Here is a principle: once everything which is contingent, tragic, comical, absurd, stupid, ridiculous, and utterly human is subtracted, what remains is neither the Truth nor a lie, but the Tao. And the Tao is in fact a Way, a way beyond all the suicides of self, of mind, of compassion, of joy, of sadness, of love, of everything else we sacrifice to keep our sanity. Rather, what we are pleased to call our sanity, which is itself always a bit absurd.
We sacrifice to keep going,but in some respects, most of us find ourselves frozen in place, frozen in time, rigid. This is perhaps the metaphor Vonnegut intended with Ice Nine (ice nine?): not the death of death, but the death of solidity and stasis, of becoming immune to absurdity, of becoming convinced you are utterly right about everything.
I have spoken often about perceptual movement, or Perceptual Breathing. It is quite possible to create a continuum where one end is anchored in futility and the utter incoherence and unknowability of everything (and the other, of course, anchored in Absolute Truth). This is a conclusion of despair, but also of observation. War is always already an abomination which, as Lao Tzu commented some 2,600 years ago, should be celebrated as a funeral even when successful. Nationalism is ersatz community, Gesellschaft masquerading as Gemeinschaft. Worse: Gesellschaft masquerading as “karass“. You can’t love everyone, and they can’t love you. And love is in any event not always what you need. You don’t know what you need. This, too, is absurd.
I will share autobiography I shouldn’t, but I continue to believe all is revealed in the end, so we may as well practice.
I saw my mother recently after a long period, and I was struck that her emotional tone reminds me of three very different people singing three different tunes all at the same time, all slightly off key. It keeps her occupied, but there is no room for anyone else. I am certainly not there, I am not present to her consciousness, nor will I ever be.
This is Verworfenheit. In important respects, I had no mother. She did not try to hurt me. She was not consciously cruel. But the wounds remain, and there is no reconciling them. There is nothing I can say to her to bridge this gap, even now, after all these long years. This is a lonely prospect.
But it has created in me an unusual perspective. I should have cracked apart and broken, but somehow I didn’t. Something coherent within me is stronger than the forces which should tear me apart. I have, not a mother, but a Fate which I am living.
This is something.