On Progress

essay and verse

ON PROGRESS

It is said that the early autumn (in the northern hemisphere) is the most likely time to encounter a ghost. Perhaps it is something to do with the abundance of built up heat. That theory sounds reasonable enough. On the other hand, maybe it is just another wild speculative stab in the dark, in the name of clarifying a phenomenon which may not have even relative existence.

Science predicts and makes intelligible theories based on data. But then, that is what the human brain, or our faculties of perception, do every conscious moment, prior to even self-consciousness. Theorising and speculation go on continually, and only occasionally do we, or some self-conscious fold in the manifold of our mind, catch hold of the activity and endorse it. That is when we think ‘we’ are thinking, and claim authorship of the productions in our heads. In actuality, what appears to be our thinking is probably just the visible crest of a wave upon the fluctuating tides and currents of an unconscious being, whose “active subject itself remains just as inaccessible to consciousness as the external thing-in-itself, to which it corresponds as internal thing”¹, in Kantian terms, the “Noumenon”.

It is sometimes (and with some justification) claimed that the seemingly-purely negative philosophies of, for instance Arthur Schopenhauer, Buddhism, or the Academic Scepticism of the so-called “New Academy” of Arcesilaus and Carneades, are anathema to human progress, and thus in a sense, betrayers of the sacred tradition. It is claimed that nothing positive can be built upon them.

Firstly, I don’t think that is entirely true. Even on a purely ideological level, there are from these sources clearly some- very careful - positive statements about the nature of nature, that is, about the principle(s) underlying and ruling what appears as this world and ourselves. One could even suggest that, in their very apophasis and elimination of the various false concepts which encrust the mind, these ‘radical’ savants of the wide Indo-European tradition are simply wiping the windows, and allowing us all to see more clearly again what had been obscured. After all, discursive thinking is not the full account of what this mind of ours is about.

But secondly, what is meant by “progress” in the context of theory and speculation? In the physical sciences, it is clear enough; progress means developing better theories for greater accuracy in predicting phenomena. But in regards to things like art, politics, religion?

Well, with regards to “politics”, political “theory” in as much as I have encountered it since college, seems to involve nothing but tedious attempts to dress up in hyperbolic (or bollox) argument and verbal posturing what could be explained in a couple of lucid paragraphs. There seems- to me at least- to be very little, if any, air between the pompous obscurity of the political and social “theory” mongers, and the least persuasive exaggerations of the most narcissistic conspiracy theorist. At least with conspiracy theories, there is a constantly vigorous recognition that the rich and powerful ‘ain’t your friends’.

What progress can there be without the basic recognition that we only perceive reality to the extent, and within the structures, which our human condition allows? I suppose underlying a lot of the aforementioned political theorising is an assumption heavily influenced by the Judaeo-Christian belief that the world is dependent on the intelligence of a very humanlike personality; not the allegorical demiurge of Plato, but a moody and jealous Hebrew monarch, whose will and designs shift and ‘progress’.

And what more, after all, is there to theorise ‘politically’ than to acknowledge that humans need a basis of sufficient resources, and an established system of justice, to allow the possibility of living a full life, including creative work and expression? Sort that out, and it would be enough (which could be done, but has not yet, and may never be, due to the perpetual hegemony of greed).

The real progress is only in the potential of every ‘individual’ mind, or soul, to realise it’s intimate relation, or identity, with the real and inconceivable (that is, transcending conceptualisation) root, principle, essence, the arkhe, of all that seems to be. And that requires nothing so much as the exorcising of conceptual phantoms and theories based on shades.

AN ORACLE OF THE MORRIGAN

“The realm of light mirage donates,

saporous, fleeing from content,

in plight, images separate,

with gaps between the clusters, rent

***

Hateful is the gloom on high!

The lords of earth are vain and cruel,

they prate, perfume discord, and by

their hoarded worth, maintain their rule

***

But where alone, the reigning truth;

all-potent dreams beyond the fall,

and wear of bone, the plain of youth-

it gleams, an antidote to all”

1. Von Hartmann, Eduard, “Philosophy of the Unconscious, Volume 2”