cardboard adolescent

for this next video, allow me a pretentious little aside:

for hegel, thesis and antithesis inevitably lead to a synthesis,
which reconciles the tensions inherent to the previous terms
the synthesis then becomes a thesis, which confronts a new antithesis,
and so on and so on, until we arrive at the ultimate synthesis,
the divine idea, and the evolution of the universe is complete.

a simplified example of this would be a bunch of people sitting around
trying to figure out how to govern themselves. finally one of them has a
bright idea, stands up, and says, just do everything i say!
everyone goes, oh yeah that's pretty simple and they try it out.
but it turns out this one dude just doesn't have the perspective to
make the best decisions for everyone, and he's starting to abuse
the power a little.
so after a while, some other people get together and say,
screw this, let's all just govern ourselves!
and everyone says, yeah, that sounds pretty good, since they'd
all been getting a little jealous of the monarch anyway, and so they
try that out. but then they start getting into arguments and
since everyone is the boss there's nobody to appeal to to
resolve things, and everything gets way out of hand.
so the thesis is monarchy, and the antithesis is anarchy
now a couple more people get together and say, why don't we
vote on issues that come up and let the majority decide?
and everyone thinks that's pretty clever, so they try it out
and it works perfectly and everybody lives happily ever after.
the synthesis would then be democracy.

now for hegel, when we reach this "divine idea," which is in this case
democracy, we've actually solved all problems in the universe, more or less.
or, to put it in another way, the universe has evolved from chaos
(everybody sitting around not knowing how to govern themselves)
to perfect order, which is democracy, in all its abstract glory.
it's not just a matter of human political science on one particular planet,
it's a matter of the universe itself finding a path to stability.
and the human path to a perfect democracy is therefore an analogy
for the universe finding order.

of course our current bipartisan corporatist democracy is not perfect,
so it will have to confront an antithesis and continue to evolve, etc.

for schopenhauer, although he uses different terms,
thesis and antithesis never resolve,
because the Universe is Will confronting itself.
since the nature of Will is to assert itself,
its conflict with itself cannot be resolved.
the "evolution" of the Universe is an illusion, there is only the
perpetual displacement of tension, it never disappears.

so to reconsider the previous example we were working with,
according to schopenhauer there is no ultimate political system,
since essentially we're all beings competing for limited energy
in a closed system, and when one person wins another has to lose.
that being the case, politics is simply the art of distributing power,
and there is no "just" or "perfect" way to distribute power,
and ultimately every system falls apart.

from a marxist perspective you can see the way the tension inherent
in class struggle can be deferred so that the conflict can be avoided:
originally there are poor and rich in the same nation state, and there
is a high chance that the poor will try to overthrow the rich. but eventually
you get poor and rich nation states, and since the rich nation states
have the wealth and power the poor states have no way of gaining wealth
or retaliating against their subjugation. ultimately though, something like
nuclear arms emerges and a temporarily stable system comes under threat again.

we can consider these two systems as Ultimate systems
of philosophy, since they reach to the highest level of abstraction
and make opposing claims: they are the ultimate thesis and antithesis.

so, perhaps, if there is no resolution possible between them,
then schopenhauer is right. or if there is a resolution possible
between them, then hegel is right. but what synthesis could possibly
resolve the tension between there is a synthesis and there is no synthesis?

only a synthesis which is not really a synthesis at all.
which is what i believe this video presents us with:



the following video is beautiful



and this, i believe, is a wonderful demonstration of the buddhist doctrine:
emptiness is form, form is emptiness



this is also beautiful