Nietzsche: Question #3

The only advice I would give an individual human being would be to not accept advice at all. You must break from the bonds others have placed upon you. All we know of our existence is that it is finite; one day we all will die. how you deal with this inevitability is your choice. You can live in despair, or you can celebrate the fact that in this present moment, you are not yet dead. the only thing that should matter to you is your own existence and your own celebration of this existence. That is why you must break free of society's many entrapping arbitrarily emplaced values. if you are to live in celebration instead of, or perhaps in spite of, despair, then you must recognize that other people's values do not necessarily apply to yourself. if you are to enjoy your time here, you need to develop your own value system, based upon yourself and yourself alone, and apply it to your everyday life. For it is only through this self-reliance that we can realize our true potential; it is the only way to achieve our will to power, our drive to gain control of our own lives; it is the only way to become the Übermensch.

A Clutterless World

People seem cluttered today. They seem distracted, confused and devoid of direction. They look adrift in a current that is too strong for them to fight against, so strong that they have neither the will nor care to even try to struggle against the directionlessness. Do most people still devote all of their focus and energy into individual tasks, or are they too engrossed in multitudes of meaningless distractions? Do people still sit down face to face and have long, meaningful, serious discussions? There must have been a time when this was so, when people had the will power to achieve great things, and achieve things greatly, or else incredible works of literature would not have been written and revolutions would never have occurred, and all of the great philosophies we have been studying would never have been thought up.

I have a vision of a utopia. In it, all clutter has been removed from the individual consciousness and humanity’s collective unconscious. People are, not merely satisfied, but happy with the necessities of life: food, clothes, water. Gone are the days of ipods, cell phones, Facebook, mass media, mass production and all material distractions. Capitalism comes crashing to its knees because companies can no longer force the false sense of need into our heads. Money is no longer a concept, as people have realized that the necessities are easily and sustainably produced from the earth. Oil ceases to be considered a resource because simple agriculture and water filtration do not require thousands of acres of land to be tilled with tractors, nor underground aquifers to be pumped dry. Violence no longer exists, as there are no inequities in need of balance; everybody lives simply and has their needs met equally through sustainable means. People have a mutual respect and love for one another, and an even greater love and respect for Earth, upon whose body they live and find sustenance.

My utopia is not attainable through policy change, changing economic systems, or any alterations on a grand societal scale. It is an evolution of consciousness. It is an individual’s realization that these things are all arbitrarily placed upon us and that they are not necessary to one’s happiness or existence. I have termed the process of coming to this realization “decluttering”, because it involves simplifying every aspect of one’s life, and removing unnecessary distractions, or clutter. Over the past few months, I have been undergoing this process of decluttering.

I started with my dietary habits. There are so many things citizens of industrialized nations like the United States consume that are unnecessary and downright unhealthy. I no longer drink sodas or most juices, as they have no nutritional substance and are filled with unnatural flavorings, colorings and chemicals. Fast food is gone from my menu, along with most saturated fat and all assortments of grease-laden food (except for an occasional desert). I feel much more energetic and aware than I did a few months ago.

Next was my bedroom. I have removed most physical clutter, and now the only things in my room are a small desk, two guitars, a mandolin, a keyboard, and a small selection of important books. I have also painted the walls a very mellow, calm, khaki color. My room now feels very peaceful, and as a result I have been sleeping less fitfully and falling asleep faster than ever before.

Everything else is still a work in progress. I am selling my Mac laptop for something with less frills, bells, and whistles. I am giving my smartphone to my sister in exchange for her more simplistic phone, and I recently decided it was rather “clutterful” to listen to music while I walk from class to class. I feel great. I feel focused, and I feel one step closer to my own personal utopia. I hope that other people may feel the same as I. I would like my utopia to, one day, extend beyond myself, and be a part of someone else’s.

A Conversation With A Friendly Schizophrenic

This past Sunday, I staggered out of the 930 club, in Washington, DC, and the warm smog and smoke-choked breeze greeted my skin heartily. I had just spent the better part of three hours having my bones massaged by beautiful bass, and endorphins were pumping through my bloodstream. We decided to head to McPherson square to check out the Occupy D.C. protest and I couldn't have been more content with how my night was going.

When we arrived at the protest I was glad to finally see a gathering of people who were not the "Tea Party", however, that cheerfulness was short-lived. As I stood, rather awkwardly surveying, a tall man approached me. He was head-and-shoulders taller than myself, with an equally large potbelly, dark brown skin, and a very protrusive goatee. His clothes were dirty and disheveled; his red shirt was faded to the point of being off-white, and he smelled as though he hadn't showered in a long time. It was quite clear that he was homeless.

He approached me muttering and, though I couldn't quite hear him, it sounded as though he was agreeing with a statement. He stopped muttering and looked at me.

"Tic tac toe, okay?" he said. He had a pencil and a small notebook in his hand. I figured I might as well humor the man. After all, who doesn't enjoy a quick game of tic tac toe?

"Absolutely," I said. The man opened his little notebook and drew two large intersecting, perpendicular lines. In each corner he drew another, smaller, set of the same two lines. It was not the tic tac toe I was used to. I drew little O's in some corners and he drew C's. I eventually drew four O's that could have, arguably, been in a row and declared "I win".

"'Lemme see," the man said, "You did, you did." I let out a little chuckle because he seemed genuinely surprised.

"Now we decode, you know," he told me. I was perplexed, but nodded in agreement. He began to scribble thoughtfully in the notebook beneath the "tic tac toe" drawing. When he was done he read aloud what he had wrote, repeating every line while nodding as if he were internally confirming that what he was saying was accurate. He had written the following:

"Two one two", "Lily Spun Leaf", "P.S Holy Flock", ""Dolble", "GASP", and "DKEX you/won!!!"

By this point, everything I had learned in psychology class about schizophrenia had been confirmed and I was now entirely more interested in the man in front of me than all the protestors I had originally come to meet. We continued to play his version of tic tac toe for the next ten minutes and he beat me every time by connecting his C's with jagged lines because the C's were anything but in a row. By the end of the third round he had written, or had had me write, the following:

"Iron tin man", "Metallic stone rage", "heavy metal groove", "PPS-DNld AT yahoo.com" (the word yahoo formed an acrostic poem which read: yield, allay, have, ottool, openl) "

I told him that my friends and I had to leave (and we honestly did) and he ripped out all the paper, plus an extra one and said, "Alright, do this for me: before you go to sleep, write something down. Remember this: zerox to the email machine" He then scribbled a few more things down and handed me all of the papers. On the final piece of paper there was an empty "tic tac toe" drawing, below which he had drawn a simple stick figure and written:

"Just You Him", "boyfriend she's Theme", "mole", "MAK"

I shook his hand and we left and as I walked through the rows of protesters all semblance of cheerfulness faded into ponderous curiosity. I wanted to see through his eyes, hear through his ears, and experience his consciousness. He clearly experienced the world radically differently than myself and most humans in general. This encounter brought to mind the idea of relative reality (the thing I have been harping on about since our first class) and I couldn't help but have an incredibly strong sense of synchronicity.

However, my brow soon began to furrow harder than usual; my jaw began to clench, my heart picked up its pace, and anger began bubbling up inside me. It sent my thoughts spinning into nothingness and I was encapsulated in rage. I was angry that that man had to live on the streets, with little to no access to healthy food or clean water. He didn't have a bed to sleep in or a nice warm shower at the end of a hard day's work all because his reality was radically different than ours.

In that moment, I understood the protesters more so than I had just a few minutes previously. They are fighting for a nation where people's needs would be considered more important than the acquiring and consolidation of money. In that nation, the amiable schizophrenic I had just met would not have to sleep on the streets and could receive psychiatric help for his mental disorder, so that his reality might seem a bit more like mine or yours.

Luckily, the anger did not last more than a few brief moments as I have, over the years, developed an unfortunate defense mechanism in which I instantly suppress any strong emotion, be it positive or negative. However, later that night, as I drifted off to sleep, my mind revisited my "tic tac toe" match. I realized then that I might be mere minutes away from experiencing life through a lens that was possibly similar to the disheveled schizophrenic's. My mind didn't disappoint. That night I dreamt of walking through a forest where every color was overly accentuated, as if it were a photo whose contrast had been dramatically increased. The trees all swayed with the exact same rhythm and off in the distance there was a chorus of timpani matching the beat to which the trees danced.

Upon awakening, I had an odd thought: if the man experienced the world in a way similar to how I experienced the world while dreaming, then my pity might be slightly misplaced.

Inner Peace

Of all the tenets of all the varied philosophies, I find the idea of achieving inner peace, through whatever means, to be the most applicable and important to my personal life.

Two summers ago I was backpacking through the Sierra Nevada’s, in northern California, and during the trip I spent twenty-four hours alone in the mountains, on the shore of a tiny lake for the purpose of meditation and reflection. The calm waters were hidden amongst soaring pine trees below two large rocky cliffs. I sat, crossed-legged, at the waters edge for several hours—eyes closed and ears wide open. I listened to the successive beats of the water lapping gently against the shore and soon my heart seemed to thud gently along with it. A cool breeze blew pine needles through my bare toes, and the sun warmed my skin with a temperate touch. For a while, my thoughts seemed to slip away and I felt a peace unlike I had ever felt before. My usually furrowed eyebrows relaxed, my muscles—tense from carrying a sixty-pound pack for two weeks—calmed and ceased their straining. Eventually, my body appeared rather secondary, and the clutter in my mind dispersed itself into the deafening silence of the woods. In those few hours, nothing was of importance other than my immediate existence.

When I opened my eyes, the colorful scenery burst into being and my utter calm was shattered by the inescapable beauty of my surroundings. I stared off at the not-so-distant shore and a sudden urge to experience myself upon the shore welled up inside me. I stripped down to my boxers and waded into the snowmelt-chilled water, energizing the little pool of placidity. I swam hard until I reached the opposite shore, where I sat shivering. The sun was still strong and I soon warmed. I then stared at the shore upon which I had just been sitting until I eventually ended up closing my eyes again. The wind blew gently through my meager hair and my heart beat along with the lapping lake. My thoughts slipped away again, and I was at peace. When I opened my eyes this time I laughed inwardly at my foolishness. The scenery burst into my field of vision exactly the same as it had before and I realized the mistake in my thinking. I had thought that the opposite shore would somehow be different, but the inner peace I felt was no different than the peace I experienced upon the original shore. Nothing had changed.

Today I was walking home from school with the sun at my back and a tiny breeze in the air. It was a beautiful day and I could not help but be happy in spite of the college applications, homework, and job interview that lay ahead of me. I could hear my heart beat thud gently in my ears, and for the few minutes in between W-L and my house I had a recurrence of the peace I felt alone in the mountains of California. I realized, then, that this peace was not in any way created, nor facilitated by any specific occurrence outside of ones self; it seems to be borne out of happiness. Later that day I finished all of my college applications, did my homework, and got a new job, all the while feeling decidedly peaceful and happy. I think that if I can manage to feel like that every day, then I can be successful in all my endeavors, and during a time when I am trying to get into college, I find that concept very encouraging.

The picture above is the lake to which I was referring.

Descartes vs. Hume: From Hume's Perspective

Had I been on the Hume side of the debate, I would have focused on two key areas. One, the issue of Descartes's "perfect entity proves god" theory is a wonderful piece of irrational, circular logic. If I have a concept of a perfect circle, does that mean that the perfect circle placed the concept in my brain? No. I simply have a concept of perfection. Secondly, when the Cartesians made the "Wax Argument", and implied that only through rational thought can you understand that the melted wax is still wax, I would have simply posed the following question: Could you deduce any truth about the wax if you could not perceive it? How could you be rational about something you can't experience?

In Response To Mr. Summer's Comment: Quantum Theory and Taoism

"Look for a clue in Newtonian thought. Could all the energy of the universe , whether spent or not, be everlasting, be unchanging, be of a permanent but not static configuration, so that while there may be change, in fact, irrefutable change, the essence of matter remains constant? You may refute as you wish.
-Mr. S"

I wonder sometimes, if there really is a concrete essence of matter. The more we discover about quantum mechanics, the more I seem to find the Taoist concept of yin and yang quite agreeable. Modern quantum theory has discovered that electrons do not have a fixed place in the structure of the atom, and that they are more correctly represented as possibilities. I think this is tied to the concept of yin and yang because the "basic building blocks" of matter are, like Schrodinger's cat, not existent or nonexistent, but both at the same time. Is existence inseparable from nonexistence? Is matter merely a possibility--a mathematical statistic? If so, I think that would account for change in the universe. If matter is the interaction between existence and nonexistence, the result of which is both existent and nonexistent, then the universe would seem to be in a constant state of flux, similar to the development of an organism; an organism is the product of the interaction of two chemical energies, the mother's and father's DNA. This interaction creates something that is the mother and the father at once. From the moment of the conception, this interaction is in a constant observable flux. The body forms, then the organism (or “the interaction”) is born and begins to grow and develop. It is like a great exhalation, bursting forth into the air, until the organism begins to die; it slows and its bones become brittle, and its organs begin to cease their functioning. Dying is an equally metered inhalation after the outward burst of the exhalation.

The organism never ceased to change throughout its days, because it was an interaction between two different things. Even when there was no apparent change from one day to the other, the organism’s body was perpetually fluctuating; acidic chemicals churned around in the stomach, the heart pounded out blood and the body’s temperature increased and decreased. Similarly, what we observe of nature is the interaction between existence and nonexistence, resulting in matter, which is both existent and nonexistent, in the same way that the organism is both its mother and its father.

I don't know if this is an adequate response to your comment, Mr. Summers, or an adequate description of my thought process, but the phrase "essence of matter" made me think fairly deeply and lengthily. I hope I don't come across as assuming or grandiose in the expressing of my thoughts.