Something To Believe In

I want to write something that makes me believe that I believe in something. I want to write something that examines the belief that I believe in something. I want to write something that makes me believe there’s something to believe in. I want to write something that I believe.

That was a bit of a riff on Love & Rockets song. Maybe I’d put a link in there if it wasn’t such a hassle, but then, I didn’t start this blog to complain about my current technological limitations.

No.

I started this blog to express and examine my beliefs about reality. About what is.

While I was out having a smoke, I got to thinking about Kant. I got to thinking about his neo-platonistic views of an ideal—the essence of something that lies beyond the appearance of something. I can’t quite recall what his name for it was, but it was hidden behind or beyond the manifestation; similar, I guess, to how there are Platonic ideals of things, the instances of which are pale shadows of the perfection. I guess I could look this shit up, but I’m going free flow here.

And somehow this got me dredging up Anslem and his perfect being (being God). It’s not necessarily immediately related, but my mind’s made a connection there—probably something to do with this ideal form that must exist because part of its perfection would be existence. But wait, wasn’t it Kant who established that existence isn’t a predicate or quality of a thing?

Wow, I’d have to look that up.

Anyway, then next it was old Uncle Nietzsche’s, “if you stare into the void, the void stares back” (at least I think this (likely paraphrase) was his). And what happened here in my head was that this perfection, this ideal, this thing that is but is not possibly experienced by us, became that void. And earlier tonight this notion of perfection crossed my mind and I thought about how practice never makes perfect, but it can and often does make better.

Perfection is absence. Ideal is absence. In absence it is the imperfect things, the things of this world, which manifest to fill the void. It is, my mind turns again, pratityasamupada: the void stares into itself, and its absolute absence creates inter-dependent-co-arising manifestation. I can not stare into myself and see nothing; the world cannot stare into itself and see nothing. If there is something to stare, then there must be something to be stared at, and these things are manifestations of nothing and all.

And while maybe that was the nugget I was mining for, the mind then turned to Existentialism, and of course, the notions of despair and longing it carries; although, perhaps transformed, through alchemical process, into satisfaction and relief—turning (or burning) the dross into dreams.