Mortal Coil

“Vanity of vanities… all is vanity” So saith the teacher, the King in Jerusalem.

- Ecclesiastes

 No text has played so influential a part in my life, as the writings of the King in Jerusalem. Truth be told, there have been many occasions upon which I have cursed them; despised them; and just as the teacher considered the dead more fortunate than the living, so I considered the fool more fortunate than my own ‘enwisened’ self. This being the case, who is the fool here? What is it that I have really been chasing? For it would be dishonest of me to say that all of my striving has been in the pursuit of wisdom. Rather, I have strived after meaning, the availability and usefulness of which has always been of far more import than any ‘wisdom’ found there in. For this reason I have only but dabbled in the practice of religion (none but Christianity at that), and on all such occasions have I found it to be too plebian; too binary; and what it offers by way of availability, is more than negated by the platonic vulgarity in whose image it is cast. Thus it seems to me that MY wisdom is really nothing more than a peculiar sort of folly, one that is more palatable to a lofty and musical taste.

Now I find myself viewing humanity in similar terms. For if the quest for wisdom is a quest for truth; and the quest for truth a quest for meaning, (here it must be confessed that by far the greater part of all human endeavour has been devoted to it), then we must also admit that truth is as far from us now as it has ever been. Perhaps even further! For it is now fashionable to deny the existence of meaning at all, and to prostrate oneself before empty scientific expositions or the insipid political and economic games now so solemnly regarded as ’sacred’. The simple masses, once so easily swayed by the religious dogma of the church, have exchanged these chains for others they feel as a more comfortable fit. In truth, they were better off with an uncomfortable something, than the snug and pleasurable nothing they now so crassly exalt. For the spectre of old still looms large over them; triumphant, and now completely unchallenged. And this spectre, is our mortal coil.

 

   ”Suffering creature, born for a day, child of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this—to die soon.” - The daemon Silenus, companion of Dionysus  

 

Thus did the daemon, said to be the wisest creature in existence, reply to King Midas when he asked of it “What is the best thing for all men?”.  How much has mankind sacrificed in defiance of this answer! To be sure, even the unfathomable amount of gold and labour expended by the pharaohs of Egypt, pales in significance when compared to the other, more human and personal sacrifices. Sacrifices of personal sovereignty, personal pleasure, personal desire, even life itself! Finally, it seems that God also was not immune to this desperate impulse of sacrifice, and on the cross did mankind finally give up all it could. How can it be reasonably be supposed that all this was done entirely in the service of trivial, purely IMAGINED concerns? In truth, these sacrifices were the actions (misguided, certainly) of a people who understood the sheer profundity of our mortal coil, and the enormous significance of throwing off its shackles; of becoming master over it.

It is the major flaw of all the Judaic religions, that they have long ago abandoned this cause, preferring instead to install themselves as a type of legalistic and moral arbiter; a type of social service. In short, they became political bodies, not spiritual ones. If we say that Buddhism does not truly resemble a religion, it is only because it has not concerned itself with these ’affairs of man’, and has maintained throughout an almost exclusive interest with the quest for meaning (truth). Hence, when we consider the life of the noble Hebrew named Jesus, what we see is something more akin to a Buddhist mode of living (although perhaps we might say his life was more human than the Buddhist, who himself makes a sacrifice of desire and passion), than what could properly be called a ‘Christian’ one.     

For truth be told, none of the Judaic religions espouse a mastery over death, but rather a complete denial of it. The invocation of eternal life (which is also to say, inconceivable and meaningless life) is nothing but the most supreme form of ignorance. That is to say, it is nothing more than a willful ignoring of the fundamentally finite and limited nature of existence; of understanding. One of the most profound implications of Kant’s most famous work, is that we could not understand or experience anything if time held no meaning. As such, ”eternal life” is a logical contradiction; ”eternal life” would be a complete lack of experience; such an ”eternal life” would be nothing more than death in any case. This is how such a belief leads one to the denial of life, even a contempt for it, and there is almost certainly a hereditary link between this mode of thought, and the prevailing nihilistic bent that is so obvious in the so-called ‘secular’ world.

The “conquering of death” that was achieved by Jesus, and which was to have such a profound effect on his followers, was not any type of “life after death” (this is something of a misnomer, for what is really meant is a ”life after life”), but a victory of life OVER death. A taming and a mastery of our mortal coil: a mastery of death, and hence, a mastery of life.  TO SEE LIFE WITHOUT DEATH AS MEANINGLESS! This is to turn the spectre of  mortality on its head completely, and anyone who can do so, is already on the path to a most supreme type of mastery.

It is not, however, everyone’s lot to realize such a monumental truth. And to them, perhaps, the feeble games at which they play may indeed be a truth of sorts: it will never be a masterful truth however, it can never be anything of the sort. But just as one cannot truly know what it is to be victorious, without knowing what it is to be defeated; one cannot truly know what it is to be a master, without knowing what it is to be a slave. For this reason, I am grateful for my greatest folly; the years in which I was enthrall to the ”vanity of vanities”. This most imperious foolishness, has served to bring about my greatest wisdom, and with it, my greatest freedom.                  

             

 

 

 

Incompleteness.

“All science is cosmology, I believe, and for me the interest of philosophy, no less than of science, lies solely in the contributions it has made to it.”

 

Karl Popper – ‘Logic of Scientific Discovery’

 

Is existence, properly considered, an activity of sorts? Or is it a state of being? What is a state of being? We may say that a state of being must refer to the ‘state of being something’. Perhaps confused; perhaps made of stone. Is being confused an activity? Is being made of stone? Is being something, the same as doing something? 

When we speak of being, are we speaking of a particular way of impressing upon reality? Could it be that an activity is something that also impresses itself on reality; that to ’play football’, is to ‘be a footballer’? But it would seem ludicrous to suggest that the ‘state of being green’, is equivalent to ‘the activity of doing green’; is it really? Science would perhaps suggest that to ’be green’ is to be composed of particular arrangements of atoms, engaging with the world in such a way that the colour-effect green occurs. This is no doubt correct; is it sufficient?  Sufficient for what purpose?

The real question that I am asking is this : Can the world be sufficiently explained through scientific terms alone?  In order that this should be a meaningful question, I must first of all assert what it is that I deem sufficiently explained. Here we must proceed cautiously, as we may well fall into the trap of simply defining the term ‘sufficiently explained’ in such a way that it would be impossible to fulfil the criteria. Besides, when we say that something has been ‘sufficiently explained’, we do not  usually mean that it ticks all the right boxes on some mental checklist, but only that the concept is now understandable to us.

What is it to understand something? We say that this thing or that is ‘understood’, yet this seems to be at odds with the nature of understanding itself. For the process of understanding is completely one-sided; it is the perceiver that has assumed a certain position, not that which is being perceived. I understand that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice-versa, but this is only a matter of convention. In other words, it is I that have placed myself in a certain relation to this phenomena. For the truth of the matter is that the sun is hurtling at immense speed towards the constellation of Hercules; the universe itself is expanding at an even greater rate; and in such a state of affairs it is just as true to say that the sun revolves around the earth. 

Is this not something of a contradiction? For if it is true to say that both of these bodies are orbiting each other, is this not the equivalent of saying that neither of them are orbiting each other? Here I may invoke the Transcendental Logic of Kant as a means of explaining such a statement, but the fact remains that this also would be an invented understanding. And if this is the case, does this mean that my understanding is false? Can a false understanding ever be sufficient? If the answer is no, then there is surely no way that existence can be sufficiently understood. If the answer is yes, of what worth is “the truth”?

 

“The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live–that the renunciation of false opinions would be a
renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.”  

 Nietzsche – ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ 

 

Can we allow ourselves to say that there is no true way of describing the universe? That to do so, is logically impossible? Surely if this is the case, then our understanding will always be disjointed in some sense or another; incomplete a priori. Can we allow ourselves to say that knowledge is false? To do so would do away with truth and falsehood completely, not knowledge. This is a dangerous step indeed, but can it be said to be as great as allowing science to dictate a truth that is false? For there is danger in that also, and even if we admit of science that it is the most respected and profound interpretation of existence, we must admit of its limits as well, it must never ‘lie’ to us in that way.

Where does this leave epistemology? To be sure, I see a great example in the case of epistemology. It is in the service of the truth, which is to say, in the service of nothing, that all epistemological inquiries are concerned. It is therefore necessary for it to be tyrannized to a certain extent; and science fills that vacuum quite nicely, or so it feels. Perhaps we should say that as epistemology is concerned only with scientific statements, it must be science itself, and therefore an incomplete standard.

If there is no possible way of completely describing the world, can we then say that one is more complete than another? We may say that one is useful; another perhaps beautiful, another vulgar. Which one is more complete? To speak of such things is nonsense. We are not so constituted as to perceive completeness, and as such we cannot assume any relations to it; we cannot even say if completeness would be any better than incompleteness.

We may say that science is better in so far as we are concerned with ‘facts’. To say that something is factual is to say that it is consistent with the language of science, not that there is no other way of speaking about it. No matter what we say of existence, there will always be more to say about it; and that is an astoundingly beautiful characteristic. 

 

Culture and Nation.

 

“The ‘black armband’ view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. [...] I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed.”

 - Prime Minister John Howard.

The quote above is taken from the 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture, an annual event at which prominent politicians, academics, etc, are invited to speak on various aspects of modern Liberalism. Former Prime Minister Howard is the only person to have been honoured with more than one invitation to speak: the first time in 1980 when he was treasurer in the Fraser Cabinet, the second shortly after becoming Prime Minister in 1996. The expression ‘black armband view of history’ was coined by Professor Geoffrey Blainey in a 1993 lecture given in Sydney, an edited transcript of which was published later in the week by the Weekend Australian. This he contrasted with the ‘three cheers view’, as being two competing attempts to define a particular type of historical narrative, with the former having assailed the latter under the stewardship of the Keating Government. Inspiration for this phrase was no doubt drawn from the wearing of black armbands in commemoration of Aboriginal people who had died as a result of white settlement, a common practice at demonstrations and other events in the years preceding.

The reactionary aspect of the then Prime Ministers remarks are of little concern, nor the anti-republican sentiment in which we find their root. The importance for us is found in the expression of two ideas, which resonated greatly with a large section of Australian society at the time. The first is the idea of what we might call ‘ownership of history’; that is to say, the idea that we can to a certain extent take responsibility for, and even characterize ourselves according to the historical events or achievements of the country we were born in. One cannot authentically claim to be proud or ashamed of an event for which one bears no responsibility at all. The second, far more potent idea was propagated from the first, and it is a seed which found a lush and fertile home on Australian soil. Given that one can take ownership of ‘heroic achievement’ through right of birth, it therefore follows that such a person is to be considered ‘heroic’, and would be perfectly justified in characterizing themselves as such.

Around the same time, a confused and strangely diffuse type of national fervour, which extended well beyond community spirit, yet was not quite fully blown nationalism either, seemed to take hold of a large segment of the population.  It was a nationalism that seemed to be implied rather than stated explicitly. Not that there was any shortage of nationalist jingoism from the fringes of this rather vague movement, which were for the most part voiced by Pauline Hanson and the dubiously heroic One Nation Party. Ms Hanson, who in many ways appeared to be epitome of the now celebrated ‘Aussie Battler’, insinuated herself into the political landscape on the back of this growing sentiment, where for the  most part she used her newfound platform to launch a vigorous attack on both Asian immigration to Australia, and government assistance programs for Aboriginals. Whilst there was certainly a racial element to her message, (in her now (in)famous maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 1996 she stated, “Of course, I will be accused of racism…”) to say that she actually introduced the notion of race into the public consciousness is wrong-headed in the extreme. In truth, what she did was emphasize and state explicitly what was also being implicated in other, more mainstream quarters.

The Prime Ministers comments quoted on the preceding page, for example, also betray a very definite binary form, and when Howard spoke of those things “of which we should be ashamed”, the electorate knew exactly what he was referring to. The heart of the message was crudely covered with a host of superfluous “isms”, which were never really at issue. With regards to sexism, the fact of the matter is that Australia was the second country in the world to grant women the right to vote, and the first to allow them to sit in parliament. Of imperialism, it must be said that this is an ideology that was at one time considered ‘legitimate’, in much the same way as socialism or capitalism are today. The British Commonwealth is rife with countries which at one time or another found themselves cleaved by the sharp edge of imperialist policy, a policy which by it’s very definition entails a certain amount of economic exploitation and cultural domination. What was at issue was the devastation wrought on Aboriginal people by a type of institutionalised racism that was only brought to a complete halt 30 years prior, along with the social and legal shambles that remains as it’s legacy to this very day. Ownership of such a portion of history, which could in no way be considered heroic, left the Prime Minister espousing a confused, if not completely inconsistent position. This position he reiterated during an address to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 2008:

 “I do not believe, as a matter of principle, that one generation can accept responsibility for the acts of an earlier generation. I don’t accept that as a matter of principle…”

It seemed that to be a ‘heroic’ Australian entailed claiming a certain degree of ownership for certain portions of history, whilst completely denying ownership for others. One need not be blessed with 20/20 vision in order to see which portions were which.

So who exactly could claim heroic status? It is here that the binary nature of Howard’s confused position fully revealed itself, and it is a question that is perhaps best answered by examining who couldn’t claim it. Certainly, there existed a subtext which seemed to imply it could not be claimed by the descendents of those who suffered the acts “of which we should be ashamed” ; an implication that there is one group (Australian/we), acting upon another, separate group (those who were acted upon). Newcomers also have no claim to heroism. Where were they when earlier generations of Australians were forging a path of ‘heroic achievement’? A path so proud that descendents could define themselves as heroic achievers as well! It was groups of people such as this that Ms Hanson treated with utter contempt, and although it is true that the majority of Australians, heroic or otherwise, were in no way party to the very significant fringe that was ‘One Nation’, the truth of the matter is that this was the fringe of a far larger group who in one way or another identified with the ideals this group espoused. These people were proud, ‘mainstream’ Australians. 

There can be little doubt as to the extent to which this new, proud and heroic national ethos was adopted. It did, and still does, in many respects resemble the ethos of the ’Real America’ which is often invoked by the political right in the U.S. There are the same binary implications; politically, both are aimed at the same ‘battler’ (lower-income) constituency. If the ever pervasive ethos of a competitive (capitalist) social mechanism, which by necessity divides it’s subjects into winners and losers, had been unkind in it’s valuation of those on the lower economic rungs, they could still cite the heroic achievement of their forebears as being a source of worth and pride. As for those who had no right to this ‘historical pride’, they could still find acceptance in this heroic group, provided they display a sufficient amount of superficial patriotic sentiment.

Yet for all this, I cannot bring myself to admit that I stand in complete opposition to the idea of national kinship; but only the idea of historic pride. For when we speak of a ‘nation’, what is it that we actually mean? Surely it is not simply a case of residing in a particular geographical location; the bloody conflicts of the middle east, Ireland, Yugoslavia, and a plethora of others stand as testament to this truth. On the other hand, if we are to say that the ‘nation’ hinges on some other identifying feature, perhaps ethnicity or customary beliefs, then we are treading on VERY dangerous ground indeed.  

As far as I can see, the idea of nation, is wholly dependant on the notion of culture. And here I may say that culture should be considered not as being a strictly defined entity, but rather a type of form that stems from a reciprocity between all the constituent aspects of an identifiable group of people. Hence an individual may identify with many differing cultural groups. That one identifies with a particular ethnic or religious culture in no way precludes them from identifying with a national culture; the only Real American or Real Australian  is one who can be identified as such. This is not dependant on any manufactured and synthetic sense of identity, or on a check list of behavioural traits that one can be expected to display, but on the veracity and authenticity of an individuals cultural sentiment.  

It is not necessary that one should approve unquestioningly every single aspect of a particular culture in order to belong to it; just as it is not necessary for me to approve of every single aspect of my family in order for me to belong to it. The ONLY thing that is necessary, is that I should FEEL a part of it; and hence any attempt to impose some type of fictional ‘national character’, will necessarily lead to the exclusion of one group or another. It is something that, like culture itself, must develop organically. The character of the nation is shaped by the individual. The character of the individual is shaped (to a very large extent), by cultural identity. It is a reciprocal process that should not be manufactured as such, but given fertile soil on which to bloom.

The New Religiousity

  

Most people do not understand nihilism, and this is something I find to be quite amusing. Having kept a sharp eye on the average person and read between the lines of their average discourse for many years now, I feel quite justified in saying that for most of those who claim distaste at such a philosophical outlook, the contempt arises more from an aesthetic type of aversion. Nihilism is perceived as being synonymous with darkness and sorrow, a stereotype which in my opinion is entirely unjustified. In practice, the ’average’ person of post industrial capitalist society is of the utmost vanity, although most would fail to see it; this years fashionable nihilist professes a far brighter and happier type of pointlessness that is far more palatable to their trivial sensibilities. Any underlying dissatisfaction with this mode of being is either ignored, or else it is driven from the ‘afflicted’ by means of a constant re-affirmation of social norms. To engage with these bungled mannequins is to learn the very essence of nihilism; all that is empty and lacking can be found therein. To be sure, they play with great skill the roles to which they have been cast, as all good actors do. They believe what they should; they like what they should; and of these ‘shoulds’, not one is of their own making.        

The prevailing hermeneutic is shaped by a bizarre mixture of the scientific object, and exchange value. For the common person everything is evaluated through this lens, and hence many have become convinced of even the most ludicrous of ideas. The laughable spectacle of the self-help author, or the ‘success’ coach trumpeting with evangelical zeal  the most untenable and crass stupidities, all of which justified by means of a professed expertise in some equally crass ‘science’, is indicative of a society in which the noble spirit of western philosophy, de omnibus dubitandum, has been all but discarded. For even if it were fair to say that the religious dogma of old now lies in ruins, the same could surely not be said for dogmatizing or the religious attitude in general; a new, pseudo-scientific type of religiosity is but only one type to have taken hold. What we see in the success coach and the self-help author is the priestly class of a people more inclined to view themselves as some type of marketable commodity in need of an owner, as opposed to a sinful wretch in need of a saviour. 

I note with some disappointment the complete impunity with which these charlatans operate, and it is high time that they were brought to task. What can be said in the defense of an individual who espouses such contradictory and clichéd nonsense? For even the apparently spontaneous affirmations of these people have a hackneyed quality to them that could only be the result of  an almost inhuman devotion to banality. The subtext of their pathetic musings is quite familiar: ‘you are worthless as you are, you need redemption’; and anyone who hears only the voice of encouragement, or an appeal to self-betterment, surely does not boast of the sharpest of hearing. In reality, what they seek is a certain amount of contrition. They desire that people will feel sufficiently ashamed of themselves when their life is measured in ‘objective’ comparison to others, and endeavour to correct themselves so as to better resemble their superiors; they profess nothing less than the objectification of all humanity. Thus the common man has determined to spend most of his life engaged in a process of resembling, and this is another way of saying that he is an actor.

 The American style of militaristic patriotism is perhaps the most glaring example of contemporary religious attitude, in that it revels in a type of ceremony that appears to be more traditionally religious. The astounding rise in the importance of the ANZAC day services is testament to the power that symbolism still holds over the lives of men. Here there is no revivalist atmosphere that pervades the motivational seminar, the sense is one of solemnity and profundity. There is the same notion of martyrdom that is inherent in both Christianity and Islam. There is also, it must be said, the same fictionalization of these martyrs. Each one of these soldiers gave his life so that we might live; each one of them is Christ-like; or so we should believe. For if it proclaims the significance of life on the one hand, it denies it on the other, and places above it a greater, immaterial ‘holy spirit’ that is solemnly dubbed liberty. For the ideal of liberty is but one aspect of a type of ‘trinity’ that makes up our ideal of the nation, and it is the worship of nation that the ANZAC memorials now signify.

For myself, I can’t help but feel a certain amount of contempt towards the scores of ‘patriots’ who descend upon these memorials in a display of righteous duty. The ignoble charade acted out annually at Gallipoli is as much a form of moralizing as it is a form of honouring. For each of these patriotic tourists will engage in remembering something they never knew in the first place: look a little closer, and you will see that there can be no reason whatsoever for supposing that the outpouring of emotion is warranted by any reasonable measure, or even that it is authentic. Most of those present are merely acting how they think they should, and I have a sneaking suspicion that those who actually did lose their lives at Gallipoli, would be quite nonplussed at being honoured by such a disingenuous, feckless, and above all dishonest rabble.

In truth, dogmatism is inevitable whenever a mode of thinking starts to take itself too seriously. The tartufferous attitude of old, that bedlamite belief in ‘the way man ought to be’, will perhaps always play a part in the vulgar type of consciousness, so to the dissatisfaction which invariably accompanies such lack of vision. For if there is one glaring fault that I perceive in the modern ’civilised’ man, it is not that he cares too little for his neighbor, it is that he cares too much! Too much for the petty ‘yeh or nay’ with which the average person passes their ‘objective’ judgment: with simpering cowardice do these very same judges also submit to another. It is not that these people value each other BY their possessions, it is that they value each other AS possessions. The only way such people can see themselves as valuable is to imagine themselves as objects, and hence assign an ‘objective’ worth. If not for such belief, how could anyone become convinced of the idea that a comprehensive appraisal of an individual can be achieved through an examination of clothing and posture? I may be unworldly in this respect, however I have never met a person whose shoes implied bravery, or whose gait suggested kindness. Yet such feeble-minded falsehoods, as well as those of a historical nature, are widely maintained with no justification whatsoever. This is done with the common aim of all dogmatic assertions: i.e - they are furthered with a view to shaping the individual within a particular mould. The particular mould that suits our bourgeois ‘betters’, is one of an unquestioning (or as J.D Rockefeller would have put it, unthinking) object, with object values.

“The wisest men, follow their own direction” – Aristotle.

Political Nothingness

 The perpetual banality that has become something of a defining feature for the ’political mainstream’, is reflected in (not stemmed from) the attitudes of our political leaders. The political relationship between voter and candidate is shaped in no small way by a peculiar kind of reciprocity, one that seems to stem from ‘nothing’, in particular. The electorate, for the most part, are seemingly uninspired by the insipid mewing that constitutes what is sometimes referred to in the U.S as the ‘national conversation’, and are inclined to vote for the party that least offends them. For their part, our leaders follow their democratic instinct, and pander to this inclination by endeavouring to display themselves as ‘inoffensive’. In the course of doing so, they eschew the opportunity to display themselves in a more inspiring light; they are as vague, ambiguous and uninspiring as the people they wish to win over. No doubt this desire to be presented as inoffensively as possible is where the term ‘politically correct’ took its root, and it is worth noting with supreme irony that there is not a politician in the land who would be so lacking in popular sensibility (vulgarity) as to describe themselves in such a way. In other words, to be ‘politically correct’, is about as far from being ’correct politically’ as one can possibly be.

 This is also to a large extent an unavoidable consequence of a binary paradigm that is ubiquitous in the so-called ’western style democracies’. We speak of politics in terms of being either ’left’ or ‘right’, rather than terms such as ’north’, ‘south’, ‘east’, or ‘west’. This is nothing more than the language of politics. The reason that no political movement is said to be neither left nor right, is simply that we refuse to define their relations by any other terms. And the foundation for such terms is derived, not from strict adherence to one particular doctrine or another, but from a type of ‘family resemblance’, or perhaps their perceived ‘social tendencies’ (for this reason I refuse to acknowledge that ‘Anarchists’ or ‘Libertarians’ are in some way an exception to this binary form of classification, as they are essentially the left and right-wing manifestations of a particular social concept). Hence, when Julia Bishop recently described the Greens as being “a faction of the Labor party”, what she was really saying is that the Greens represent a sub-set of the political left, and that with regards to the political left in Australia, the ‘head of the family’ so to speak, is the ALP. 

This type of observation may raise the hackles of those who identify strongly with the Greens, and Julia herself may have overlooked the implications that her definition of the term ’faction’ entail (for by the same criterion, we may well say that One Nation is a ‘faction’ of the Liberal party), however there is a sense in which she is correct when she describes such parties as “irrelevant”. For example, I sincerely doubt there are many people torn between supporting the Liberals or the Greens; the ALP or One Nation; and the all important ‘middle ground’ which must be occupied successfully in order to prevail come election day, is constituted mainly by those who are almost by definition, neither one thing nor the other, left or right. And this is another way of saying that, in political terms, they are at once both left and right, they stand for all and nothing. It is for this group of ‘all and nothing’ people that the major parties tailor their ‘all and nothing’ message, and let us be completely clear on one point, if there is one defining feature in this group of ‘undecideds’, it is that they are ‘undecided’ as to what THEY THEMSELVES stand for politically, in any significant sense at least.

Granted, there is surely a minority within the electorate who do maintain firm positions, yet do not see these positions reflected by any political party. In this case I would say that to abstain from voting is just as legitimate a political action as voting, and as such it is incorrect to classify those who would do so as ‘undecided’. It should also be admitted that those who we speak of as ‘undecided’ are, in my experience, quite average people. They should not be looked upon as being in any way intellectually incapable of acting in a fashion that is rationally coherent, as those that are tend to have VERY significant political views (generally related in some way to the ‘invasion’ of boat people). It is also an absurdity to refer to these people as being those who do not hold ‘strong’ political beliefs. One cannot ‘hold’ a belief in the same way one can ‘hold’ an object. You can express ’the belief that it is’; ‘the belief that it is not’; or express ‘no belief whatsoever’. The practice of referring to ’strong belief’ and ‘weak belief’ is an equivocation that should be rejected entirely. For one to say that they ’believe’ a proposition, is for them simply to reaffirm said proposition, and this is tantamount to asserting the proposition itself. There is no ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ form of proposition, one either has a belief (an affirmation or negation) regarding a proposition, or one does not.   

To say that one is ‘unsure’ of how to act politically, is to say that they are unsure of their own political position, and in most cases this is because they have no position. I contend that this ‘lack of position’, stems from the nature of the reciprocity that I described earlier, in fact it may be properly said that what they really lack is a definition. By this I mean that they are unable to define themselves in any type of subjective political context, and this is just another way of saying that, politically, they stand for ‘nothing in particular’. As such they are quite haphazard in their political actions, and are more likely to be swayed by superficial aspects and deceptions of marketing than by anything substantial. To be sure, they are good citizens. As good capitalists they believe that a strong, stable economy is desirable; as good socialists they believe that certain social conditions should prevail; and there stands the political viewpoint of the ‘undecided’. These are the people who make governments, they are the ‘model citizens’ before whom our ‘model leaders’ are prostrate, and their political actions are affected by nothing more so than ‘nothing in particular’.

Freedom to Choose

The perplexity which has been characteristic, and in a certain sense, even definitive of my rather humble existence, has left the way open to some rather misleading apprehensions. Perhaps none has been the source of more confusion than notion of being ’free to choose’, the assumption of which forms the basis for the values that lie a the heart of our most sacred social institutions. To impugn on this holy of holies is a most seditious act indeed, and there is no one ensconced within the walls of these most noble houses so immoral as to even consider it. Yet those of us in possession of sufficient immorality are not this way inclined, and seek to inquire as to the basis of this assumption, for we perceive that it is not without its problems.

Thrown with seemingly causal necessity from one state of affairs to the next, man also perceives a form; a possibility of a state of affairs which differs from the factual, and immediately he finds himself in revolt against the senses, against causality; most of all, against necessity. The vulgarity with which the greater part of humanity responds to this struggle has at times been for me the source of great bemusement, even consternation. ”If I had chosen another path, things would be different” – that is to say, “If things had been different, things would be different”. To think that this form of proposition could be considered by anyone as being anything but the most pathetically trivial of utterances leaves me even more perplexed; this is the same species that begat Plato?

Here we should admit that the ‘act of choosing’ is not in any way a significant one. For as we shall see, when we speak of making a choice, we are not speaking about engaging in any particular act whatsoever, but rather we are referring to our ability to imagine a different factual state – that is to say, we are creating a type of fiction. In rejecting this notion of ‘free-will’ (also, ‘non free-will’), we echo the sentiment of Nietzsche. For our justification, we echo the sentiment of Wittgenstein: we base it upon an examination of the contexts in which the word itself occurs. We disavow any notion of  the act of choosing altogether, it is a superfluous concept; it is not a case of being ‘free to choose’ or ‘not free to choose’ at all. For, when I assert that “I chose to take a walk to the shop”, there is no distinction between asserting this, and asserting ”I took a walk to the shop”; and if I am to ask “What will you choose to do?”, I am merely asking “What will you do?”. 

In all instances we see that there is nothing at all substantial to this notion of choice; to insinuate the notion of choice into a particular state of affairs is simply to acknowledge that we can conceive of several different states of affairs. Perhaps they are related by a rational inference, but these conceptions are no less imaginary for it, they have no bearing whatsoever on what actually ‘is the case’. Indeed, as I alluded to earlier, any assertion that refers to a past ‘choice’ is merely an assertion that under different conditions, different facts would result, and this in turn can be reduced to the pointlessly trivial tautology “If things had been different, then things would be different”; this applies mutatis mutandis for statements concerning present and future choices. In short, there is no more entailed by the act of choosing than there is by the act of doing, and hence we say that there is no such act as choosing; one cannot ‘do to do’. However, we obviously maintain the literal significance of the word, in as much as it can be used to describe certain conditions in which an act takes place, but it is not an act in and of itself. 

What then can we say about the more popular notion of choice? It must be remarked that in many ways, it seems to function as a form of deception by which the maintenance of a particular type of consciousness is perpetuated. The idea that any one individual is just as free to choose as any other can create the illusion that there is some type of level footing upon which all the constituents of a given society are placed. To this end, particular classes of individuals can be patronized on the importance of ’life choices’, without ever being availed, or even made aware of, any number of significant ‘life possibilities’. In this way can they be directed (manipulated) onto an appropriate course of life that is ostensibly ’of their choosing’. 

“When you have thus formed the chain of ideas in the heads of your citizens, you will be able to pride yourself on guiding them and being their masters. A stupid despot may constrain his chains with iron chains; but a true politician binds them ever more strongly by the chain of their own ideas; it is at the stable point of reason that he secures the end of the chain; this link is all the stronger in that we do not know of what it is made and we believe it to be of our own work; despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the most unshakable empires” -

J.M Servan – ‘Discourse on the Administration of Criminal Justice’ 1767

 ’The linking of ideas’ was invoked by Foucault in his magnificent work ‘Discipline and Punish’. Here perhaps, we may be so bold as to add one more link, and proclaim that just as the idea of crime is linked as being necessary to the idea of punishment; and the idea of obedience is linked as being necessary to reward; so to is the idea of choice linked as being necessary to the idea of freedom, and this makes it perhaps the most important link in the chain. For in the name of freedom there has been more by way of blood-letting and human sacrifice than any other ideal hitherto, and when we have found that the popular conception of choice is in large part nothing more than a pernicious fraud, we are also obliged to examine this most prized of conditions.

I shall only touch lightly on this subject here, as I feel this should in itself be the subject of an entirely different inquiry. It shall suffice to say that the term ’freedom to choose’ is a patently insignificant statement, and that we should rather prefer the term ’freedom to act’. We say also that, as it is necessary for the occurrence of any act, that it should be possible for it to occur; and that the more significant the possibility the greater the likelihood of its occurrence; we must therefore say that freedom, as we conceive of its relation to an individual person, is dependent on the number of ‘significant possibilities’ to which an individual is availed. Hence, we can deduce that in our free society, there exists a class of people who are born with significantly less freedom than others. The propagation of freedom  must then necessarily entail the propagation of significant possibilities, and of making people aware of possibilities they have not imagined.