When we talk about the impossible we might see a light at the end of the tunnel, but this light is really just the part of the tunnel that has electricity. The point of any discussion that wishes to find a solution, should not be about solutions. So far as reality proper and ideological power goes, as long as there is a solution, nothing changes. So the true revolutionary should not be so much concerned with enacting revolution, but should be more concerned with revealing and elucidating problem, because it is only when there is no solution, that things change. So if we see what is impossible, then we have found the real game: that the effort for the radical occurs to reify the state of reality, so ingenious, self centered and fearful of losing power humanity is. There is no successful freedom beyond the state (see my essays on feminism) in this way, freedom is an illusion, an ideological clone of the ghost in the machine. Freedom occurs through fidelity to the state. Freedom is violence.
Now, doesn’t that sound pretty impossible? But this is exactly the post-modern judgment that opened the doors by which to speak of ideology and social justice. The activities of social justice lay exactly in the discourse of freedom; this is what was realized, that there is no justifying effect in attempting to speak of justifying the individual outside of the state, as some sort of essential subject.
Ironically, to speak of freedom as an effect outside of social justice is impossible. So that is the course we take.
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That by which we may know of what is impossible presents the truth of reality. By this truth, the real argument for determinism is always transferred to the contingent through the contingent; determinism is always a theory. When what is contingent, that is, results found through the interaction of random chance and a choice of free will, is placed or otherwise exists at the root of being human, only problem occurs as oscillation between problem and solution is not seen as a basic motion of existence, and a solution is sought to rectify the motion of human consciousness.
We can say this is the problem: in so much as the universe is determined, such determination is theoretical, and, inso much as there may be theory, the universe is not determined since theory arises in the contingency of the universe: it is theoretical. This is the basis of the argument between determinism and contingency; neither can be argued to the truth it proposes in either placement, they can only argue what is real, and reality involves contingency. We can say also: in so much as the universe is contingent, presently manifested upon necessary causal relations that take their form out of random situations, so much we have free will, and, in as much as we may know of this contingent universe and our freedom within it, the universe has been determined in this way, that we cannot but have a contingent universe.
In other words, we cannot live as human beings and be determined, choice always plays in reality. The idea that we and or the universe is determined, meaning that we have no true choice (see my previous posts), is always set in choice as we live; we make choices throughout the day that if tempered with the idea of determinism perpetually amounts to a choice, or a reminding, that we are determined. The problem of human existence is posed by this determination.
This problem cannot be solved in argument. The discussion that seeks to prove the solvency of contingency or determination always avoids the object of its antagonism; the argument for a determined universe avoids the choices that are made in the arguing, and contingency misses the necessary procurement of terms that are assembled to present its argument, as well as its meaning. The universe is determined, but we must choose, and the choice we make could not be made otherwise – but I have chosen. Though we might find the solution to the polemic here in a universe that is both determined and contingent, and perhaps bring a contextual reduction to a further analysis, this then proposes the reality of the universe as lived experience. Yet, the progress implicated by this move invariably will bring about not only a further polemic of terms, but also will yield a return to the same argument under different terms, as we will see. If there is a human being who suffers no problems, who makes no choice, what we have with him is then a person who has ‘stepped out of time’, or to be more precise, lives in another reality.
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The solution to the real problem of the universe is impossible. Yet, because the solution of the universe is impossible, it can be solved, and because the problem of the universe can and cannot be solved, the means through which the problem has been posed, as well as its solution, must be the problem. It may well be this posing, but it is at least a posing.
This is to say, the scheme of meaningful terms by which the universe is known, as to its problem and solution, is defective. We can say this conclusion is true because the scheme is that which poses the truth of reality, and this scheme says such a conclusion is impossible, this must be true, so the solution is impossible. If what is impossible is temporary, that is only impossible right now but maybe not later, then it is real, and is not impossible, but then the vacillation of problem and solution is possible. But, again, if we can surmise of what is human by the apparency of this sentence, of the quality inherent of its representation, then a removal of the motion may be human, and consequently is not real. The terms of reality themselves must be the problem, unless there is a humanity beyond terms, so the solution cannot be found through the terms. And, if there is a humanity beyond the terms, the problem is how to use terms to speak of this humanity; we must think less upon definition, since the definitions of terms do not encompass such humanity, and think more upon orientation. This is to say we might think more about a poetics, but this term also risks relapse into the scheme we are meaning to point out as faulty.
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We have a definition of the universe that is operative: The universe is that which contains or is otherwise accounting for all that exists. The universe operates by laws. By these laws the universe develops stars, planets, and everything else, including the human creature.
Humans began as ignorant of the laws of the universe, how it operates, and due to the capacity inherent of the human structure, brain, body, etc, humans as a species have been involved in an attempt to know how the universe operates. Recently, humans have developed science that tells us that while the universe has been operating by set laws, part of this law is accounted for by random occurrence. Science is still attempting to discover the parameters, the law, by which randomness can occur.
The segue above suggests a definition of human that is operative. Human beings have an ability for free thinking. This ability allows human beings to discover things of the universe, how they operate and function, how they interact, as well as extrapolate possibility of universal things, including relations, themselves, human nature and psychology. Free thinking and action occurs through, or is manifested by, choice, and choice, while based upon a coming upon distinct or sometimes not so distinct options, situations for decision making, these situations nevertheless arise through cause, which when looked into are found to be not so distinct, and are in fact, debatable. Cause, in this way, can be said to arise from randomness, since, at least, we are not able to account at one time for all cause that amounts to a situation, and in one sense those causes that are not accounted for amount of chance, but in another sense, cause that amounts to the chance of a situation being thus situated can be considered random. Yet choice itself, as an ability, is not seen to arise from or within random occurrences, but is understood as basic to a causal chain, and is decision that originates in a primary subject, the individual human being.
We have thus a situation of two situations, and the situation of this situation is one of two situations. The redundancy of this situation will make itself apparent.
The law abiding or containing universe arises in situation from randomness, and the human being makes choices based upon determined causes that arise likewise with random aspects. The random aspect of the universe is understood as a basic feature to be uncovered through science, and the random aspect of being human is addressed similarly through psychology, but the universe is set aside in the act of choice, that is, decision. So we have the universe as it is, having developed along certain lines and junctures of laws constituent or otherwise informed by arbitrary influences and events, and the individual human as it is as an end product of a causal chain of choices, the actual occasions of decision arriving by chance. The confluence of these situations arrives at the point of a common unknown influence (random occurrence).
Yet, the unknown of a universe that is of a different quality than the unknown in which the event of human choice takes place argues that there are different qualities of absent influence. An absence that has a quality is not characterized by itself, rather, that which characterizes an absence is not absence but the choices that establish what influences to define what a particular absence is. The universal absence, which can be said to be the random element of law, is a mathematical formulation, while the random element involved with human decision is a psychic affect; if there is a mathematical formulation that can convey the psychic affect without effecting the psyche, or a psychic affect that can impose math or withdraw a mathematical formulation, then the two categories would not be drawn in this way or be able to convey a sensible meaning in this way for I would say ‘math formulation’ and ‘psychic affect’ would not need to correlated since they would naturally confer the other. This incommensurability argues that the universe and the human being are segregate elements of a larger encompassment, and this is exactly what the imposition of undetermined choice, free will, psychical determination, proposes.
And again, the problem; if the universe is structured with random aspects, then these aspects are in truth universal aspects that are random. Yet this is only known by the agent of free will, thus we should have a problem that begins and ends with choice, that the random aspect of the universe is actually a point of failure of free will. Yet it is quite sensible to thereby argue that this point of failure is the situation of the individual in and of the true universe, or, that human beings are merely ignorant at this point.
It is not difficult to make a correlation between the deduced common random influence and the induced larger encompassment. In effect, the unavoidable contingency of the human being in the universe allows for the determination of both the transcendental and immanent One of sensible reality; the very basis of the ability to choose cannot be separated from its counter partial One. Choice must be set between two elements, the option and the ‘chooser’. As above, this sensibility arrives at two sensibilities that appear segregate. The One Thing called the universe and the One Thing called the human psychic being, and these taken together can imply a third influencing extra-universal element that also counts as a unifying One. But which way do these various ‘Ones’ fall to incorporate the ‘One-and-Only’, irrefutable One?
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Where should we look for this One?
In yoga classes and organic grocery stores that make you feel good and bring up pictures of happy Buddha, blissful Mohammed and smiling Jesus, of all humanity holding hands in a loving chain around the world, everyone exhibiting their art to each other, and call it the Zeniverse?
Or in the styley cool centers where eager Bing-ers looking for the next hip place to eat can think on what might be included in part 4 of this nonsense?
Oh wait; probably none of those people have read this far.
But for those who have, I leave you with a riddle of sorts:
Those who see forward are congregants;
Those who see present are prophets;
Those who see backward are enlightened.
Who is correct?
Waiter ??….
