Seq C: Meaning of life > Htaed fo gninaem (the 88s [Ivories & Ebonies])
IRL, asking why is perceived to be asking for trouble, which may be why it's so rarely asked. Thus the annals of the abstract intelligentsia, and not Vivandia (the heterotopia of life itself), comprise the space-time of the study of the human condition and of the meaning of life (Haeckel's World-riddles [this link the solution to a riddle, clues to which are embedded in e*sequiturs 28, 49, nullsequitur 37 and even e*sequitur 83 below] [Die Welträtsel]). (Once that's out of the way, peeps move on to more practical matters.) Inquiring into these noumena (delivered as promised), of course, opens many cans of worms, including (look into these, dear reder!) the Absolute, immanence, the cosmological argument, the Unmoved Mover, the "uncaused cause," the Infinite Regress, Actual and Potential Infinities and circularity (So many thinkers thinking!); the preceding rapidly devolving into phenomenalism ("the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli... situated in time and in space.... [P]henomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data."), panpsychism, the principle of sufficient reason and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (proving yet again that as a species we [a] are indeed very curious or [b] remain inadequately evolved as sentient organisms).
(In fairness, it may seem that your correspondent has filled e*sequiturs with callow and callous criticisms of ideas, and that this is hypocritically inconsistent with advocacy for fostering [and not stifling] them in e*sequitur 72. This criticism is valid and deserved. The defense is their presentation: some will no doubt be new to the lay reder, who can with fresh mind's eye consider for erimself their validity and relevance, uninfluenced.) Edwin Abbott's (contemporary of Haeckel, Gilbert & Sullivan)
e*sequitur 79: Flatland
("A Romance of Many Dimensions by a Square"; and of course its 3D Spaceland), a mathetopia where (synesthetic?) Chromatists fight sumptuary laws and worldviews are defined by limitations in personal dimensional perspectives (trust me when I tell you that this sounds familiar). Flatland's teleportations could be subject to the uncertainty principle (with which, it may be dryly stated, the reder is intuitively familiar); and of course here, too, that we encounter the hopeful if underutilised Haecceity and Quiddity (and another pair, Actualism and Possibilism), Ontological Twins connoting This- and Whatness (ntm another optimistic wallflower, alethic modalities). And we daren't omit De Dicto (championed by Latitudinarianists as pwning De Re), De Re and De Se, the Intensional Triplets (IRL, unless you "want to be a student of Chomsky," "believe some actuary is out to get you" or "think you are a weapons developer," you can skip these, along with catastrophe theories).
Since we're on the Page of Difficult Concepts, let's fearlessly gloss over that of
e*sequitur 80: free will
(Hard determinists say there is none; soft determinists allow for chance; and compatibilists say that free will and determinism can coexist [you can infer what Free Willians say] [and note that knowledgeable biblioscripts {and you know how credible they are} grant that djinn have free will, thus proving once and for all beyond the shadow of a doubt that man doesn't, so stop troubling your little clay head about this and accept your pathetic fate, mortal]. Some in the scientific community may still dismiss chance on a semantic technicality by denying its evitability and trivialising instances [they {along with y*u-kn*w-wh*} not being dice tossers, domino theorists {actually, some are} or lottery winners]. We may heave an audible sigh here and rerede "Three Wherefores" in e*sequitur 26).
If pinching yourself to confirm your own existence, consider
e*sequitur 81: onticity
[thinghood] and note Martin Heidegger's Dasein, a term to designate
"a being that is capable of ontology, that is, recursively comprehending properties of the very fact of its own Being."
Your humble e*sequitrist candidly confesses to not actually caring what the above sentence means, either [actually I do and do, as you do, too: It means the state of being human] [and compare
Seed AI [Artificial Intelligence] {... a hypothesised type of strong artificial intelligence capable of recursive self-improvement.},
the state of not being human {and let us fervently pray for Friendly AI in the event of the Singularity, given your average human's Sentience Quotient (SQ) of +13, an electronically enhanced alien (subject for xenopsychology), +23 ("10 orders of magnitude more [than a human]," noting "Implications for Interspecies Communication" [xenolinguistics, cuttlefish, chameleons and honeybee pheromones]), and a Singularity optimised computer achieving the "theoretical computational limit of the entire universe" being +50}. But we wouldn't have artificial intelligence if Herr Heidegger and many generations of scientists, philosophers, linguists and other systematic thinkers weren't concerned with intentional beings {v. intensionality (v. extension), comprehension (in logic, not the word you think you know)}, stochasticism, the Chinese room [see Seq 9] and other intellectually exotic phenomena.) and
e*sequitur 82: Plan B,
the simplistic sty non pareil (see*sequitur 24), procataleptically dismissed: Plan B (disclosure: those in power in any society call this Plan A) (aka the pseudomarket economy / anarchy [= Thelemy {see Rabelais' Abbey of Thelema}: "Do what thou wilt."] or limited distribution totalitarian pseudofreedom) posits a bell curve of humanity, submission to Darwinian forces, and perpetual violence. Adherents claim that Plan B most effectively fosters innovation and creates the most salutary quality of life for the most people. Opponents say that despite adherents' claims, Plan B is non-sustainable and actually creates more misery that would be the case in a socially engineered society. Humans have only been experimenting for a few millennia with variants on Plan B and others. Among these, Plan B is notable as primarily abdicative, fatalistic, hopeless (disingenuous claims to the contrary notwithstanding) and nihilistic; it is, saliently, antiprogressive [its criticism of progressives being that they are naïve to even try and that they are artifically prolonging the lives of those who deserve to die]; it is certainly, explicitly, never forward-looking. Its further flaws are conspicuous: That Plan B ironically prohibits intervention as "unnatural," a logical inconsistency since, if intervention is an option [which it is], it cannot, by definition, be unnatural [procataleptically, if "more natural," then, yes, Hobbes' natural state {see*sequitur 12} is just the thing for you] [and then there is the small problem of enforcement in any abdicative philosophy]. And that, in accepting violence, Plan B sows the seeds of human extinction in the form of specieal (all) and/or planetary destruction (either will suffice, the results a toss), given our track record at devising ever-more destructive weapons and consumption of resources. The ironically anti-planary aspect of Plan B is the most egregious, given the certain, eventual, eventful and intended unintendedly consequential (: Inaction has its consequences, Eddie) outcome of its prescription for rudderlessness.
The bell curve proposition (see Satire), although less easily dismissed given its empirical factuality, is dismissable all the same as false morality on a speciescale, given that humans have the capacity to override instinctual abusive hierarchism while simultaneously facilitating top-of-curvers' innovations. Surely at some point we will collaboratively apply our capable minds for intentional (planned) futurity (survival). Until then, note that hierarchy as a moral misvalue has its roots in both constructive and destructive endeavours: societal welfare on one hand and military obedience on the other.
Here, children, in a word, is The Argument for Plan B: Play (liberally defined, based on the tired claim that communitarianism / collaborativism must be joyless). Those willing to accept uncertainty (hardly, given the certainly of societies' stacked decks) in exchange for novelty / discovery will find B a grand plan. In ironic endorsement of B, progressivism (which B ungratefully disdains) demands innovation (B's legitimising argument) -- play's offspring. [The*sequitrist will address this schriftworthy theme in a future opus.]
Finally, intellectuals take note: None less than Hawking himself has questioned whether intelligence (exemplified by unpunished innovation and / or public expression of thought and ideas [e.g., Galileo and Gramsci]) is a beneficial, prevailing trait (but you already knew that). History and Plan B provide an answer that non-totalitarian transhumanists (this an optimistic oxymoron) might not like so much, and in which (definitively average / mediocre) Bellmodians (see*sequitur 68's koinophiles) might take comfort (if they understood the concept).
If Plan B adherents are right, life is a futile (if entertaining) exercise in building
e*sequitur 83: sand castles
which are leveled in time (and [Sandburg's inkfish] Shakespeare was merely a statistician). There will be no examination upon your completion of e*sequiturs, but some maintain that there will be one upon your passing (or "chant du cygne," you "consigned to earth," "definitely done dancing," having "hopped the twig," "joined the majority," "returned to the source" or "taking the dirt nap" [recall Python's Parrot in e*sequitur 31] among other euphemisms [compare the unpleasant, chthonic and therianthropic {winged} Eumenides/Erinyes/Furies] for death), so this is a chance to study up. We may hold certain truths to be self-evident, but tend to avoid the self-evidence that death presents. What death and fear of it do demonstrably do, however, is to inspire humans to exercise their considerable imaginations (noted earlier in Seq A and e*sequitur 58), with some novel results. Par example, sand paintings, created by members of multiple cultures. Latin Americans, in closing el Día de los Muertos (here a fake and fabled "doomsday" [see Seq E] Aztec/Mixtec rock crystal skull, cuz to Hirst's toothy [oh-oh] pavé paperweight [see*sequitur 26]) celebrations, sweep them away in a poetic metaphor for the ephemerality of life. Tibetans do the same, but rather to illustrate the illusion of material permanence; both are apt. The Luiseños (Payomkowishum [Respect]) utilised sand painting in four rituals, including Wukunish, the girl (age grade [memo to nonanthropologists: look it up]) ceremony, and Anut, the ant ordeal; the Navajos (e*sequiturs merely glancing at) here. (For ancient rock art, the sacred sandstone of inselberg Uluru.)
Thus this plentiful, common, granular substance sand, can (like the sparrow) provoke profundity. In Borges' El libro de arena (The Book of Sand), the narrator purchases the Book of All Books, with an infinite number of pages; overwhelmed, he "considers destroying the book by fire (cf. Savonarola in e*sequitur 23), but decides against this after reasoning that such a fire would release infinite amounts of smoke, and asphyxiate the entire world."
Archimedes' (inventor extraordinaire; so much human invention [including the Internet] military [he ironically {poetically justly?} killed by Roman soldiers disregarding countermanding orders] in origin [esteemed reder, consider the implications of this] [for those paying attention, Anti-Progressives cite Archimedes and Shakespeare as proof that we are not progressing, i.e., that they were better than today's best {not having heard this} and that progress is illusory {no doubt netting more than a few gullible takers}]) abstract, self-appellative surrogate,
e*sequitur 84: the Sand Reckoner,
"will try to show... by means of geometrical proofs... that, of the numbers [of grains of sand] named by [Archimedes, the Sand Reckoner]..., some exceed not only the number of the mass of sand equal in magnitude to the earth..., but also that of a mass equal in magnitude to the universe."
In the course of so doing, he "discovered and proved the law of exponents." Not bad for a life's work (actually, his contributions were a tad more extensive, including the method of exhaustion, summation of infinite series and a close approximation of pi [see*sequitur 32]; the Archimedes Palimpsest [so called because it was overwritten {and incompletely erased} by religious liturgy] contains the unique "On Floating Bodies" and "(O)stomachion [mentioned by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura {see*sequitur 64}]," a 14-piece, 536 solution, tangramlike puzzle). How many? Given incorrect assumptions, Archimedes' calculations were deemed ultimately inaccurate [1063 grains], although no one, we may assume, is counting. Unlike Archimedes,
Carl Sandburg (failed math and grammar tests at West Point after serving in the Spanish American War) was concerned with the mass of people. Not a mincer, he wrote of made makers ("Three Ghosts"), and said "They Will Say." And "Aztec Mask," "The Sphinx," "Who Am I?" [ans.: Truth], "Masses" and "Happiness," which depicts beings actually being alive.
e*sequitur 85: Totalitarianism,
(variant: authoritarianism) which depicts dead society, comes in more flavours (see peacocks in e*sequitur 13) than acknowledged, including democratic, consumptionary and C*pitalistic totalitarianisms (socialistic totalitarianism already well documented). E*sequiturs will not dwell on this subject, except to note its periodically pragmatic utility, broad advocacy (N.B. theocratic totalitarianism) and its leaders' penchant for behavioral control and repression. Its methods are many, scientific and proven (including highly effective modern [noting roots in historical public relations and propaganda] mass communications apparati); its terminology Orwellian ("thought reform"). Totalitarian regimes seem to last for decades, given their direct correlation to the lifespans of totarchs (an unlikely audience for musical totalists Ben Neill or Rhys Chatham, although John Myers may appear a bit totalitarian conducting Glenn Branca's androcentric Hallucination City: Symphony for 100 Guitars); totalitarian systems even longer, being based on the potent brew of ideology and gangsterism (congresses, C*rporations and clergies, with anti-Hammurabic [cf. "so that the strong should not harm the weak" and "to further the well-being of mankind"] enforcing provisions). These instances are dominated by structures accorded superanthropic status (C*rporations having more power and Rights than Man), providing a preview of life directed by pure machine intelligence: amoral, efficient, destructive and, novelly under a newly indifferent sun, so far ineradicable.
In some ways, Noocracy (refugee from the Interlude) - government by the wise, stands opposite totalitarianism (do compare geniocracy [and note democracy, derided by timocrats as corrupted {declassé}, and history's highly intelligent totalitarians]), although its assumptions surely yield, as we might imagine, totalitarian results. It may be reasonably inferred that wisely led government is ideal (with analogs in presbyteries and gerontocracies) when achieved. Elsetimes, strings emote and the wise (entartete künstler, z.B. [zum Beispiel]) escape, hide and sometimes endure, holding out for better times.
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Image: "Calavera de la Catrina"
(Mictecacihuatl, queen and lady of the dead, Santa Muerte, bone guardian [calacas reminding us to have happy memories of our beloved deceased {do not skip ahead but note "Janus, gazing," Seq F}]), José Guadalupe Posada (Ga 4.570001852-913).