Dark Paths

February 9, 2025 11:01pm

The search led to a French writer from the Decadent movement, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and to Julius Evola, an Italian far-right philosopher who was mentioned by a writer I follow. This literary acquaintance was reviewing his life, his contribution to the universe, and wondering if he had made any difference. I was thinking about this struggle to find meaning and the extremes to which some of us go in that pursuit. Huysmans and Evola followed this search down some dark and dead-end paths and left the world the worse for it.

Finding no meaning, can we not still follow the examples set by our saints and wise teachers? Which of our actions, our choices lead to a better world?

Spinoza’s God

February 13, 2025 11:24am

Einstein on God: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and action of human beings.”

Days after seeing Einstein’s quote, I found an internet interview of Elon Musk in which he also referred to “Spinoza’s God.” So….time for some reading.

This morning, about 6am, I was lying in bed thinking about the most significant choices I made in my life and the reasons for them. Some were deliberate and some were lucky. Regardless of the reasons, I have come to believe that no decision made on my part would have led to any other denouement. I think I would have arrived at exactly this place, this worldview, this philosophical position, regardless of the paths I might have chosen.

The first and greatest conscious choice I made was a spiritual conversion at age 10. The repercussions of that decision have echoed through the years and provided the impetus for much of my thinking since. And now, where am I? At most, I can sympathize with Spinoza’s conjecture that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator.” He believed that God is the substance of the universe; the universe and God are one.

Kubrick, Consciousness, and Confusion

February 21, 2025 8:40am

Stanley Kubrick, 1968 Playboy interview:

If man really sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie….But even for those who lack the sensitivity to more than vaguely comprehend their transience and their triviality, this inchoate awareness robs life of meaning and purpose; it’s why ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,’ why so many of us find our lives as absent of meaning as our deaths. The world’s religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache; but as clergymen now pronounce the death of God and, to quote Arnold again, ‘the sea of faith’ recedes around the world with a ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,’ man has no crutch left on which to lean—and no hope, however irrational, to give purpose to his existence. – Stanely Kubrick

Brilliant!

It is 14 degrees, and the ground is snow-covered as I ruminate on the eternal truths above. I found this quote while reading the comments from David Foster Wallace interviews on youtube. Someone recalled Kubrick after hearing Wallace on similar topics. The “Arnold” mentioned by Kubrick above is poet Matthew Arnold and the “sea of faith” line is from his best-known poem, “Dover Beach.”

Kubrick’s thoughts remind me of several writers I admire: Pascal, Woolf, Pessoa, Carlyle — and mirror some of my own writing.

So, what leads so many who are “forced by their own sensibilities” to this perspective, this questioning of reality and our role in it?

The human animal is subject to the same prime directive as all other animals – survive as both an individual and as a species. This is pretty self-evident; but now layer on top of this instinctive behavior, in all its myriad nuances, a consciousness, a self-awareness that leads us to see ourselves as above these biological limitations – to think ourselves made in the image of God!

What a conflict of ideas for these creatures marooned on the Island of Dr. Moreau. Fulfill the biological imperative and the conscious spirit whispers ” you are not an animal.” Follow the conscious spirit toward sainthood and the animal instinct prowls the path threatening to devour you at every step.

Each of us must decide every day which drive will reign. Who knows where this ends. The development of consciousness was an evolutionary stepping-stone but where does it lead?