A Virtualprimate

The Art of blogging

2010-05-31T23:43:00.003+10:00

Admittedly, I'm not a good blogger...
I'm simply not social enough.
Perhaps if I Jazz it up, make lots of links, connect with people, and participate I could do better?
I really should market my product.
Its not about the content, its about the packaging.
Its not about meaning its about how many friends you have.
It doesn't value substance it requires something catchy,
Something quick,
Something that appeals to short attention spans... I could go on...
Admittedly, I'm not a good blogger.

Dark Dungeons

2010-05-26T18:58:00.000+10:00

Painting pictures in the sand

2010-05-05T00:16:00.009+10:00

"While strolling through her cactus garden one warm June morning, Amanda came upon an old Navajo man painting pictures in the sand.
"What is the function of the artist?" Amanda demanded of the talented trespasser.
"The function of the artist," the Navajo answered, "is to provide what life does not."

- Tom Robbins, 'Another Roadside Attraction"

Incongruous it is to take value in what is not.

Art, it seems, surpasses what is true, exploring fable. This could be called the truth of art, its freedom to go beyond what is and yet to nonetheless be true. So much so, that by revolving full circle, one puts an apple on a stand and calls it art... it is an apple and yet is not. The call to say it it something else provides what life does not...

And then, we realize that this is just so much navel gazing, we are calling our art an art, and then we remember that it involves play.

Art is fun, within what is real is not.
It lives in dreams, dreams do not.
It exists beyond that which is given, calls what is not.
And dwelling upon it makes no sense,

Being both beyond what is and yet not quite what is not.

Nietszche's Ghost

2010-04-23T13:11:00.002+10:00

Since pursuing studies in a new field (Library and Information studies), and while supporting students in an academic library, I have become increasingly skeptical about the quality and relevance of academic study. I find it appalling that a student that copy/pastes references and material and then reshapes it so that it is accepted as their work can achieve great results (this I have seen) while a student who contributes thought and understanding achieves mediocre results. During former studies in philosophy the material encouraged idiosyncratic responses provided they were well thought out and developed.The measuring of worth was focused on content and style rather then style over content.

Since pursuing a different field I have found that I achieve better results if I put in the minimal amount of my own understanding instead replicating as many resources that I can get my hands on putting them into different (some would argue their own) words. How is this a demonstration of academic merit or of grasping the subject?

I'll be happy to pass this degree knowing that my results have no baring on my abilities or understanding either professionally or academically and yet I question the way that assessments are measured if it does not reflect the understanding that a pupil has of the subject but merely reflects their ability to follow instruction and execute a prescribed response and formula. Knowledge management is hardly a factual based subject and yet it seems that thinking outside the box is hardly of any value? This, to me, makes very little sense.

As for references... they should be relevant and reflect ones understanding right? And yet, academic studies seems to encourage adding references for the sake of adding references... ?
Color me confused and dismayed at Academics, and more in agreement with Nietszche then ever, who described academic output as mummified texts rotting away on shelves (oh sry... i should include the reference for this right because otherwise what I am saying is unsubstantiated and of no value... right?)

Are we in the 'Age of the Feuilleton'?

2009-12-09T18:05:00.010+11:00

Fragments taken from Hesse, Herman, 'The Glass bead game'

"... In the course of the aforementioned Age of the Feuilleton, men came to enjoy an incredible degree of intellectual freedom, more than they could stand...

We must confess that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pebulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather 'chatted' about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge...

Among the favourite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore such titles as 'Friedrich Nietzsche and Women's Fashions of 1870', or 'The Composer Rossini's Great Courtesan's', or The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans', and so on...

We feel surprise that there should have been people who devoured such chitchat for their daily reading; but what astonishes us far more is that authors of repute and of decent education should have helped to 'service' this gigantic consumption of empty whimsies. Significantly, 'service' was the expression used; it was also the word denoting the relationship of man to the machine at the time...

The great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, if the bearer of an aristocratic name was involved in a scandal, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned of the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out."

Discuss.

Mediation

2009-11-18T20:28:00.005+11:00

The avoidance of suffering through the suppression of those things we wish for is to capitulate to unhappiness...

To wish for things so ardently that we are unhappy when they are unfulfilled is to generate unhappiness...

To follow our hopes and dreams knowing that they won't all be fulfilled is to accept.

Population

2009-11-09T21:48:00.003+11:00

Our Government still supports the policy to increase our population... I guess its an economically sound strategy based on numbers; Bigger markets are more competitive, more money can be made from them. Why worry about the standard of living or about a sustainable tomorrow...

I have some reading to do... perhaps I'll start here:

http://www.population.org.au/

A ladder to the sky

2009-10-04T15:13:00.006+11:00

He heard it said, ‘mind your left side, what is held tight will eventually go, what is let free will hold.’

And he, as a young man, let go; he let things be as they were and built nothing, knowing a house of cards. He wandered wherever he may and came upon a field where a tall tree grew and rested under its branches. He thought he knew that since everything came from nothing only to later return again to nothing, holding possessions and building security was a vain project set to fail. So even though he acted responsibly for those he knew he took no personal responsibility preferring instead to dream.

But then one day, out of the blue vast empty sky, he spied a girl who could fly. And although the shade of the tree still blocked the heat of the sun and provided some degree of comfort, he all of a sudden wished he had built a ladder to the sky.

Is it right to eat meat?

2009-08-31T09:57:00.017+10:00

While it sometimes seems natural to ask someone why they chose to be a vegetarian many would consider it strange to hear someone ask another ‘why do you choose to eat meat’?

In this culture it’s generally taken to be the norm that people will eat meat unless they choose otherwise. I think this is why I first found vegetarian products that imitate meat to be a bit bizarre. I saw them somehow as reaffirming the above idea that meat was taken as the norm, vegetarianism seen as a derivative.

In fact sometimes people who advocate meat eating argue that eating meat is 'natural' in such a way as to imply that not eating meat is unnatural. However this argument, when taken to this extent, seems flawed; All we have to do to question its validity is to ask ourselves can we imagine that there could be a society that survived and thrived wholly on vegetables and survived so successfully that no one living in that society remembered ever having eaten meat... If we can imagine this to be possible, and can imagine that this society could thrive and be sustainable, then it follows that eating meat is not necessarily the only natural way for a society to be. This is true even in the face of arguments aimed to convince us that eating meat was necessary during some part of humanities evolution. For even if this is true it doesn’t follow that meat eating is the primary natural state or that it 'should' be. At this point one can see that often the claim that eating meat is natural is actually a claim that people should eat meat.

It follows then that there are two questions that are of equal importance, firstly ‘why do you chose not to eat meat?’ and secondly ‘why do you chose to eat meat?’

All this said thus far, what is it about eating or not eating meat that makes this a moral question that requires reasons and/or justifications? The usual response involves something akin the sanctity of life and yet isn’t it true that we live in a world wherein life feeds on life? Isn't this natural phenomenon? If it is, if lions and tigers and bears exist, then suggesting that killing and eating living creatures is essentially wrong suggests that all carnivores are sinners, and if you also believe that existence was designed or created by a divine being, then they were made to be... ? Accordingly I don't thing this argument adds up and yet...

Certainly today’s mass production cannot be justified as 'natural.' In this culture the amount of meat that is consumed seems possible only due to the implementation of technology and production and ironically mass production, while bolstering the ability to slaughter and prepare more meat then ever before, also has the potential to make more vegetarian products easily available. So the question of whether the edifice of production causes unnecessary cruelty for nothing more than our culinary pleasure seems like a reasonable and imperative question to ask and this lends weight to the idea that as equally true that one should ask why they chose not to eat meat they should also ask why they do.

Revisiting faith and uncertainty

2009-08-02T16:22:00.000+10:00

Why do people seem to be so afraid to accept that there might not be an ultimate answer, no capital T Truth, no fundamental purpose or meaning to life?

While it is comforting to believe that there is a divine plan, especially when times seem unfair and life makes no sense, believing that there must be a meaning which we don’t understand doesn’t make life any less uncertain.

If life does have a meaning it is still uncertain and if it doesn’t it is certainly uncertain.

If life doesn’t have an ultimate meaning this doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as truth (little t truths), or beauty or suffering or for the need to try to understand what life is all about. Moreover this doesn’t dismiss the notion of faith for in the case of faith uncertainty is part and parcel of what it’s all about (we wouldn’t need faith if the meaning of life was certain and well understood).

No words

2009-07-18T16:59:00.003+10:00

And so I write words, adding to the never ceasing avalanche of typeface spelt out in an unreal landscape, so many signs signifying, so many meanings lost in translation, and yet I add them… wondering why I am moved to participate? Perhaps it’s a longing for life which is contradictorily held at a distance? A longing to create something of value that will shine on and yet it seems that I can only add to the unceasing torrent of people with too much to say?
I really like cats; They speak yet they use no words.

A can of beans

2009-07-08T09:57:00.003+10:00

Little biddy me
Dislikes rules of oppression
The laws that bind
Especially when its the religious kind
And the tides rise
It’s a circus out there
A veritable freak show
And a can of beans

Dissident America

2009-03-19T08:44:00.003+11:00

Dissident America

Dreaming the dream

You can't live in the present forever

Trading in flesh

Counting the cash

Like crawfish, back on out of it

It's a sad and beautiful World

Working for scratch

Out here in the garbage

A sad and beautiful World

(Influenced and 'cut-up' from Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch)

Are you a Cosmic Schmuck?

2008-12-09T19:19:00.006+11:00

It sometimes amazes me how certain people are that their way of seeing is the right and only way. Again and again wars are fought and conflicts erupt and hardly ever do people pause and ask themselves what is actually going on. Everyone seems to suggest that they are compassionate yet it quickly follows that they are of course right, and never does it come to pass that the contradiction inherent in this is acknowledged.

For we’re right and they’re wrong they say, and that’s how it is, and it will never be any other way.

Never is it suggested that they might be incorrect, or even more subtly that there might be things that they don't know. Even when it’s true that somebody is at fault, when it’s true that the bombing of innocents is unforgivable and abhorrent, never is it asked why and never is the actual fabric of the conflict addressed. Instead it seems people are more interested in being or projecting that they are right (see also Politicians). Yet the more they puff themselves up with self-righteousness the more fuel is thrown onto the fire. And when weapons of any type are introduced into the fray, whether they are conventional arms or diplomatic and economic sanctions, then the stakes only ever get higher, and the conflict becomes a raging torrent. And the worse it gets the more people feel the need to claim that they could never possibly have been wrong, for by this point it's all out of control, the sides are drawn, and never shall compromise be valued.

And as the dispute turns into a holy war it becomes apparent that those who try to compromise end up crushed under the wave of right and wrong, black and white, us and them. And the poor fools that suggest any other scheme, who claim that we could pause for a moment and reconsider, only end up powerless to make any difference at all. They are dubbed terrorists or sympathisers thereof...

And all the while people forget that it began with their own opinion, their own (or their society/cultures) point of view versus another that conflicted or was merely different.

It has been said over and over that the opinions you have are simply opinions, that "the map isn't the territory," (Map-territory relation) that we shouldn't be so judgemental and we should love our fellow human, that understanding can make a difference. Yet despite the voices of many these ideas are drowned out by the sheer volume of those who never doubt for a moment that they are right.

Is it simply about power? For taking the middle ground is a dangerous position. In recent times America, it seems, had to show its strength and couldn't possibly succumb to weakness against the ominous threat that it faced, for seeking understanding leaves the seeker vulnerable to being bludgeoned by the righteous opinion of others. Yet does it really follow that it’s simply better to take an absolute stance, to be uncompromising and forget about the idea of resolution?

How many people can admit that they don't know?

I am a 'Cosmic Schmuck' (see: Robert Anton Wilson). I'm not always right and I am sometimes in error. I even find it difficult to discern when I am and when I'm not.

Are You a Cosmic Schmuck?

To reassess the terrain by acknowledging that interpretations change, that opinions differ and that sometimes we are wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t have an opinion. In fact, it could be said that its impossible not to take a stance since taking the option of not deciding is itself a position and it clearly isn’t always the best one. Yet given this, acknowledging that your opinion is just an opinion means hopefully that one endeavours to make an informed decision. It also means that judgements are not made for the sake of judging but for the sake of understanding.

It is we who judge and we do so relative to what and who we are.

Knowing that we all hold opinions that we sometimes later disagree with, and that we never have the objective complete truth, hopefully means that we can make an effort to understand even more so. Not having an absolute answer doesn’t mean that we cannot have any understanding. For in many ways it’s not the answers, or judgements, or beliefs that matter but is instead the questions we ask that lead us to form them. Although, this being said, it is the answers, judgements and truths that we adhere to that form a scaffold around the process of making judgements, and if they are held rigidly then they also restrict the range of acceptable conclusions.

In the field of human conflict what this means is that we hopefully take the trouble to question what we believe about a person or culture and hopefully this leads to a better understanding of the conflict that has occurred. Sometimes it is necessary to take a firm line, yet it seems that often this is held due to a dedication to being right (or to avoiding being wrong) without realising that it’s probably more important to make a decision for the right reasons than for righteous ones. Yet, again and again, when it comes to conflict the need to be right overwhelms the need to do right. The propensity to judge becomes more necessary than the propensity to understand and things are only made worse when certainty becomes the primary goal and prize.

I am a cosmic schmuck.

“My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
- Robert Anton Wilson.

Evil Plan (tm): Love is the only way.

2008-11-22T01:19:00.003+11:00

Your objective is simple: Soul Accumulation.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Love (Yes, it works)

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first expose a pope. This will cause the world to sense a grave disturbance in the force, frightened by your arrival. Who is this really bad guy? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in classic black?

Stage Two

Next, you must desecrate the internet. This will all be done from a island of mu, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will spontaneously combust, as countless hordes of winged monkeys hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must tauntingly wave your secret death ray, bringing about an end to sanity. Your name shall become synonymous with metal, and no man will ever again dare make you clean your room. Everyone will bow before your mind-boggling insanity, and the world will have no choice but to fall madly in love with you.

see also:
Evil plan @ dark sites

Incomplete

2008-11-16T16:01:00.012+11:00

There is an idea that that we can be 'one', an idea that suggests that we can experience full awareness of ourselves and the world and be at peace. However, in the world where we live, a world that is beyond ourselves and our creations and yet is forever shaped by our vision of it (and so it is named ‘our’ world), it seems that we are as yet to discover the way to perceive, to see, to think, and to feel that would allow us to fulfill a dream of integration... a dream that really seems to be about integrating with ourselves?

The World is malleable but firm. It is we who name it and decipher what we think it means, and yet the World resists, for it’s always a step beyond our understanding, and we never really see the forest through the trees. We live in the bounds of our own cast off reflections and see only our own vision of the world scaffolded by our languages and descriptions and the limitations of how we all are. It is the World that we see yet we always see it our way.

So is it possible to ‘be’ so that thought can co-mingle with one’s very experience and infuse with it?
Yet perhaps our experience of separation is merely an illusion, so that instead thought and the World are woven together already, the experience of separation here is then just another part of the whole.
But then what could it mean to separate a whole into parts?
Perhaps the whole isn’t ordered and complete (closed, defined, being)... maybe it’s disordered and incomplete (open, generative, becoming)...

Just like my thoughts

Like a picture of Dorian Gray

2008-11-15T21:46:00.014+11:00

Beauty marred by scars like a picture of Dorian Gray
Aging and changing and fading away
Oh for a picture so endless unmarked by decay
It would be perfect he says
Yet he doesn’t know
For without loss...
Indifference

Penance

2008-10-29T14:23:00.000+11:00

I recognize what was mine
And consequences bled
Not wanting to add any harm
With all that's done and said
But it’ll take some time
So don’t ask why
Shatter me
In fortunes fly

A feather for a soul

2008-10-13T15:23:00.004+11:00

A loss, an ache,
And heart break.
As tidings go,
With a feather for a soul

The Fnord Is

2008-09-17T13:21:00.011+10:00

Fnord! It's malleable but firm.

It is written on every page, captured in every picture and is there in every scene and yet no one ever see’s it. It is malleable but firm like chicken or grapefruit and before you interrupt to say, ‘but hey, grapefruit is hard?’ it is just as malleable as avocado or mango, for even hard things are fnord.

Mars too is malleable but firm, in fact it changed just recently, what with the discovery of water, and yet, at the same time, it didn’t change at all. Granite is also malleable but firm as are moon rocks as well.

What we see and how we see is malleable but firm and that’s fnord too.

Firm things are fnord and they're malleable and even malleable things are fnord and they're firm.

God too is fnord and he/she/it is malleable but firm also, like water ice blocks or chocolate sundaes.

It might even be suggested that God is the ultimate fnord for he/she/it is ‘ultimately’ malleable but firm, perfectly malleable but firm, infinitely malleable but firm... the ultimate being (being is malleable but firm, being is fnord).

If God ‘is,’ then God is separate from us, from our perceptions, just like how everything that is said to exist independently of us is also separate from us and outside our opinions... we are malleable but firm... as is what we see, as is God, fnord.

Even nothing is malleable but firm, shaped by our perceptions of what we think it might be and yet if we think nothing exists then it has to outside of our understanding or knowledge of it, just like all independent things.

What is the ‘true’ existence of anything? How can we ever say we know what it might be when we ourselves can only see from our own perspective? Yet we often say what we think things are, in nearly every other sentence we declare what ‘is,’ what ‘was,’ what we ‘are,’ and how we have ‘been.’

Fnord is malleable but firm, just like e-prime, a language game or exercise designed to remove the definitive article in things. What is the definitive article? Is it not that things are said to be what we say they are; that the word is the thing?

We live in a world of ‘is’ yet what ‘IS’ is independent even while we never see what is independent, for we aren’t able to choose to see the world any way we like and yet we still only see it our way (and that's malleable but firm).

Eprime is an experiment to change the way we see by altering our words. It’s ultimately inconclusive and yet that’s the point. It’s an attempt to remove from our speech the things that are said to be, even while not denying that there are things that exist, yet the being of things that exist isn’t described by our words.

The only definition of fnord is that it is undefinable (which is odd considering that by definition it is beyond definition) (and ain't that fnord?)

In short, read between the lines, that’s where the fnord IS.

The fool

2008-08-01T06:43:00.004+10:00

It's not always a bad thing to sometimes feel foolish.
It's a wonder to me that I still sometimes feel naive.
I once did a survey on masculinity and spirituality wherein there were two sentences that required completion. Here they are with the endings I gave:

A masculine man is.... 'not a boy.'
A spiritual man is... 'a boy.'

No matter the consequences, or the possibility of being humbled, having a sense of wonder is an amazing thing and I, right at this moment, despite feeling rather silly, still find that I have more reasons to smile then to frown.
As many have said it's a healthy thing to be able to laugh at oneself, which is just as well, for I find that I still give myself plenty of reasons to.

Humbly,
The indefinable me

Without purpose

2008-07-30T21:15:00.018+10:00

Without purpose
Free of reason
Are you dreaming?
Do you want something more?
In the open
With no more ceiling
It's revealing
To be outside yourself

And do you want something more?
To feel free inside as well
Do you want something?

Only wanting peace of mind
I want to be there every time
Yet I’m so foolish
Like all people
When I try for peace of mind
I want to be there free of mine
And I’m so foolish
Like all people

I'll try to give up what's mine
To let go of the self that I find
I wander to be who I am
And I end up back where I began...

Without purpose
Free of reason
Who is it that needs more?

Nietzsche (A cut-up)

2008-07-27T00:00:00.004+10:00

Over the strong again and strength dispenses with the deal of so called virtue…
And you say that he seeks no famous hymn, to be contradicting you, the divine.
Say it in innocence, peace until it lowers the seed.
Conceptual web spinning of a presupposition, what ultimately grew?

Centuries for one should make no body, for the lot of a people remain. Really not going back. Paid dearly for the fact that antiquity was too misleading. My cure from all wretched establishment of the few thinkers who say from the schools that it is courage in the face of reality.
That birth of tragedy was my first kitchen coal. Your hearts so little, can you one day create with me, nobler than bronze.

A dark eyed abyss, staring in tunes and of those who tell of staring into soul thought space, in absence of pace, a reversal of the shielding clamour…

I talk to stop gap this being.

With the Dawn

2008-07-22T02:03:00.006+10:00

I was only trying to forget
To put things behind, to leave all regret
To do nothing dumb like the things I had done
To learn from mistakes and instead make a different one
And even if we don’t choose the way that we feel
We can still do our best to flow and be real
To drift with the current and ride out the storm
To sleep through the night and wake with the dawn

Is ignorance bliss?

2008-07-09T16:56:00.004+10:00

Sometimes I feel as though I think too much. Accordingly I’m driven to question the motivation I have to question. Is the confusion worthwhile when it seems that I’d be better of ignorant of the things that I ask?

Yet, in those moments when I doubt the predisposition to doubt maybe it’s not thinking that’s the problem but is instead the content of my thoughts? Is it really true that its better to be ignorant while at the same time it’s also true that what you don’t know might still kill you?

Meh to the desire of being ignorant,
And bah at the belief of thinking that I'm not.

That I Know

2008-07-03T17:12:00.012+10:00

Regarding that famous quote said by Socrates;

‘I know that I know nothing’

But do I know?
How can I be sure?
Isn't it more plausible to think that I know something rather then nothing?
For I know that I know even though I’m not sure of what it is I know.
And do I need to be sure of that which I know to know that I know?
For I know that I think, even while I have no idea about how it is that I think...

And so I protest, I know that I know something... even while I'm not quite sure about what that is.

The idea that we have to be certain to claim that we have knowledge of any sort is certainly a peculiar idea.

With nothing to say

2008-06-24T15:57:00.008+10:00

The voices resonating sounds of chatter filling space with human projections
Sitting in silence surrounded by symbolic space
Space-time bursting with one hundred thousand things
All bearing birth-life-death and the here now forever
A spectrum of multi-verses joining a singularity
With no centre or boundary
Intake, outtake; breathing into life surrounding

Plain words leave without an inside
Vocas Mystica

Ephemeral

2008-06-19T19:23:00.005+10:00

I’m taking a ride down the ephemeral avenue…
Life it seems has many layers, and all of them are true and yet they are all of different quality.
There are events in space and the interplay of physics. There is chance and consequence and the irregular regularities.
There are moments of happenstance and mediocre trifles and there are also the things that are confronting and overwhelming.
There is the interpretation of things and of our relations between them.
There are the considerations of the existences of others and of how we relate to what is and to whatever that’s happening.
There are the words that we use that never encapsulate the things they describe.
There is love and understanding alongside incomprehensible ignorance.
And it is all outside and is reflected inside and a map can never be drawn marking the boundary between, for there is no boundary.

Yet we identify the pieces and segregate by type and kind.
And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Properties that are not things at all emerge from the pieces existing between and within the interacting spaces and cannot be reduced to their components.
Yet meanwhile we seek closure in our understanding yet never can we attain it in the open ended changing as the relations within interactive processing and interpretation alter the parameters of the world and ourselves so that as something is defined new anomalies appear.
Differing perspectives generate new ways of seeing that modify the substance of that which is seen.
And as we look at things differently we ourselves are changed.
Never does it seem that any ending is reached, for endings are only ever changing’s and nothing gets to its own end.

How can we be understood?
Verbs rather than nouns

What you see in others

2008-06-19T00:48:00.011+10:00

He had lost his faith in people and this took him by surprise. Not that he had ever really believed people to be primarily good however when confronting the world he nevertheless had faith in himself and so believing at the very least that people weren’t ever truly bad he believed that things were ok.

Now however he stood at a different point. Fortune had challenged his faith, and he had found himself in doubt about his own ability to cope. This had been hard enough, yet it was at this time that he discovered something new about people, something that made him question the faith that he had. He discovered that even if people weren’t necessarily bad they were capable of being ignorant and selfish. True, he had thought this before, but never did he fully comprehend what the idea actually implied. For at a time when he confronted unexpected catastrophe some people reacted not merely uncaring but seemingly with callousness. Naively he tried to do what he believed to be right, and he tried to explain the difficulty he faced, yet the more he gave the worse things became. He realised that in a way the demand he made, to be understood, was in its own way selfish, yet he wanted nothing more than acknowledgment, for he felt a need to overcome the hurt that was felt but instead all he received was accusation and judgment. In the folly of his need he doubled his efforts to breach the misunderstanding that had appeared until out of helplessness to improve his lot he felt his faith slip away.

Self-perception is a health issue for a reason and never can anyone say they are compassionate if they choose to be heartless when someone who threatens them not at all is in need.

He swore to himself that he wouldn’t be needy again, however in his honesty he realised that this wasn’t a promise he could keep, unless of coarse he withdrew and never allowed any vulnerability to be seen. He felt a pang of loneliness creep into his imaginary soul, for he realised the gulf that truly separated people, the distance between the sentience of each other that contributed to the pain they were able to inflict allowing them to see others as deserving of the harm that they caused.

He sat and watched the news of devastation that flickered across the television screen. The madness and devastation was as unfathomable as it had always been; yet for the first time he felt a crippling despair. In others he saw himself, and in seeing that he too was no better than anyone else the weight of a meaningless heartless existence fell bitterly upon him.

Yet that was yesterday and tomorrow is another day. Later, despite the fact of his confrontation, he found that he still smiled at the smallest of things and he couldn’t help but to do so. For although he still remembered the weight of yesterday he realised that his faith wasn’t utterly in ruin after all. He found, unexpectedly, that he could still be reached when confronted by the unanticipated generosity of another. So although he knew that sometimes people could be incredibly cruel, and that they were capable of so much harm, he remembered that people could also be the opposite. In consequence he knew, so could he.

"All is joy," (this) in contrast to the Buddha's equally true, equally false, but now obsolete "All is sorrow."
- Robert Anton Wilson, ‘Schrödinger’s Cat trilogy’

Jibber Jabber

2008-06-13T10:30:00.003+10:00

The best speakers know how to pause but I do not always know how.

I chatter aimlessly and sometimes I even interrupt myself. I talk when excited, I talk when I’m nervous, I talk when I’m bored, in whatever state I am I talk.

Yet sometimes conversation seems empty, and most of what is spoken is said to fill silence, to maintain some kind of control, to impress, to joke about and to create the fiction of what we feel we should be.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I listen too, but I never fail to respond, to interact, to answer and ask questions. How many of the words that we share really matter?

Sometimes I think in silence people can share so much more.

One must mind their jibber jabber.

Shh…

Six word stories

2008-06-12T18:44:00.006+10:00

Hemingway wrote a six word story.
He called it his best work.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

My own attempts are as follows:

'All spoken, nothing said, silent endings.'

'Wild and untamed, fled into comfort.'

'In suburban streets the cave dwellers.'

'A key to freedom, save us.'

'And where do I leave myself?'

‘He stared in shock, still life.’

‘Sanely he slept with no imagination.’

‘Acting honestly she was perfectly deceived.’

‘In love: one pain to another.’

‘Sign up for the human race.’

‘Small teacup, but a massive storm’

Impermanence

2008-06-09T11:13:00.004+10:00

Towers and monoliths, knowledge’s and laws
All built as if emulating an agreed upon permanence
Manifested by blindness to impermanence

Despite the idea that everything is temporary
We built as if we had no idea of impermanence at all.

What of the temporal things?

2008-06-07T12:46:00.011+10:00

“Greatness, knowledge, renown,
Friendship, pleasure and possessions,
All is only wind, only smoke:
To say it better, all is nothing.”

- Soren Kierkegaard, ‘Either/Or,’ Part 1

Is it accurate to say that an object or thing must possess permanence for it to be considered valuable, for it to be something rather then nothing? Perhaps not, perhaps both objects and ideas can possess value despite that they are temporary? Yet, even though this might be true, it seems that we nevertheless invest great amounts of energy in order to establish things that are everlasting and/or enduring. We establish them as truths, as orders, as fixtures and as monuments. We establish civilizations that are meant to endure and persist through time.

Even if we affirm that the temporary can have value, it appears that the impermanent, mutable, changing and fading are all seen to have less value then the lasting. Yet, it is also the case that everything we establish will, and indeed must, change. The truths that we hold so dear are by the measure of history temporary. Is it really conceivable that the ideas, knowledge’s and truths, that the orders, fixtures and monuments, will remain as they are right now for humans far removed in the uncertain future? Even those things that do endure never do so forever. Can we really believe that our vision of the world is the vision that will prevail through time?

But if we admit that the impermanent has value and that the ideal of permanence is just that, an ideal, than why is it that we persist in erecting monuments to permanence? Why is permanence thought to be the most significant thing despite the fact that human life is exactly the opposite in that it is mutable and temporary?

Is it possible to live with uncertainty and change and to accept it? It seems so very unlikely in our time, the time of gadgets and technological innovation. It seems that we no longer celebrate the changing of seasons and rise and fall of tides, instead we want to preserve what we have, and we want to maintain our security and solidarity. We want to forever progress and raise towers to the heavens and build and build until it all comes crumbling down when were finally caught unawares that things couldn’t last, even though we already knew… sort of.

In between

2008-05-27T08:58:00.004+10:00

Somewhere in between there’s room for a pause. The either/or becomes neither, and existence is a foreigner. Outside understanding yet with clarity it is known that the other is unknowable. There is no closure, never absolutely, for when something is made static recognition becomes unrecognizable. Words are defined with reference to one and another and another, and “meaning is use” (Wittgenstein, L.).

It’s all so simple and yet so impossible to grasp like the mathematical impossibility of traveling from one point to another while having to cover the distance half way each time. Yet mathematics is a map and words can be games and we inherit the language of our ancestors.

And maybe intelligence isn’t always the soundest strategy?

On acceptance

2008-05-11T22:01:00.007+10:00

“Happiness is only real when it is shared"

This is often how it feels…

I myself have been lucky since I have shared much happiness.

I have smiled often while being unaware that I was smiling.

Among some I have felt free to forget who I am, to not have to be someone for them for instead I was someone for me even while not having to be.

Yet the idea that real happiness must be shared is something that seems to make more sense when you know loneliness, for then you know what it is that is so often taken for granted.

However it is not happiness because it’s shared it is instead that it’s free. When people share freely, when people are accepting and forgiving and when they can forget that they can be seen and judged, it’s so happy to be.

Sometimes I have felt driven into the wild, for ironically sometimes it feels like acceptance does not come easily.

Yet the only sane answer to share what you can and to know how to smile is to accept whenever you can for free.

(The above quote is taken from Into the Wild)

On Faith

2008-05-07T20:38:00.006+10:00

Is the demand that a person ‘have faith’ equivalent to making a demand for ignorance? If faith means to believe without questioning does this imply that one should give up the idea of thinking?

It seems true that implicit in having faith is the idea that the subject doesn’t really know for sure, for if knowledge was had and the theory was certain then there wouldn’t be any need for faith?

Faith is not certainty. This is true even if the claim is accepted that faith can sometimes produce in some people a sense of being certain.

The scientist who works on a hypothesis seemingly must have faith in it so to surpass the first obstacles that look to prove it wrong for otherwise how could they establish a well thought out theory without giving up on it at the first sign of error?

Yet the very idea that someone is certain seems contrary to the idea that they have faith for in this case they have skipped past faith and have convinced themselves that they know, and yet if they are certain that they know then seemingly they would have no need for faith?

To my way of thinking the experience of faith is a personal one and it can be directed in many ways, through symbols, through institutions and social networks, through names and prayers and yet in all these there is a common theme of believe in something bigger, more important, something that is beyond and is in some way unknown. Fundamentally it can be said that having faith is a human experience. The demand for faith seems to originate from the demands of our existence and in many ways this itself is plenty enough for anyone to justify an acceptance of faith.

In this way it is misguided to say to another that their faith is flawed while it is equally misguided to demand faith of another dogmatically.

Faith could even be an experience that could be practiced openly through the acknowledgment that it is not an act of certainty but is instead an act of hope?

When you have faith in a friend believing that they will catch you when you fall it doesn’t always mean that you won’t hit the floor whether by accidental mishap or by misjudgment. Yet the fact that the outcome isn’t certain doesn’t mean that this faith is misplaced, for in this case it’s not the outcome that one has faith in instead it is the friend.

So the fact that faith is uncertain does not diminish its value, for we all have faith in many things, for tomorrow is never guaranteed.

The primary difficulty with the existence of faith seems to be that it easily becomes a vehicle for our ego; we demand our own central importance and elevated state and the primary importance of that in which we belief, though if coupled with humility faith may very well be invaluable?

Could faith be described not as an exercise of belief in one defined and conceptualized force or religion but rather as an act of hope and humility? Could it be understood as an act that doesn’t preclude thought instead necessarily embracing it so that faith is not identified mistakenly as a state of certainty?

Dreams, Reality and The Book of Flying

2008-04-14T23:38:00.001+10:00

Dreams are the soul of the imagination, the slender and evasive revenants of the shells we erect as our dwellings. We build our shells from the sand of our ground bones, mortared with our very blood, and imagine we fence the dreams away but we only fence them in. A few, the rare, the beautiful, remain as near to the heat of their dreams as children, and we know them by their laughter, by the ease at which they are moved to tears, by our own desire to be around them.

- Miller, Keith 'The Book of flying'

In stories we dwell, each of us weaving our own while sharing tales or trading banter. Our scientists too weave tales that are said to describe the World at large, to measure its bounds so that we can understand how things really are, out there, outside, yet these too are stories. These stories tell the tale of truth regarding our world, that world that we live in, wherein we tell our tales, yet these can only really attempt to tell the truth of 'our World' and not any other...
Many stories also tell tales about truth, the truth about dreams.

A coffee at 9000 feet

2008-04-14T12:27:00.000+10:00

I plead guilty…

For sometimes being emotional, downtrodden and blue
For feeling when times were rough that there was nothing I could do
For not living up to expectations of how I wanted to be
For feeling a need to have others understand me
For feeling frustrated and for succumbing to fears
For being overwhelmed and for shedding tears
For fleeing and seeking out ways to escape
For drinking and smoking and staying up late
For the times I was lost
And the times I felt lonely
And the times I felt out of control
For confusion and doubt and for unrequited love
For wanting and needing and for all the above
For all those times I may have been somewhat intense
For being open and honest and for making a mess
I am guilty of sometimes feeling guilty it’s true
So what should I do?

It reminds me of a quote I recently read:

“If you think you can control your emotions, think that some people also believe that they can control their heartbeat or hair growth”
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005) ‘Fooled by randomness” p.67

So I guess it’s not wrong to feel this way?
And it would certainly be a silly thing ever to say
For emotions are motions (and not a fashion statement)
And if it isn’t wrong I will hold my head high
And if I am lucky I might touch the sky
And even if I don’t I’ll be what I am
I’ll aim to let go and won’t get carried away
Accepting insignificance
I’ll live for today

And on that note;
Today I had a coffee at 9000 feet.

The generative World (Metaphysical some-antics)

2008-04-02T20:02:00.001+11:00

Perspectives generate worlds.
For without a perspective no experienced world exists?
The World of absolute objectivity is no world at all, for us, it can never exist.
Yet some, noting the ‘For us,’ will say ‘ah, but there is still a world beyond us’
However nothing beyond can be recognized without a new perspective that allows for its discovery and every new perspective is a new way of seeing.
That’s not to say that there aren’t different points of view outside of our own and that we can simply be uncritically content with any given position. It’s only to say that different perceptions generate different correlations in that which exists, and often have value and are meaningful for different reasons...

Existence and Reality are two different ideas. Existence is simply what is and can never be experienced, perceived or described objectively. Yet it can still be said that some things really are true. Yet if so, they are relative to the events, happenings and viewpoints that exist in the world. This relativity doesn't make them any less true; instead these relations constitute their truth. In another way of saying it, whatever truth exists does so by merit of the relations between things. And even if a description is never equal to the thing that it describes the correlations between the description and existence creates new ways of seeing what is.

As in theoretical physics, the experimenter affects the result of the experiment.

Due to the premise that perception, perspective and theory shape the world relatively or subjectively, the objective world can never be seen. In the words of Nelson Goodman it is “a world well lost.” (Goodman, N, 'Ways of World making') Objectivity is void. There is no ‘absolute’ perspective that is implicitly correct, yet each and every point of view generates truths of its own in relation to the world that is both shaped by our perception of it while it at the same time the world offers resistance due to its existence.

The world is malleable but firm.

To have a perspective is to take on a limit. Without a limit there is no perspective. It is impossible to state a truth without a context, yet this doesn't mean that there is no content within different realities, or viewpoints. There isn’t one correct way of seeing the world; there are many different ways of seeing that generate different correlations, different truth's and in a sense different world’s.

And of course, in a generated world that emerges from the relations between things within our indescribable existence it is even more crucial to mind what you think. It’s not true that anything is true, and it’s not true that everything is false. We are what we are and we can only try to understand from that which we are. We cannot think anything we like, but we do change the world, our world.

The degree of the amazing

2008-04-01T13:44:00.000+11:00

In life the degree of the amazing lies in direct proportion to the degree of the difficult.

Yet this is only true if you don’t consider that the difficult is also amazing. Admittedly, sometimes the difficult stuff amazes me, leaving me totally stunned and somewhat foolish, and sometimes maybe the amazing can be difficult too, like in love for instance…

Somewhere it was written; “As equally as true as the Buddhist proclamation that all is suffering is the alternate proclamation that all is joy.”

So even difficult things are joy? But then, ‘even false things are true’ (See the Principia Discordia… its true too).

I suppose it’s all about ones perspective just as much as it is about the way things are, and I guess that despite the many times I have stumbled I still want to aim to be like the Taoist skydiver, he who falls without a parachute and yet keeps his eyes open all the way down.

Ka pow!

The philosophy of Humpty Dumpty

2008-03-28T13:09:00.000+11:00

Humpty Dumpty went to the mall
Humpty Dumpty was told to want more
All the shop keepers and all the money men
Insisted that Humpty was happier then

Perhaps we are all Humpty Dumpty!
(Anthropomorphic eggs?) :P

See also: Carroll, Lewis "Through the looking glass"
Chapter 6 Humpty Dumpty

Incompetence by Faculty

2008-03-24T11:26:00.000+11:00

At a University sometimes the area of study gives some indication of the level of a persons incompetence (sad but true)...

Business = utter incompetence
Psychology = Issues
Philosophy = scatterbrain
Law = uptight
Medicine = stuck up
Engineering = no idea about anything
Mathematics = pernickety
Physics = off the planet
Biology = biologistica idiotolist
Chemistry = high
Fine Arts = airy fairy
Environmental science = hippie
Sport = duh
Linguistics = who cares
English = lovely but befuddled
Library science = ZzzZzzZzz
Architecture = a mess
Classics = drunk

Did I miss any?

The Peter Principle

2008-03-21T19:04:00.001+11:00

Although I haven't as yet read the book to go with this here principle of hierarchiology it sounds feasible to me...

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his highest level of incompetence.

(see: The Peter Principle / Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull)

Go figure?

Endlessly

2008-03-19T12:47:00.000+11:00

Nothing ever gets to its own end…

So despite the way things fell shattered
Despite the way events left him bare
Like it was over
Despite the bottle of booze
And the ways of escape
Despite the feeling that he would never rise again
After a fall
It simply didn’t end
And he was still there
Staring at pieces that were left behind
Pieces of love
Pieces sacrificed
Things that were shared
And there he stayed
Wanting it to be over
Yet the World changed
As he remained lost in an ending
Never realizing that all the while it was instead a beginning
There he stood torn
Between one moment and the next
So far disassociated and removed
That he forgot how to take the next step
And his World ground swiftly to a halt
As he handed the past over to tomorrow
So unaligned with today
And yet he still changed
As all things do
Endlessly

The compassionate Yeti (No reason necessary to love)

2008-03-15T00:46:00.001+11:00

Joshua reached across the table and took the old mans hand. "You drill us every day in the same movements, we practice the same brush strokes over and over, we chant the same mantras, why? So that these actions will become natural, spontaneous, without being diluted by thought, right?"
"Yes." said Gaspar.
"Compassion is the same way," said Joshua. "That's what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. Thats what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift."

- Christopher Moore, 'Lamb : the gospel according to Biff, Christs childhood pal'

I Forget

2008-03-12T20:24:00.000+11:00

I have long endeavored to be nothing more and nothing less then my self and despite that I sometimes fail my aim and approach to things has been simple; to feel how I feel and to act according to what I believe, to maintain my integrity and to be true to both myself and to others…

And so it seems I float
Strangely enough I drift
Pushed and pulled by the surrounding currents
And although my endeavors aim for the expression of me
Whatever it is that I tend to be
The way to find a purchase of self
Is to just let go and be

A leaf on the wind
Never knowing what it means to be a leaf
And it never matters which way the wind blows
When you're a…

I forget.

Becoming

2008-03-12T10:58:00.000+11:00

Electric current circuits slept
For time had worn them out
Just like everything
And meanwhile

Through here to tomorrow and from what’s past
A moments never ever been
And nor will it become
This time
Nor that time
For every time is changing
Becoming
So become

The forgetful self

2008-03-04T18:27:00.000+11:00

Its not that I forgot myself, it’s that I forgot that forgetting is the path of ones ‘true’ self.
Holding onto assumptions of what is believed of oneself can only end in folly, for the World changes and the self is like a river that cannot be grasped.
To be one’s self peacefully it is necessary to let go of what one thinks is known about oneself – to just be, without preconception or judgment.
To be true to oneself is to be accepting of what is, without prescription, to simply be without giving reasons or explanations for being, to live without stating causes, by accepting that you don’t know and that you don’t have to know.
To be true to oneself is to concede that the self is a mystery and that life is incomprehensible and just is in its self what it is.
Existence doesn’t need an explanation to be.
So it is then just a matter of letting go, and of accepting what is, what has been and what will be.

…

We must lose all we have.
It is the simple web of life and death that makes this so, and so the more we strive to gain the more we find that we hold onto.
Yet the more we have the more we must let go of.

The way of suffering

2008-02-24T18:56:00.000+11:00

What follows is a short book review from 22.01.07

Without even necessarily being aware I hold on tight to the integrity of my ego. At the point when I am torn apart, when I feel as though my self is lost, and that I will never be the same again, I flee into the comfort of despair. Or when I judge myself in hatred, and I wish I had never been born, I retain the belief that I don't deserve the indignity of suffering. But never can I fully admit to myself the shame of my inferiority to the things that I cannot control…

I have said that I am fallible, and indeed I am, but even as I speak these words a part of me acts as though my awareness of this makes me special. I don’t mean for this to happen, and I’d avoid it if I could, but the need I have to feel secure in myself in a world wherein I will inevitably face the horrors of death and bodily decay drives me even stronger towards the insistence of my own self worth. And even though I endeavour to let go of self-importance I nonetheless remain locked within a struggle of denial… for in aiming to be free from pride and the habit of self-inflation I seek to hide from my own vulnerabilities for never can I face or fully comprehend how fallible I actually am.

The irony is that I give up control and I flow when I’m able in order to feel as though my journey is under control.

"The way of suffering" by Jerome A Miller is truly an extraordinary journey through the geography of crisis. Many people find this type of existential exploration to be moody and depressing, yet in many ways it is refreshing in its honesty and practicality. It neither glorifies or hides from the human condition and neither does it flee into fantasy or hope (whether it be false or otherwise). For me, in an odd sort of way, it helps me to accept, even as I know that I will never totally do so. It is strangely comforting despite that I will never be totally comforted.

The meek shall inherit the earth and I will endeavour to live for today.

What does it all mean?

2008-02-11T13:45:00.000+11:00

What does it all mean?
That which is cast away
Like leaves scattering
Like dust
Like nothing
Like everything
Like moments today that are only here and now and yet ever
Like love

The wise blue ball

2008-02-06T12:42:00.000+11:00

Here I am on a circle space planet cruiser surrounded by many miles of unending directions stretching outwards to unimaginable depths.
On a rock water fire gas ball traversing an elliptical trajectory tracing its steps and repeating repetitions.
Spaceship earth has nowhere to go in this vast space, no site to aim for in its travels.
And yet do you hear blue sorrow? No not at all.
Instead during its rounded repeatable trip there is no break down towards stasis despite such a lack of direction rather there is a prospering and a flourish.
A never-ending process of change meeting beauty, the no where to go, the never being goal, never holds spaceship earth back.
The wise blue ball,
Great emulator of wisdom…
No reason necessary.

Release (Lyrical La la)

2008-01-25T14:43:00.000+11:00

Yesterday’s gone
And yet it’s not over
And I might have done wrong
I might have grown older
And yet I might have been innocent
And kissed away the sun
It’s so foolish
Can you see what I have done?

And everything release
For I believe in peace

So I cast it away
Both love and confusion
And I say it’s ok
In a self made delusion
And I might have been different then
When loves the only way
It’s such a simple thing
Just living for today

And everything release
For I believe in peace

Falling deeper down there
Wash them by the shore
I cast away what’s mine there
To hide away no more

And everything
Yes everything
Release
I cast away
A fool today
Believing in peace

And everything
Just make it everything
Release
My time is here
And I will not fear
Living in peace

Goodbye Blue Monday : Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922-2007

2008-01-02T00:10:00.000+11:00

What follows was written as a contribution to the first dead Philosopher's Carnival (Philosopher's Carnival #60) hosted by Dialectic - The blog of the University of Newcastle Philosophy club. Kurt Vonnegut Jr is an American writer of German descent most famous for the novel Slaughterhouse 5. Other works include Breakfast of Champions, Cats Cradle and Mother night.

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane"
- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut Jr is the only writer that I have written in defence of to an Australian newspaper. At the time I speculated that I must be getting old to have been moved to write to complain about the opinion of a journalist, for after all, everyone knows that they're full of it.

His 2005 book, 'A man without a country,' was being reviewed and the article included an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. I was horrified. The article took comments made in the interview and implied that Vonnegut was a supporter of terrorism.

I thought that this was preposterous and comically ironic.

In response I described Vonnegut as "one of the most humanitarian of writers I have ever read," for:

“Vonnegut seems to understand that we individual humans don't really know what's going on, and that the reasons for things are often unfathomable and not quite as simple as they may seem. In this way sometimes these unhappy events can even be humorous, and by laughing at their ridiculousness and the stupidity of those involved, including our own political leaders, we can try to be more understanding and 'human'.”

Kurt Vonnegut was the honorary president of the American Humanist Association from 1992 until his death in 2007. Humanism has many varied definitions and can be hard to characterise, yet for Vonnegut being a Humanist meant that one endeavoured to be kind whether there was a promise of reward or not.

"I am a humanist," he said, "which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishment after I am dead." (Niose, D. 2007, The Humanist 67.4, p.22)

This implies that one acts in such a way not for the end result but for the act itself.

Philosophers often ask the question of why a person should act morally. They sometimes ask for a reason that can guide their actions. They aim to establish a moral framework that in some way or shape is reflective of a reasonable world. Yet for Vonnegut it is easy to get the impression that no rational or reasonable reference is needed for the claim that one ought to be kind.

There was only one rule that he knew of…

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” (Vonnegut, K. 1965, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater)

If there is a God, you have to be kind. If there is no God, you have to be kind. It’s neither because of the end result that might occur from behaving like so, nor is it from the existence of an underpinning moral order. Instead it is just a piece of advice from a thinker concerned with how one is to get along in a world that can sometimes seem unreasonable and irrational.

Vonnegut's approach can be compared to an inverse idea that everything happens for a reason, an idea that is often evoked to provide comfort. That whatever happens, either way, everything has a plan. Vonnegut’s characters often believe that there is a plan. Yet often the plan, when discovered, turns out to be frivolous, failing to provide the secret meaning that we were after.

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different”

An important point to note about Vonnegut's humanism is that it is not just about whether a given idea is noble, nor about the intentions behind it. Again and again Vonnegut writes of people who have good intentions yet these intentions can nonetheless cause harm. Ideas (or rather ideals) like freedom and democracy may indeed be well intended yet if inhumane actions result from these ideas then can they be considered humane?

His approach asks us to question our ideas, to acknowledge that if we put our ideas on a podium and claim certainty without a willingness to question what we believe then we can often cause harm. How far can our well intended ideas go before we acknowledge that they, in having inhumane consequences, are in fact inhumane? If living a life of luxury with electricity and oil does harm to the world around us, and to our selves, through pollution and war, then are we living in a humane society?

Vonnegut doesn't present us with an easy answer for this question however he urges us to ask it, to question our actions in order to act humanely. The lack of certainty leaves us in a postmodern world wherein we find ourselves without an absolute point of reference to guide our moral compass. Good and evil are not fixed and there is no divine order that we can use to justify our ideas or actions to ensure humane outcomes. Yet this does not leave us stranded without ethics; instead, there is an even greater need for us to question the ideas we promote and the actions we pursue.

Humanism is often characterized as the belief that we humans can better ourselves, and by consequence the world around us, through our own efforts without the need of divine intervention. Often ideas like truth, knowledge, rationality or science are evoked as the tools we use to engender human welfare. Yet Vonnegut does not replace a divine order with a rational order. “The fruits of science so far, put into the hands of governments, have turned out to be cruelties and stupidities exceeding by far those of the Spanish Inquisition and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible.” (Vonnegut 1992 The Humanist 52:6. p.3)

Furthermore, “Napalm, incidentally, is a gift to civilization from the chemistry department of Harvard University” (Ibid. p.3)

We are not perfect, we are fallible and despite our good intentions we make mistakes. Yet, even more to the point, we do not have a method, be it reason or science or divine truth, that unerringly steers us towards a humane society. Holding tightly to the righteousness of our cause by the claim that we are right and fair, progressive and democratic, while making the inverse claim that others are not, does not make us fair. Yet, despite that we are confronted with uncertainty while contemplating the cause of making a better world;

"God damn it, you've got to be kind."

See also: Vonnegut.com