A strand of thought

July 19, 2008

Human minds feel at ease working with dialectics. Two opposed concepts keep the factors to a minimum, reducing the possibility for confusion. Either something goes in the pile to the left or it goes in the pile to the right. As with most things that are helpful, dialectics have their own danger. The false dichotomy is the name we give to a danger of thinking in terms of polarities. “A or B” in a world of A's, B's, and C's will not suffice. Something significant is left out and the edifice is shown to outstrip its pretensions.

I here draw upon a basic division with the end of clarifying certain tendencies I have persistently found myself involved with. At the same time I recognize it as a helpful, and therefore partially inaccurate, way of dividing reality. "Pessimist" and "optimist" are two amongst many possibilities, themselves admitting of gradations. I am not suggesting that a person is wholly one or the other at any point in their life. Nor am I suggesting a person is one or the other from birth or from any duration of their life. These types are simply descriptions of mentalities we pick up (at times in confused manners) and, although never purely manifested, I suggest they are always important to keep in mind. Awareness of the direction we point ourselves keeps us informed as to the places we are heading.
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There is an argument for the existence of God (the ontological argument) that runs thus: God, if he exists, is the greatest possible being and no greater being can be conceived. To exist is better than to not exist. Therefore, the greatest possible being must exist (and that being we call God) because if it did not, we could conceive of one better [namely that greatest of beings that does exist in reality (not just in our minds)]. The merits of the argument aside, one of the propositions is of interest to our discussion. 'To exist is better than to not exist'. Is this so?

Answering the question of preference in the distinction between existence and non-existence yields the difference between optimists (those who prefer existence) and pessimists (those who prefer non-existence). Optimistic and pessimistic outlooks infuse aspects of reality with basic assumptions that generate profound differences in interpretation: the outer aspect (consisting of the world and other people) and the inner aspect (consisting of the will and the self).

In regards to the inner and the characterization of the will for instance, the pessimist is a person who interprets the world as a place where the greatest of individuals' aspirations are either never fulfilled or are fulfilled in an empty way (by chance). The optimist is a person who interprets the world as a place where the greatest of individuals' aspirations may be fulfilled via intentional actions (at times with help).

The pessimist resides in certainty. He interacts with the world and says of what he experiences, "I know you. You are not enduring light. If you are light, you are only a flicker in darkness." As a result, he can never be surprised. He comes to his life with a belief not only that all is not well but that all cannot be well. "None can be well." With this he is able to steal a secret solace, an inner happiness from being ever-correct.

The sort of optimist I am writing of resides in uncertainty. It interacts with the world and says of what it experiences, "I feel you. You appear as light (or darkness) but it is not for me to know without doubt which you are. If you are light, you are the truth." The optimist accepts his own fallibility, yet is always surprised (to a certain extent) by her failures. She comes to her life with a belief that all is not well but that all can be well. "Everything can be well." With this she is able to steal a secret solace, an inner happiness from being ever-hopeful.

Which is the greater delusion: considering oneself to have a wholly accurate conception of the world or considering oneself to have an ever-possibly flawed conception of the world?

Both the pessimist and the optimist will say to the other that he is a coward. The pessimist is cowardly by insisting upon his own defeat (since the optimist says there is good in man and therefore that necessary defeat of man entails necessary defeat of good); the optimist is cowardly by refusing to attempt to win [since the pessimist says there is only evil (or that evil is the only thing that can ever endure) and the optimist refuses to recognize reality for what it is and play according to its rules].

Pascal knew the bankruptcy at the base of pessimism. The pessimist cannot wager anything because he cannot stomach risk. What is the risk in expecting the worst? Should the worst come about, its sting is deadened by its being anticipated. Should something better than the worst come about, the pessimist is free to absorb it while feigning that it is only the unfulfilled worst. He rests in the greatest of certainties: that everything changes. Everything beautiful is ripped down, everything that is good loses eventually, and everything just falls victim to injustice if given enough time. The pessimist drains the content of positivity when it obtains; the pessimist is nourished by the content of negativity while it reigns. Either way he has the surest possession: nothing.

"What of ugliness, evil, and injustice, do they not too crumble?" the optimist may ask the pessimist. "Yes they do, but they are expected to. The intoxication of beauty, goodness, and justice is in their ability to fool those who hang their lives on them into thinking they are enduring possibilities. I grant that everything falls into the void as surely as it bubbles out of it. We cannot understand why they do, and so we have nothing to draw upon for hope. We have no resources for wagering; the gambler has lost before he rolls his dice. Pessimists, like myself, recognize this and choose not to throw. We recognize that we are not the dice throwers; something like fate, the mechanisms of reality throw our dice for us. We are surprised by nothing. Winning, losing, it is all the same. We do not chose to be defeated; defeat is chosen for us as surely as we are born. It is by the loss of permanence (death) that we are born, and it is by the loss of permanence (life) that we are snuffed out."

Death is the truth that splits the optimist and the pessimist based on their assumptions and way of living. The optimist (the ideal sort of optimist, the sober optimist) hears death as a call to apply one's life (the allotment of time) as rightfully as he knows how. She is aware of her own fallibility, but cannot afford the luxury of caution because death will steal her possibilities. The pessimist hears death as a call to submit as quickly as possible to the force that ends that which currently is. Death brings both to submit; the former submits to hope and the latter to futility.

Hope incorporates the sober truth and dares to rise above it. It sees that death is at the end of all life, that pain fills the vacuum between pleasures, and that darkness is more pervasive than light. Hope dwells in the midst of its antithesis if it dwells anywhere. It recognizes that those constituents of that which we call 'good' struggle in the mechanical world and yet can only be realized in collaboration within it. So, it takes any instantiation of good things (love, beauty, truth, justice) as permanent victories. Even after the instantiation comes to an end, that it existed at all is enough for hope to perpetuate.

Futility disempowers agents; futility removes responsibility and thus makes all equally blameless. Because everything must submit to the mechanisms of a determined world (that is at its base ineffable/irrational), pessimism sees the application of effort (the will) as a superficial act. The deep act that underlays effort is mechanism, is the force of cogs (essential material causality). Futility takes its strength from the pervasiveness of its successful predictions. It says, "everything worthwhile will end" and takes the evaporation of instantiations of goodness as proof and thus reason for obedience to the flux. Pessimism, then, is a sort of active apathy. Active in that it encourages one to be ever-complicit in the defeat of meaningfulness; apathetic in that it rides the wave of decay to accomplish the end of meaninglessness.

What are we to make of the pessimists projects? Surely he disowns them; they are not his own, they are what is dictated to him by circumstance. If it is suggested to him that it looks as though he is pursuing an end [and thereby using his practical rationality (i.e., adjustment of means to ends, i.e., goods)], he responds that it is only the surface of the underlying dark tempest. So, while employing his own powers he must abide by the ultimate disempowering demands of pessimism. He is responsible in a thin, rather than thick way. True enough the action came from his mind and was performed by his body, but his mind and body were wholly determined by the way of the world.

September 19, 2008

Don’t Jump
Today at work as I was walking across a roof, a balding, slim custodian noticed me from the ground. He told me, Don't jump. It's not worth it." Instinctively I responded, "That's what I have to tell myself."

What isn't worth it? The failed attempt at taking one's life from an insufficient height? Was the jump itself not worth the effort? Would it be worthier to drown one's sorrows, become callous, or lash our against others?

Or, was the thing that would drive me to ponder such a leap really not so bad as to warrant such dramatic action? What if it was not just one thing, but a series of painful misfortunes and mistakes? Could no series of events ever make the jump worth it?

Most likely, the custodian was making silly banter. He had no reason to take me as suicidal. Yet, semiconsciously, impulsively I answer with all candor. It is what I must tell myself--regardless of its truth.

How could one come to know that choosing death in the midst of unceasing suffering is not worth the gamble of enduring? Only time will tell if better days are possible--and how many better days does it take? The question is theoretically unanswerable. The most once can do is take a principled stand--to say that the gamble that is life (the uncertainty of pleasure, contentment, fulfillment, salvation) is inherently superior, worthier than the certainty of the cessation of earthly suffering (to say nothing of the uncertainty of the non-earthly).

What are we to say to those who prefer the contrary stand--or are considering it? Only the truth: in so doing, they are choosing to define their lives in terms of suffering. If they are comfortable making suffering the final measure of worth--if they recognize nothing more fundamental--then there can be no further argument. We can only show them the value that may exist concomitantly with suffering: love.

Love alone can trump suffering, can redeem it. When approaching the edge, can you still see beauty, can you still have an inkling of truth, can your remember the sweetness of innocence? If so, then you have a sense of love and must tell yourself it is not worth it. Why? The latent message in all awareness of love is simply that life is worth it through it. You must tell yourself because it is what you have been told by those abilities and memories.

“Have you not been told of ugliness, falseness, and hate? Why not repeat them?” Yes, you hear it every time there is wantonness, every time there is emptiness when fulfillment is expected. But you should not repeat such silences because you should not propagate what affronts you. Is there any truth more clear than the consistency of the golden rule and such idioms as "you reap what you sew,"? One gives consent to receiving what one distributes--be it in practice or in theory. If one denies such consent, one denies one's selfhood, says he is not ultimately unified. Upon such an utterance we, as his contemporaries, are pushed naturally to defend ourselves from such a being disproportionately (since he claims to be and acts as though he were more than one individual).

Life is always asking us which pose we strike because it is always possible to define life by suffering and by love, to snuff out one's life or to persist regardless of context. We offer answers in ever step we take, whether closer or farther from the drop--in how we embrace or reject life.

Are there people who willfully agree to live but who still define life by suffering? Yes. The two views are not a perfect dichotomy. A person's life may be so free from suffering of all sorts and expectations of suffering may be so slim that the gamble of life seems worth it. Then, one may proceed as always, living to reap advantage--now kind, now malicious, however circumstance and the logic of self-interest demand. Besides this option, a person who suffers and/or expects to suffer may yet endorse life without recognizing and living for love. In these individual, the process of living has so worn them down that they take suffering to be a normative concept. Life is painful, therefore one ought to be in pain. One is then righteous in bringing pain to others, to themselves, or both; all deserve to taste reality most keenly.

How can life cause such a conclusion to form in a person? When they refrain from reflecting with depth upon their experiences, when they refrain from pursuing truth beyond what they initially conclude, then a person can be so affronted by life as to conclude that suffering is and most ought to be. Just as a man who only feels his sickness and does not engage his will to meet reality and his mind to learn from it cannot conceive of what it is to be healthy, so a man who surrenders to life will be taken to darkness. For sickness and darkness have this sort of unconscious pull. Both exist on a lower level alone where only the unconscious intuits them (like the imagination in fabricating the edges of nothingness). Whereas the higher thoughts and feelings can endorse love as well as those of the appetites--only the appetites can be so enamored by sickness and darkness. Then, part of the person brings them to a conclusion that the whole of them--were it in balance--could not assent to.

September 28, 2008

Valuation
I am grateful. You should know that.

Despite the grief, I am always somewhere secretly appreciative for my life. The core of my optimism lies there.

There is an argument for the existence of God. Have I told you about it? St. Anselm is credited with the original formulation in the eleventh century. The ontological argument hinges upon the premise that existence is greater than non-existence. It struck me when I first read the argument. The premise is a valuation (although Anselm treats it as though it was an indubitable truth) and I remember thinking, "Is existing really better than non-existing?" Can we even consider that question? Non-being has no defense--how could anything be intelligibly compared to it? Precisely the lack of intelligibility makes it the normative rather than empirical claim. Everything that involves a value is so laden with murkiness, intuitions, and emotions that to speak of them completely clearly is impossible. Something of utmost importance is lost in translation. Arguments as to why one ought to continue living, for example, can never be made conclusive. Words cannot so accurately and consistently infuse the sentiments and intuitions that are apart of the experience of the premise that being is greater than non-being as to complete a deductive argument.

That was an aside. What I came here to say was something like "don't worry." (I say this for myself as much as for you. I say this all for the both of us--me and me.) It is true that I have flattened. It is true that I feel less intensely now, less often now, that resignation is a place I visit more frequently than ever before. Apathy is not a sign of decomposition in this case. I wanted you to know that I am still convinced that life is good (where "good" means worthwhile rather than pleasing) and that being is greater. Life is good because life has been good because life can be good. Have you considered that I could have been so fulfilled already that to be relieved of ambition is a sign health? Could it be than a loss of vitality is a symptom of living enough rather than dying?

I think I could draw upon what has happened already to manage to embrace life until it is over. I am not so restless that I cannot tolerate the prospect of not being able to add anything else to my well--although that is not to say I am sure nothing else will be added.

Do you know how easy it is to cry once you have been apart of something so rich? Recalling a memory is like being witness to a contemporary event--although it happened to you it strikes you as foreign because it is not thoroughly present. I can weep over-joyfully. Do you know what that is like? It alters one's perspective. I can see the beauty in kindness. Sometimes I nearly break-down when I hear a father say sweet-playful utterances to his child. I cannot bear being in the presence of such things. Do you know that we do not deserve being treated well? Do you know of the injustice of making demands upon the world and others? What have you done, what could you possibly have performed, in order to make being lovingly caressed reasonable?! There are no desserts in love! Gifts--all gifts! To be in the presence of such exchanges--can't you cry at them? I can. What is it to you if I am unsure about my capacities and my desires? Why should you be so concerned? I can cry at the embarrassment of being surrounded by such wonderful things! Isn't that enough?

What of ugliness? What of how your are being forced to squander your talents, Matthew? What of being jilted, Matthew? Where are your tears for them? They are nothing. They do not concern me. They cannot move me like being privy to my niece's and nephew's interactions. I will not let them! Why? Because being is greater than non-being. So--we need not be so concerned. Maybe I'll return and flourish again. Maybe I will not. But I am and will remain grateful and that is enough.

Gifts and Burdens - April 6, 2009 -
Life begins, through self-consciousness, always unexpectedly. To be something and to know that you are something, when formerly there was nothing to know, is the strange introduction to the world all subjects experience.

Consciously or otherwise, as one goes through life, one passes a judgment on that initiation. It either is judged primarily as a gift or a burden. Thus one lives life primarily with an attitude of graciousness or indignation. The former attitude is nearer to the reality of the situation. The notion of a gift (in its purity) entails an absence of desserts in that it is given without expectation on the part of the receiver and the giver. Pure gifts are freely given. A burden, however, always entails an offense to desserts. A burden is, when viewed by the recipient, something unjustified. To consider yourself burdened is to assert you are attached to something you do not desire to be attached to. Insofar as the desire is contrary to the burdensome object, the burdened asserts it ought to be otherwise--one ought to be free from the object.

Gifts are not encumbered with expectations on the part of the recipient. One is obligated to accept the addition, regardless of whether it is justified or not. A man receives a pink paisley tie and ought to be gracious, regardless of whether it meshes with his wardrobe or not. He has been extended surplus abundance, regardless of the object in question, and ought to be grateful towards the core of the action of giving. Every recipient of a gift is perpetuated by the giver in the act of expanding what the recipient possesses, whether it be a tie, a memory, or the faculty of memory itself. Each gift increases the recipient's share of being.

Burdens, too, increase the recipient's share of being, but in the way that a larger sieve increases the capacity for water to be lost. Burdens are an addition by subtraction, a giving by a taking. A hindrance is given and thus takes comfort. A yoke burdens by adding weight and thereby subtracting potential strength.

How are these judgments formed?

Innocence - April 9, 2009 -
Is mankind innocent? Those in favor reply, "I have done nothing wrong. Why do I have to die? How could I deserve a death sentence before I even began? Why must life entail death. Mortality is unjust."

One could respond to the objector, "You have done nothing wrong, nor nothing right. Before you began you did nothing. It follows that life is as much an injustice as death. Why do you have to live? Assume life, and death is odious. Assume nothing, and the possibility of life--even with death--is beautiful."
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Love is a free gift because it is unconditional. In this way, birth itself, the advent of every person, is a consequence of a loving act on different levels (both physical and metaphysical).

Truth is for consciousness. Life is the process of unwrapping the first present.

These hands are too dirty - April 12, 2009 -
That there is a single flower in this vast desert is enough to prove to me beyond a doubt that God exists. That my eyes have seen this flower is enough to make me want to gouge them out.

Sometimes you are in a place so beautiful you never want to leave. Sometimes you are in a place so beautiful you wish the rest of your life to be one great departure from it.

The problem of evil is a stumbling block for many people. For me, the greater problem is the problem of good.

A man was once hidden from the glory of God in a cleft of a mountain to protect him from being annihilated by the sight. It follows that pure light blinds us as totally as pure darkness.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Tension and Rest


The inevitable result of the union of an immovable object
with a moving one is tension. Such is a state pervasive amongst people:
discontent. Being agents and therefore in motion, people find themselves placed
within a world that is impersonal and therefore devoid of sympathetic motion
(i.e., agency). There is an inconsistency within the relation, a lack of
resonance. At times, the agent bends the world; at times, the world resists the
agent. We may pick up the stone, but cannot push our fingers through it.
.. ..

So much depends on how one
manages one's expectations. The world does not meet our expectations insofar as
it is unjust. It is the setting of odium; virtue goes unrewarded, love dies,
suffering is gratuitous, and corporal punishment is a universal sentence. One
does not like pain and is nauseated by being victimized. One is repulsed by the
affronts that are discomfort and circumscription of one’s autonomy. Nature, our
supposed mother, is capricious (to the extent that an adjective can be applied
to an impersonal subject).



Given the disappointment incumbent upon living in the world, what is one to do?
Submit (to alter by bringing down) or rebel (to alter by bringing up).



Submission has two principal forms, each focusing on one of the two factors in
the relationship: the individual, with her expectations, and the world, with
its truth. The submission that alters the individual subsumes what she wants
from the world, it clips the wings of the agent. She releases herself from the
consequent indignation directed at pain. She resigns herself to her impotence.
Not choosing the world or her own entrance into it, she recognizes she can
rightfully claim no desserts. The new relation is peaceful as a consequence
self-abnegation. After reconceiving her place in the world, her emotional
revulsion is tempered.



The submission that alters the world makes (on the level of thought) its perceived
defiance illusory. It reduces the grandeur of the world’s shortcomings.
Sometimes this involves removing it of its finality and positing another world;
sometimes this involves absolving it of its shortcomings. Without finality, the
world is interpreted as harmless in regards to life. Since it can only maim,
and not murder, the tension is reduced. If instead the world is absolved, it is
reinterpreted as undeserving expectation or resisting the possibility of it. Resentment,
a consequence of disappointed expectation, is inappropriate when it is directed
to a mechanism. One can no more hold the injustice of the world against the
world than one can hold a misfire against a gun. Moral blame presupposes
responsibility, and responsibility presupposes the freedom to do otherwise. The
world simply is—there is no ‘should be’ for it. The world as it appears—as an
antagonist—is replaced with the world as it now is taken to be—as a stage for
living. Whether there is anticipation of a change in backdrop or not, the world
is no longer resented. It is benign because it is innocent, free of ability to
defeat (because of immortality of the person or bruteness of the world).



Rebellion has two principal forms, analogous in its division. The rebellion
that alters the individual seeks to overcome the weakness implicit in being
affronted. Granting that the origin of disappointment is in impotence—in the
powerlessness to make the setting conducive to one's ends—she conscripts the
power of the world. Taking cues from nature, she gives herself over to caprice.
Tapping into the power of the world, she destroys the hesitation in her when
confronting it. Viewing the world as invincible, she alters her constitution
consciously towards allying with it. She gives herself over to the heart of the
world, the preconscious striving, the dictatorship of force. Creating and
destroying with equal and inexplicable fervor, she raises herself above
discomfort into a state of abandon and humor. She laughs at the part of
individuals that desires independent (i.e., metaphysical) value. Removed from
that trap and identified with the world, she is free to be both predator and
pray.



The rebellion that alters the world is principally political. It seeks to
create a utopia, an instantiation of absolute justice. Nature is conscripted by
technology, and energy is directed towards the final elimination of worldly
affronts. The endpoint is justice with the endorsed means being whatever brings
about change from the status quo the fastest—which tends to be unjust in the
short-term. For the sake of fulfilling corporate demands for value, it can
stifle individual demands for value.
.. ..

Leaving aside the difficulties of analysis of the individual,
what is the world? Are we clear minded in are rejection of it?
.. ..

Tension is not only a product of
the relation between a person and the world properly speaking. The tension in
one’s life may be translated into the relation between two persons or a person
and people. When one asserts, “I deny the world because it does not meet my
expectations,” how much of what prompts denial is causally originated by the
world? A child scrapes his knee and begins to cry, an old woman, with mind
ravaged by decay, stares vacantly at her unrecognized husband—such are the
results of a mechanism that perpetuate tragedy in our lives. Still, much of
what affronts us about life is the consequence of other people not meeting our
expectations. Disappointment is compounded, but the reaction was hitherto
focused on one aspect. The crux of the problem here addressed is always in the
agent versus the mechanism. By instances of agent versus agent(s), a similar
consequence (disappointment), is fraudulently transferred into the problem and
erroneously increases the fervor of the offense. If the distinction between a
person and a natural thing (nature at large included), then all offensive
weight cannot be added to the scales with which we measure the world.
.. ..
Still other disagreeable
phenomena, the loss of a vocation for instance, are more an amalgam of the
world and others. The machinations of the economy defray the individual
responsibility of the employer that terminates the employee as a result of
financial necessity, which is precipitated by a multiplicity of factors (drops
in sales, ineffective advertising campaigns, product recalls, inefficient
distribution of resources within the business, etc.). Accordingly, the
appropriate response to all that is outside the frustrated individual demands
more nuance.
.. ..
In short, we must keep the world
pure if we are to judge it rightly.

.. ..
To whom are we to direct our demands for absolute justice?
The world? No—it cannot answer. Our fellows? No—we know that they will not
answer (for injustice consecrated once by one man is enough to frustrate the
absolute demand). To that which is distinct from the world and man, God, the
only possibility left if the demand is to remain? All that is disagreeable in
the world is often used to indict God, the scapegoat of frustration. Can a
person at once reject God’s existence and hold God culpable for evil? No. The
rejection of God is the final undercutting of the demands for absolute justice,
and it seals a fate of disappointed expectations. What is worse, those
expectations—by the denial of metaphysics—are humiliated. The frustrated
individual becomes like a child who cries for a toy that is impossible. The
tension so central to life leads to a definition of life with futility as
absurdity disavows the legitimacy of expectation.
.. ..

If there could be a God, then we
must take the picture He has painted for us in the Holy Scriptures seriously.
If we do, then we will see that God already anticipated the demand for absolute
justice insofar as He made it of people. With the demand reversed, so then does
the desired outcome. Instead of calling for justice to be done, one prefers
forgiveness—as the obligation to perfection necessarily goes unfulfilled.

.. ..
From whence does the sense of entitlement come? The mind and
the heart collude to create discontent; the mind understanding (even vaguely)
how things are; the heart intuiting how things should be (even if normativity
is erroneously grounded in egoism).
.. ..
What would it be for expectations to be warranted?
Justification concerns origins. Something is justified insofar as its origins
are appropriate, where appropriate means fitting the context. A belief, for
instance, is deemed justified when it is the consequence of direct perceptual
observation. Direct perceptual observation is unquestionably a fitting means
for belief acquisition—it takes account of the factors involved in belief (the
believer, who perceives, and the believed, that is capable of being perceived).
.. ..

What is the origin of the
heart’s intuition? Self-interest. The heart principally addresses itself to the
outside world as a consumer—it moves towards what it interprets as beneficial.
How can self-interest be justified when considering a multiplicity, when there
are additional factors beyond the self?
The demand from self-interest is consequence of the living individual’s
desire to continue living (because living is in itself desirable), the other
factors have different interests (if they have any at all). Self-interest,
then, does not take account of the factors involved, is inappropriate, and
therefore unjustified.

.. ..
Discontent says of life, “Life, yes, but not like this.” How
if life defined? As a blending of the actual and ideal—the fulfillment found in
pieces throughout life, brought to completion by suppression of that which
counteracts it. But, this thinking is fundamentally muddled. Either yes to life
or no to life, not yes to life as it ought to be, where ought is defined by the
heart.

.. ..

Where can one say ‘yes’ to life as it ought to be, if not in
the world? On the sacred level that bridges the immanent and transcendent, on
the level of the metaphysical.
.. ..
Discontent is perpetuated by a denial of the sacred. Why
deny the sacred? Among other reasons, there is the difficulty of approaching it
and the presumed undesirability of approaching it. The former is a consequence
of the epistemic difficulties that flow from the nature of the sacred; the
latter is a consequence defining the sacred too closely in terms of the world.
Both involve confused application of principles that are rooted in the world. The
path to knowledge that is essentially worldly is not necessarily applicable to
the non-worldly. The characteristics of the worldly are not necessarily
applicable to the non-worldly. Nevertheless, discontent continues because of
imperceptibility or guilt.
.. ..
In a simplistic way, everything of the world is introduced
by the corporeal senses.
.. ..
In a simplistic way, everything of the world is founded in
the sacred. Everything, insofar as it exists, is supported by the Creator. All
that is grating about the world, to that extent, is heavenly sanctioned. The
odium is transferred from the product to its producer. When God is assumed, He
is indicted as the progenitor of injustice and suffering. When there is no God,
the world is blamed (though, as shown above, this is a confused response). One
fights God by denying Him, and rebelling against His revealed will. One fights
the world by destroying it.
.. ..
Ivan Karamazov is a quintessential example of the discontent
considered here. He says, “All the knowledge in the world is not worth a
child’s tears.” Previously, Ivan told the story of a child who was wantonly
punished, to the point of torture and finally death. Who is most culpable: the
abuser, God, or the world?
.. ..
Does evil outweigh goodness? By giving evil more reality,
more weight, one tips the scales in favor of the discontented individual’s
opponent. He wants to lose because he cedes his mind’s arsenal to evil, he
interprets it as being fundamental. The pessimist and the optimist both stack
their decks in their attempts to win, but the optimist’s victory is the only
one that could be endorsed by both. Everyone wants good to win, only some do
not allow it to.

.. ..

.. ..
The problem is psychological as well as philosophical.
.. ..
Is the human tendency to desire justice warranted? Can a
person’s interiority—that meeting place of mind and heart—be justified? On the
subject, Simone Weil writes:
.. ..
The structure of a human heart is
just as much of a reality as any other in this universe, neither more nor less
of a reality than the trajectory of a planet. [...] If justice is inerasable
from the heart of Man, it must have a reality in this world.
.. ..
The intransigence of psychological tendencies can give
credence to a proposition as much as consistent scientific findings. The Truth
does not change; once the variables of the hypothesis are sufficiently
isolated, the results are undeniable. If the interiority of people consistently
assume values that are not ubiquitous in the world, that is not proof of their
irreality.
.. ..
If anything ought to be rebelled against, it is the
reduction of life’s value to an equation with factors of pleasure and
suffering.
.. ..
Why must suffering be final? Can suffering be redeemed? Yes,
Ivan, the child cries now. But is that the end of the story? If one is really convinced of the reality of justice, then the tears cannot be the end. No suffering is wanton. If justice is not real, then all the tears and smiles must be equally accepted. If it is, then tears are to be lamented but not hated. Why make the jump to that level of
resistance? Only because there is a sneaking suspicion that justice is chimerical, that personal interiority is wrong, that the evidence convicts the world of caprice uniformly.
.. ..
What is the outcome of this resistance? Does it stem the
flow of tears in the slightest? No. Discontent is born out of a sense of
helplessness. If we cannot bend the world to our will prior to our rebellion
because it is out of our control, what makes us think we can control it after rebellion?
As we can see in The Brothers Karamazov, the hopelessness that flows from Ivan’s rebellion relieves him of the energy to resist injustice in his life. He becomes complicit in the murder of his father. One cannot at once be convicted that justice is real and maintain that it is not really in the world without great psychological
tension.
.. ..
At its most most, only self-satisfaction, the pleasure of being on
the side of the righteous in theory while not having to be in practice.
.. ..
At its least least, the psychological outcome of resistance is resignation.