Tag Archives: Metaphysics

The Observer and the Observed: Science cannot make the distinction, and thus it is philosophically illegitimate.

Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, Physics and Metaphysics, scientific determinism, Space, Uncategorized, , ,

One of my primary metaphysical axioms is the following: The observer cannot be a direct function of what is observed. A rejection of this axiom implies that the observer and the observed are fundamentally one and the same, in which case there is no such thing as either, since no distinction is possible. Nothing is observed, therefore no knowledge is acquired, therefore nothing can be said to exist, either the observer or the observed.

The reason for this axiom stems from my observation that the science, the scientific method, and scientific determinist claims about the nature of reality, all being iterations of empirical, materialist ideas when discussed in philosophical terms (which they should never be, as science is NOT philosophy….meaning that it is decidedly NOT a meta-analysis of reality and existence, and does not possess the tools be such), all presume—that is, prima facia—that such a distinction between the observer and what he observes simply does not exist. The observer is his body, his senses, his brain, and these are all material objects existing empirically and thus whatever scientific knowledge is acquired about those things which the body, brain, and senses observe about reality must also apply to the observer.

This of course is a clear—or at least, it should be clear—contradiction, and only by engaging in the cognitive dissonance ironically seen in mysticism, can science make such an assertion. If the observer is, at his most basic level, just a function of the same materials and forces which comprise what he observes, then there is of course no distinction possible by which the observer may know and understand what he IS versus what he IS NOT, which of course is a clear and obvious prerequisite to actually observing anything in the first place. The materialist assumptions of science when it is asserted as a philosophical discursion render scientific philosophies entirely self-defeating, and thus, to insist that science has anything to say regarding the nature and purpose of reality, is to insist that the “truth” is purely mystical, which means, irrational. As a philosophy, science, the scientific method, and scientific determinism should be rejected out of hand. The very fact that science roots itself it the ability of a scientist to actually observe natural objects and phenomena makes all assertions of scientific determinism/materialism/naturalism with respect to the nature of the observer himself an exercise in irony so profound as to make it perfectly ridiculous.

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The predictable “scientific” defense appeals to an illusory consciousness, which is simply another way of describing the inability of science to make a meaningful distinction between the observer and what he observes. This begs the question: If consciousness is an illusion, then an illusion of what, exactly?

You see, the claim of “the illusion of consciousness” really means that consciousness—meaning the conscious frame of reference which is ipso facto necessary in order that any actual observation can occur at all—is in its fundamental nature entirely anathema to existence. In other words, the “illusory consciousness” is just the baseless idea that not only does consciousness not exist, it is completely antithetical to existence and reality at root. That consciousness is necessary to make such a claim in the first place—because someone must be in a position to know, and thus to be aware, and thus to be conscious of the fact, in order that they may communicate it—is seemingly never considered. Truly, when scientists stray into the realm of metaphysics and philosophy on the whole, the limitations of their intellect, or the the lengths to which they will go to ignore it, become obvious and quite startling.

Another claim made in service to the idea that science and its philosophical iterations can make a distinction between the observer and the observed is that space is the distinction. In other words, the space which separates the senses, and thus the brain and body, serves as the distinction between what is observed and the one doing the observing. However, this does not work either, because space, if we look at it fundamentally, removed from it abstract mathematical renderings (abstract mathematical renderings which ironically necessitate consciousness…that is, a distinct, independent, conscious observer) is not actually anything at all. Space, in other words, is not something which exists, it is, in its nature, quite the opposite…it is the absence of existence. Space is void…it is null. It, by definition, is not there. This fact is why I have for years found the concept of “wormholes” amusing and entirely fantastical, at least when described as “holes in space”. My response has been to question just how you can have a hole in space when space, itself, is the hole. For example, how can you have a hole in the hole of a doughnut? How can you have a hole in the hole? How can space occupy space? It’s nonsense on its face.

So, no, space does not suffice to serve as the distinction between the observer and the observed because space IS NOT. Space does not exist in the first place to serve as a distinction or anything else, because space, independently, is meaningless, purposeless, and categorically null.

And here’s the hard part. Unfortunately for all of the empiricists, objectivists, scientific determinists, naturalists, etc., and despite all of the (false claims) of my appealing to the mysticism of Primacy of Consciousness, we are at some point simply going to have to accept the fact that all distinctions between objects, including the brain, body, and senses of the observer and that which he observes, are entirely conceptual. This is going to be a hard pill to swallow, but there is simply no rational, logically consistent way around it. Consciousness is categorically necessary to realty and existence at the most fundamental level. Period. Full stop. The sooner we accept this the sooner we can start to talk real philosophy, and, somewhat ironically, real science for a change.

It’s Not About Obedience Alone, it’s About Discipleship: The ruling class demands body, mind, and soul

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, government, , ,

Recently a deranged totalitarian thug over in Australia, where they have been popping up like mushrooms lately, declared that you are an anti-vaxxer, and an enemy of public health, if you oppose the government’s injection mandate, even if you have yourself received an injection. Now, this is obvious doublespeak and completely insane by even the most rudimentary of rational standards, but nevertheless it can be explained by briefly examining the nature of the State as a function of the collectivist metaphysics upon which it is established.

Collectivist metaphysics makes it clear that the State owns you, yes, but it’s rather more profound and fundamental than that. The more precise way of putting it is that the State IS you, or that it SHALL BE you.

The State—the government; the ruling class—being the incarnation of the Collective Ideal is, again, a collective metaphysical premise. This means that “you as you”, as an individual, is a completely incongruous and invalid concept with respect to the nature of Reality. The State, on principle, rejects “you”, or “you-ness”, as a categorical lie. Thus, when it comes to what and who you are under the authority of the State, there should ideally be no distinction whatsoever. The State is you; you are the State. Your true sanctification is therefore the complete possession of you—all you have, do, think, and say—by the ruling class.

You see, your Original Sin is your innate sense of autonomous Self; your exercise of will in service to that Self is your damnable rebellion. Obedience then, by itself, is simply an act of your own will—obedience is often done merely out of self-interest, which makes it, again by itself, just another act of rebellion. To merely obey and get the injection is not real compliance. It’s not really any better than not getting the injection at all. You must agree with your heart and mind that the injection mandate is good. You must submit your will to your rulers. You must agree and promote. You must evangelize. You must take active steps to condemn, ridicule, incarcerate, and destroy those who oppose the will of the State. The State is you, and you are it.

Body, mind, and soul…anything less makes you a criminal.

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Three)

General Philosophy, Identity, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, reason, , , , , , , , ,

“…how can one be born if one does not exist in the first place? How can you experience birth if birth is the fundamental beginning? There is no YOU to be born prior to your birth, and so the consequence is birth but there is no action which involves you at all. The action which is entirely mutually exclusive of you somehow concludes with you.”

I understand how abstruse and arcane this quote is, taken from part two of this series, so I decided to dedicated part three to clarifying the point made, and also insofar as this point necessarily relates to death. Also, in reading back this quote I was able to anticipate possible objections and concerns as a function of the overt complexity of the argument; those will likewise be addressed.

To begin with, let’s look at this analogy. The car you drive (if you have a car, that is…if not, well, you’ll still follow) did not always exist as the car, per se. Prior to being your car it was merely a collection of parts, and before that, piles of metal and glass and plastic and paint; and before that, raw minerals which were mined from the ground, or chemicals mixed and refined in some industrial laboratory. After a few years, the car is disposed of, and will then decompose and break down, back into its multiple parts. But these parts, prior to and after the existence of the car, per se, continue to exist. They do not return to oblivion in the same way that they do not spring from it. After all, we know that according to the law of conservation of mass that matter cannot be created and destroyed; and philosophically this is form of the logic of non-contradiction. Meaning that the reason matter cannot be fundamentally created or destroyed is because a thing which exists cannot spring from non-existence, and it cannot become non-existent. Its existence IS; it is axiomatic, it is a-priori; it is de facto.

Likewise, one might say that while a human being did not exist as such prior to birth, there did exist a collection of parts—hormones and fertilizer and eggs and sperm cells and enzymes and proteins, DNA…you get the idea—which eventually came together to form the human being—let’s say you, in the interest  of casualness—that we recognize as a specific individual person. Following death, you shall desololve and decompose back into the many parts which formed you. All of these parts existed prior to you, and they all will exist after you. You are the parts, and the parts are you, and the parts remain in some for as a-priori existing; they are absolute; eternal.

Here is the problem with this explanation, and I’m sure you’ve probably already discerned it. The car, coming from a collection of parts, does not have a sense of Self. It possesses no singular consciousness…it does not recognized, or rather, it does not observe and interpret its environment, and all of reality itself, from a singular, specific, constant frame of reference. The car, in other words, does not know it’s a car. The collection of parts which make up the car do not suddenly, once in “true” car form, begin to associate as a single entity, able to conceptualize itself as a single object, and likewise its environment and all things in it. The parts of the car do not suddenly reject instinctually and naturally their distinct existence and begin to call themselves “I”, “Myself”, “Me”.

Do you see what I am getting at here? The difference between a car and a human being is that human beings DO possess a singular consciousness; a single observational and conceptulaizing frame of reference which demands and necessitates that the parts are not in fact fundamental, but merely form one’s body. Yet one’s SELF—that by which those parts paradoxically utter the words “I”, “Myself”, “Me”, and “Mine”—is the true nature and essence of human existence. To deny this is to relegate consciousness to some inexplicable epiphenomenon, or infinite mystery, or an illusion, or some random blip of mathematical uncertainty…and yet none of these claims can possibly be true because Truth itself necessitates that they be entirely false.

And it is this Self—this singularity—which I mean when I say that the human being is said to begin at birth and end at death. Of course the parts of “you” live on…and of course “you” were born of parts. I am not obtuse or blind to this obvious and pedestrian fact. But the real YOU, your SELF…your agency, awareness, will, consciousness…is NOT of parts, because there is no One from many parts; no I from Not I; no Self Awareness from infinite unconsciousness. And absolute consciousness does not “return” or dissolve into absolute unconsciousness; what IS does not become object oblivion. The law of the conservation of matter must also infer a law of conservation of consciousness (Self Awareness; which is the ability to conceptualize Self and Other) unless we are prepared to claim that consciousness is a lie or an illusion…a claim is very easily debunked and dismissed as the very mysticism and irrationality that those who peddle it claim to oppose.

And this is why I utterly reject the notions of birth and death. Not because they serve as anthropological and biological concepts to describe the cosmically and mathematically prescribed evolution of a human bing, but because they are a deception, and their fundamental meanings are completely spurious at best. Birth and death can only apply to he who is conscious, and yet they utterly contradict consciousness because they render it transitory, coming from oblivion and returning to oblivion, and thus render consciousness a moot and worthless concept. Which renders birth and death themselves moot and worthless. And yet if consciousness IS, and is ACTUAL, it must be absolute and constant, and thus likewise birth and death are rendered moot and worthless. In either and all cases, birth and death are fundamentally meaningless. They may serve as convenient contextual and subjective descriptions of a person’s existence, but they are not absolute, and are not objective, and have no actual bearing on the root nature of human existence. Birth and death are irrelevant with respect to parts. The parts, being absolute and perpetual, according to the law of conservation of matter, are not ultimately born, and do not die, and thus if man is like a car, made up of perpetually existing parts in some form or another, then he does not die and he is not born any more than a car is born or dies, except in the purely figurative sense.

But man is said to be born and then to die; and any way you try to rationalize this claim, it fails. And it fails for one simple reason. Man, unlike his car, knows himself.

END

The God, Math: The religious dogma of science revealed through the “expanding universe” (Part TWO)

collectivist metaphysics, Determinism, Metaphysics, Metaphysics of Time, Objective Relativity, Physics and Metaphysics, scientific determinism, Space, , , , , , ,

The Wikipedia article on the expanding universe, cited in part one of this article series, does not acknowledge the necessity of the observer to Reality, particularly with respect to movement, and ignores the distinction between movement qua movement and relative movement. Instead it appeals to the artifice of the metric tensor to explain how the universe does not actually expand, and that space and objects in space do not actually move, and yet it kinda does and they kinda do. I submit that science has become, in some fundamental way, the pseudo-philosophical, and albeit implied, art of rejecting the observer as entirely superfluous to Reality, Existence, and thus by extension, Truth and Ethics. But instead of simply admitting that science has no frame of reference for describing (the fundamental nature of) the observer, and thus conceding that he should be left to other schools of thought and other methodologies for his description, science functionally declares his “objective” non-existence as observer-qua-observer (or, better stated, his “ultimately non-efficacious existence”) an empirical fact, and this  because the observer is scientifically revealed to be so.

I am not entirely certain why science promotes this folderol…a focused and overt dissertation on the subject has never been submitted. Nevertheless, what is overt, and painfully obvious, is that science has no rationally consistent methodology for describing and explaining the observer. The observer lies completely beyond the scope of science, and for some reason this is unacceptable to the scientific community. Is it arrogance? Bullish pride? Who knows…but by rejecting the observer as purely ephemeral at best, it attempts to rectify the inrinsic contradictions this rejection of the observer necessitates…for example, that the universe is not expanding, and space and objects in space do not actually move, except that it kinda is and they kinda do. And the metric tensor is a perfect example of an artifice used to reconcile the contradiction.

“Technically, neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale.”  [Bold print added for emphasis]

A few problems with this…I will attempt to plot the inconsistencies as clearly and succinctly as possible.

Earlier, I stated that the claims that “neither space nor objects in space move”, and “the universe does not expand into anything, and does not require space to exist outside of it” are correct. However, it is important that I qualify my agreement as being in some way quite superficial; that is, my agreement terminates once a deeper examination of these claims in the context of the full Wikipedia quote commences (see the beginning of part one for the full quote). And unfortunately, the examination needs only be cursory.

While it is true that objects “in space” do not move, the article, as I have mentioned, fails to qualify the meaning of the word “move”. That is, it does not make the important distinction between movement qua movement, which certainly does not exist, because this is impossible in a vacuum, and relative movement, which certainly does. In a vacuum, object A, alone, does not move, because there is and can be no relevant, measurable, definable distinction between, say, A at position X and A at position Y. A is simply “in” the vacuum…there is no “where” then to its existence except itself, as it were. It just exists. It is A qua A. But if we add object B to the vacuum, then there is no longer the existence of A qua A, but also the relative existence of A to B. And now there can be a relevant, measurable, and definable distinction between A’s position at X and its position at Y—as relative to B. In this context then, A does in fact move, it’s simply that the movement is relative, not absolute. And the converse of this is also true—that B may move relative to A. Of course, it is the necessary role of the observer to determine which object, A or B, is to be the reference for the relative movement between the two. Is A revolving around B, for example, or is B revolving around A? That question can only be answered by the observer, because only the Self is constant.

Moving on.

While it is rightly stated that the universe does not expand into anything, it should, for clarity and veracity’s sake, be stated that, this being the case, the universe does not actually expand at all. Space, and its corollary, time, being non-existent outside of the universe, along with anything else, means that the universe simply exists relative to itself, so to speak…or in other words, non-relatively. Meaning that the universe simply “is what it is”. In actuality, “the universe” is simply a label we give to the sum and substance of Reality. The universe, thus,  is not a thing, so to speak, but an abstraction, and as such it holds no deeper meaning nor significance than as an abstract context for Reality. The expansion of the universe then is simply a way of describing a particular form of relative movement between certain objects man observes in his environment.

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“It is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that actually changes in scale.”

Spacetime is an interesting concept, or phenomenon, you could say, I suppose, as it is presented to us by science. It is referred to in physics as being a “coordinate system”. But here in the Wikipedia article we see an implied distinction between the coordinate system, or the metric tensor, and spacetime.

So which is it? Is spacetime a coordinate system, or is the coordinate system distinct? Well, due to the intrinsic rational inconsistencies with the scientific conceptual perspective of spacetime, and being familiar with science’s penchant for excusing these inconsistencies by appealing to contradiction and then pretending that the contradiction is understood and appreciated by the “enlightened” few—that is, the mathematically and scientifically gifted, who today, ironically, comprise our postmodern priest class—I would say that  science most likely considers it both and neither.

Not that it matters to us really, for it is clear to the rational observer, who resists the scientific community’s determination to exceed the scope of its mathematical boundaries, that spacetime is purely a conceptual placeholder. That is, neither space nor time actually exist. The abstractions of “space” and “time” may be rendered as a mathematical coordinate system, but these are not object or empirical themselves—spacetime is not a thing to either be a coordinate system or revealed as or translated into a coordinate system. It is instead a product of man’s conceptualizing powers—a means by which man cognitively organizes certain objects in his environment.

Space is not a thing itself, it is by definition and by rational necessity the absence of things; you cannot have holes in space (e.g “worm holes”), for space is the hole. And objects do not exist in space…they simply exist. The whole point of space, the vacuum, is that it is not. And objects cannot exist in that which does not exist. And time, being a continuum, is likewise a conceptual abstraction—a product of man’s mind; a product of the conscious observer. Time is and must necessarily be a continuum, for time can have no beginning or end, it is the beginning and the end. Time can have no future or past or present, it is the future, past, and present. Time, in other words, is an infinitely linear conceptual construct which is divided into mutually exclusive units of past, present, and future, which are qualified and quantified for practical application. Spacetime, then, at its fundamental root is the abstract conceptual environment in which all empirical/material objects are said to exist at the irreducible physical level. Nothing more. The metric tensor, or the coordinate system, which physics declares the corollary existential, even ontic I would argue, manifestation of spacetime, is simply another abstract quantification of it.

Naturally science disagrees with this…the metric is no mere abstraction, you see, but a god of sorts. It has causality, and its causality is authoritative; and being mathematical and thus predictable, is determinative; and being determinative is absolute—omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Do not take the assertion that the metric “governs” the size and geometry of spacetime as some unimportant thing, its deeper implications to be glossed over as unimportant or pat. The metric governs—it commands, it controls. It acts and the universe inexorably follows suit. It declares what is to be done and the universe obeys. The universe does not itself expand, and objects and spacetime do not move, and yet the metric changes in scale, and so it does and so they do. They do not, and yet through the mysterious omnipotence of the math, they do. The contradiction, though a contradiction, is nevertheless true, and is a testament to the power of god. He who has ears, let him hear. The power of god is wiser than man…man cannot comprehend it. For man’s reason has no frame of reference, no means of apprehending or processing an IS which is simultaneously and IS NOT. Man, the priests of science declare, must accept such truths on faith alone. Math is god; and he doesn’t need your acceding or your concession to validate his truth.

The universe is merely an extension of god, who created all things ex nihilo…from nothing. And god is the metric tensor; the math. The math is infinite…changing into itself; expanding into its own infinity. So the numbers change, but they don’t, because the numbers go on forever. There is no beginning nor end; the difference in the scale of the metric is the difference in degrees of infinity, which of course is no difference at all. The universe expands, but it doesn’t; objects in space move, but they don’t. The universe, objects, spacetime…they all exist, but they don’t. But how is this possible? Because the god of science declares it so.

The intellectual disagreements between religion science, it seems, boil down to little more than debates about whose god can beat up the other.

END

The God, Math: The religious dogma of science revealed through the “expanding universe” (Part ONE)

Determinism, Metaphysics, Physics and Metaphysics, scientific determinism, Space, Time and Space, , , , ,

Accepting that the idea of the expansion of the universe is a phenomenon considered relatively well-understood and axiomatic by the scientific community, and perhaps in general, let’s assume Wikipedia to be a credible citation for summarizing expansion:

“The expansion of the universe is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not expand “into” anything and does not require space to exist “outside” it. Technically neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale.”

Focus for a moment on this section: “…it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself…”

How does Wikipedia define “metric”?

”In general relativity, the metric tensor…may be thought of as a generalization of the gravitational potential of Newtonian gravitation.”

“And if we look up the word “tensor” we are told that this is a:

”…mathematical object anologous to but more general than a vector, represented by an array of components that are functions of the coordinates of space.” 

In other words, what science, particularly physics, is telling us is that the only thing which is active, and thus existing (where existence to be efficacious must be active, not passive…for existence which does not “do” is not actually existing) is the mathematical coordinate system. All else then, is passive. All else except the metric tensor does not do; does not move; does not act. Thus, existentially speaking, it is purely illusory. Reality is, in true essence, a set of infinite abstract placeholders which somehow the mathematically-inclined observer may apprehend and define, even though he, himself, is not actually there.

This may seem like quite a large leap of logic. How does one arrive at such a philosophical conclusion from a purely academic monograph on tensors, vectors, geometry, and spacetime?

I’ll explain.

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I was somewhat surprised to see the Wikipedia article on the expansion of the universe admit that the universe cannot and does not actually expand into anything. I was further surprised to see it admitted that neither space nor objects in space actually move. Accepting the logic of the relativity of movement in a vacuum, the conclusion that there is no movement qua movement (non-relative movement) would seem quite self-evident, yet I’ve never seen it admitted by science. Perhaps I’ve just not been hanging around the right circles and source material.

At any rate, both the claim that the universe does not actually expand (expansion qua expansion) and that space and objects in space do not actually move (movement qua movement) are of course completely true. Perhaps the reason for my surprise at seeing them admitted in a science article is that such claims are more a metaphysical acknowledgment than a physical one. They require a certain meta analysis of the universe qua the universe, rather than the universe as experienced relative to the observer. The former is falls more within the scope of philosophy, the latter, physics. This of course is fine, there is nothing wrong with anyone citing a fact, it’s just that I’ve grown more accustomed to science hijacking philosophy and then promptly mangling it like a toddler on a jelly sandwich instead of actually accepting its distinct truth.

Unfortunately, no sooner does the article make the (albeit implied) important and complex distinction between physics and metaphysics, when this distinction is almost immediately obliterated, with science once again hijacking philosophy and handling it like a monkey handles a clarinet.

What this article implies is that all of reality is boiled down to a mathematical artifice…a McGuffin, you could call it. You see, to bridge the gap between metaphysics and physics, a bridge which is recognized by the declaration that the universe doesn’t actually expand (that is, it doesn’t expand into anything…and by this we can extrapolate the logical assertion thus that the universe doesn’t actually expand at all) and that space nor objects in space actually move, science submits a purely abstract, purely cognitively manifested contrivance of an infinite set of specifically structured numerical and symbolic placeholders. It replaces the whole of efficacious (active, and thus, existent) reality with this set, which of course has the effect, intended or unintended (it doesn’t matter), of punting the entire real field of metaphysics and all of philosophy with it into the endless abyss of mysticism.

And even more egregious is the fact that the irony is completely lost on those atheists who appeal to science as proof of the rationality of dismissing God and the notion of God altogether. Because only fools believe in the fairy tale of the “magic man in the sky”, whilst the rational objectivists and sane empiricists can see that clearly all things are created and controlled instead by an invisible, yet omnipotent, omniscient, and ominipresent mathematical coordinate system summing all things to infinity on infinity.

If that’s not psychological projection then I don’t know what is.

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Movement, you see, doesn’t exist…that is, the article tells us that the universe does not expand, and that space and objects in space do not move, but instead it is the “metric” which changes in scale”.

Except of course, that there is movement. The concept of movement is not irrational; actual movement does happen…the idea is efficacious; action occurs. It only needs to be qualified that movement is relative. An observer needs to be part of the equation in order to provide a reference for the relationship between two or more objects in a vacuum…because the observer—the Awareness of Self (the “I” of Self)—provides the (only rational) constant for object relationship in a vacuum. Once the observer is present to declare that, for example, “X shall revolve around Y” or “Y shall revolve around X”, then movement can be objectively defined, said to exist, and this efficaciously and actually so, and then mathematically measured. Mathematics are a conclusion, or an effect, not a cause, you see.

But science doesn’t accept the rationality and actuality of the observer. Because it has long ago confused and conflated mathematical truth with philosophical truth, it has relegated the observer to at best an undefinable and ultimately irrelvant epiphenomenon, inconsistent and incompatible with reality, because reality is to be wholly defined scientifically, which is to say mathematically.

Movement, even relative movement, is jettisoned and replaced with a metric which “changes in scale”, which is not movement at all, really , but merely the predetermined “evolution” of an infinite numerical and symbolic mathematical data set. And thus, since nothing actually moves, up to and including the universe, the existence of such is entirely passive, which means that its “existence” doesn’t actually exist. Because if existence doesn’t mean existing, then there is no such thing as existence in the first place. The universe, and all in it, and thus you and me of course, aren’t actually there. There is no observer. And thus there is no constant for movement. All is just an infinite data set which reveals a particular sum at a particular predetermined rate at a particular predetermined time…and all of these particulars are merely illusory, too, for the data set is, again, infinite. Thus, all units of data are merely units of infinity, which renders them ultimately impossible to define. So the grand answer to the cosmic question of life and existence and reality and truth and everything can be summed up by science as merely the  conclusion that “infinity equals infinity”. And, I mean, I don’t even know what you’d call this. It’s some kind of grand atrocity of nihilistic intellectual error, to be sure, but if there is a name for it which illustrates appropriately its level of debasement of all morality and meaning, I don’t know what it is. I couldn’t begin to conjure one up, it’s that bad.

END part ONE

The Conflicting Realites of State and Individual Citizen: The ethics difference

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, law, Metaphysics, morality, Violence, , , , , , , , , ,

All governments by nature and implicit definition are founded upon collectivist, not individualist, metaphysics; and I have discussed the differences between these two metaphysical constructs many times on this blog. Government represents an Ideal, which is simply an abstract archetype for Reality, itself…a superstructure, or meta-structure, if you like, but it is completely subjective. Government is is tasked with organizing the existence of both humanity and its environment into this grand, overarching ideal, which, being subjective, could be anything at all: a Worker’s Utopia; We the People; the Aryan Nation; Society of Social Justice (i.e. Marxist Communism); God’s Chosen People; the Diversity Paradise; the King’s Land…you get the idea. In order to do this, government must first interpret Reality in a collective sense…that is, it must assume that all that is seen is a direct and absolute function of the Ideal, and government’s job is to subdue the ostensibly disparate components of Reality, including humanity, and organize them into a cooperative system which works collectively to singularly serve the interest of the Ideal…which functionally means serving the governemnt—the State—which is the material incarnation of the Ideal, containing the sum and substance of the Ideal’s entitled power of practical utility. To the individual citizen, this power, as it inevitably becomes more and more overt and comprehensive, looks like tyranny; he sees soaring tax rates and expanding government interference in commerce and free market value exchange as theft; he sees the subterfuge, doublespeak, hypocrisy, artifice, racketeering, and general political corruption as bearing false witness; he sees the warmongering, empire building, law-enforcement excess and brutality, the facilitation or outright commission of foreign and domestic political coups, false flag crises, and the insatiable military industrial complex as murder. In other words, the individual, particularly one living in a western reprentative democracy, which is founded upon the illusionary and completely contradictory-to-government notions of individual right to life and liberty…yes, the individual is operating on a different set of ethics, and this is because he is, even subconsciously, operating likewise from a different metaphysical interpretation of reality (usually…I’m speaking in general terms). You see, the individual assumes that he exists as himself, a singular agent and agency, a Self qua Self, with a singular and efficacious and actual Volition, which exists of and for and to HImself, and therefore possesses a innate and inherent right to own himself. And this means that the role of the State—though impossible, representing the very denial of government entirely—is to protect and promote his body, which he owns, and thus the product of his body’s labor, and thus to promote free association and uncoerced value exchange as a means of social, politcal, and economic association. From this Individualist principle the Individual thus assumes that coercive State policy (threats of punishment to achieve political ends) constitutes implicit (and often explicit) murder; contradiction, hypocrisy, pandering, doublespeak, subterfuge, exagerration, and propaganda is lying; taxes (at least in some forms…in reality, however, all forms), debt, economic meddling, coporate and special interest bribery, and subsidization (at least in some forms…in reality, all forms) is theft. The individual feels this way because the ethics to which he subscribes—the ethics of morality, as opposed to legality—demand that he do so. Moral ethics establish the Individual as the Standard of Universal Good and Truth. And since the Individual is defined according to the metaphysics as Singualar, Conscious, Conceptualizing, and therefore fully Volitional/Willfull, then uncoerced value exchange (i.e. trade/contract in all of its various forms, both formal and informal) represents the only ethical means by which the metaphysics can be applied rationally to Reality. The forced removal of ones property, or theft, becomes evil; violations of one’s body become murder; interpreting or rendering reality in ways which violate the Individual’s ability to properly ascertain and thus organize it (hypocrisy, false witness, deception, etc.) becomes lying. Murder, theft, lying…these are all evil according to the ethics of morality; and morality is entirely and only a function of Individualist metaphysics. And morality is NOT legality, and thus, it has nothing to do with the State. And what’s more, murder, theft, and lying only exist as a function of moral ethics. They are not and cannot be meaningful to  legal ethics. In other words, as far as the State is concerned, the lying to, and the murder and theft of the individual do not exist. And this is because the Indivdual, from the frame of reference of the collectivist metaphysics from which the State operates, does not exist. You cannot take from one who does not own himself; cannot lie to one who does not know himself; cannot murder he who is not himself.

And here we begin to see the conflict…the mutually exclusive frames of reference between the Individual Citizen and the State Official is the singular foundation of all social choas, in all forms both public and private I submit, and is implied and necessarily animated and catalyzed by the State, with increasingly authoritarian consequences. The establishment of the State creates a society where individualist and collectivist metaphysics collide. The implicit and natural awareness of the moral right of the individual to own himself is disasterously combined with the implicit legal right of the State to coerce by force the indivdual into a collective reality. The friction begins as a small festering sore which is aggravated by ever increasing government despotism against which the individual rebels in whatever way he can that will not run him afoul of the law, to no avail, as he is hopelessly outgunned by the money and violent power of the State, and marginalized and demagoged by powerful and powerfully dogmatic explicit and implicit collectivist institutions and philosophies which overtly and inadvertently promote collectivist metaphysics, like the media and the scientific and religious determinists. Thus, as more and more individuals wallow in the misery of a marginalized and meaningless existence in an ever-increasing insane asylum of collectivist disciples run by an almost unfathomably powerful and rich ruling class, and as more collectivist polices are inacted to “help” those who suffer from polices designed to destroy them by denying their existence altogether, the moral and psychological foundations crumble. The ruling class implements more and more draconian strategies to deliever on the collectivist “Eden” promised to “the People”, many of the ruling class unaware that they are the only ones who can ever possibly live in it because they are it.  All of these strategies fail, of course, because they necessarily must, because the logical presumption of collectivist metaphysics, whether a given politician knows it or not, is that the eradication of individuals is the ethical Good, and the arrant achievement of the Good is the whole damn point of of the metaphysics in the first place. Through the socialization of just about everything—from healthcare to food to education to transportation to employment to childcare to leisure—indolence is affirmed, promoted, and perpetuated. This subsidized indolence leads necessarily to the irrelevance and forsaking of one’s mind, which leads to the forsaking—implicit or explicit— of one’s Self. Eventually, no longer able to extract any more meat or leather from the tax cattle, and no longer able to pay its foreign and domestic creditors, and collapsing under the weight of debt and infighting and external pressures and threats, and thus with no one left to functionally rule and thus no one left to compel into the Collective Ideal, the ruling class collapses or dissipates or scatters or infiltrates other societies/social networks and so goes the nation. This unavoidable end is often bloody and ferocious and apocalyptic, but sometimes it fizzles with a whimper. Either way, end it shall, and there are always mass graves of some sort or another left behind to remind us of the failure of collectivist metaphysics. Not that anyone really notices because, like the Matrix, it always starts all over again eventually.

You will never convince the State that it is tyrannical, no matter how egregious its excesses or atrocious and self-serving its transgressions, because it simply possesses no frame of reference for its own tyranny. It certainly sees itself as the Authority of the land, but you must understand that it holds to a fundamentally different interpretation of the concept. To the individual citizen (and to the individualist it is explicit and obvious), State authority is simply force—government coercing via violence and threats of violence its citizens out of their life and property. In other words, though they perhaps expect the State to act morally, they comply with the State’s legality. That is, they understand that the way the State operates is to take from the individual against his will, considering will as irrelvant with respect to legal obligation, in the interest of the “greater”, or “common good”. The individual operates from a place of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for much of the lifespan of the nation, accepting a weird and ultimately unworkable amalgamation of legal ethics and moral ethics. Eventually the people begin to notice the stark shift of social norms in the direction of the legal end of the ethical “spectrum”; this is inevitable, as the whole point of the State is to eventually subsume all vestiges of individualism into collectivist “reality”. There is greater reliance on government violence and coercion to “solve” problems, compromise or cooperation become more and more unlikely as the polarization between individualist and collectivist ideology becomes a “cold civil war”; voters are bribed with government promises to subsidize their concerns away, which inevitably requires higher taxes and even higher national debt, polarizing the nation even more as concerns about the solvency of the economy and the legitimacy of the system on the whole begin to send waves of anxiety and anger throughout the populace. Citizens are distracted from the obvious political corruption and mendacity through the bromide of political circuses, vapid entertainment heavily submerged in socialist ideology, and the corporate and political encouragement to engaged in all forms of hedonism, specifically gluttony and sexual promiscuity, with the destruction of the nuclear family and the epidemc of abortion and single motherhood further destroying social cohesion and trust, promoting even more anger and fear, all of which is naturally exploited by the ruling class towards the achievement of even more power and wealth. The citizenry is also distracted by the wanton and widespread legal double standards which excuse the political and celebrity and corporate classes from everything from child sex trafficking to open murder, whilst the middle class is terrorized by threats of being ostracized, or worse, and called insane conspiracy wackos  for merely pointing this out; and accused of all forms of bigotry for not accepting its “responsibility” to “pay its fair share”, which is simply code for accepting and embracing neo-Marxist ideology and in particular socialist economics. The lower class, whilst being imprisoned in massive numbers for the slightest and most anodyne of infractions, and imprisoned in general in ghettos of institutionalized poverty and nihilism, is used to threaten the middle class…the ruling class will have no choice, you see, but to unleash the hordes of lower/working class “victims” who are just itching to exact revenge upon their middle class slavemasters—the middle class being the bourgeoisie root of all “evil” in the world according to the Marxist collectivists who increasingly own the narrative, and this as the media becomes little more than a State Ministry of Propaganda . Borders are purposefully left porous, as a tacit lower class invasion is permitted by the State, terrorizing the middle class into greater submission. The celebrity, corporate, and political classes are of course safe and sound behind the thick, high walls, bristling with guns, of their ivory towers, so such threats and invasions against the middle class come often and easy, as those who wield power rest imminently secure. After all, worst case scenario, they can always flee to Costa Rica or some other foreign haven, and access their tax-free offshore accounts to finance their lavish lifestyles until kingdom come.

But understand, again, that because the State functions entirely from the ethics of legality and not morality, it does not acknowledge that tyranny is possible for it; it does not accept that its Authority can ever be authoritarian. For the State, theft, murder, and false witness do not exist. It cannot steal from, kill, or lie to that which it owns according to the metaphysical principles upon which it established. Remember, according to the State’s collectivist metaphysics, all of Reality is to be brought into accordance with the Collective Ideal, which is the absolute source of Reality, and the means of doing this and thus the practical (material) incarnation of this Ideal is the State. In other words, the collective Ideal is Reality, and the State’s job is to organize it so that it reflects this Ideal aesthetically. And the “perfect” aesthetics are achieved by making a “perfect” Reality, epistemologically, ethically, and politcally, all beginning with the metaphysics.

The State machinations of this undertaking may to us look like murder, theft, deception, incompetence, and corruption…and in fact they are (for the metaphysics of individualism are perfectly rational, and never contradict, which makes them True and Good; Collectivist metaphysics are thus necessarily False and Evil…and their near infinite rational inconsistency on every level bears this out). But to the State—the ruling class and their corporate/celebrity bedfellows—murder, theft, et al is merely the necessary discharging of its collectivist obligation; the perfunctory disposing of its own naturally-entitled property. Why do you think Eichmann was so blasé about his complicity in the mass extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany? Because as far as he was concerned, it was merely an administrative task…like filing records, date entry, and keeping the books. He said as much himself.  And, to be frank, he was being entirely consistent with the metaphysics which he accepted as absolute and irreducibly true. The State technically owned the Jews and everyone else, in his mind…and therefore it can’t be murder then. After all, the State has a right to do what it wants with what it rightly owns.

And by the by, all of this is true for the Church, which defines God implicitly as a Collective Ideal which it exists to discharge upon the earth by force and threats of hell and torment and excommunication. God cannot sin, you see, not fundametally becaue he is wholly rational and considers all men to be their own agents, entitled to their own lives and property and choice…in other words, not because He is moral. But because He is the Collective Ideal…He IS everything, and therefore owns everything. Thus, there is no such thing as murder, theft, et al for God. It’s all His legal right to exercise the legal ownership of His property. And the Church is His Presence on earth. So to those of you who think they shall find refuge in a some kind of “moral theocracy”, think again. “Moral theocracy” is a contradiction in terms.

END

You’re Not Saved by Being a Christian, You’re Saved by Being YOU: The lie of collective salvation

Christian fallacy, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, Uncategorized, , , ,

In the Christian Church, I don’t care which denomination—it doesnt matter, they all share the same foundational metaphysics—what does it mean to be saved?

Now, you might think that this question is a prologue to a deep and meaningful disquisition of Christian soteriology. However, I can assure you that this is quite uneccesary…for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the vast majority of Christians find such a thing completely useless (and couldn’t even begin to comprehend it even if they wanted to…which they don’t). They fancy themselves far too divinely enlightened and practical (they are in fact neither) in their theology to bother with something quite this abstract. In this case, then, I will answer the question according to the “enlightened” and “practical” faith of the Christain church:

It means to believe in Jesus.

But that seems awfully vague, and it is, so we must press a little.

What does it mean, exactly, to believe in Jesus?

It means to renounce your sins and vow to obey God’s moral commands. It is a commitment to reject your “natural” self—your “pre-salvation” you—and to be “born again”.

Now, here is where the whole thing goes off the rails, wheels flying wildly in all directions. Because here we get into the metaphysics of it…though most Christians, to their own folly, don’t even recognize the word. And this is why discussing soteriology with Christians is a complete waste of time. The whole religion dissolves into mysticism; and “faith’ becomes an antonym to “reason” and “sensibility”. Interestingly enough, and sadly, this is also where Christianity goes completely extra-biblical…or anti-bibilcal, really. In other words, there is little to nothing of Christ in any of the Christian ideas one would normally associate with salvation .

The root assumption behind salvation in Christian theology (or rather, ideology) is that the “born-again” you is both fundamentally different from and fundamentally the same as the the “natural you”. And it is this metaphysical contradiction which undermines the faith, and reduces it to either quaint novelty (as in the Amish or Mennonites), anodyne and stultifying cynicism (“middle America” mainline churches)  or mendacious, civilization-wrecking autocracy (Augustine, Luther, Calvin); and all degrees within and among these. You see, the “old you” by dint of birth is unable to please God due to the pervasive wickedness which is a function of your base existence, period. In other words, the very fact that you are is why you are evil and cannot please God naturally. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” the Chruch perversly and irrationally interprets to mean that the very birth of men condemns them to fall under God’s wrath. Man’s “original sin” is that he is born at all. You qua you—you as existant—is evil incarnate.

Of course Christians will take issue with my use of the world “interpret”, claiming that they are simply declaring what the Bible “plainly states”. But this comes from the false belief that what is written in the Bible is somehow immune from interpretation—that somehow the Bible is a closed system of meaning. That it’s a truth in and of itself and thus outside of man, and therefore it is a truth that man must be “enlightened to”, as opposed to something written specifically for him and from him and speaking to his particular existential frame of reference.

This is mystic nonsense—an iteration of Christianity’s pagan-gnostic roots. The Bible is written in language, and as such it is necessarily interpreted by those who posses the innate ability and inherent reference to give it meaning: man. Christians do not simply “declare” the Bible, despite what they may think and claim, they interpret it. And they do so badly.

So, prior to salvation you can do no good thing because of your fundamental depravity. Now, I understand Christians will object to this, arguing that, on the contrary, you can do good but that you have a “tendency” to “trend” (by which they mean inexorably) toward evil; however, this claim does not suffer rational scrutiny. You see, according to the metaphysics, man’s evil is not at root a function of what he does but what he is. And since what he is is evil, then all he does is evil by definition, no matter how “good” it may appear. Because man’s nature is utterly fallen, and “fallen” is the place from which all men are categorically spawned, there is no moral difference between the man who runs an orphanage and the man who burns one down. Both men are equally evil in root nature, both men require salvation in equal measure. and thus what they do must be morally valued equally. Ethics always follow metaphysics, and actions are valued by essence, NOT the other way around.

Man’s existential evil makes him unable to be good, which means that he cannot choose Christ…for such a choice, even if made by him, would necessarily be meaningless. Absolute Evil cannot conjoin with the perfect Good of God’s Son, no matter how much it wants or chooses to. A mystic conversion is the only “solution” to the existential conundrum in which man finds himself. Hence the get-out-of-reason-free cards of election and predestination. God arbitrarily—as far as man is concerned—chooses those who shall choose Him…and if this seems like good old fashioned contradiction, that’s because it is. So don’t waste your time trying to make sense of it. Those who are saved thus become “new creatures”, no longer defined by their collective existential depravity, but by their collective identity as “God’s chosen”. In other words, it has nothing to do with what a man chooses, individually, to do or not do, according to his own singular reference and volition of “I’ or “me”; no, his new identity in Christ is merely a function of some mystical and mysterious conversion from existential “evil” to existential “good”.

In as much as man’s “evil” has nothing to do with what he thinks about himself or does for himself from himself, but everything to do with simply what he is at root…his evil, thus, is in a sense “outside” of him. He has no choice in it…his choice is irrelevant. Everything he does is evil, no matter what it is, because he IS evil. And likewise his “new nature” in Christ—that is, it has nothing to do with him. What he chooses or thinks, in and of his own individual Self, is irrelevant to God’s determining power. Man is a bystander to both his damnation (from brith) and his salvation (from “new birth”). In this sense then, his salvation is collective, NOT individual. It is an Ideal into which he is gang-pressed, not a choice he makes for and from himself. The proof of his salvation is his membership in the Church; and the Church is the collective institution which is given the authority by God to manifest the salvation Ideal upon the earth.

So what does this mean post-salvation for the new Christian? They have been chosen…they are saved, no longer totally depraved, right? No longer victims of their natural, sinister, sinful selves. They are free…free to choose and do good, right?

Well, yes and no, and thus we have more of the same contradiction which undermines all rationality within Christianity. The same rational inconsistencies which plague pre-salvation man and his election unto and into Christ following him to salvation. Man is saved in spite of himself…he does not actually choose Christ because this requires a natural and innate ability to recognize good, to choose it, and to follow through with it, and this ability he does not have because he IS Evil. And this being the case, by what means or power can man, now saved, recognize and do any good thing? By the same power which saved him, of course—that is, God’s grace. Which of course, like salvation itself, has nothing fundamentally to do with man qua man. By ”God’s grace” Christians mean God’s absolute, all-pervasive power over all of Creation, to determine it to its inevitable divine conclusion. So the “good” that the saved man is, and the “good” he recognizes and obeys are an essence and action which are not really of him at all. In short, it’s fair to say that post-salvation man is still just as vile and wicked as he was pre-salvation. Nothing has changed but semantics. Man is not “changed”, but rather, “covered”, which is as close a euphemism as you can get I supppose.

When we are talking metaphysics…when we are talking about the very root essence of a thing, this essence is utter and absolute. It is not transmutable; it is not transient; it is fundamental. It is the infinite core of what a thing IS, by which it exists in reality in the first place. What a thing is existentially is that immutable core from which it exists, period. And thus “this” cannot become “that”. If man is evil, existentially, before salvation, then he is likewise evil, existentially, after. And there is no argument one can make to the contrary which is not ultaimtely going to be punted into the cosmic abyss of “God’s mystery”. There is no means except the surrendering of one’s sense where one can reasonably declare that Absolute A becomes Absolute B.

And Christians know this, at least on some level, which is why they insist that even the saved can still commit sin. You get sin from where? Sin nature. Otherwise, it’s not sin, its just bad or immoral action. To describe an act of sin is to describe the act according to a nature that pervades man at his very root. Christianity recognizes that man’s immutable sin nature follows him into his salvation, which is why the church encourages the laity to “preach the Gospel to themselves every day”. Even Christians need to be reminded how they can do no good thing, and to recognize salvation as a life of “grace”, not individual and volitonal moral living, as though man is capable of such a thing. Try being a Christian and taking credit for any moral or rational choice, and proclaiming that you thus justly earn the reward of such a choice. You will be patently and shamelessly accused of rank heresy on the spot…of ignoring or being blind to God’s grace. Though, to be fair, they may say it nicely. But keep it up and see what happens. Christians have short patience for rejections of “grace”.

Christians never dawdle in reminding each other that it is foolish pride for them to consider the idea that they, at any time, pre or post-salvation, possess any inherent ability to do any good thing. Indeed, the mark of a false Christian is one who believes that he is somehow  good in himself. He is not. He is evil. His salvation was God’s mysterious grace, and likewise whatever good he does or befalls him after salvation is entirely a product of that same grace. Man’s nature never fundamentally changes. He is saved entirely in spite of himself, and likewise his salvation is “worked out” in spite of himself. In other words, there is nothing of You qua You that has anything at all to do with why God chose to save you, and how God manifests this salvation in your life. You qua You—the “I” of “My Self”—is utterly evil, and thus must be completely sidelined before, during, and after salvation.

So back to our original question: What does it mean to be saved?

Well, the real answer is that it means nothing for YOU, because YOU are nothing. You qua You—You, the Individual—are exchanged for the collective Ideal of what it means to be “Christian”. “Christian” is a collective. “You” are now an indistinguishable component of the Church, which is the physical incarnation of the Ideal. “You” have been aborted by the metaphysics. Only the Collective matters.

This is salvation.

And this is a lie.

END

 

How Existence Destroys Reality

Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, , ,

Ability underwrites all action. Action, itself, being necessarily relative (that is, relatively discerned—which corollates to a conceptual definition of what is acting and how, which corellates to an Observer) can imply (epistemological) distinction as spawning from metaphysical (or “existential”) equality.  Relativity, you see, is corollary at the metaphysical level to Ability, and thus distinctions in actions, whilst they imply and corollate to epistemological differences (epistemology being the category where objects, or “things which are” enter into the philosophical paradigm ), do not imply differences in root metaphysical (“existential”) value and essence, and this because of the necessary metaphysics spawning from Ability as Primary, as opposed to Existence.

Existence, as metaphysical primary, is not actually being…not actually existing, because ability (to exist) is not implied, and thus neither is action. And therefore, relativity, a necessary metaphysical foundation of meaning (truth, or the object definition of what is) is likewise not implied, making epistemological distinctions between things (which exist) impossible. That is, from existence as primary we cannot logically draw the conclusion that existence exists—that it does existence—because if that were the case—if existence actually existed—then the ability to exist would be necessitated as that which underwrites existence, thus supplanting it as the metaphysical primary (which it does).

Existence, then, as primary, is not an act from ability, but merely an Is from an Is. The metaphysical primary becomes a rank abstraction: Is qua Is.

Existence doesn’t act (exist) because it’s able, but rather it Is because it Is. In other words, existence as primary is tautological…a rational error, from which no truth and certainly no reality, can be drawn.

”Is qua Is” cannot mean equal metaphysical (“existential”) value and essence whilst also correlating to and implying epistemological distinctions (different and distinct things which exist) because epistemological distinctions (by the Observer) cannot be made absent action and relativity rooted in Ability. By making existence passive, it also becomes monolithic and intrinsically indivisible, and therefore implies that at the most fundamental, absolute level the things which exist are all the same thing—that being “existence”. But of course the idea that different things are really the same thing is meaningless folderol…contradiction. So with existence as the metaphysical primary we have a root singularity from which all reality springs which is undefinable, and therefore unknowable, because it precludes existential distinctions between and amongst things, and thus no thing can actually be said to exist at all, in which case existence itself cannot be said to exist. Existence, as the metaphysical primary, becomes nothing, and all of reality with it.

 

More on the Self and the Fallacy of “Existence Exists”

Epistemology, General Philosophy, Identity, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, , , ,

Let’s take a chair.

Is the chair able to exist…as a chair?

No?

But if it is unable to exist, then how does the chair manifest its existence…how can it BE a chair if it’s not able to be a chair?

Let’s say that Ability is not considered  wrt to the suggested metaphysical primary, Existence. Then “chair” is simply a manifestation of existence qua existence…it cannot be distinctly known as “chair”. You see, if the chair doesn’t have any inherent ability to BE a chair then it isn’t actively a chair…it doesn’t act–it doesn’t DO–as a chair, and so how can it be said to be a chair? What’s the difference between the existence of “chair” and existence of, say, “tree”? It doesn’t ACT as a chair, so what exactly makes it a chair? All of the things that make it chair must be relative to the things that make a tree a tree? But the tree doesn’t act as tree, and the chair doesn’t act as chair–because they possesses no inherent, underlying Ability–and so by what means can we qualify or quantify the distinctions? Chair is chair and tree is tree, and neither act and thus there is no relative distinction between the two..because relativity (relative distinction) requires action requires the ability to act, and they possess no ability. They only possess existence. But then what is the difference between the existence of tree and existence of chair?

There is none.

There is no ability and thus no action, and thus no relative distinction.  Any distinction would be absolute. But there is no such thing as absolute distinction because absolute distinction is infinite distinction; and infinite distinction precludes co-existence.

And this is why Existence as the metaphysical primary wrecks ALL distinctions between its supposed particulars. There is no tree and no chair; there is only existence. There is no ability to exist and thus no action of existence and thus no relativity of the objects which are said to exist and thus no way to make distinctions of the particulars of existence and thus no way to define the particulars of existence (e.g. chair as opposed to tree) and thus no way to claim that any of the particulars of existence exist and thus no way to claim that existence exists.

But if we say the chair has the ability to exist then we make existence AS CHAIR an action…something the chair does. It is doing as a function of its ability to do. And all doing is relative. There is no action that is not relative, because a single object cannot move in a vacuum. (In a vacuum, there is literally no difference between position A and B of a given object, whether in time or space.) And so if being is action and action is relative then those extant properties which make a tree a tree and a chair a chair are, in fact, a manifestation of their ability to act (as chair or tree) and thus are likewise relative. And relative distinctions do not make a chair a chair and a tree a tree except that they be by conceptualized. Relative distinctions are not absolute, by definition. They require an observer. They require conceptualization via a constant…a reference. And that reference is Self. Is “I”.

And so the Ability (to “exist”…e.g. as chair) which drives the action (of “existence”…e.g. being a chair) demands the relativity (of “existence”…e.g. of chair) which demands conceptualization (of “existence”…e.g. the sentient observation of the chair) which demands a constant–a reference (for the “existence”…e.g. of the chair) and that reference is “I”.

That reference is what I mean by the Self.

Metaphysics: Ability-Action-Relativity-Conceptualization-Constant

How Aristotle is Both Right and Wrong About “A is A”

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, , , ,

One may understandably take issue with my maxim that A is only A relative to B…because that which does not exist relative to anything else cannot be compared, and without comparison there is no definition, so you can’t claim that it actually exists. In other words, you cannot say what A is unless you can say what it is NOT. Making what A is NOT (e.g. B) an existential requirement for A, making A’s existence inexorably bound to B’s. This wrecks any distinction between A and B with respect to existence as a metaphysical primary. Meaning, existence implies no actual distinction between those things which are said to exist. Which destroys A and B entirely at the level of their root existence. This truth does not make me a subjectivist or proponent of consciousness as a primary. It merely makes me perceptive.

Now, having said that, this is correct in a sense:  that my point above does not, itself, provide for the full reconciliation of the existential paradox: Achieving a plurality of existence from a single metaphysical primary.  How are there distinct objects, relating to one another in an identical and absolute metaphysical context…that is, being direct functions of the same singular metaphysical root, and yet also being entirely and rationally distinct?

However, I submit that being correct here: That A must actually be A, utterly and distinctly so, if we shall assert that it is NOT B–does not make me wrong here: That A cannot in fact be A absent the relative existence of B (because that which cannot be compared cannot be defined; and that which cannot be defined cannot be said to exist). This makes A as much a function of B as it makes A utterly distinct from B.

The failure of Aristotelian apologists to observe and address this paradox is (partly) why Aristotelian metaphysics have ultimately lead nowhere except a repeat of the historic cycle of individuals conceding to collectivist ideologies, creating tyrannical states which eventually implode, killing millions in the process, with the survivors then rising from the ashes only to start the whole nightmare over again.

That A must be A (in an appeal to Aristotle) as a prerequisite for relatively comparing it to B does not in fact disprove the that A cannot in fact be A unless it is relatively compared to B.

It’s a chicken-and–egg type deal. Aristotelian metaphysics rest essentially upon one half of the paradox, and thus at best they tell only half the story.

The sum and substance of my journey into metaphysics has been:

A. to observe the aforementioned metaphysical paradox and the necessary resultant rational and practical insufficiencies of both Primacy of Existence and Primacy of Consciousness metaphysical models, and…

B. to offer a solution to the paradox in the form of a new, more effective primary: Ability.

A greater examination of that, and various related topics, will be undertaken in subsequent articles.