Anti-Fanaticism

The world today needs great ideas. Human society needs inspiration. However, these very needs imply another necessity for extreme caution.

Our anti-human historical process teaches us that great ideas are embraced by Wealth through the apparatus of Civilisation and converts inspiration and creativity into ideology and dogma. For this reason, all good ideas have to be handled with protective gloves, not to protect our hands but in order to safeguard them from our own society’s greed.

We can use terms like Fascism or Stalinism to represent the idea of a total immersion in ideology, but likewise we could talk of Opus Deism or Mormonism, or we can unify all of these dogmas under the umbrella of Fanaticism.

The 21^st century has arrived with its own peculiar narratives: the dialectic between Fanaticism and Anti-fanaticism is one of these; but this dialectic is itself swamped by a far more powerful squabble between the fanatics themselves. The seemingly age-old bickering between religious fanatics has made a comeback, in a brutal, violent way, and this is also fostered and favoured by a political ideology fanaticism, which is in truth an economic ideology. This creates a powerful and destructive dynamic that mitigates human progress and creativity whilst inflating Wealth.

Civilisation today is driven by an internecine struggle of alliances and enemies. On the one hand there are the champions of the spirit and on the other the upholders of the material. Both of these fanatical movements promise great rewards for their followers, and both of these streams create currents of wealth creating power that flow through and nurture each other.

Neither option keeps everyone happy, but together they offer a great alternative to each other: if you don’t want to be subject to one side of civilisation’s fanaticisms’ coin, then you can join the other side without needing to denounce civilisation at all. Only the fanatics are trying to escape now.

Of course this seems to be anti-intuitive: isn’t fanaticism a threat to Civilisation? Aren’t the fanatics Barbarians? This is what Civilisation would have us believe: but the real answer is “no” and “no”; Civilisation feeds its fanatics for its own benefit.

As for the Anti-fanatics: all people who are not fanatics are, potentially, anti-fanatics. However, the anti-human historical process has always shown us how easily the mechanisms of Civilisation can be used to turn non-fanatics into absolute “believers” in an historical blink of an eye. As for the anti-fanatical purist, they also have the fanatic in them: the fanaticism of the anti-fanatic. And in this sense the looming scenario is dismally pessimistic: one can only combat fanaticism fanatically. A new paradox emerges, and with each paradox a new challenge to overcome it. How do we overcome Fanaticism without being fanatical?

We imagine pockets of anti-fanatics, swimming lonely and anonymously within the great schools of ideologies; immersed because they have to be, but following the rules without conforming to the fanaticism. We think these anti-fanatics have to exist, because without them the dialectics of society would be self-contained between “spirit” and “material” and between each sections own inner squabbles; and this would have provoked a rapid collapse of civilisation itself.

Or, in other words, civilisation still exists today because of the true anti-fanatic current that flows within it.

The Anti-fanatics are cynics and scientists. They are sceptics and visionaries. They visualise Utopias and deconstruct the Heterotopias that dominate and disfigure our reality. They seem to be a tiny minority, but this may be an illusion created by complexity. Lines seem straight until we magnify them. Closer inspection always reveals an inner chaos, a deeper yearning for a more creative fabric forming existence.

Where does our Conception of God come from?

Yayoi Kusama: Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity, 2009

We didn’t conceive and refine the Judaeo-Christian concept of God out of natural phenomenon or even logical deduction – apart from a First Cause, there is no logical need for God. Instead, it was formed out of a mainly intuitive comprehension of Humanity’s own potential. The image we have of God is a reflection of what our own collective intellect could be capable of being and producing, and of the incredible power that a highly advanced and evolved humanity could be capable of achieving if it survives, and manages to develop in a progressive way, for millions of years to come.

At the moment we have to be considered very poor candidates for the Master of the Universe. Nevertheless, we stand at a crossroads that demands that we must now take an optimistic evolution into consideration or perish. It is time to shake off our tremendous nihilism and pessimism and admit that an anthropogenesis into a God-like species is an idea that ultimately reflects our own collective potential – albeit in a far, far distant future. Of course, the entire history of our civilisation has been a process of turning our backs on that potential; God was created in our own image to mitigate the obligation to become godly ourselves. The responsibility is awesome, but sooner or later we will have to embrace it or disappear: that is the ultimate choice between purposiveness and nihilism.

THE PARANOID WORLD

What is more delusional: the paranoiac or the delusion forming civilisation that he/she is paranoid about?

To understand how enslaved we are by the system it is necessary to understand how vulnerable the human psyche is and how effectively Civilisation is able to manipulate this vulnerability in order to inhibit the natural, human instincts of progress.

Civilisation is, in effect, a monopolising of progress for itself. Only Civilisation has the resources to make progress happen. It not only decides to what extent it will happen, it also determines the speed at which the progress will unfold. Through the structure of Civilisation, a carefully controlled unravelling is carried out in a way that maximises the profit that those powers that drive Civilisation can make.

The combined creative potential in humanity is immense, and, if it were unleashed, societies would advance with incredible leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, Civilisation is designed to restrain this creative power in order to assimilate it for itself. Where progress appears cautious, it is because Civilisation hasn’t yet taken control of the innovations.

In this sense, Civilisation is paranoid about human progress. It is deeply concerned that creativity and know-how will develop societies in such a way that the profit from progress will no longer be guaranteed. Such an idea makes Civilisation extremely nervous. The accumulation of wealth is the basis of Civilisation, and it has grown addicted to it. It is time for it to go to rehab., but it says, no, no, no!

REALITY AS A PURPOSEFUL LIE

The mystic philosophers were right when they told us that reality is elsewhere, but they were wrong in claiming that our ultimate delusion came from a lack of spiritual insight; our alienation from reality is a psychological and social delusion created by our tendency to perceive reality in lies.

In essence, however, even this delusional tendency to believe things that cannot be proven, may be a necessary element for any positive human view of reality.

Science gives us a view of reality that goes beyond the narrow confines of the world that we perceive. In this way, science is an attempt to uncover the delusional nature of our lying perceptions. The real is not really what we see and feel.

Nevertheless, scientific objectivity clashes with our attempts to forge a positive view of our place in the cosmos. Ultimately, scientific truth is nihilistic. Vanity of vanities. Everything is headed to an inescapable thermal death. All things will come to an end. There is no ultimate purpose to the Universe.

But does an acceptance of this ultimately pointless reality do humanity as a whole any good? Science tells us how insignificant and ultimately pointless we are in the Universe. The result is nihilism and a depression that bleeds down through the entire fabric of contemporary, nihilistic civilisation. Live the moment. Reality is ephemeral. And so, religion has to be saved or even restored. We need hope, don’t we? Even if that hope is a blatant lie.

But even religions are essentially nihilistic as far as humanity goes. For religions, reality is elsewhere, in the Paradise after death. And so we ask: Why is reality so negative? Why is truth so grim?

A positive view of historical human reality can only be truly comprehensible to human beings from the point of view of humanity itself. However, this statement implies an anthropocentric view, which most scientists now reject as biased; and because of that consider it to be unrealistic.

But, does this mean that in order to be realistic we have to forfeit any positive view of humanity?

In actual fact, science itself gives us a way out here; for there is cosmological data that points to a sentient-life purpose evolution of the Universe. Data exists that explains how the self-organising of the Universe was able to create conditions for organisms so complex that they can comprehend that same organisation.[i]

In order to determine reality without deluding ourselves in lies we need to look at the debate that scientists are having on the idea of a purposefully determined cosmos. In this argument the science that has to be allowed the most authority is cosmology. So, what do cosmologists and other physicists really think about the idea of a deterministic Universe; one that implies that we are evolving purposefully towards an ultimate goal?

Some scientists, like cosmologist Martin Rees and the physicist Paul Davies, are in favour of the idea of purposefully orientated evolution, whilst almost any quantum physicist would argue against the anthropocentric view, in favour of indeterminism. Nevertheless, arguments can be found, that take a middle ground. And perhaps it is here that we can resolve the debate.

We think this middle ground has been nicely described by Dan Pipono:

“There is no meaningful difference (between determinism and indeterminism). Suppose at some moment there is some kind of undetermined probabilistic event and the universe forks in one of two ways. Then mathematically we can describe the situation in two distinct ways A and B: (1) we could say that after the fork, the universe is either in state A or state B. The universe is non-deterministic because we don’t know which of A and B it is going to be before the fork. OR (2) the universe is in a state that consists of two pieces, A and B, each of which contains a copy of us. The universe is deterministic but appears non-deterministic because we don’t know which of A and B is the one that contains us. Some people will use Occam’s razor in this situation. Some will use it to argue for (1) because a universe with just A or B is simpler than a universe with both A and B. Some will use it to argue for (2) because often (2) is mathematically simpler than (1). I can’t see any way of distinguishing (1) and (2). In practice I’d use whichever is more convenient for whatever I’m trying to do.”[ii]

Like Pipono and Occam, we argue that reality needs to be viewed according to what is most convenient to what needs to be done with that reality. And what we, as humans, need to question is what is the most convenient reality for humanity; a purposeful state or a nihilistic one? If we still cannot, with true scientific certainty, resolve the debate in favour of either purpose or nihilism, which view of reality is ultimately more convenient for us; for our survival and progress?

 

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe

[ii] See Dan Pipono https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-evidence-for-and-against-determinism

Cosmic Will (science versus religion)

The growing process, from the single fertilised cell to the adult form of a biological entity with all its necessary parts, internal organs and external limbs and sensors, is developed with such incredible attention to detail and accuracy that one cannot help but feel such a process is being directed: that is seems to have been willed.

“Willed by God,” insist the religious. But what would God will such a thing for? “Ah, the Lord works in mysterious ways that we are capable of understanding.” Yet, that conclusion only turns the problem back to the start again. If we want to escape nihilism we have to understand purposiveness, and to appreciate authentic and universal purpose we must tackle the purposiveness inherent in the Universe itself.

If we surrender to a belief that we live in a Universe that has a purpose, but one that we are incapable of ever understanding, then that is just as nihilistic an attitude as the belief in a Universe that has no purpose at all.

Fortunately, for understanding purposiveness, life displays purposeful organisation. In fact, everything about life seems to be directed toward some purpose. Not only that, the inanimate universe has its own purposeful direction as well, the extremely complicated process of the creation of life and its evolution into sentient beings; beings that are capable of asking what the ultimate purpose of the creation of intelligent life can possibly be.

This is the key question of all metaphysics – and subsequently it is inherent in all philosophy and science as well; and all religions, of course. Nevertheless, in the case of religion, once God with a capital G has been found, it gives up the chase and sinks into the nihilism buried in the idea of “God’s mysterious will”. An end-point to all argument that protects its power through unquestionable dogmas. Religious power depends on maintaining its mystery.

THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE COSMIC WILL

However, if a cosmic will exists, where is it? If something is organising the Universe, where is it?

Once candidate could be gravity. Gravity has a very peculiar way of organising things: it makes things clump together, although that same homogenising process also enhances chaotic perturbations and creates another ordered kind of heterogeneity. Gravity is also a correcting agent against the destructive laws of thermodynamics; instead of disintegrating matter it creates structures that grow with time. While most hot objects become cooler if they lose energy, self-gravitating systems grow hotter. So, without gravity the Universe could never have created conditions for intelligence life in the Universe, but does that mean that it itself is the force that actually directs its own purposiveness?

If we were to mythologise this, we could resurrect the old concepts of the good and evil forces that rule over us and determine our lives: Thermodynamics is therefore a kind of Loki, bent on the nihilistic disintegration of his unloved father’s creation; whilst Gravity is like Thor, trying to preserve it. In this Asgard of cosmic will, Electro-magnetism becomes a kind of demi-god. Its power is short-ranged and local whilst Gravity has an influence on astronomical dimensions.

Gravity is the great organiser of the Cosmos: and to create life and subsequently sentient, sapiens beings, the Universe needs to be organised.

THE SEARCH FOR PURPOSE: SCIENCE VERSUS RELIGION

The deeper we go in our scientific understanding of the Universe’s creation and self-organisation, the closer science and mythology, and even religion, seem to be. But there is an enormous difference. Science takes nothing for granted, whereas religion takes everything for granted. Science, like philosophy, insists on a need for constant questioning, whereas in religion the questioning is retarded and manipulated in order to suit its own dictatorial needs and desires.

In other words: if we truly desire to understand God or the Cosmic Will, then it is imperative that one does so through scientific or philosophical processes rather than religious ones. Through experiment and calculus rather than prayer. The Alchemists were, and the cosmologists and sub-atomic physicists are, much closer to knowing God than any Pope.

On Art, Artist and the Material

This is a brilliant definition of art.

The Wall of Winter Blues

Picture: Internet

The material is indifferent.

Art is an imitation of the material and Art is always biased.
Art can be happy, sunny, blue or dark.
It can be neutral, but it can never be indifferent like the material.
Art will always be biased, because the purpose of art is to offer a perspective of the material.
Art will always be biased because it is a reaction to the indifferent nature of the material.
Art will always be biased because it originates from the sensation of emotions.
Art can be a colored looking glass, a kaleidoscope, a magnifying lens, a telescope, a map, or a mirror.
Whatever it is, art is artificial, not material. The material does not have a spectator. When a lion hunts a deer, when a mother gives birth to a child and cries in pain and when lovers make love, it has no value to the…

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Fear of Frankenstein

The birth of the 21st century has seen societies infected by a collective Frankenstein Fear psychosis, in which Civilisation has to deal with the terrifying monsters of its own creation.

We are lost in the abysmal condition in which the exportation of our own values, creates and inspires an importation of monsters fabricated by those same values.

In the culture of competitiveness, a society of winners and losers is created. In the culture of competitiveness, the losers fall into exclusion zones. In the culture of competitiveness, it is logical that the losers will want to revenge themselves on the winners, but to do so, the excluded will have to invade the realm of the privileged.

Because of this, terrorism and all other revenge-wreaking monstrosities, have to be formulated as a logical consequence of, and, as such, as an integral part of a culture of competitiveness. It is not a cancer in the system; it is a logical result of that system.

Terrorism is evil, but the culture whose nature logically inspires terrorism is evil as well.

 

THE CRIMINAL NARRATIVE

Albert Camus made a differentiation between two kinds of crimes: crimes against capital and crimes against logic.[i] In actual fact, the second crime supports the first. In order to get away with a major money heist the blue-blooded criminal knows he or she must first create a narrative that will turn their crime into something normal; and to do that they need to simply distort logic. It is behind smoke-screens of bent rationality that the most audacious crimes are committed over and over again. They call these smoke-screens, “The Economy”.

In order to ensure that the money always rises to the top of the pile, the ones behind the levitation act feed societies with an Economy Narrative that is completely based and reliant on a logic of deception. It is a logic that justifies their greed, and it does so with total approbation from the greater part of society, even though it is degrading, debilitating and harmful for the vast majority of human beings. To achieve this lying distortion, create their own reality, and convince the masses to support that reality, the first thing that is done is extract “humanity” from the argument. Instead of using exchange to benefit the whole of humanity, therefore, the Economy Narrative talks about what is good for “The Market”.

The criminal distortion of logic in the Economy Narrative cannot function within an authentically human society. Its logical crimes are immediately stripped bare when shown against the backdrop of humanity. When seen from the human point of view, the crimes are immediately revealed for what they are – crimes against humanity. If we change “Market” for “Humanity” the whole Economy Narrative falls apart. And so, the criminal of capital knows, the human point of view has to be eradicated. Once this is done, the crime against logic creates a kind of story that will encourage the victims of capital’s thieving to think like criminals themselves by indoctrinating them with criminal dreams and fantasies. Once society itself has bought this dream, the smoke-screen is up and the real pillaging of all capital can take place in earnest.

With humanity out of the picture, society becomes a herd of individualities, each one mesmerised by his or her unique condition of being an individual within the Market, but driven by the barking sheepdog who pushes them together, inculcating fear with his barks of anything outside of the circle that might threaten the Market enclosing the herd and which is so absolutely necessary for its well-being.

Whilst the individuals are busy watching their neighbours and praying for the health of the Market, the big picture, and the awesome crimes that take place there, can be well hidden. And once the bigger picture is veiled it is easy to carry out the great systemic robbery: a tremendous magic trick that provokes an uncanny levitation of all wealth.

“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime,” said Camus.[ii] Economic measures, the so-called economic reforms, are anti-cholesterol remedies to ensure the upward movement of wealth. The term reform is criminally distorted so that it justifies the criminals selfish aims whilst seeming to mean something that is necessary for all of society. And yes, Camus is also right by naming our age, the era of premeditation. It is all carefully planned. What seems like economic chaos is simply a manifestation of pure criminal logic.

[i] Albert Camus, The Rebel, introduction, p. i

[ii] Ibid

Our Lack of Humanity

What Civilisation lacks above all else is precisely the one thing we all share; our humanity.

Without the binding force that humanity possesses, societies feel fragmented; there is a sense that things are not properly put together; that everything is a mess. There is a feeling that the System enveloping society has no feeling for the society itself. Many parts of civilisation seem to be unnecessary or purposeless. The relationship that the individual parts have to the whole is not palpable and things just seem to be there, ad hoc, for no significant reason at all.

The result of this lack is that society becomes a neurotic collective of neuroses, and it becomes incapable of seeing the inherent contradictions in many of the values it upholds. In fact, it is a society that cherishes opposing sets of conscious values, but fails to appreciate the absurdity of the contradiction. It will worship freedom, but champion the needs for ever stricter controls. It will strive for peace, but does so by warring against its enemies at the slightest excuse. It will harken to the need for more human rights and social justice whilst enforcing economies that ensure the flow of money in a continual stream upward to the most privileged classes.

Civilisation desperately needs a psychiatric cure from the terrible neuroses that afflict it. Someone needs to lie our System down on the couch and explain to it once and for all what it is lacking and what it needs to concentrate on and recuperate. The cure is not so hard once the patient accepts the facts and looks for the lack within itself; for the cure is there, and always has been. In fact, it is the material that constitutes the very basis of civilisation itself. We call it “humanity”.

Humanity vs Pride

“… one characteristic seems to be pertinent for all neuroses …

pride governs feelings.”[i]

 

The propagation and dictatorships of pride – from the personal pride to the national – is built out of a separation: the creation of borders between us and them; the manifestation of our need to measure ourselves and create an identity out of our differences (she’s got blonde hair, he’s got red hair, they’ve got black hair and the rest of us have all got brown hair). But the separation is also a superficial thing, created out of the obvious notion that we are all different in some ways and have certain similarities in others. However, in our societies there is a prejudice towards the differences via the superficial valuation that some differences are better than others (we would love to be blonde like her). However, once the difference has been established then, psychologically, it starts to get more serious and nasty. After making the separation we must conform to what seems to be ours. Certainly one can dye one’s hair, but, everyone knows that that is cheating. The rule of identities is that one must be proud of what one is, not what one should be or would like to be – and here begin all neuroses.

The sense of direction – where are we going? – is absent in the neurotic society because its “directive powers are weakened in direct proportion to the degree of alienation from self,” [ii] which is our alienation from humanity. Or, in other words, our pride in our identity, in that which makes us different from them, is denying us an identity with our real self, which is that we are all human beings.

The power of humanity, like Freud’s concept of the “ego” stands weak against the magnificent promises of the idealised society that is geared toward satisfying desires. Nevertheless, the macro-psychological ego, or true self that is humanity, may be the most positive and constructive force we could ever possess if it were allowed to be unleashed. Its weakness does not lie in its lack of potential, but rather in its lack of visibility. The problem with humanity is that we no longer perceive it: it has become a concept like “ghosts” or “flying saucers”, something that some of us may believe in, but hardly ever talk about, lest we be judged to be crackpots for having brought the subject up.

If, like a psychoanalyser, we were to examine society for traces of its humanity, we would find that very little of it is visibly operating. The structure of everything is built on division and differentiation. We might see possibilities; that certain beliefs and feelings seem authentically “human” and that the basic drives for progress and development contain an authenticity that transcends the simple selfish ones generated by the individual’s own pride, but, in general terms, “the human” remains shadowy; in the background.

However, if our analyses were to go deeper and we were able to draw society’s attention towards its humanity within our own individual psyche, then perhaps we could undermine the pride-based system, drawing it away from its own cynically defensive view of reality and instil in it an interest in the truth about itself.

Humanity must be allowed to assume responsibility for itself. This is the basic, but ignored, principle of democracy. Humanity needs to be allowed to make human decisions; feel human feelings; and develop beliefs and goals which further humanity.

In order for this to happen, awareness must be unleashed; an awareness that can only be created through an analytic process – we must put the System on the analyst’s couch and talk to it, question it; lead it towards a consciousness of its own positive force, which is its own authenticity. No matter how selfish it seems, the System is still basically a human one, and until humanity is rediscovered, it will remain a neurotic one, gasping for air in a stagnating ocean of ubiquitous pride.

[i] K. Horney, Neuroses and Human Growth, p.162

[ii] Ibid, p. 167