140

1. The world is boring, said the man who knew everything.
2. The world is a lovely and terrible mystery, said the enthusiastic fool.
3. I prefer the enthusiastic fool.
4. Unity, or number one, is so natural that we take it for granted.
5. Red, blue, and yellow are all around us. No big deal. And yet "qualia" are utterly inexplicable.
6. Sure, we have our mathematical models that relate them to x-rays and all the rest.
7. But this is a blindness to color as we experience it.
8. Color as we experience it cannot be reduced.
9. I mention it. I share it as something joyful. Others can argue it.
10. Argument has its merits. But it also tighten the skin of the mind.
11. We want to "win." We don't like learning as much as we pretend to?
12. Do we learn sometimes only to parade this learning?
13. Are we sometimes compulsive performers?
14. What about philosophy as an increase of wonder?
15. What about philosophy as an eye opener?
16. Once, I especially liked the notion of philosophy as liberation.
17. Kill God. Wake up from the idolatry of other humans.
18. I still think this is valuable part of philosophy, or shall we just say thinking?
19. "Philosophy" strikes many as a pretentious word.
20. Is this phobia somewhat justified?
21. I think it is. We readers of philosophy are eager indeed to tell it how it is.
22. It's our way or the highway, right?
23. The philosopher is the first cousin of the priest.
24. An intellectual is someone who knows exactly how you should think.
25. And that's exactly how I want you to think of an intellectual.
26. How funny it is that this role comes so natural to us.
27. Are battling to make our personal view of reality the official view?
28. Are we frustrated when others don't see the obvious merit of our superb worldview?
29. Why don't they just UNDERSTAND how unbearably brilliant we are?
30. Why can't they see that they just don't...see?
31. Father knows best. Right?
32. On the other hand, is it better to let the others steer?
33. What if we somehow transcend our vanity long enough to come from a place of love?
34. Then should we share?
35. I feel more like an honest man when I'm spewing my enthusiasm, as opposed to crashing threads with an intent to embarrass the "heathens without the light."
36. There are many of us on this forum who bring the not so good news to heathens without the light and end up finding out that they think we are the heathens without the light.
37. So we see who can browbeat the other. Sometimes they end up hating us, and we them.
38. No one has made any converts. No one has increased their daily ration of APPLAUSE.
39. This forum is a small scale version of the "big bad world."
40. We want to dominate more than we want to understand.
41. We want to impose our tyranny. Understanding our genius is their job. The poor sad others not as bright as we.
42. And this is the kingly We. This is the personal We of universal truth.
43. The radical skeptic is self-refuting.
44. The know-it-all ends up ignored. Or admired by the aspiring know-it-all.
45. I suppose one can get away with knowing something if one is friendly.
46. If we find ourselves compulsively sharing our opinions, perhaps this is a confession that we need one another after all, if only as an audience.
47. And if the know-it-all still needs an audience, then knowing-it-all is not the path to contentment. And therefore not the path of Wisdom.
48. Or does contentment have nothing to do with Wisdom?
49. I suspect that my introduction of math into certain conversations was taken as some sort of intimidation attempt. Our culture worships math while hating it?
50. Now there are some sharp guys on this forum who would never see it that way. But many young pups like myself still find ourselves barking near the fence.
51. And yet I only rambled on and on about math from a childish (in the best sense) enthusiasm.
52. I was good at math as a child without being in love with it.
53. I wrote poetry and love notes in sophomore geometry, was bored by proofs.'
54. I was an anti-social dreamer. Not much has changed?
55. But it has. At least out here in the real world.
56. A good woman. A damn good woman. And we learned over the years not to destroy one another, or ourselves.
57. If you never had to learn this, thank your mommy and daddy and your particular neck of the woods.
58. The tenderness between lovers keeps that all important inner child alive.
59. I simply can't believe in the man of steel.
60. We die without water. We die without love.
61. To love is important perhaps than to be loved, but the two are not often separate.
62. I have had enough great moments to surmise that saints and sages live in a state of love --which is also a world of beauty.
63. And I have opened my heart just enough at times to know that there is a deep sorrow to love.
64. How quickly I forget!
65. A dog returns to its vomit. And I return to my vanity, fear, rage, greed.
66. I shouldn't play it up too much.
67. I'm one of the happiest people I know.
68. But this happiness, and an exposure to great things, is a temptation to the vanity that annuls the greatness of these things.
69. What are these great things I speak of?
70. Marriage, friends, books, music, movies, the weather and the sidewalk.
71. At the core of all of these, making them work, is LOVE, a childlike enthusiasm.
72. But life is strange. Many times I have felt as pure as saint....
73. An hour later I am vividly fantasizing first degree murder.
74. Someone insults me out here in the real world, perhaps without intending, out of their own awkwardness, vanity, fear, etc....
75. And I fantasize their murder.
76. A cold thrill, the fantasy of murder. Perhaps you know it?
77. I don't think of myself as strange in this regard.
78. Under our prudent personas lurk dragons and whores.
79. Man is a wolf to man. Man is a bleating lamb to man.
80. At least once a week it occurs to me that I must die, that all this beauty will be taken away from me.
81. At other times I'm frustrated with the way of the world enough to almost enjoy this thought, that there will finally be an end to all this noise and strife.
82. For me, the afterlife is not real.
83. I admit that it's possible just as I admit winning the lottery is possible. It's not something I expect.
84. So annihilation then! Zilch zip nada!
85. How does one deal with this? When one is in love with life?
86. I remind myself that I am not myself.
87. This face and even the particular faces that I love are not the essence of life.
88. The same love will shine in the slightly different faces of another pair of lovers.
89. The same joy in philosophy will swell a slightly different torso.
90. Am I my face or am I the joy that animates my face in those moments that make me resist death in the first place?
91. And isn't this the same joy that animates all of us?
92. Do I identity with my thoughts?
93. Yes and no. Are they my thoughts?
94. All of my best thoughts are thousands of years old.
95. The men who sculpted the Buddhas over yonder were filled, I think, with the same joy that I feel at my best, the same radiant contentment.
96. All the paintings of Christ are the painting of this joy, this "transcendence" of death.
97. A flame leaps from melting candle to melting candle.
98. Are we the melting candle or the flame?
99. I feel a sense of rightness whenever I use whatever talent has been given to me to express such thoughts.
100. The best art is religious or philosophical or call it what you will. That's heartfelt opinion.
101. Has anyone seen Requiem For A Dream? That is a vision of Hell. That is a mirror for us.
102. We destroy ourselves and one another in ignorance.
103. Hatred is hell. Vanity is hell. Greed is hell. That's hell enough to go around.
104. Love is heaven. Wisdom is heaven. Art is heaven. That's heaven enough for anyone.
105. Or is it? We cling to our exclusive Church, whether this church is a university, a backstage pass, a steeple tipped palace of self-righteous fury, a swollen bank account, or our own sneering face...
106. And yet all these "churches" will rot, rust, and fade.
107. I'd be a hypocrite if this was about accusation. Bad! Bad ! Bad!
108. That's the terrible danger in all religion and all philosophy, I think.
109. A man learns just enough to despise his fellows...and this contempt is a well made grave.
110. I know that it's funny to hear this from me, a big mouth asshole. But I am always bothered after indulging myself. It's not in the least fear of some monster in "heaven."
111. It's simply that my joy is gone.
112. Like I said, I'm a happy person. And I consciously associate joy with virtue.
113. So I know that I've lost my way when I've lost my joy.
114. But I'm the firstborn son of a proud father, so it doesn't role off my back like it should.
115. Off with his head!
116. Caligula and Nero (in Seutonius) are portraits of our dark human hearts.
117. Dostoevsky knew all about this. Stavrogin in Demons. A sublime novel.
118. It's my view that we should be conscious of the terrible cruelty within ourselves, if only to help us make peace with the terrible cruelty in the world.
119. The world's injustice is a mirror image of the injustice in ourselves.
120. If we embrace righteous rage, are we not becoming the violence we deplore?
121. We all have our limits, and perhaps this is right.
122. We don't forget how to kill those who threaten our loved ones. And I think we should.
123. A time to kill. And a time to accuse.
124. But not all the time? Not much of the time?
125. Slow to wrath is good for the blood pressure.
126. And because it's so destructive to this forum's potential, can we not cramp the good vibe of others?
127. Why should but in with our righteousness and negativity when the other is just enjoying him or herself? How errant can they be if they are enjoying themselves without insulting others?
128. And can we not just stay out threads that do not interest us? Must we play the superior soul? Are we so desperate to air out of infinite knowledge that we can't just find the sandbox of our preference?
129. I'm suggesting that if we can't make our own joy or join in another's, we should probably save our grumblings for blogs like this. Where participation is voluntary.
130. So there you go, dear reader. I tried to avoid the pretentious terms that often hide not so difficult thoughts.
131. I'll end with a little anecdote.
132. At 16 I wrote a 3 page "book" on the miracle of existence. I wrote that color was a miracle, that three dimensional space was a miracle. That sound was a miracle. All color, all space, all sound. I hadn't read philosophy yet.
133. The point is that here I am again. Certain philosophers have touched on just those things, but I knew it at 16. And forgot it! The point is not my "wonderful precociousness" but only that perhaps the best aspects of philosophy are child's play. (Of course my younger self entirely overlooked the miracle of words, numbers, the human smile.)
134. Are we so dazzled by our immeasurable sophistication that we can't even FIND the damned mystery?
135. Are we so eager to pose as the Master of Great and Difficult Thoughts that we are blind to the greatest thoughts precisely because they are not difficult enough for our vanity?
136. "Be astonished at nothing"? WTF!
137. Ideally we should perhaps escape fear. But what is this dodge of wonder?
138. Look at me, ma! No feelings!
139. But the Sex Pistols are did that one. And only the small bit of irony in the tone keeps it from being 100% adolescent vomit.
140. So screw it. I'm going to turn away from "it's oh so difficult to understand" to a simpler vocabulary. I should have stayed closer to Bukowski and Fante.

absolute 1

0 is the fulcrum of integers, the nudity of naturals.

0 can symbolize the female but perhaps better symbolizes Being-under-erasure.

The number line itself is the female, the matrix.

The number line, like woman, is bifurcated.

The number line implies a 2.

We can think of left/right movement or up/down movement.

We can think of more or less magnitude, if we want to avoid the spatial element.

But we must have duality if we hope to have movement.

We see that binary system, although it does not contain the digit 2, contains 2 digits.

It also contains the line, which is an implied 2.

A number is the cut on the line.

A number is a unity, a union of its digits, a singular quantity.

All numbers are "male."

Are all operators "female"?

By "female" I mean dual.

The even numbers were considered female.

The odd numbers were male.

The operation of negation/inversion is the most poetic of operators.

Logic is modular base 2 arithmetic.

Logic is number reduced to lowest functional terms.

Assuming that only binary and singular operators are allowed.

Obviously, only a few operators are conceivable, and most are redundant if convenient.

Logic must have a binary operator.

Math needs binary operators in order to describe relationships.

The NOT or INVERSE operator is not enough, despite its perfect beauty.

Mathematics reveals ontology.

Logos obscures it?

But this book is logos.

The proto-logic is also the absolute logic.

We abandon the "transcendental" logic, or analytic, as it implies a dualism.

Kant's noumena seems illogical.

Idealism evolves beyond itself.

The "system of concepts" recognizes itself as the structure of reality.

If reality is structure by the concept, then reality and the concept are one, dissolving the duality.
But the matrix is dual.

Absolute ontology is negative.

Being is not one.

Being is negative one.

The structure of reality negates itself.

Reality is dynamic but unified.

The self and reality are one.

The "self" is a flexible part of the intelligible structure of "reality/self/it."

Dualisms are justified practically.

Philosophy is poetry.

Nonism is poetry.

Truth is beauty.

Pi is the constant of eternity.

e is the constant of time.

A circle is a logarithmic spiral with a 0 growth rate.

This is poetry.

Truth is beautiful.

12 is a superperfect number.

This means it is the sum of its factors, AND that its factors are sums of their factors.

It's the only superperfect number that isn't huge.

We know that 12 is important historically.

Our calendars have twelve months.

Christ had twelve disciples.

Pure quantity is beautiful in itself and also because it is eternal.

12 will outlive individual humans, if not the species.

-1 is not only a number but also an inversion operator.

-1 is a negativity wand.

The sigma (for summing) works just like a computer program.

It's a machine made of pure thought.

-1 is powerful in such a machine.

i is perhaps more powerful.

If -1 is an inversion, the i is a half-inversion.

If -1 one is pi radians, then i is pi/2 radians.

Positive unity, or 1, is the absolute number.

If 0 is number naked, then 1 is number crowned.

1 is the prime of primes.

1 is super-prime.

1 is the foundation of all ratio.

1 hides between all other integers, as the measure of the space between them.

n is often used to denote natural numbers.

p is often used to denote primes.

x and y are often used to denote unknowns.

a and b are often used to represent indeterminate constants.

this makes them the variables that paradoxically represent constants.

we need a constant that represents variables.

we need a constant for randomness.

r would work, but so would the questionmark.

a greek letter might be preferred.

theta is used for angles.

infinitesimals are limits without the dodge.

the limit concept is sublime.

but so are infinitesimals.

zeno has not been refuted.

zeno is an ontologist.

beings are unities.

beings are ones.

beings are enclosures.

the mountain is sense data considered as a whole and associated with other similarly constituted objects or beings.

this includes abstract objects, or thoughts.

thought and memory are discrete.

qualia is experienced as something other than concept, but concept cannot express this.

"red" is not redness.

"infinity" is not infinity.

the "transrational" is nothing but feelings/sensations.

life is the clash of two inferred elements, experienced as unity.

sensation/feeling apart from concept is one element.

concept apart from particular concepts is the other.

we cannot speak of sensation or feeling except by means of concept.

we cannot think of a thoughtless reality.

we infer that we are the union of two such elements.

synthesis and negation are one.

synthesis is the negation of accident.

this refers to the essence and accident contrast.

what makes a chair a chair, for instance, is its essence.

what can be taken away or added is its accident.

to synthesize we negate.

the concept animal is the synthesis of cats, dogs, mice, etc.

But this is simultaneously a negation of their differences.

For when we speak of animals, we are intentionally vague or general.

And this is only possible because what is accidental to their status as animals is negated.

If we wanted to refer only to dogs, we would have.

We can choose the level of generality as needed.

Concepts enclose one another like russian dolls.

Concepts exist in a tree-like system.

Our biggest abstractions include most of the rest.

For instance: the universe, reality, everything, the all.

Heidegger used Being in this way.

What is the Being of beings?

It is not consciousness, for consciousness is a being.

It is not "Being" for "Being" is a word.

This leads us to negative ontology.

The being of beings is inferred as a one that cannot be present, for every one that is present, or positive, will be yet another being.

The negative object is absolute negation.

An object is created by negation/inversion.

A television, for instance, is just the inverse of the not-television.

An object is defined by what it is not.

And what it is not is defined by what it is.

This is like a cut on the Real line.

Mathematics reveals ontology.

Ontology is the logic of being.

Logic is a being.

Absolute logic is the self-consciousness of the negative being.

This sounds mystical, but is not.

Philosophy has lost itself in psychology.

The essence of philosophy is the description of essence.

Man qua man is essentially essence.

Essence is thought.

Thought is being.

Thought is reality.

Reality is thought.

Thought is the structure of reality.

Reality is the structure of thought.

We are dealing with words.

If reality is thought and thought is reality, why must we use two words for the same thing?

Dualities like this are practical.

1 is the onliest number.

It owes its recursions to the Line.

Infinity is a proto-number.

Infinity is implied by positional notation.

The 0 helped infinity to fly.

10 is beautiful for several reasons.

It represents the number of digits in its base.

It is the first number in this base to manifest positional notational.

It is the first natural appearance of zero within this base.

It contains both and only the two most beautiful digits.

It contains both an even and an odd digit.

It contains the super-prime and the un-number.

0 is a being that represents nonbeing.

0 emphasizes, to the thoughtful, its existence as pure concept.

0 is the presence of an absence.

1000 is beautiful precisely because the 0s are modest.

0s appear as the notational system takes on another digit.

999 + 1 = 1000

2 is the number of the matrix.

2 is Mary.

1 is Jesus.

To avoid being confused as someone who pretends to be a professional interpreter of the great names in philosophy, let me emphasize that while I have cherished influences, I ultimately present this fusion as just that, a personal synthesis of my impassioned but limited exposure not only to Western Foolosophy but also to this strange bird known as Life On Earth Among Humans.


1. I think that enough self-consciousness leads to the realization that there is no real border between the self and the world.
2. We live in our thoughts, which are made of language, as much as we live in our sensations.
3. So the world as we experience is largely made of thought.
4. And the intelligible structure of the word, seems to me, to be nothing but these thoughts we have of the world.
5. As our thoughts are changeable, so is the world as we know it.
6. Most of us think of ourselves as living upon a large ball, and yet few of us have taken the necessary spaceship ride to validate this.
7. Of course we have the pictures and science book and the consensus of those around us --and these are sufficiently convincing.
8. This is an example of intelligible structure. We have constructed our notion of the very planet we call home from pictures and words provided for us by others.
9. We are given a name at birth that we did not choose. Before long this name is used to hold together various thoughts we have about this thing we learn to call the "self."
10. We use the pronoun "I."
11. Who or what is this "I"?
12. Can we point to this "I" by pointing to our body?
13. But this "I" is always claiming to have "feelings" and "thoughts."
14. Where are these feelings and thoughts?
15. Can we answer this question by pointing to our skull?
16. If we cut this skull open, will thoughts and feelings spill out?
17. Obviously the brain is related to these thoughts and feelings.
18. Just as obviously the brain is not as brain these thoughts and feelings.
19. "Brain" is a concept, a way of organizing our thoughts and sensations as well as a way to refer to this organization.
20. All this is no doubt obvious to many.
21. Others are perhaps so enamored of science, that they mistake an association of thoughts with the brain for an explanation.
22. Is causal relationship all there is to explanation?
23. If so, why is a question like that so natural?
24. Even if certain philosophers have a point about the futility of such questions, are we so easily satisfied by that?

354f

I think about art and religion. What does an artist want to give? Different artists offer us different things. But what is the best kind of art?

Generally I think that religious art is best, but this should not be understood in a strictly traditional sense. Even Yves Klein, when he paints a monochrome, can be understood as someone who wants us to SEE.

See what? It's a monochrome! Exactly. To see one color. To see that color is.

But that's obvious!

Should it be so obvious? Should we find the raw existence of color so very boring?

I think of those big beautiful sculptures of the Buddha, which are how many years old? What were the sculptors trying to say? Did they care about their artistic reputations?

I bet that many did not. Not in the least. I suspect that they felt something there, that they understood something that was finally worth chiseling into stone.

I myself have been in artist in just about every medium. I have wrestled wrestled wrestled with the problem of what to say with my art.

Some of my best lines were tossed off from a state of joy, of excitement. I was playing with words. I wrote down what delighted me. I forgot about the audience. I wanted to save these amusements for later. And that is why I wrote them, and didn't just think them and pass on.

I used to want to write fiction, as I have always enjoyed fiction. But the fiction I enjoyed was never the shallow stuff. I wanted fiction to say something about reality. I also loved Bukowski, Miller, Kerouac, Fante, and the autobiographical writers in general. Of course Dostoevsky is deep. Nabokov is a master of sensation and desire, of the slick phrase. All of this enhanced my perception of reality. In this sense, fiction served as a narrative form of philosophy, or human science rather than natural science.

In the last few years I've wrote less and less fiction, excepting some self-referential "meta-fiction," and concentrated on philosophy.

I'm not connected to any acknowledged philosophical community, excepting of course all the other living breathing thinking human beings in my life. We are all philosophers in the broad sense, as we all think sometimes on the grand issues. Yes?

For awhile, I wrote philosophy from the angle of what I playfully call "Satanism." Now this is just a philosophy that stresses the freedom of an individual to create him or herself. And of course it was largely inspired by Nietzsche, etc., and rock-n-roll, and Shakespeare, and all the great books I've been lucky enough to be exposed to.

a2

"Yeah, this guy proves in his new books that nothing can ever be proven..."

So far, reading was something he had only experienced in books...

(The above is not my line, but it puts a smile on my face.)

If it weren't for technology, the scientist would be lumped with the priest. We believe what serves us, whether or not we understand it all.

Logical consistency, divorced from practical success or failure, is something akin to painting or music. I talked to a chemist today with a doctorate. He had never explored Cantor, Godel, etc. And yet I have no doubt he would annihilate me at applied mathematics. He's recently invented a new form of paint.

Godel and Turing were obsessed with Disney's Snow White. Godel starved himself to death. Turing's last meal was a cyanide apple.

Hilbert spoke of the paradise that Cantor had created for mathematicians. I think Cantor's aleph notation, to mention a detail, is beautiful, but this paradise line amuses me.

I like math largely because it's as finite as we can get. The natural numbers are the bleached bones of pure intellect.

Of course I can't help but respond to words like "transfinite." Up, up, and away! Spengler was right. We want to fly through space that stretches endlessly. Faustian man lives in the future. No wonder Christ is painted so often as an infant. If the Christ infant symbolizes the project (the ideal future), his mother symbolizes the present which is the spatial-emotional matrix of this project. I lump emotion with the spatial because both are hugely important and yet difficult to symbolize. I refer especially to the paradoxes of Zeno and the number line. How many numbers fit on an inch of number line? As many as you want, and then some.

Our future selves are already present as seeds in the dirt of our present selves. Jung wrote this as well. And our dreams hint at what we shall become, to those who can read the signs. I'm not one of them.

I agree that life is complex, that language is a box of melted crayons. That's why my mathematical paradise is an integer as much as a transcendental. Of course the contrast is beautiful. That's why Euler's identity puts a smile on my face. All my favorite numbers arranged like ducks. And these numbers each hint at a different aspect of mathematics. It's as if they all decided to meet in the middle for a press conference.

1

1 (one) is the center of positive numbers. And -1 is the center of negative numbers. This is counter-intuitional, but quite reasonable.

The smallest positive number is 1 divided by infinity. The largest positive number is infinity divided by one. The logical middle of this spectrum is 1 divided by 1. Or 1 times 1.

Just as 0 (zero) is the border between addition and subtraction, 1 (one) is the border between division and multiplication. Division and multiplication are two ways to write the same numerical-sexual operator. To divide a number by x is to multiply it by 1-over-x.

what is the difference between 1 over infinity and negative 1 over infinity? is it zero ? And does zero equal, for multiplication/division the same thing as -1/infinity? and 1/infinity? Except that the sign can still change the polarity it is multiplied/divided by.

The negatives are an anti-world to the positives. Zero is the strange number between these worlds. And zero covers an infinitely small space of the number line. To speak figuratively but seriously, there is only one number. But this number is twisted into many self-related and self-grounded shapes by our complex notation. The two key manifestations of this number concept are one and zero, or presence and absence.

Only the tiniest point on the number line is absence, or zero. The rest is presence or reverse presence.

Ism

Sensation just is. Emotion just is. No matter how many concepts we pile upon sensation and emotion, they simply are. If we have become blind and deaf to anything, perhaps it is this. Experience is neither explained nor explainable. True, experience includes explanations of many kinds. But a close look at these explanations reveals that they are generally descriptions that integrate various aspects of experience into a causal nexus. And this causal nexus is a learned abstraction.

This causal nexus is so well learned that it is taken for some sort of ultimate truth. Causality is the primary modern superstition. It doesn't matter what Hume pointed out, because nobody reads Hume. And it's not that Hume is so important. Causality is so taken for granted that it has become an invisible prejudice. The invisibility of a prejudice is a measure of its power over us.

This is not to deny the utility of causality, for causality has earned its keep. But let's not make a master of our servant. Let's not mistakenly see the human experience as something boring and explained when it is indeed a strange and terrible miracle.