There’s The Door!…

“Our civilization is founded on the shambles and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself.”

             William James

            

            How can anyone relax with that bit of moroseness hanging over his or her head is anyone's guess. Mr. James was no piker when it came to intellectual stamina, but you have to admit his sentiment is a bit on the downbeat side. Well my dears in case you haven’t noticed I have arrived there myself! 

            I just turned 60 and boy is my raison d’etre tired!

            For all of you god fearing and god smacking absolutists out there surfing in the viscous wake of the surface show, there comes a time when push comes to shove, everything is on the table and all bets are off, by this I mean a time when both of you pikers need to put up or get the fuck out!

What if there was a door and beyond this door was the meaning of life. All you had to do literally was open the door and you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether life had any inherent meaning or we were just farcical creatures standing on the edge of an abyss in clown shoes.

I have said this many times, mostly to myself, usually between 4 and 5 am, that Man erects hero systems to stave off the Jamesian “worm at the core”, the self-conscious knowledge that someday, no matter how hard he tries to the contrary, he will be no more.

But without hero systems life would be like space walking without a tether. Moorings provide Man with the ability to negotiate the vagaries of living in a remorseless cosmos. However, to find out that your hero system, the one so carefully constructed, proved meaningless is a very daunting proposition.

Would an evangelical so resolute in his absolutism risk finding out everything that represents him was a sham and that his life, his emotional energy regarding this life was based on faulty intelligence?

Would an avowed atheist walk through the door only to find out that there is in fact is a creator of eternal omniscient presence?

I say no! Both positions are absolute, which makes them vulnerable to cognitive dissonance. Both believers would bravely reach for the doorknob, turn it then freeze, realizing that by opening this door they are risking everything. What rational person would take the chance of losing the very thing that defines their worldview and in turn how they are viewed in the eyes of this world?

Hero systems are so hard to give up, as the true believer is so often willing to defend it with great prejudice. Hero systems are bulwarks against the other. These totems to meaning are erected and set in concrete for the express purpose of being steadfast and unmovable in a very unwieldy world.

This is the point and the problem, living with uncertainty. However, if you are somehow able to achieve equanimity living with uncertainty by building your hero system on its sandy base, when the topography shifts you are much better equipped to roll with it. So much of our trouble as a species is based on this. We are cursed with the knowledge of our own mortality. And for most of us it is too much to bear.

Man’s fate will always be tied to this immortality problem. In my view he is doomed because he can’t see the forest for the trees. Governments all over the world cobble reasons to be and most of them eventually result in the killing of their fellow man. This has been going on since man used the skulls of the conquered to pave his sidewalks. How arrogant and unconscionable is it to think that any hero system has the complete truth? Is it any wonder that murder has not abated since the first tool was invented? Are all 6.5 billion of us so special and individuated that we cannot find any common ground in which to play a friendly game of catch? Countries carry on as worlds unto themselves with complete disregard for the fate of the entire planet. Man knows deep down that he lives in finitude, but chooses instead to live under illusion. He willfully sullies the atmosphere, commits crimes against humanity and plays his sad animal games because somehow the immensity of being alive is not enough of a song for him to sing.

Why is Man so fond of predestination? Why is he always looking for a map? Many have tried to draw one with disastrous results. What about just being alive? What is so wrong with digging that action?

From the day we are born we are doomed to an unknown end. Why sweat it? The greatest thinkers, from Becker to Nietzsche, knew that the tenuousness of being alive was at its essence its greatest attribute. By admitting that our common finitude ultimately binds us can we only push forward as a planet, brothers in arms steering away from hero systems whose potential might perpetrate our extinction. Instead of preoccupying ourselves with over sentimental notions about what happens after we leave this world wouldn’t it be more prudent to address the problems of existence while we are alive? Governments then could exchange ideas in the hope of broadening understanding not just for their countries, but also for the fate of the Family of Man.

Living is the only miracle Man really needs to address. Think of what Man would accomplish if he were released from the tyranny of faith and absolutism and absolutely accepted that this might be all that there is and time for making hay and love is limited? Life would be more precious if we accepted our eventual demise and viewed it as an incredible opportunity to bask in its glorious albeit evanescent glow? Yes, yes I say! Man’s spirit of inquiry, his desire to create screams one thousand fold “yes!” to being alive.

Each day is a gift to make something out of nothing. Write a story, play an instrument, expand. We are a culture that is in such desperate need to be entertained, enveloped in the white noise of 24-hour blather. We are content to smother under the cult of personality. We seem to only take interest in the vacuity of the lives of others and don’t seem to have any interest in uplifting our own. The question is not whether or not life has any meaning. This is unknowable. The question is what are you going to do with the life you have. You have been invited to the party. That is enough. Why stand on the sidelines watching when you could be dancing with the hottest carbon based life form in the universe?