.diminished discords (iv)

a new series of aphorisms and short reflections for twenty twenty six.

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since the individual is now primary, there is zero hope for society, and less so for humanity. (the larger the group, the less reality it has, the less sense the category makes). there is no automatic collective purpose anymore. at least for modern people. any real purpose must be consciously shared and pursued. an individual relating to another individual (that can be a human, but also an animal, a plant, a god, an activity; anything really). who would want to go back to a type of consciousness where we are less than free. not me.

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in retrospect, a lot of what i've written about spirituality was probably an attempt to prove my religion and faith (to God? laughable. other people? even more laughable. to myself? probably), rather than understand it and live it. i have no wish to do that anymore.

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the whole month of january i had a bad flu. probably because i refuse to not smoke even when i'm sick, i had terrible coughs (though i also refuse to believe they are connected; more often than not, i stop coughing when i smoke, rather than when i don't). i'm over it now, but something remains. a sharp pain in my left lung (or maybe my ribs, or my heart, or all of them; i'm not entirely sure). the terrible cough is gone, but the pain is not going away (or if it is, it's very slowly). maybe it means i have some kind of fatal disease. my wife doesn't like it when i say stuff like this. but i try to make her see the bright side: it would, no doubt, increase the value of my books. i think if i were to die before i reach forty, i could become a classic author of genius. whereas if i remain alive, i'm just another schmuck.

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i find myself more and more at odds with both classical religion and mainstream attitudes to reality. the first one refuses to accept just how random and chaotic a world of true freedom is. the second refuses to understand it, and own it. 

it is precisely because we are free that there is randomness (i act this way, you act that way, someone else acts another way, every single being, not just humans, acting all the time at cross purposes: the result is unexpected; cannot be predicted). and it is precisely in freedom and in freedom only that there is meaning. that's the fun. and the tragedy. can't have one without the other. and why would you want to.

religious people seem to want to live in a fairy tale (i think this is where their attraction to symbolism and all of that comes from) where everything makes sense and fits cute little patterns. and they will close their eyes to the horror that happens as a result of people having freedom. this is a scenic route to nihilism. blaming God for things he has no control over. even if he could do something about it, he is much too respectful of our individuality to do so. it would unmake the world. it would remove all meaning from it. the nihilism of only God having true agency. grim. ghastly.

without the possibility of horror there is also no possibility of beauty. i refuse to attribute the cruelty of the world to God's providence. i hold God in much higher regard. and i love that he's a gambler, and respects us enough to allow us to make mistakes, and to forge our own path.

that's the whole point. we have to participate in making meaning. not 'find' it. we have to make it. God makes it for himself, not for us. what he did is give us an opportunity. why would i want him to steer the ship for me. it's enough that he gave me a ship. the point is to become more like him, not less.

the other side of the coin is mainstream atheism, which looks upon the chaotic results of freedom and concludes that there is no meaning. what a stupid and unwarranted conclusion. just another type of cope. to refuse responsibility.

randomness is a product of free beings acting (and acting requires purpose, hence, meaning). now, the result of course is often chaotic. it has to be. but that just means improvisation is one of the skills (perhaps the main skill) we're meant to master here. but most people want a script, i suppose.

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consciousness is a very powerful thing. the more individual it is, the more potential it has to alienate us from our neighbor. but that's what gives value to love. when something is fully chosen, when there are no external constraints or obligations to behave the right way and no threat over our heads for behaving the wrong way, that's when our love is really true. 

so perhaps it's not unwarranted to cut modern western people some slack. we are navigating a whole new way of being. the uncharted waters of full personality.

was it safer before? yes. but so what. there are places you cannot go with training wheels. those nasty scratches on your knees and palms and face are necessary. and even if it was possible, what value would there be in achieving something without the risk of failure. it's like winning the game by cheating. no fun, and no glory. 

it's not just religion either, or heaven. it's marriage, and friendship, and community, and creativity. it has more value now because it's not part of some many stepped program you have to follow. life as a quest, not a recipe.

western people conquered this new plane of freedom and unsurprisingly misused it. but error can be repented. whereas the devil wants us back safe in the cage, where repentance doesn't even come into the picture. repent what, if you didn't choose anything. the metaphysical equivalent of 'i was just following orders'.

salvation by default, for someone who has tasted freedom, is a form of damnation.

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one thing that disgusts me about people now is their lack of commitment. to anything. not a lover, not their creative pursuits, not even pleasure as such. which is why everyone is addicted to distraction and seeking to numb themselves to everything. it is the opposite of commitment, because it is negative. it's about avoidance, not about pursuit of anything positive. 

and it can't all be attributed to atheism or nihilism, since you could find quite easily commitment (to the point of madness) even among nihilists a century or so ago. (of course, i would also argue that they aren't true nihilists. the true nihilist lets himself die, and nothing more). 

so what is it? fear, most likely. that was the great advantage of the before times, i suppose. there was less fear, because the world was smaller. less choices. less responsibility. but that's also the problem. 

how much of earlier human commitment (to religion, to marriage, to morality, etc etc) was socially mandated, not consciously chosen. it was automated. now it must be consciously pursued or it won't be anything. 

if you love something, be loyal to it. bend heaven and earth for it. that's what God respects and expects from us.

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all throughout the gospels Jesus speaks of sifting, and judgement, of separating the good and the bad, of the elect, of leaving the worthless behind so that the worthy can be glorified. 

it seems the world was created so that a small number of people could achieve something great (and really that's the only way it could be, because there's no glory without trial). Jesus seemed to accept the price. 

if you think about it, everything is like this. most things end up in the trash one way or the other. (think of food: you prepare a meal by using only a fraction of the ingredients you choose. even if you use most of it, you eat it and most of it ends in the toilet; only a little bit of it is of use in the end; the rest is recycled, in the true sense, not the sham that goes by that name).

and it's an acceptable trade off, because the little that is good is worth more than the much that gets chucked away. it's not even in the same league. that's at least what Jesus says, and how he acts.

how they made a universalist religion out of this is baffling to me. Jesus is the most discriminatory of gods. if we take him at his word, of course.

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Bruce wrote a post about his relationship to music, and how it has dwindled in intensity after his early twenties. i very much relate to this. also to literature. in retrospect, my twenties were a very dark time in many senses (though i don't regret them, everything is useful if we learn the right lessons). but this is why i'm so glad to have regained my love for fiction and also, even more recent, for music. i hadn't felt it so intensely in a long, long time. and it partakes of something like infatuation. a mystical infatuation, really. i'm very grateful for this.

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i know very few people read these posts, and an even smaller number ever listens to the music at the end of them. but i like sharing, and it's worth it if nothing else to revisit later by myself.

i was going to include a track by Mccoy Tyner on this one and talk a bit about him and his approach, but i got side tracked away from modal jazz by a (sort of) recommendation by Walter, the composer Frederick Delius (i'd never heard of him before). 

this piece, Song of Summer, stood out. if Debussy was german, is what it sounds like to me (even though Delius was born in england, he is ethnically german). i still prefer french impressionism; the germanic spirit is too serious for it. but this piece is really beautiful, even if, again, in typical german fashion, it is almost comically too heavy for summer. maybe it's a summer already in expectation of fall, as i suppose it must be.