Do you mind?

Sometimes we better use the rear view mirror for our observations, instead of the headlights. Like with deer. - old trucker saying

There is too much literature about the "I", the ego, the self, or the mind, and too much of this literature is so terribly organised, structured in chapters, paragraphs, sections, with proud headers like "How our mind produces the sense of self" or "Evolution of the subjective ego". Of course all these scholars are absolutely right in whatever they are saying, all the proof they rake together supporting their claim that the self actually does exist, or does not exist, is valid. We acknowledge the relevance of their research and are probably infinitely indebted to their inquisitiveness.

Yet I do not care. That force in me, whatever it is, real, imaginary, that is somehow working, it has, like any force, no essence. We learn about it through circumstantial evidence: the creation of art, scientific paradigms, humor, poetry. Or do we? Sometimes, and that is befitting in our culture of librarians, we desire a clear and precise description of what the "mind" actually is, the kind of descriptions we possess of diesel engines, chronographs, and capacitors.

I rather have a bunch of wild metaphors, like the old trucker saying. How many volumes do we need to explain its meaning in terms of neurons and axons? And how many more exciting metaphors could we create in the mean time, all saying terribly little about our "minds", and all enriching the way we use them.

Writing. Laughing.

What is the value of writing? Thinking, shared. The ability to think old thoughts again, sharpen them, create a monument for our live thinking that otherwise would exist only as marginal comments to whatever circumstances we've concentrated our thoughts on. Systems of thoughts can be dangerous; history is full of examples. See the system of the bible, promoting human superiority ("and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth", Genesis 1:26).

Deconstructive writing, that French fashion that had to be ahead of its time - is not really possible as much as it is necessary today.

I have an intuition about what this life is all about. It has a lot to do with the ability to laugh deeply, genuinely, affirmatively, to laugh in unison with the universe.

Is truth=beauty is true?

We all know people who occasionally proclaim that truth is beauty. But have you ever shared a table with somebody who made the statement in such a convincing way, that you felt that their whole existence was breathing this truth? I did, last week.
I met a stage designer somewhere in Amsterdam, and there he said it. I instantly believed what he said and nibbled on my cookie while nodding my approval. Later that day, cooled down by a bout of Dutch rain, I felt I had to somehow reproduce the philosophical underpinning I have for it. Strolling alongside the pretty canals, crossing wonderful wooden drawbridges, and looking at the reflections of the slanted facades in the last remaining mirrors of ice, I attempted to think about the subject.
The concept of Truth, when extended beyond the purely functional "what is the case" (under certain circumstances), is a concept vague enough to keep many philosophers busy for the next couple of centuries. But that's no reason to shrug. Let's deal our cards:

1. Truth under NO circumstances - mathematical, logical truths, tautologies (eg. Pi is not a rational number)
2. Truth under SOME circumstances - everyday truths, scientific knowledge (eg. Jupiter is larger than Neptune)
3. Truth under ALL circumstances - ultimate Truths (eg. religious truths)

I write "NO" circumstances (or context) in the first case, because these truths don't depend on any context. Of course they hold, but since that fact is not influenced by the context, it doesn't help distinguishing between contexts. 2+2=4 on Mars or among microbes. We would say it doesn't tell any aspect of the "truth" about Mars or microbes. Truths in the second sense, that hold under "SOME" circumstances, do help us tell some aspect of the "truth" about planets, animals, humans, or words, colors, smells. Intuitively, what religious truth means is some kind of generalisation of this second kind of truth, a truth that tells us ALL aspects of everything, and tells it apart. Truth in that third sense is a perfect categorization or taxonomy of everything we dare talk about.

That concept can only be approximated, as we are thrown into Being and possess only eyes here, on the inside. Such approximations (without calling them so) have been attempted by religion since the early rise of human culture (eg. the Gilgamesh). The optimal approximation would be as close as we could get to the Truth (insofar as that should remain meaningful as an absolute concept) and how do we get to such an approximation? How do we make a "move" that is at the same time a generalization of our experience and yet dependent on it. This move, I think, should be described as aesthetic. It holds the uniqueness of an experience (because beauty is what strikes us and inspires us) while generalizing at the same time as we identify it as beauty (the painful comparison to known beauty and past experiences). The aesthetic experience thus qualifies as a candidate for the kind of approximation of truths of the third category.

Some say that you can't do such wild thinking without soon arriving at some Hegelian phrase. Here is ours: (truth in art, like truth in general, requires the harmony of an inner and outer, of concept and reality. (Aesthetics Vol I, p. 343, translated by T.M. Knox)

So yes, affirmative, truth=beauty, our sense of beauty is the organ can perceive the most meaningful truths.

What do I think about Zizek?

What is he thinking?

As a learned philosopher with a funny blog, I should have an opinion or two about the Thinking Beast of Ljubljana, the populist, famous, celebrated, roaring, one and only, please welcome Slavoj Zizek (the adornments on the Zs are intentionally left out) who twists psychoanalytical theories together with rabid Marxism and generates a steady stream of anticapitalist thoughts with a dangerously early expiration date. I remember that he once proudly proclaimed that he didn't watch the movie Avatar, but had seen the poster and read a synopsis or something and considered that enough to burn it to the ground in one of his countercynical reviews. I hereby proudly proclaim that I never went cover-to-cover in any of mr. Zizek's books (but ind of did get the gist and the jest of that body of his texts). I also grow a beard now.

Some criticize Slavoj because he abuses Lacanian thinking for his own purpose, others think his rhetorical ardor precludes engaging and meaningful discussions of his work. He is turning himself into a caricature faster than anybody would be able to escape such a fixation. But still, what can we distill from his philosophies? We could - and should - have a good laugh with the Elvis of cultural theory, and learn not to take ourselves too seriously. Disappointing? You want to gain wisdom, you want to know the true essence of society, the inner workings of revolutions, crises, and submission to the capitalist beast? I don't think you'll find that in Zizek's philosophies. You can find a lot of controversial material, I mean the man calls himself a "friendly Stalinist" and I overheard him once in Berlin after a lecture where he was basking in self-indulgence, "Oh how smart we are..." - his interlocutor was Peter Sloterdijk and the venue the Rosa Luxemburg theater;- But "real" communists find him dangerous too, because he is to wild to be a dogmatic anything. The 4th International over at WSWS calls him a "charlatan" and "puerile thinker", and their argument is, as far as I can see, mere non-compliance with Marx and denial of the existence of the working class.

Where he would get interesting for us is the moment he turns his Heraclitian rigor toward the planet. He is worried about ecological disasters like the BP oil spill, and climate change related forced migrations. Yet what I miss is a scientific understanding of the world. That is my main concern with Žižek (here my friend, I gave you back the toboggans on your Zs), when I hear him talk I miss a scientific understanding. I want to hear him explain in some depth the depletion of groundwater levels, the dangers of fracking, the destruction of the Amazon, the melting of glaciers and the pollution of rivers. Why? Because it is a basis we don't need to fight over. The blind fanatics and their spasm of denial of natural realities will die off quickly after nature makes her cold breath felt.

What we need is a philosophy - and philosophers - with a firm ground in science, not political theory or economy. Perhaps, ideologues and anti-ideologues have in common that scientific (ecological, geological) knowledge doesn't affect the core of what they want to say. While they diligently absorb ecological disasters into their theories, they are merely there because they illustrate the bankruptcy of the System (our artifact), not because we are a species among other species that are about to fuck up the planet - and ideology is piled up with anti-ideology on the trash pile of petty righteousness called "history".

Back to nature, less meta-reflection, and better sex.
At this point, I could suggest a counter-philosophy, and engage in some kind of dialogue with monsieur Žižek. But I leave that to the reader as an exercise. Please inflate your own balloons of meaning. What I see as the role of philosophers does have something to do with ideology and dialectics, precisely because these beasts of mass culture are not going do disappear ('t would be naive to think that). A philosopher knows what she needs to know about metaphysics, and should tirelessly criticize new ideologies, be it ecofascism, post-capitalism or new age collectivism. And precisely because they have a firm base in scientific understanding, they can differ and digress and do that what Nietzsche's old, halkyonic pharmacy once prescribed: bearing the largest possible contradictions in our chest. I hope this account wasn't too šcattered, and its intuition more or less clear.

May 19. Exploring an island with one palmtree on it.

Today, we will have lunch on the Kuna island again. We will have the same menu as yesterday, and - if we would have been Kunas - as everyday. But we are no Kunas. Tomorrow we will have lunch in an American foodcourt eating french fries and hamburgers. Tomorrow the Kuna will eat fried fish, coconut rice and potatoes.

Yesterday we discovered this island with only one palmtree on it, and decided to go there. After making absolutely sure it was no hallucination, Dan, Karina and I took the dinghy and rowed up to the tiny isle. One single palmtree, standing firmly in the middle of the island, surrounded by sparse grasses... one single palmtree - it's amazing. It's unique (fortunately it was the only one-palmtree-island we've seen) and it makes us feel good. One single palmtree - I feel like my philosophical Self is coming back. That singleton right there in the center of the universe it is defining by its very act of existing, that unique object it is defining a multitude of perspectives. Any given location in the universe of one-palmtree-island is distinguishable from any other location exactly through the viewpoint it has with respect to the single palm tree. The palm tree shows a different side to any location on the island. Every location has its own single palmtree. There are uncountably many palmtrees on the island. Everywhere you look you see a different palmtree. You must get mad when you live here, seeing all those different palmtrees every day. In fact, if we'd let a typical human being inhabit the one-palmtree-island, he will most probably - cut down the palmtree.

Rowing back, Dan sees something very big moving in the water. We take brave Karina, who is swimming while we row and chatter, we take her back in the boat and row to shore fast. It could have been a shark. We heard stories. A guy in Panama will tell us that he went snorkeling on the San Blas islands and saw a hammerhead shark at some three meters distance. He had been extremely lucky, according to his captain. He could have been torn apart and eaten for lunch. After all, just like us, hammerhead sharks love some variation of nutrients.

It's a mellow afternoon. DJ basks in his brilliant Britishness playing cricket with small coconut sprouts I throw towards him and a palm branch. I talk about math with Karina who is going to study it. I try to build a makeshift raft but fail dramatically at it. It falls apart before it even floats. Doesn't matter. We sail to another Kuna island where Fabien takes care of the immigration. We will sail overnight to Portobello, Panama. I skip dinner to avoid seasickness and retreat in my berth for the final night at sea.