cardboard adolescent

What is truth? How do we gain knowledge?

Truth is a type of necessity, a restraint. When a statement is true, that means it cannot be untrue. Existence is restrained to the parameters of the truth. But on what ground can we say that existence can be restrained at all? How can we ever know we have seen all there is to see from existence?

But logical truths are taken to be of a different order. Something cannot both be and not be. Something cannot be more than itself. Such statements are unimaginable. Similarly, it is often held that an experience is irrefutable. If you saw something, felt something, heard something, you cannot deny that it happened. Hence, knowledge is taken to be the marriage of logical necessity and direct experience.

However, the marriage itself is rather dubious. Going back to the logical axioms listed above, can something be and not be? Take a wave for instance—it exists as a phenomenon, but not as a concrete entity, only the individual water particles exist, which through their interactions give rise to the illusion of the wave. And the same goes for the water particles themselves, since a water particle is just an idealized hypostasis of the interactions of yet subtler components. And who says this process has a bottom? We have assumed there is a bottom, and our science rests on this assumption, but what experiment would be able to prove whether or not there is a bottom? All science can do is keep digging, and keep being surprised.

And what of something being more than itself? X=X, that is the common assumptions. But what about X<X or X>X? They seem absurd propositions. And yet, as soon as we define an entity, we see that its influence extends beyond its own limits. In fact, the limits by which we define an entity are only an expression of how we relate to that entity, how we limit it relative to how we limit ourselves.

Existence is both the most familiar and most mysterious term available to us. It is indefinable, and hence has countless contradictory and paradoxical definitions. Existence is both more than itself and less than itself. As soon as one defines existence as everything one has ever experienced, as everything anything has ever experienced, a new moment has arrived, and existence is already more than what it was. On the other hand, if one defines existence not as that which is, but as the property of being which those things possess, existence itself slips away through process of elimination and keeps becoming less than itself, caught in the gray zone between something and nothing. Existence explodes and disappears. There is no containing it.

There is no privileged observer position in the world. What have been called observations have always been interactions. An observation implies a detached entity able to measure the interactions of entangled entities. But the instruments of measurement inevitably intrude on this entanglement and change the situation. The only way we can know the situation is to become part of it, to experience it. The more we try to detach from the situation, the more we know only our own detachment, or the more we disrupt the situation. And yet, this too is knowing. But it is not what we set out to know, which was…?

We see direct expressions of this everywhere: anthropology, biology, psychology… in physics it is called “the measurement problem.” The problem of measurement is that there is no such thing. There are only the direct experiences, and the logical necessities we devise are our attempts to cage in existence, to keep it stable and familiar. There is no use in trying to search for the origin to this self-defeating process. The search for origins is simply another expression of the desire to make existence comprehensible and manageable. The stronger our desire to do this, the more forcefully existence will assert itself as incomprehensible and unmanageable, as chaotic and impersonal.

Hence, the only path left to us is to invert our original notion of truth, that of truth as a restraint, and instead to posit truth as freedom. When we see truth as restraint, what is freedom? Freedom becomes purely negative—we have the freedom to resist the truth. And even this isn’t a true freedom, since truth will assert itself and restrain us whether we resist or acquiesce. When we see truth as restraint, there is no freedom. There is only the absurd rebellion of an illusory freedom.

What does it mean to see truth as freedom? It means that truth is faith in existence. When we recognize that everything is entangled, that everything is part of the situation, we find the freedom to surrender to the situation. We find that the freedom of existence to transcend even logical restraints is our freedom, since we are existence. When existence flows, it is absolutely free. It is not a question of surrendering our own freedom to go with the flow of existence, but simply of realizing that we are existence, that we are intrinsically part of the absolutely free flow. We are expressions of it, it is an expression of us. Truth is the direct experience of freedom. There is no alienation from existence, there is no resisting existence, even such illusions and misunderstandings are part of the freedom of existence. Even such illusions and misunderstandings are part of truth. Rational understanding, concepts, laws, and logic do not define existence, they are free expressions of existence as it moves through itself. Existence breathes life into them and they unfold and they collapse and blow away on the wind—they are nothing more than dreams.

The purpose of philosophy, then, is liberation. Philosophy liberates us from meaningless questions and meaningless answers. Philosophy liberates us from the search for absolutes, since existence itself cannot be found, nor does it need to be. Philosophy initiates us into the freedom of existence through paradox and contradiction, which are the loving partners of completeness and consistency. Loving, complementary opposites, not contradictions which demand a resolution, nor expressions of the futility and absurdity of existence. And yet, tense, dueling opposites, which demand a resolution, which scream the futility and absurdity of existence. Philosophy has no purpose, since any purpose is self-defeating. If the purpose is liberation, the result will be further entrenchment. If the purpose is reconciliation, the result will be further diffraction. And yet, here and there someone will be liberated. Someone will find reconciliation.

Reason is a tool we use to respond to problems. There is suffering, there is decay, and we use reason to move back into an empty space where there is equilibrium. But we grow so enamored with reason that we begin to use it to invent problems to solve: what is a problem? What is suffering? What is this device I used to solve the problem? What is equilibrium? The creation of illusory problems is an artform, it allows reason to dance in an imaginary space. However, it is ultimately regrettable to take this too seriously. When we move from the problem through the process of reason into an empty space, we know all there is to know, because we experience the flow. When we invent imaginary problems and find ourselves unable to resolve them, what we experience is a circular flow which cannot find catharsis, and we can trick ourselves into believing that this is the absolute experience of existence, the truth of all flows. This keeps us from evolving into the flow from problem to solution, and realizing our full potential.