agitprop version 2.0

Traversing the Postmodern Landscape

It's been a few months since the last installment of Zen Corner. For those of you not aware, Zen Corner is my measly attempt to throw some high-brow (and low-brow) philosophy into the mix here at Agitprop. I figured that we should start out the month of August with a reflective piece on the being and nothingness of Postmodernity.

You could call me an amateur philosophy enthusiast. From the little reading I have done about the following two subjects, I have noticed a particular commonality between Zen Buddhism and postmodern philosophy. Zen claims to have no dogma. Postmodern philosophy is in itself an oxymoron--a system of thought which claims to have no system of thought. Thus, both sets of philosophies seem to contradict themselves and just exist for what they are.

What is real? Can I taste reality? What is the Matrix?

These are the questions that sometimes occupy my mind. Philosophically I would define myself as an anti-fundamentalist. I am not a full-fledged relativist although I think black and white views of the world are overly-simplistic and can pose harm to oneself and others. I scored as a postmodernist on the What Is Your Worldview? quiz. It's a quick and easy survey. Take it and leave your results in the comments if you like . . .

And now, allow me to introduce our philosophers. The format is a little different but the message (or lack of message) is the same . . .

What is Real?

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there. –- Miles Davis

Just ‘cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there. –- from the song "There There" by Radiohead

I don't do numbers. -- Donald Rumsfeld

Each second is a universe of time. -– Henry Miller

Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration. -- Henry Miller

Reality is Absurd, So Just Be

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. -- from the song "Beautiful Boy" by John Lennon

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate—that’s my philosophy. –- Thornton Wilder

To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana. –- Shunryu Suzuki

The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals. – the character "The Stranger" from The Big Lebowski

I used to fly for United Airlines then I got fired for reading High Times. My license expired in almost no time. Now I'm retired and I think that's fine. – from the song “Mexican Wine” by Fountains of Wayne

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. -- the character "Steve McCroskey" from Airplane

Let Go of the Unknown Unknowns

I must confess that I don’t have the faintest idea what my purpose is or what’s going on, and I never have. I became comfortable with that mystery a long time ago—that I would never know how any of these things fit together in any explicit way. – Gary Synder

I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small—the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love. – Hindu Sage

Reality is the beginning not the end,
Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega,
Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.
-- Wallace Stevens

Think. Reflect. Think again. Take the quiz.

technorati: philosophy zen postmodernism

I Want To Be Sedated

Drugs and mind-altering substances have played a large role in developing one's consciousness of both the inner and outer world. They have also created many medical, moral, artistic, and spiritual puzzles which have plagued humankind.

Society's current relationship with drugs is paradoxical at best. One hundred years ago, contraband materials such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana were perfectly acceptable for both medical and personal use. Today, the State has criminalized these drugs and users are sent to prison. Interesting how times have changed.   

I'm not interested in the historical or cultural signifcance of drugs. That is for another, much longer post. Here I am looking at the role drugs have played in understanding the human experience. Whether it is your morning cup of coffee, dinner-time glass of Shiraz, or nightly toke of a joint, there are numerous chemical substances which alter and mold our perception of reality.

Thomas De Quincey, one of the first literary experimenters with drugs, wrote in The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater:

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!

Poet Charles Baudelaire learned the ups and downs of drug use first hand:

The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.

He clearly preferred a nice Pinot Noir to a bong hit anyday:

Wine exalts the will; hashish destroys it. Wine is a physical stimulant; hashish a suicidal weapon. Wine mellows us and makes us sociable; hashish isolates us.

Are drugs merely a vehicle by which to escape reality? Conversely, one may argue that reality is hard to define, almost unknowable for a sober mind. Thus, do drugs bring us closer to reality?

Alcohol doesn’t console, it doesn’t fill up anyone’s psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn’t comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
-- Marguerite Duras

Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine, Jiggling yr knees blankeyed in the rain, When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain.
--  Allen Ginsberg

One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness—the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others. -- Norman Mailer 

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite.  -- William Blake

                                                

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.                                                        – M.C. Escher

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Your thoughts?

Society and the State of Nature

Issues of power and authority dominate our lives. Throughout history, humanity has argued about how power and authority should be applied in human social organization through government and law. This week I would like to briefly ponder the role of government--historically, how it developed, and morally, how it should be organized.

I begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Social Contract. Rousseau contended that in the state of nature humans are essentially good creatures, or noble savages. Conversely he viewed society as artificial and corrupt. Society is responsible for the continuing unhappiness of humanity vis-a-vis its limitations on the freedom of individuals. But even Rousseau agreed that anarchy is not a valid option. Thus government becomes a necessary evil. We can't live with it and we can't live without it (or maybe it just depends on who's president at the time?).

Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract that humans must divest their individual freedoms into a collective authority which will provide a system of social order and protect individuals from the harsh realities of the state of nature. Here is the fundamental problem of forming society:

"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before."

How the social contract provides the solution:

"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

Rousseau argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority. But what happens when there are differing views of freedom, equality and justice and the will of the majority is difficult to interpret? It is commonplace that governments violate the social contract by exceeding their authority and becoming oppressive tyrannies. I sometimes wonder if humanity will revert to a primitive anarchic state of nature if we continue on our destructive path in the world.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man . . . No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.                                                    -- Thomas Hobbes

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.          -- Martin Luther King Jr.                                                              

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.              – Thomas Jefferson

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.                                           -- George Orwell

 [I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.                                            -- Albert Camus

                                                                                            . . .

I always pose more questions than can be answered. But that is the purpose of philosophical inquiry--the more we think, the more we know. Thinking is becoming rare these days. You must utilize your mind while it still belongs to you.

Agitprop welcomes any comments on Society and the State Nature as well as suggestions for future topics for Zen Corner.

Welcome to Zen Corner

Agitprop's Zen Corner is a place to reflect on issues of being, nothingness, and everything else in between. A place to draw comfort from the eternal discomfort of our postmodern existence. A place to wallow and think about the depths of this life.

Death is our eternal companion . . . The thing to do when you're impatient is . . . to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you.                                                                  -- Carlos Castenada

You live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality but you do not know this. When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing, and being nothing you are everything. That is all.             -- Kalu Rinpoche                                                                

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.  -- William Shakespeare.

                                                                                                                               

I believe in the essential unity of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one person gains spiritually the whole world gains, and if one person falls, the world falls to that extent.                                                                         -- Mohandas K. Gandhi