Goethe's Faust

Faust "How uselessly I've laboured to collect
The treasures of the human intellect,
And now I sit and wonder what I've done.
I feel no new strength surging in my soul
I'm not a hairsbreadth taller, I'm not one
Step nearer to the infinite goal"

A significant theme emerging from the first volume of Goethe's Faust is the contrast between a life of study, deep introversion, observation and a life of direct action, involvment, raw emotion. Herman Hesse took this one theme, one contrast, and wrote a brilliant novel centred almost entirely on it, Narcissus and Goldmund.

I feel this theme addresses a fundamental element of human experience. As humans we have constructed complex, complicated cultures; epigenetic worlds. We are able to involve ourselves in these worlds and in some way detach ourselves from the physical, genetic world.

I think some people can involve themselves in an epigenetic world too much and lose connection with raw reality and direct experience. Thus it is understandable that Faust would, after years involvment in this world, want to break away from it. He undertsands that full, deep knowledge doesn't derive entirely from book learning.

Goethe's Faust and the Religious/Atheist Debate

Margareta "Then you don't believe?"

Faust "My sweet beloved child, don't misconceive
My meaning! Who dare say God's name?
Who dares to claim that he believes in God?
And whose heart is so dead
That he has ever boldly said:
No, I do not believe?
Embracing all things,
Holding all things in being,
Does He not hold and keep
You, me, even Himself?
Is not the heavens' great vault up there on high,
And here below, does not the earth stand fast?
Do everlasting stars, gleaming with love,
Not rise above us through the sky?
Are we not here and gazing eye to eye?
Does all this not beseige your mind and heart,
And weave in unseen visibility
All round you its eternal mystery?
Oh, fill your heart right up with all of this,
And when your brimming over with bliss
Of such a feeling, call it what you like!
Call it joy, or your heart, or love, or God!
I have no name for it. The feeling's all there is:
The name's mere noise and smoke - what does it do
But cloud the heavenly radiance?"

This passage sheds interesting light on the religious/atheist debate and to me provides one of the best takes on it.

Goethe was receptive to the awe-inspiring complexity of existence and interpreted his experiences in a subtle way, without succumbing to simplicity and dogmatism. With the purity and clarity of a child he realised and understood the sheer brilliance that things exist "Are we not here and gazing eye to eye?"

Significantly Goethe addresses the limitations of language, in describing the complexity of nature and reality, "the name's mere noise and smoke"

In order to address the multifarious nature of reality and the religious question Goethe writes in paradoxes. "Who dares to claim that he believes... whose heart is so dead that he has ever boldly said: no, I do not believe". The answer to the religious question lies in between two clearly defined, one-dimensional poles. The structure of his poetic language is also paradoxical, "weave in unseen visibility"

More points should, undoubtedly, be added to the religious/atheist debate. Such as the oppression of institutional religion and the point that religious stories or concepts, such as God, represent aspects of the human psyche and can therefore be illuminating.

Institutional Thought

Many people unconsciously operate under ideological or institutional assumptions. Without interrogating such assumptions people become ignorant, dangerous and uncreative.

When an individual or idea challenges one’s network of unconscious, institutional assumptions you will often find a violent, confrontational and aggressive reaction. To me this process occurs in all domains of human society and culture, for example in political and religious domains, and can be found on the left and right of the political spectrum.  

Clinging to ideological and institutional thought is dangerous because it pushes individuals and groups away from each other, discouraging cooperation. It promotes divisions and side-taking, because people will feel a vehement and aggressive need to defend specific positions, as though such positions were absolutely correct. It also greatly inhibits individual growth and the ability to see reality with clarity, sensitivity and accuracy.

I feel a significant ongoing hindrance to the development of human society and culture is that many of us unconsciously grasp to institutions and ideas and unhealthily identify with them. A degree of habit and order is necessary and we would be lost in chaos without this. But because so many of us are, I believe, fundamentally insecure, because naked reality is so frightening to the ego, many people unhealthily attach themselves to ideologies or simply established ideas and consequently resist fresh insight and genuine, fundamental change.

In my mind a healthy, psychologically mature or well-rounded individual is one who has developed a relatively consistent and flexible framework for interpreting and navigating the world and who realises the relativity of this framework, thus overcoming unnecessary aggression, delusional thought and narrow mindedness.

People might read these ideas but not deeply understand or integrate them, let alone meaningfully apply them. They might nod their heads and understand superficially but their ego, their conscious personality, would not realise them, for such insights would destroy their delusions and apparent psychological security.

Human Understanding

Any reflective work must be clear, from the outset, about certain processes. Few thinkers I have come across start from the simplest, most basic terms. Few of these thinkers are clear about their intentions and few of them form fresh insights. By fresh I mean free from platitudes and insipid ideological thinking.

I feel the ongoing confusions and divisions of human history need to be halted and everything, all the evidence, needs to be examined broadly and fairly. As far as I'm concerned we need to stop, pay attention, transcend the prejudices of the ego, dispense with preconceptions and, ultimately, find common ground.

Ideological autopilot needs to be switched off. We need to step outside and look within.

We can't change society until we personally develop. We can't personally develop until we are genuinely free of institutional conditioning and side-taking.

Human understanding must be viewed in light of two fundamental phenomena, language and naked reality.

In a broad sense language may be seen as the framework or context through which naked reality is translated and experienced. But language is ultimately derived, like everything, from naked reality.

The multiple elements of language are best seen as tools to understand, manipulate and cooperate with reality.

The urge to understand and attain clarity seems, with a number of people, to be a natural automatic process, an instinct. Arguably it is thus deeply rooted in biology and nature.

Understanding is about forming concepts, within the framework of language, that most accurately express naked reality, bearing in mind that naked reality is changeable. Accuracy can be determined through evidence and experimentation.

Human understanding is about aligning people and their conscious personalities with naked reality so that these phenomena move together in harmony.

Understanding is about consciousness and awareness. In this sense it is about receptivity and combating repression. Along with receptivity understanding must include attention and integration. To understand meaningfully one must be attentive and one must integrate information into consciousness.

To attain the most meaningful and rich pictures of reality it is necessary to take into account various forms of evidence, for example anthropological, biological, social, historical and cultural, to chart the development of understanding and consciousness and embed these phenomena in empirical and demonstrable contexts.

Parallelograms

From a familiar, external, conscious world the song Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs plummets the listener into an intuitive, Finnegans Wake, collective unconscious, dream world.

It speaks of the language and syntax of reality, explicitly through mention of geometry and biology and implicitly through its audial transition from a melodious, familiar dimension to a discordant, unfamiliar dimension.

The hidden dimension this song addresses may be described as the structural matrix and bedrock of reality. In the same way that we create two-dimensional images and fictional realities it can be said that a higher dimensional reality creates us and our three-dimensional world.

As a musical genre psychedelic folk is an apt way to express such insight. The folk element evokes old, rural, communal and spiritual tradtions and does so in a mysterious and beautiful way. The psychedelic element updates the folk aspect, employing electronic sounds and musical experimentation and embedding it in the historical and cultural context in which it was made. There is thus a melding of ancient and modern, tradition and revolution, continuity and change.

That Parallelograms, the song and the album of the same name, was largely ignored when first released in 1970 is testament to the overall commercialism and vapidity of the music industry and the ignorance of a society unable to perceive raw artistry and deep insight into the nature of existence.

The Least Among us

"We are led by the least among us" 

                                     - Terence McKenna

I've grown tired of arguing against the Conservatives. Is it not abundantly clear that their fundamental policies have always maintained or increased an extreme rich-poor divide and fuelled perpetual war and hatred? The Conservatives show no signs whatsoever of changing their fundamental policies, so clearly they show no signs of ending poverty, war and hatred.

One of the main arguments of the Conservatives is that they are the only party who can deliver a "strong economy". What is meant by "strong economy"? I rarely here this phrase explained in a reasonable, intelligent way. From a non-technical standpoint and judging simply by the hard evidence of many years of Conservative rule, including New Labour, it seems that the Conservatives' "strong economy" invariably equates to a staggering divide between the rich and poor. So in what sense do they mean "strong"? The Conservatives champion and preside over an economic system that allows one individual to be worth £9.5 billion and, simultaneously, for homelessness to rise. Is this not enough to make the population understand? It doesn't take an intellectual to understand that there is something inherently wrong with a political party and system that allows this to happen.

Even if economic efficiency was defined in terms of cold, abstract logic, the Conservatives do not deliver. Neoliberalism, the Conservatives' ruling ideology and economic system, their sine ne qua non, led to the 2008 financial crash. In other words it collapsed. Neoliberalism was started by Margaret Thatcher, the ultimate Conservative, the Conservatives' idol, and was continued by Tony Blair and New Labour. Blair and New Labour were, according to Thatcher, her greatest achievements. So even in cold, ruthless terms the Conservatives aren't worth voting for.

Humane political parties do exist. They won't solve every problem and they may have to operate in a toxic global climate for a while but who knows, maybe they'll set an example? Maybe they'll show people another way? Societal change has to start somewhere.

Why Might Momentum be an Object of Criticism?

I don't usually think in terms of left-wing or right-wing. I prefer more concrete terms; fair, unfair, sensitive, insensitive, empathetic, unempathetic. These terms carry more weight and meaning for me.

Alan Johnson has recently argued that Momentum is a "hard-left" group infiltrating the Labour party, drawing comparisons with the 1980s group Militant. But, as I constantly find in the popular press, this view isn't backed up. Johnson doesn't provide any circumstances or situations to show that Momentum is an extreme or militant group. His view is thus invalid.

Johnson also doesn't consider his view from different sides. Perhaps Momentum is around to combat the high levels of class injustice and inequality in our society and the waging of perpetual war, which is rife and which we aren't properly informed about it. In this sense his argument isn't remotely intelligent or sensitive.

Similarly Tom Watson and Neil Kinnock talk of "Trotskyists" infiltrating the Labour party without adequate explanation or exploration of what a "Trotskyist" is. I thus get the impression that this phrase is a scare tactic, like "hard-left", and when one delves into it one finds that it doesn't have any meaning. The popular press is full of such empty phrases and scare tactics. Much of the world-population thus end up living their lives based on a vapid and abstract political rhetoric perpetuated by self-serving individuals and a biased media. 

I wonder if Kinnock and Watson spoke out against Tony Blair in the same way they have with Momentum? Or even Ed Miliband who aimed to continue with austerity? One has to assume that Kinnock and Watson are promoters and members of the British establishment. The establishment, for the record, does not have the will or desire of the wider population at heart.

What does infiltrate even mean? Are any of our Labour MPs militant Trotskyists? Are militant Trotskyists going to take over UK government? I think it's far more relevant and beneficial to discuss and criticise Blairites and New Labour MPs who for many years had an overwhelming stranglehold on the Labour party, and probably still do to a minor extent, and whose record, such as the Iraq war and the promotion and practise of neoliberalism, is shameful.

Even if "hard-left" groups did exist and did have negative intentions, as it currently stands we have far more pressing problems that need to be addressed. We have the destruction of coral reefs, rising greenhouse gases, livestock emissions, the swift disappearance of many animal species, class inequality, mistreatment of disabled people and perpetual war, all resulting from insensitive and neoliberal, one might say right-wing, governments. In light of these catastrophes, that are occurring right now as a result of Western governments that have been in power continuously for many years, "hard-left" groups are not something I'm worried about.

It is funny when people talk of "hard-left" groups, as Americans do with Communists, when all we've had in Britain and the U.S for many years are right-wing governments. When you look at the records of such right-wing governments - ongoing wars in the Middle East, rising class inequality, nurses using food banks in the UK, private healthcare in the U.S, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S, the Vietnam war by the U.S, ongoing environmental devastation - you realise that an alternative form of government is needed.

As far as I'm concerned our society is fundamentally skewed and oppressive and when genuine beneficial change presents itself most of our politicians and media-outlets instinctively try to obliterate it.