small insignificant links in a great machine. For this new concept of Christianity, a new psychological view of dependency, allowed their vulnerability, exploitation and acceptance to a new capitalistic society, leaving the self-employed, occupational safety of guild contained Medieval society to that of being an employee of a wealthy aristocrat. It was the aristocrats, the wealthy, that truly benefited from the Renaissance with the freedom to individualize, thus producing advances in intellectual thought, philosophy, science, art and autonomous creativity.

Despite such a capitalistic system of unequality, as the aristocrats were a minority, great leaps were achieved in their upper class circles. Intellectualism, philosophy, literary, scientific and artistic circles grew among them. A new class of autonomous creativity was born. It was here that the greats came about, where cultures grew about. This is where national cultural pride, the intellectual and literary giants were born and dignity of ancestry and roots came from. This is where German's Goethe, Hegel, Kant and Nietzsche came from, where France's Pascal, Decartes, Proust, Sartre, Camus and Rosseau came from, where England's Shakespeare, Hobbes and Locke, came from and Italy's Dante, Machiavelli, DeAngelo and Divinci. Such awe inspiring and commanding presence of greatness found in cultures came from aristocratic societies. Yet is was the poorer masses, who were living in existential despair, as employees and cogs in a great machine, while the minority of creative aristocrats developed great human achievements that literally altered European and Western civilization's thinking, which in turn affected all aspects of human development from political, social, literary, scientific, religious and artistic achievements.

Now we turn to the later birth of (not the Greek) of democracy, as in American democracy. Not the democracy of Jefferson and later Lincoln, but what exists today in the 21st century in this pseudo-democratic world. We turn to a period called by many as post-modern. The modern period was that existing of science and industrial achievements replacing antiquated religious theology that incorporated nonrational fundamentalism and superstitious teachings but in doing so trashed the mysticism, the idea of the supersensuous, the mysterum tremendum and tacit knowing of transcendent reality. It was near the end of this era of modernism where Nietzsche spoke of that to come, a post-modern world of nihilism. The post modern period, the result of the modern era, is that of nihilism, an equalitarianism that homogenizes values into a bottomless pit of valueless foundations in sand. Just as Nietzsche had already saw and envisioned, in this post-modern era, equalitarianism has dominated society to balance out all distinctions of value into a nihilistic society. While this is most beneficial and far advanced regarding different races, sexual orientations and cultural prejudices, such equalizing of values themselves, that is, the homogenizing of all cultural ambitions that consist of unique individual positing, in turn, destroys the very content of their being. This is where nihilism, relativism, the melting down of individual inner directed value creation into a blended blob of media controlled publicly opinionated values that lack the true individual autonomy, the one and only autonomy that produces the greats in the realm of humanity comes forth. The great leaders, the awe inspiring statesmen, the poets, scientists, artists and ultimately the revolutionary minds that both reject conformity and enforced established ideals, shaping the destination of humanity into increasing thrusts of positive evolutionary growth of advancement become lost in a melting pot of values that loose all tenuous strength, washing away into an empty existential void. What results in such a void is nihilism, the loss of the true being, forfeited to the collective in empty non-passionate bland existence of both stagnation and vulnerability towards authoritarian control.

One can see this in the idea of culturalism in what is known as "old money." When a person is rendered as coming from "old money," they come from the idea of the aristocrats that had both money and intellectual, artistic, scientific and cultural achievement, that is, they were persons of insight and wisdom, the had the ability to see the world with both strong values, but always under multi-directional perspectives and yet apart from relativism in the strength that produced great leader and thinkers such as Goethe and Shakespeare. In contrast, those from the "new money" represent the new rich "poor" man, the man without the riches of inwardness. Here in equalitarianism, it is the poor man who gains wealth and power, one who exists from the masses which endorse not such autonomous character, but rather the enticing of the sensations as the (new) true values of life; the teaching of materialism and pleasures deemed desirable by the media determined rules of public opinion. What is being said here is that there is a grand schism, a sharp differentiation from the individual inner-directed autonomy of the "old money," and that of the outer-directed values formed by the pressured laws of public opinion domination that is produced by the powerful and large corporate controlled (& monopolistic) media.

"To be witty without possessing the riches of inwardness is like squandering money upon luxuries and dispensing with necessities, or, as the proverb says, like selling one's breeches to buy a wig." Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age, p. 39

The majority of such results reside in two main paths. One of relativism and nihilism in a existential void of empty values. The domineering media and laws of public opinion which ultimately form the lack of inner directed values of high intellectual understanding, spiritual insight apart from rational analysis into a melting pot of void. This leads to lack of awareness. And history has shown time and time again, that the lack of intellectual awareness coupled with the inability to perceive the irrational and intuitive insight of self positing, always leads to loss of individual autonomy, first in self inner directed value creating and secondly in the abuse and control of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the loss of true democracy and polis, the eventual oligarchy and aristocratic control. When this happens, either one of two follow. In such an unequal society, this produces either new great and awe inspiring thinkers and growth in human evolutionary achievement or it produces the abuse of power in horrendous detrimental degrees in totalitarianism, dictatorial control or shear abuse of the powerful. One just shudders at the writings of Marquees DeSade, under the domineering French aristocratic abuse of the time, at least I know I do and rightly so for my inner directed values I hold on to and direct in such movement.

One other and most important development occurs from a nihilistic society; the revival of fundamentalism, a psychological perspective that filters and limits perception in all areas of thought to reduction of major proportions; in religious, in scientific, in philosophical, in cultural, in political and societal thinking, which in turn, permeates the entire collective. In intellectual circles, fundamental thinking destroys the mystical irrational state of Being, a state found in children and those of such "unlearned" wisdom. The result of nihilism and lack of inner directed value positing, produces fundamental thinking that leads to ignorance in environmental concerns, to haphazardness in capitalistic enterprising, to cultural clashes of enormous magnitude, resulting in political foreign policy that leads to war and loss of lives, which in today's small world, is even of most concern since this can lead to great casualties. It is here the production and outbreak of harsh and debilitating constraints to order are enforced, the destruction of self autonomy, in that of religious teachings. In such religious teachings, the affect is that on an individual basis, that is, intrinsically the relativism transforms into fundamental intolerance of a personal nature, a prejudice and exclusiveness that leads to wars, genocide and possibly the decided future of mankind.

Heidegger on Nietzsche and
The Release from Nihilism:
Inverted Platonism

Here is where I would like to speak of the thinking that possibly leads to a cure to nihilism, that of Nietzsche, actually more than that, Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche, Volume 1, The Will to Power as Art. In this analysis, Heidegger brings forth his observation as to the cure or way out of nihilism and the relativizing of self value positing creation.

The Two Book Ends of Western Civilization
and Postmodern Nihilism

According to Plato, art is far removed from truth, thus it is inferior to truth. Yet it is Nietzsche that says, “art is greater than truth.” I have read by others, such as Huston Smith, that the following two books act as the book ends of Western civilization and can be likened to the one end, Plato’s Allegory of The Cave and on the other far end, Nietzsche’s, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And so it is, on one end the meaning of a world of the sensuous, that of appearances and a true world of the super sensuous above, to that of both being abolished into solely the sensuous. While positivism represented a reversal, Nietzsche did not apply this, but rather an inverted form of Platonism.

It was Plato that taught the world we know as a world of appearances, the sensuous, is not the real world, but merely our perception of appearances, while a true world, the super sensuous existed apart from human phenomenal perception and filtered interpretation existing in form completely different than we can possibly imagine. Yet in an amazing similar vein to forms of Eastern thought in Hinduism and Buddhism, access to the true Being, which is capable of fleeting appearances of such a true world, could be experienced through the aesthetic value of beauty and the life of virtue. Unlike meditation that is usually the course pursued in Eastern thought, Plato’s glimpses were achieved through theoria – contemplation of virtue and the ability to see the beautiful. It was here that the false self, or the world of the sensuous could be transcended into a higher self, or Being that observes fleeting moments of the supersensuous, the world beyond the shadow world of the sensuous in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

This particular teaching mutated many times over into one of no longer having an ability to transcend the false self or the sensuous world into the super sensuous in this lifetime through beauty and virtue, to one of only such an event occurring from death, the leaving of this world to the next. It was here that the three major monotheistic religions that molded western civilization, Judaism, Christianity and Islam became greatly influenced under this Greek teaching of Platonism, from Maimonides, Rumi to St. Augustine. When one sees this amazing and stark similarity of a concealed true Being that exists apart from the lower or apparent self, the ego, to that of a true world that originally could be glimpsed in this life through the ideas of beauty and virtue, which in turn brought forth Eros, or love, there can be seen a direct connection to the Greek influenced Judaism that both Rabbi Hillel and Christ had access to and very possibly attempted to achieve, crossing all tribal, cultural and religious prejudices of their Jewish upbringing into one of virtue and Eros, a life that impressed others such, that subsequent Jewish midrashic writing, the gospels, followed.

What follows is now the opposite of Platonism, that of positivism, which teaches that this world of the sensuous and appearances is the real and only world of both what we perceive and what is, while Nietzsche did not teach this, but rather inverted Platonism. It was here that Nietzsche abolished both worlds into one world of the sensuous that in turn was both the true world and a lie. The sensuous is the real world, while truth is the “become,’ truth only exists as an error in permanence in the apparition of what is “becoming,” the apparition lives in the fixation of moving art, in the creativity of becoming. Yet this error of truth is ultimately crucial and necessary for living, as living could not exist without such.

"Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately derides." (WKM, 493) "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies." (XII, 293) FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

It is here that Nietzsche sees the truth as art, as the fixation on an apparition, an apparition is what is not true in permanence but truth in the temporal moving, changing and becoming in the temporal being to continual becoming. It is here that one leaves Plato’s understanding of art as removed from truth to that of art as having more value than truth. For Plato, the idea was the truth, the material construction of the object was a representation and the subsequent artist's rendering, a singular perspective angle, was even further from the real truth, the idea. Yet for Nietzsche, truth is the apparition, it is the error of the constant; it exists in temporal flow of art, in the continual act of creating. The still sensuous world must always change according to our moving perceptions, our artistic creative movement that flows in every act of becoming, every thought, every change, change that must occur to be of the living, and all existence is living and the will to power. The idea of Nietzsche’s Overman or Superman was one of knowing art of over truth, of inner directed value positing, of speaking truth knowing it is in error, while knowing the sensuous world is the only truth. Here exists the act of creation, of passion, of art as the self-positing ability to have inner directed authenticity and self-affirmation. This was not about a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that posited fundamentalism and intolerance with outer directed inauthentic control as the sensuous.

Why art, in the question of truth? Asks David Farrell in his analysis of Heidegger’s Nietzsche, in Volume One. He answers, “Truth happens in the world of art. Both truth and art are historical, they stand in time. The work of art brings forth a being ‘that never was before and never will come to be afterwards.’ Its ‘stand’ is not only no guarantee against a fall, it marks the inception of the fall. Hence the need for preservation – which itself lapses into art appreciation and the art trade. If there is something that ‘stands’ in more permanent sense it is the Heraclitean (that which maintains strife and change are the natural conditions of the universe) and Empedoclean (that which maintains that all matter is composed of earth, air, fire and water, and that all change is caused by attraction and repulsion strife), the Anaximandrian usage (the geometrical model of the universe and speculated out of the separation of opposite qualities from one primordial substance), which itself becomes present only through the being that rises and falls, emerges lingers awhile, and disappears, in that way alone announcing what is. Thus the (stillness) ‘worldliness’ of the work of art is not supra temporal but the ‘becoming and happening of truth.” Never renounced, always affirmed is the relation of worldliness to the nothing, that is, to a source beyond all beings but achieved only in a being. To dwell in nearness to the source is to be mindful of the double shadow that each thing, in becoming, casts before and behind itself.

“Art is the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity.” Nietzsche
“The fixation of truth is an immobilizing of life, and hence its inhibition and dissolution.” Martin Heidegger. “We have art so that we do not perish from the truth” (WM, 822).“It is not possible to live with the truth,” if life is always enhancement of life, the ‘will to truth,’ i.e. to fixed apparition, is ‘already a symptom of degeneration.” (XIV, 368).“Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as fixation of an apparition.”

Such was the way to see beyond nihilism, to move beyond a society of homogenized values, washed values blended in a melting pot of inauthentic, outer-directed collective, dominated by public opinion, media and authoritarian control. For the rational thinking found in modernism, that of an enlightened civilization of political scientific “truths,” that of Hobbes, Locke, Rosseau, Montaigne and Marx, saw truth as the “become,” as permanence and solidarity in fixed meaning, in political scientific formations that were formulated according to the prior formulations of the ontology of man's nature, rational structure upon rational system, thus bringing forth our post modern era of relativism. Such nihilism then becomes the dominating force of our postmodern structure.

Equality and Eqalitarianism

I applaud Martin Luther King, Jr. who not only peacefully fought for the rights of African Americans, but for the rights of all men, from the Vietnamese worker in the field to the laborer and official the like. Humanity can be entirely grateful he protested the government and did not literalize the words of St. Paul in Romans 13:1-5, as the shallow thinking one-sided fundamentalists so do. It was most moving and of a higher level in understanding in King's association and admiration of the Vietnamese monk, Thick Nhat Hahn at the time the United States was currently fighting the Vietnam war. It was truly inspiration watching King use the bible to free men from oppression, for it was the same book, the bible, that was being scripturally used to support segregation and the mistreatment of African Americans. Here King saw a spirit over the letter, mercy over sacrifice and the knowledge of the non-verbal essence of Being over the laws that organize reason as infallible laws of literalization and dry rationalism. King was very well educated in both theological perspectives and mystical awareness, from Paul Tillich, Ghandi, to Nietzsche. I find King truly a remarkable man, one I highly admire and respect.

Now the thought that all men are created equal. To this is must be confirmed yes. Yet how so? All men and women are most certainly created equal in racial being, in non-fundamental/tolerant/inclusive religious adherence, in humanity, in one that deems equal respect and honor, that is acknowledged dignity and significance, that is bestowed the same privileges as one another from the moment of birth.

Yet are all men equal? This I will say, no. Not all persons are Martin Luther King Jr., Mozarts, Goethes, Shakespeares, Einsteins, Ghandis and Jungs. Not all men move nations, embrace forgiveness, prevent tragic causalities of great proportion, diffuse what could be deadly blood baths and not all men can lead others in such a way that internally change them, that direct them in such a way that they themselves produce a self positing center towards the benefit of humanity on a planetary realm, in the direction of peaceful co-existence and yet maintained different and distinctive character traits with other cultures, an environment that produces great thinkers who inspire humanity towards growth that further develops collectivization on a individual basis, that is, collectivization from the self-reliant and yet paradoxically flexible intertwining of social structure that mends all humanity together into one unifying layer of fabric maintaining intricacies in manifold multiplicities which enrich, enhance and beautify the whole.

The human who attains himself and increases (Western Monotheism), or the one who looses himself into a higher and larger whole (Platonism) or the one who sees only the whole (Mysticism) or she that accepts no answer in existential despair and courage, or the one who accepts such existential despair, while self-creating himself, re-valuing himself (Nietzsche). This man is the overman, that man that has risen over the "last man," the man of petty, self-pursuit, trivial existence.

The problem of the equalitarian system is the benefit of freedom and equal dignity of all men transmute into the clouded idealism that takes men that fail to achieve the self-positing and self-affirmation of productive unity into equal stature and value as those that do. Anotherwards, those that achieve in nonconformity and walk beyond societal paradigm incorporating that which increases levels of Being and thought into higher awareness of contemplation and action are blending in equal value with those who are incapable. Such higher levels in those thinkers who self-affirm themselves in the values that raise the artistic and creative passions of inner dimensions, both of logic, science and rationalism, coupled with the irrational variations of Being and non-communicable knowing of the centering Self and autonomous self-positing of Being are of no greater value than the values parroted from outer directed teachers and groups the conform to pre-existing ideas that historically and systematically have proven inferior and even fatal- in this day and age, that of dry rationalism and empirical observance. Instead of the equalization of the higher abilitative conscious aided in producing the individual being that is utilized to increase the social collective and societal framework, they are reduced from such superior ability into a blending mixture of stature, the realm of equality. Any of those "Mozarts" who coexist among the masses, are mingled in such a way of equality that they are lowered and lost within the sea of the masses into a melting pot of values that together with the whole, homogenize into a mish mash of devalued outer directed judgments, nihilism, that of weak, outer directed fabric that cannot withstand more than a few washings, for it will fade in color and produce holes and rips where both the beauty and function of the garment is deemed null and void.

For this it can be repeated, that the so called "great thinkers" the minds that literally changed the entire realm of Western civilization came from aristocratic societies, systems that did not equalize the "greats" into a nihilistic melting pot of relativism. This is not said to endorse oligarchies and aristocratic societies of unequal class levels with unfair opportunities, unavailable financial juncture and authoritarian control, but rather it is stated to perceive a democratic society that endorses both such systems of structure; one, a society that produces the poor man with the opportunities to become materially rich, devoid of the shallow lack of thinking found in the "new money" of non-valued, surface materialistic nihilism and subsequent judgmental fundamentalism consisting of intolerant exclusivity and second, the production and enabling of such inspirational, artistic, intellectual, scientific and creative thinkers of higher ability to excel in such a way to influence the rest of humanity.

In contrast to the free thinker of the aristocratic society, history has shown that it has always been through the suffering, usually those in the masses, those under political, social and financial pressures, that have produced the greatest creativity. The African American slaves, those formerly suppressed under the Eastern Communist block, political prisoners, citizens in lieu of revolution and revolt against the current societal structure.

"I have often asked myself whether I am not more heavily obligated to the hardest years of my life than to my others. . . And so for my long sickness, do I not owe it indescribably more than I owe to my health? I owe it a higher health - one which is made stronger by whatever does not kill it. I also owe my philosophy to it. Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit. . . Only great pain, that long, slow pain which takes its time - only this forces us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put away all trust. . . I doubt that such pain makes us "better," but I know that it makes us more profound." Nietzsche contra Wagner, Epilogue I which is a revised version of section 3 of the preface to the 2nd ed. of The Gay Science.

It appears that when such pressure, hardship and suffering ceases, the creativity decreases with it. There is less passion and artistic extremity; lucidity lessens into mediocre middling of average caliber. Must man suffer to create? Must he walk outside of his comfort zone into the fearful uncertainty of the unknown to posit values that raise awareness beyond the conforming surface? I don't think authoritarianism or suffering is the answer, for this is the loss of freedom, the most significant and crucial meaning of human existence. The answer must lie in individual meditative thinking that allows simplicity and appreciation of the ordinary, the paradise that can only be seen apart from taught concepts and unconscious perceptions.

It was Descartes that had to leave his life of security for experiential knowledge, yet only to return to his fixed life. It was ultimately Faust who left the safety zone of certainty and predictability to sporadic and spontaneous living, living life apart from mere existing, that brought forth the creative man, the self-positing authenticity, the centering of the self. It was Faust who enabled his Will to Power.

In Walter Kaufmann's, Discovering The Mind, Vol II, his interpretation of Nietzsche (a much more honest assessment of Nietzsche, as opposed to Heidegger’s) shows that the Will to Power was not one of brute force, nor was it the idea of Spinoza's version of man's instinctual drive toward preservation, nor was it entirely pleasure, as in Freud's, The Pleasure Principle, but rather the idea put forth by Adler, that of the desire and need for power. Unlike those that have grossly misinterpreted The Will to Power, this power is not the power that must dominate over other persons, nor control or dictate over others, for such power does not even need an “other.” Nietzsche relates this to be in interior power of the self, a power over one's Being, a self control of inner sanctitude, that of the peaceful, calm and inner strength as found in the works of Goethe.

"The Germans think that strength must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty; then they submit with fervor and admiration; they are suddenly rid of their pitiful weakness . . . and they devoutly enjoy fervor. That there is strength in mildness and stillness, they do not believe easily. They miss strength in Goethe. . ." Nietzsche, Werek, XI, p. 112

"Nature, not the caste system instituted by Manu, distinguishes the preeminently spiritual ones, those who are preeminently strong in muscle and temperament, and those, the third type, who excel neither in one respect nor in the other, the mediocre ones - the last as the great majority, the first as the elite . . . The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction . . . their job is self-conquest, asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct . . . Knowledge - a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man; that does to preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest. They rule not because they want to but because the are . . .When the exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and his peers, this is not mere courtesy of the heart - it is simply his duty." Nietzsche, The Antichrist, p.57

Appreciating the Everyday life
and The Understanding of "Greatness"

Standing at the side of a lake a few blocks from my residence, watching the blue-gray water, that produced waves of dark shades as each breeze hovered over the water, gently pushing the water in ripples of color shade variations. The ducks sitting in stillness upon the lake slowly flowed with each ripple, gently moving back and forth in groups. As I stood there gusts of wind would blow across my ears, creating a hollowing sound of "wush-ing" that coincided with the semi-cold late November day as a tree that refused to drop its remainder of brown, dead leaves simultaneously produced loud and soothing white-noise, from the gusts of wind blowing across such. The sun rose from my rear and the morning brightness enhanced the few and small clusters of white and gray cloud formations. The dark green along the lake of the evergreens sparkled as I noticed a seagull perched on the top of one, just gently sitting there watching the wind blow by.

How is important is all of this? The above paragraph of a morning walk reminds me of the journals of Krishnamurti, who daily would experience the beauty, the magic, in ordinary, everyday, and what is considered in this enlightened world, as insignificant observances. A re-discovery that lives only in the present moment, neither forward nor backward, incapable of storage in the intellect, yet the sublime can be written in words that express superficially the experience. Chogyam Trungpa's, chapter entitled "Discovering Magic" from Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior, again witnesses the beauty, the numinous, as in Rudolph Otto's Idea of the Holy, in that of a raindrop sliding down a window pane. The subtle and silent awareness, the appreciation such as this can be found in the unlearned wisdom found in a child.

Who is the person that notices such things? Who even has the time to notice this, to appreciate this, the present "moment," to actually be moved internally by such everyday, insignificant and ordinary things? This reminds me of Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, where one can find such statements as "be happy were you are," and "live in the present moment."

From Heidegger's Nietzsche, p. 206 ftn.

"My formula for greatness in a human being is armor fati - love of necessity: that one does not will to have anything different, neither forward nor backward nor into all eternity. Not merely to bear necessity, though must less to cloak it - all Idealism is mendacity in the face of necessity - but to love." Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (II, 10 and III, "Der Fall Wagner," 4)

Nietzsche had first cited the formula six years earlier, at the outset of Book IV of The Gay Science, as the very essence of affirmation:

"I want to learn better how to see the necessity in things as what is beautiful - in that way I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Armor fati: let this be my love from now on!"

And he had written to Franz Overbeck, also in 1882, that he was possessed of "a fatalistic trust in God" which he preferred to call armor fati; and he boasted, "I would stick my head down a lion's throat, not to mention . . . "

The fullest statement concerning amor fati, however appears as WM, 104) (CM, W II 7a (32), from spring-summer, 1888) Although the note as a whole merits reprinting, and rereading, the following extract contains the essential lines. Nietzsche explains that his "experimental philosophy" aims to advance beyond nihilism to the very opposite of nihilism.

"to a Dionysian yes-saying to the world as it is, without reduction, exception, or selection; it wants eternal circulation - the same things, the same logic and dialogic of implication. Supreme state to which a philosopher may attain; taking a stand in Dionysian fashion on behalf of existence. My formula for this is armor fati.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

. . . . . . . .

Once I had a little game. I liked to crawl back in my brain. I think you know the game I mean. I mean the game called 'go insane.' Now you should try this little game. Just close your eyes forget your name. Forget the world, forget the people. And we'll erect a different steeple. This little game is fun to do. Just close your eyes, I'm going too. And I'm right here, no way to lose. Release control, we're breaking through. - Jim Morrison

The culture grows; form autonomous creation as opposed to fundamental beginning points or universal atoms, born from art, created from ideas, values become and flexible valuations. Nietzsche’s “Gay Science” of continual experimental meaning of All values, eradication of all logistical structures in substantiated meaning of virtue and good, eternal re-valuation and flux of all values, the re-value positing of the de-value positing, the forming and shaping of the chaos, the Apollonian of the Dionysian. Yet what really is a maxim to such basics? There are no such animals. One must live in the basics, defends such basics, but does so in the always continual flow of change, or re-value, with the destruction of the most cherished and honored meanings.

Like a child, one matures, one learns, one grows, circumstantial, manifold facets all unify into a whole that stands in multiple relativistic parts. Doing such, unfortunately are those that freeze such agnamic inspirations, such magnitude of support beams of awe strength which holds and thus renders the giants as unhonorable mice trapped in glue, as caged birds; beautiful in appearance, devoid of liberty and freedom, yet in this case, the freedom can only live from within.