Monday, June 20, 2011
Somersaults of Comprehension
Consider life in North America during the millennia prior to
Columbus. native American life passed by idyllically for thousands
of years, undisturbed by the cleverness of European conquest and
colonial aggression. Yes, there were doubtless tribal skirmishes and territorial border
disputes, but no massive waves of conquest or colonial aggression of
the magnitude of an Alexander the Great, or a Cortez, or a Napoleon
or a Hitler. Prior to the rather advanced culture of native Americans, we know
that there were upon the earth various human-like but distinct
species such as the Neanderthal, which lived side by side with
our "human" ancestors, but became extinct. The very existence of separate, distinct human-like species would
seem to undermine the notion of "Man" as a deliberate creation meant
to be set above all other species. Perhaps the Neanderthal was a much nicer person than our human
ancestors. Paleontologists have determined that Neanderthals established a
permanent home and never wandered more than 30 miles from that home
in search of food or stones for tool making. By contrast, the constant nomadic wanderings and ceaseless innovation
of our human ancestors theoretically sharpened their intellect
through the constant exercise of diversity and changing challenges in
the ever-widening circles of their somersaults of comprehension. Astrophysicists tell us that in approximately 8 billion years, our
sun will expand to engulf all of the planets, including Earth, and
will then burn out in a spectacular super-Nova and disappear. Faced with this distant but inevitable Doomsday, our one real hope of
cultural "salvation" and ideological "immortality" is to develop a
technology which will allow our language and learning and culture and
civilization to escape the narrow limits of this solar system and
exist self-sufficiently in prolonged space travel to colonize some
other planetary solar system capable of supporting biological life. But for all of our religion and philosophy and science, we have not
evolved beyond the use of force and violence to settle our disputes
and differences, but remain in a perennial state of war or
preparation for war. We consume so much energy and resources fighting each other that
there is nothing left to fight against the real enemy of ultimate
solar extinction. Perhaps the answer to our salvation from the Armageddon of the Super-
Nova is to develop an artificial intelligence which will carry on the
activity of consciousness, that great dialectic, once organic life
has passed away, a cyborg 'Library of Babel' such as Jorge Luis
Borges describes (above). What is the superiority of the simple, good-natured Neanderthal over
the cunning craftiness and treachery of our all-too-human ancestors? Faulkner once criticized Hemingway, saying, "Hemingway was never
known to send anyone to a dictionary." http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=6635 Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, five years
after it had been awarded to another American, William Faulkner.
Neither writer, however, thought much of the other.
Faulkner once declared that Hemingway had "never been known to use a
word that might send the reader to the dictionary."
"Poor Faulkner," Hemingway retorted. "Does he really think big
emotions come from big words! He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar
words? I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and
better words, and those are the ones I use."
When we read an author like Hemingway, we read life in its
primordial, (Neanderthal, if you will), simplicity, life for living's
sake, stripped of its hierophantic garb of symbolism, motifs,
metaphor, allegory and inner hidden meanings. We read in Hemingway's short stories of the manly Nick, who pauses
during his hike to savor the pancakes saved from breakfast which he
anticipated as he walked along, and afterwards, a cigarette. What is life and existence and bodily experience apart from meaning,
morality, philosophy, religion and teleological cultural goals? Fiction such as Hemingway produced does not provide the same sort of
fuel for scholastic research as a Plato or a Steinbeck or a Melville. Even an Existentialist such as Sartre or Heidegger strives to uncover
the esoteric meaning hidden beneath the simple bronze of Being. Heidegger's definition of man is one who beholds "Being, which
unveils", but an unwilling, reticent Being, much like Melville's
Bartleby the Scriviner, whose sole refrain to all requests is "I
would prefer not to." In the two movies, "Wings of Desire (Himmel uber Berlin)" and its
American remake, "City of Angels", we are confronted with angelic,
incorporeal beings who crave the esoteric knowledge, most commonplace
for us, of how coffee tastes and how tobacco smells. Fleshly beings
such as we, bored with mere physical sensations and appetites, seek
to uncover the Platonic forms and unified field theories which
underlie mere Being. Whenever the mind turns a somersault of comprehension, we feel a
metaphysical thrill. A child is constantly thrilling to such somersaults since, for a
child, just as for Shakespeare's Miranda and her "Brave New World",
everything is new and awaiting discovery. Supposedly, when a student of mathematics succeeds with the greatest
difficulty for the very first time in comprehending what the
mathematician Kurt Godel did in his Incompleteness theorem, they
experience a thrill akin to a religious experience. Hinduism is quite explicit about "horripulation" (goosebumps) as a
symptom of experiencing the Divine, while Abrahamic religions remain
silent about such hair-raising phenomena. But, constant sensation ceases to be a sensation.The second time that
humans walked on the moon, people hardly noticed or made the same
fuss, compared to the first moon walk. Even manna in the wilderness
and pillars of fire can become commonplace and passé. Marxists awaited a final time when the State would wither away. Hegel envisioned a future age of "Absolute Knowledge" where time, in
the sense of historical change, ceases. The Kingdom of heaven, as described in the "Book of Revelation", must
be something of this sort, an ultimate, unchanging, timeless age of
absolutes. In such a heavenly Kingdom, what more is there to prophesize, since
all prophecy has been fulfilled? What further struggle is there to wage, since all evil and opposition
has been defeated? What further thrill from somersaults of comprehension may be had,
since, as St. Paul says, "We no longer see through a glass darkly,
but see face to face and know even as we are known." In such angelic realms, what is left to desire or yearn for unless it
is perhaps to once again enter into the imperfect flesh of a physical
body and taste a cup of coffee, a pancake, a cigarette, or to be
reborn once again as an infant, innocent and ignorant, to turn
somersaults once again upon the Bronze of Being and thrill to the
discovery of the commonplace.
Columbus. native American life passed by idyllically for thousands
of years, undisturbed by the cleverness of European conquest and
colonial aggression. Yes, there were doubtless tribal skirmishes and territorial border
disputes, but no massive waves of conquest or colonial aggression of
the magnitude of an Alexander the Great, or a Cortez, or a Napoleon
or a Hitler. Prior to the rather advanced culture of native Americans, we know
that there were upon the earth various human-like but distinct
species such as the Neanderthal, which lived side by side with
our "human" ancestors, but became extinct. The very existence of separate, distinct human-like species would
seem to undermine the notion of "Man" as a deliberate creation meant
to be set above all other species. Perhaps the Neanderthal was a much nicer person than our human
ancestors. Paleontologists have determined that Neanderthals established a
permanent home and never wandered more than 30 miles from that home
in search of food or stones for tool making. By contrast, the constant nomadic wanderings and ceaseless innovation
of our human ancestors theoretically sharpened their intellect
through the constant exercise of diversity and changing challenges in
the ever-widening circles of their somersaults of comprehension. Astrophysicists tell us that in approximately 8 billion years, our
sun will expand to engulf all of the planets, including Earth, and
will then burn out in a spectacular super-Nova and disappear. Faced with this distant but inevitable Doomsday, our one real hope of
cultural "salvation" and ideological "immortality" is to develop a
technology which will allow our language and learning and culture and
civilization to escape the narrow limits of this solar system and
exist self-sufficiently in prolonged space travel to colonize some
other planetary solar system capable of supporting biological life. But for all of our religion and philosophy and science, we have not
evolved beyond the use of force and violence to settle our disputes
and differences, but remain in a perennial state of war or
preparation for war. We consume so much energy and resources fighting each other that
there is nothing left to fight against the real enemy of ultimate
solar extinction. Perhaps the answer to our salvation from the Armageddon of the Super-
Nova is to develop an artificial intelligence which will carry on the
activity of consciousness, that great dialectic, once organic life
has passed away, a cyborg 'Library of Babel' such as Jorge Luis
Borges describes (above). What is the superiority of the simple, good-natured Neanderthal over
the cunning craftiness and treachery of our all-too-human ancestors? Faulkner once criticized Hemingway, saying, "Hemingway was never
known to send anyone to a dictionary." http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=6635 Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, five years
after it had been awarded to another American, William Faulkner.
Neither writer, however, thought much of the other.
Faulkner once declared that Hemingway had "never been known to use a
word that might send the reader to the dictionary."
"Poor Faulkner," Hemingway retorted. "Does he really think big
emotions come from big words! He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar
words? I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and
better words, and those are the ones I use."
When we read an author like Hemingway, we read life in its
primordial, (Neanderthal, if you will), simplicity, life for living's
sake, stripped of its hierophantic garb of symbolism, motifs,
metaphor, allegory and inner hidden meanings. We read in Hemingway's short stories of the manly Nick, who pauses
during his hike to savor the pancakes saved from breakfast which he
anticipated as he walked along, and afterwards, a cigarette. What is life and existence and bodily experience apart from meaning,
morality, philosophy, religion and teleological cultural goals? Fiction such as Hemingway produced does not provide the same sort of
fuel for scholastic research as a Plato or a Steinbeck or a Melville. Even an Existentialist such as Sartre or Heidegger strives to uncover
the esoteric meaning hidden beneath the simple bronze of Being. Heidegger's definition of man is one who beholds "Being, which
unveils", but an unwilling, reticent Being, much like Melville's
Bartleby the Scriviner, whose sole refrain to all requests is "I
would prefer not to." In the two movies, "Wings of Desire (Himmel uber Berlin)" and its
American remake, "City of Angels", we are confronted with angelic,
incorporeal beings who crave the esoteric knowledge, most commonplace
for us, of how coffee tastes and how tobacco smells. Fleshly beings
such as we, bored with mere physical sensations and appetites, seek
to uncover the Platonic forms and unified field theories which
underlie mere Being. Whenever the mind turns a somersault of comprehension, we feel a
metaphysical thrill. A child is constantly thrilling to such somersaults since, for a
child, just as for Shakespeare's Miranda and her "Brave New World",
everything is new and awaiting discovery. Supposedly, when a student of mathematics succeeds with the greatest
difficulty for the very first time in comprehending what the
mathematician Kurt Godel did in his Incompleteness theorem, they
experience a thrill akin to a religious experience. Hinduism is quite explicit about "horripulation" (goosebumps) as a
symptom of experiencing the Divine, while Abrahamic religions remain
silent about such hair-raising phenomena. But, constant sensation ceases to be a sensation.The second time that
humans walked on the moon, people hardly noticed or made the same
fuss, compared to the first moon walk. Even manna in the wilderness
and pillars of fire can become commonplace and passé. Marxists awaited a final time when the State would wither away. Hegel envisioned a future age of "Absolute Knowledge" where time, in
the sense of historical change, ceases. The Kingdom of heaven, as described in the "Book of Revelation", must
be something of this sort, an ultimate, unchanging, timeless age of
absolutes. In such a heavenly Kingdom, what more is there to prophesize, since
all prophecy has been fulfilled? What further struggle is there to wage, since all evil and opposition
has been defeated? What further thrill from somersaults of comprehension may be had,
since, as St. Paul says, "We no longer see through a glass darkly,
but see face to face and know even as we are known." In such angelic realms, what is left to desire or yearn for unless it
is perhaps to once again enter into the imperfect flesh of a physical
body and taste a cup of coffee, a pancake, a cigarette, or to be
reborn once again as an infant, innocent and ignorant, to turn
somersaults once again upon the Bronze of Being and thrill to the
discovery of the commonplace.
