Logic and Life

Life and Logic

A book reviewer today ends his review of a comic book about logic, math, and madness, with an observation that life is bigger than logic. He admits that his conclusion is trite. All the following observations of yours are trite, too. Sometimes, truth is trite; sometimes it is sublime. The wise man knows the difference. You are not wise. You are merely struggling against madness.

The morning greeted you with A's mild rebuke of B's self-righteousness. You had to struggle hard against yourself for not commenting on A'ss put-down by either a terse “Amen!’ or a slightly longer version:

-I don’t know who I am.
-Did you ever know?
-No.
-Then nothing has changed.

Unlike B, you do want to change for the better. You don’t wish to be mired in pettiness or cheap cleverness. After all, you do read philosophy.

Yesterday you had a confrontation with yourself. The result was that you hurried to a hardware store. After lingering there for almost forty minutes, you settled on the Baretta 14-shot 38. It was small enough for concealment, yet packed with enough power for damage. However, when it was time to pay for it, the salesman told you since you were an out-of-state resident, you were not allowed to purchase the tool. You had to settle for a knife with a switchblade instead. The sound the knife makes when it is open is eerie. That should bring reality closer to all those involved. Time to bring everything on or time to back down and walk away. As you are fond of saying, you don’t know who you really are until you are tested. Yesterday you were tested and you acted like a fool, totally in sync with your emotions, but completely disconnected with your intellect. Ah well, you must do better next time. Gratuitous violence is mental retardation. Controlled violence is enlightenment.

As Cicero once said, rational ability without education has more often raised man to glory than education without natural ability. The downturn you are experiencing is testing you whether you have the wherewithal to survive. You are treading on slippery grounds. Be careful. Don’t be blind to your own shortcomings like The Crippled and the Arthritic. At any rate, you are very contemptuous of cowards, of members of the NATO (No Action Talk Only) Society. They make you feel nauseous to the core. Also, you begin to lose respect for those who adopt poses, who try to appear more profound and learned than they really are. Sophistry is just another name for shameless and clever lying. If one has something to say, just spell it out plainly and clearly. There is no need to be cryptic. Also, be sure to back up, to substantiate what you spell out.

People tend to disappoint you. That is your own fault for being naïve and idealistic. Don’t disappoint yourself, however. Hang in there. Work hard and stay the course. Be patient.

You are breathing hard. You are excited. You feel engaged and alive as you are typing these words. You then have an insight that all those poses, those insipid jokes, those pitiful lame attempts of poetry writing, those inane comments (including your own) are just pathetic strivings to be human. A man totally cut off from his fellow men cannot be a real human. Only when he is in communication with others, even in miscommunication, can he become himself. Man is a social, communicative being. Yet he feels alone and lonely throughout his life. That’s why sex and love are powerful drives. He has a strong need to be understood. He needs to be joined with others. During sex, he has an illusion that he is joined physically and, hopefully, emotionally with somebody. (Therefore, it does not take much imagination to think that sex with a prostitute is an empty, lonely act). It takes a very strong man to be indifferent to the drives.

On this planet, everything is evanescent, is subject to dissolution. What’s about God? Well, the reality of the World has an evanescent existence. Contrary to common beliefs, “God is invisible, inconceivable, and unthinkable. No symbol or metaphor can describe Him and none may take His place. All metaphysical representations of God without exceptions are myths, meaningful as such when understood to be hints and parallels, but they become superstitions when taken for the reality of God Himself ” (Karl Jaspers). To talk about God is tantamount to talking about the origin of the Universe. We know the how but not the why. We know about the Big Bang, but we don’t know, at least not yet, why the Big Bang occurred. Those who talk about God as if they understand Him all engage in wishful and delusional thinking. Man is the only animal who is big on delusions and illusions. This paragraph is perhaps the most profound and insightful of the whole essay. We can tell how smart and honest a person is after he expounds his beliefs and ideas about the concept called God. We can tell if he has done some serious thinking or merely parroted what he has been taught and heard.

Likewise, Man can only be experienced and not totally understood. Each man is an island. And Life is a journey of a sailing ship among the islands. Most of the journey is at night amidst rain and howling winds. Occasionally the ship sails in bright sunshine and balmy weather. That’s when life gives you a glimpse of the grandeur and joy life can be. You wonder why the ship can’t cruise during the day and in the better weather conditions more often. The answer lies in the fact that Man likes to do things the hard way. He likes to overreach himself, to go beyond himself. He is never satisfied. Those who are satisfied are not quite human enough. Man, by definition, is a work in progress, not a finished product.

Sooner or later, every man asks himself the questions: Who am I? What can I know? What do I live for? Selfishly for myself or for my family and my fellow countrymen? Am I a real man or merely a monkey in disguise? When I die, am I proud of the way my life has been?

Wissai
(To be continued)