Philosophy for Geeks, part 3

August 04, 2019. Part 3.

Truth as it applies to humans can only be generalized. However, if someone wants to tell you the truth about you, demand details. Yes Virginia, paradox is good. Acceptable, anyway.

I don’t like to feel labeled. Nevertheless, I label everything up to and including myself. Human nature. I think that the danger of labeling is not that you will be labeled (or mislabeled) but that you will limit yourself to the boundaries that the label implies.

Philosophies that concern themselves with how things should be are a waste of time. Popeye said, “I yam what I yam.” Life, too, am what it is. Several months ago I had a pretty intense discussion about Zen Buddhism. I won’t pretend that I understood the truth of the message. Instead, let me pass on what bugged me. It seemed to me that the underlying philosophy of Zen Buddhism was that everything is perfect as is and nothing requires change and that acceptance of that “reality” would bring peace. Further conversation gave me to believe me that that is the state the practitioners of Zen Buddhism aspire to. During the conversation, I pointed out the obvious inconsistency of “seeking after” a state of, for want of a better word, non-seekingness. My friend admitted this. The truth of the matter is that neither of us has a problem with inconsistencies or paradoxes (see above or below, whichever). No, what bugged me was the idea that we shouldn’t try to improve ourselves because we are already perfect. As a theoretical concept, this is great! Self-acceptance. On the other hand, how many of you out there are living theoretical lives? Acceptance is important. Acceptance of things that cannot be changed is sanity-saving. I will never be more than 5’5” (and a half!). Much as it used to pain me to accept that, I finally came to realize that every time I bemoaned my lack of height, I was wasting valuable air. I yam what I yam. That said, don’t tell me that I should accept (to the point of not trying to improve) my situation in life. If there is no hope of improvement, what is the point?

Paradox is a human universal.

We’re all as much to blame as anyone.

If you read something here and say, “Duh! That’s obvious!” don’t be surprised or disappointed. I can’t pretend that I’m saying or thinking something that has never been said or thought before. Even the most original concept is—more often than not—a restatement from a different angle.

Perspective is everything.

I often feel that knowing things makes me arrogant. Excuse me, that the display of my knowledge makes me appear arrogant. Then I realized that a beautiful woman is not (necessarily) stuck-up because of her beauty. To the same degree that she can’t help being beautiful, I can’t help being intelligent. So, if you can’t help being intelligent and someone tells you not to show off or be arrogant or act superior, listen to what they say, but don’t let them shame you or bully you into hiding your light. “Dumbing down” is dumb.

Lately, when I’m with large groups of people, all I see are hypocrisy and lies. Maybe I need glasses. Or maybe I’m with the wrong groups of people.

Everything can be broken down to component parts. Presumably, even component parts.

What is the heart of an onion?

Communicating with an old friend of mine not too long ago, I got on the subject of the women in Puerto Rico and wrote this: “The women here tend to be stunningly beautiful physically and emotional horror shows in their hearts and souls.” Gross generalization, but it was the way I felt at the time (important emphasis). I continued with, “When I go somewhere in Puerto Rico, it’s like going to a candy store that sells candy that will make you sick. Makes for good eating, but who wants to pay that price? And then, who wants to be in the candy store at all, knowing that for all its attractiveness, you’re just not going to buy anything?” That’s how I justify my standoffishness. 2019 addition: Emotional horror shows are everywhere, as is beauty. What was it that Buckaroo Banzai said? “No matter where you go, there you are.” Seems apt.

A very spiritual person once told me that she had trouble communicating her beliefs without offending, saying that she believed her message to be “inherently offensive.” At first I agreed: that kind of extreme belief can be a little off-putting. Hers was to me when first we spoke, though offensive may be too strong a word. . . . Anyway, I played around in my head with a variety of possibilities. All of which boiled down to the idea that she could be less aggressive about her beliefs/message and the way she presents them/it. The error I soon noted was in thinking that she should change how she displays herself. That the wrapping paper was the problem and not what she had wrapped up. Now, hold on! Before you get all bent out of shape, hear me out. She wants people to hear about God and Jesus and how they will save you/make your life better. What happens if we peel away the skin of the onion? Minus the fanatics who want you to believe exactly as they believe because they have their own control issues, the prevalent message of any religion or system of belief (not including things like Satanism) is love. Think about it. “Honor thy father and mother.” Love. “Treat your neighbor as yourself.” Love. “Thou shalt not kill.” Stretches the analogy a bit, but still I think it extends out to say: Don’t kill, love. How can any sane person (notice the qualifier “sane”) object to a message of love? Now if someone wants you to believe not only what she believes but to believe it in the same way . . . screw ‘er. Otherwise, love is good.

Driving home yesterday, I observed a young woman walking down the street and talking to herself. “Poor thing,” I said aloud, “I wonder what’s wrong with her.”

Nothing is as simple as it appears.

Nothing is as complicated as it seems.

My latest “thing” is not talking. Try it. Don’t speak unless you have something to say. Be warned, it’s liable to make you and anyone with you pretty uncomfortable. It is a valuable lesson. You’re walking down the street with a friend, and he glances up at the balcony of your neighbor’s house and says, “Looks like they painted their balcony.” What are you supposed to say to that? “Yep,” or “I see,” or “No, it’s just sunburned.” Say nothing. Silence doesn’t require filling. Inane chatter doesn’t require an inane response. So why is this valuable? Have you ever stopped to think how frequently we speak without communicating anything? Noticing a new paint job or wondering whether the weather will clear in the next few days is verbal white noise. Saying those kinds of things does not communicate anything. So don’t say them. Try silence. This all gets sticky, of course. We aren’t alone in the world, and sometimes people need more than mere physical presence not to feel alone. Sometimes we need the sound of another human voice, even if it really isn’t saying anything. So, as with all the world, silence needs a balance, too.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed that I was ever really as young as I was. In every moment of my life, I have felt “grown up.” Capable, intelligent, conscious. For goodness sakes, when I was five, I used to philosophize with myself over the real existence of other people. But then I remember how, as a teenager, I fell in love with Nadia Comaneci, sure that we would meet and marry and— And I remember that I was as silly and immature as the teenagers I see walking down the street with their boxers up to their chests and their pants down around their knees. Further, I imagine that probably they see themselves as seriously as I did. And still do. Hmmm . . .

New theory time. Well. We look at life, we see the cycles. It is all cyclical. Tides, menstruation, seasons. I have noticed over the last few years that my creative life is cyclical. Times of intense creativity are interspersed with quiescent ones. My emotional life has cyclic patterns. My sex life, even. So look at your life first and start finding those cycles. Knowing your own internal rhythms inevitably must help you live more comfortably with yourself and with those around you.

So, cycles. They’re in our lives, in nature. History is great at cycles, as is evolution. It got me to thinking. Maybe there is no death. Not really. I’ve been in these periods where I write enormous amounts of music on a daily basis. Two weeks later and I’m spending every waking hour watching TV, reading, doing anything but write music. I’m like two different people. A person who meets one of those facets for the first time and then doesn’t see me until the next facet is going great guns might not recognize the me who is living that second facet. If you lived only in summer and suddenly found yourself in the middle of winter, would you even be able to understand that you are still on the planet earth? All this goes to the idea that maybe life never ends or begins. Birth is opening your eyes on the day when you’ve only ever experienced night. Death is being thrown into the middle of winter when you’ve lived an entire lifetime of summer.

In support of that: Can you think of a time when your memories stop? They become dimmer and dimmer, but can you point to 18 months, three days, and say, “There, there is the wall of my memory”? We’ve spoken of the engineer and the mathematician. In this case, I think that our memories become dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until we finally say, “Beyond that, I cannot recall.” But does that mean that there are no more memories or that like the engineer we see that it’s close enough to zero that we just call it that for convenience? How can you be sure that our memory doesn’t continue getting dimmer and dimmer into infinity? How can you be positive that you don’t have millennia of memory stored away and only made inaccessible by distance and laziness?