To Alex

A Message to Alex

Hey hope these work. The In Memoriam one 'From Faith Through Doubt to Hope' is alright, i just totally got involved in the text because all that religious doubt and despair stuff is what fascinates me more than anything. The metaphysical possibilities in a world where God is Dead...in my view metaphysics is the human desire to declare that what is in fact just an assembly of atoms is a stone, or an assembly of words a poem, or a random appearance of stars Orion, or a conglomeration of people a society or anything - it's what people do, metaphysics is what separates humans from animals in my opinion, the ability to create ideas, notions, and from those to create whole faiths and beliefs out of what we now know are just a random lot of atoms held together by molecular bonds. My mini crusade (which i'm working on) is to point out to people that ever since the beginning of the 19th century the authority of metaphysics, the highest seat of which was god, is being deteriorated. This started off as a great thing, it meant that people who objected to being indoctrinated into a specific metaphysical belief system were free to reinvent their own beliefs and ideas from the world which they saw around them - this was made possible by the youthful energy and free spirit of the romantics amongst other things. Tennyson and people like him reacted to the death of god with an appeal to metaphysics and faith that many found annoying and retrogressive, in many ways they were right the progress was in breaking up authority - great. But Tennyson had a point, which you shall see if you read the essay (and understand the basis of the philosophy i'm explaining on which the essay was based, i think, although i've developed it a lot since then). Anyway then the 19th century hurtles on towards the increased freedom of individuals and the rise of relativism with everyone creating their own metaphysical notions and beliefs - towards the turn of the century you can see this in Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic philosophy, which i wrote an essay about if you'd like to read it (but read The Picture of Dorian Gray First). In many ways this is liberating but Dorian Gray is an example of how this can fail disastrously. Middlemarch also shows us characters who have a sense of ambition and desire to arbitrate their own lives although they live in a frustrating and restrictive society that tries to assimilate them to their own mode of provincial beleifs - the book is a subtle and engenious exploration of the dynamic progresses of their egos as their ambitions are thwarted from without, by the imperfectness of the society around them through which some try to develop, and from within, by the pettiness of their selfish egos. Eliot is showing us that there is something profoundly dangerous that the freedom which comes from the death of god and the rise of relativism and individual freedom entails - but of course she sees the beauty and excellence and neccesity of that freedom too. (see paradise lost, the book is all about the essense of a life, whether it is better to life a life of freedom which is YOURS where you will feel misery and joy side by side, or to give your life in obedience to a law so that you will be blissfully happy but not really know it for lack of comparison, and hence all your happiness will not be YOUR happiness at all...yeah but i still don't know whether milton knew what he was suggesting in the last lines of the poem (read them). ask mrs KD for my milton essays, they are wierd) Anyway Eliot is all for freedom and the individual developement of characters and one's ideas after the demolition of religious (and social) authority that used to rule and control the ideas and developments of individuals, but she stresses the absolutely imperative neccessity of a feeling of community, of sympathy, and an understanding that best christian teachings do not have to be thrown away just because you have cast off the authority that used to enforce them...basically she's all about secular humanism and stuff i don't know the term for it but it is the only chance for humanity. Seriously people should just read books it would solve all the problems of the world. Anyway so despite Eliot's sympathetic appeal (which i hope you might see is a profoundly metaphysical one that urges people to note that just because there is no power that ordains it any more, that does not mean that it is neccessary to stop seeing the gatherings of little humans in towns and cities on the earth as a society of people living together with their differing desires and interpretations which require imagination and sympathy in order not to descend into moral chaos, you see?) despite this the metaphysical destruction continues, you get nietzsche who is crazy but brilliant, so right in many ways but so amoral that the implications of the truths he espouses are disastrous for society (see WWII, Nietzsche inspired hitler...) because he, like Oscar Wilde, rejects morals (on account of their metaphysical restraints amongst other things). Anyway moving on you can see then how science conquers all in the 20th century and that is the ultimate blow to metaphysics, as it can counter it with the pure facts of physics any day, that is if you place the ultimate seal of your approval on the value of fact, but then you might as well say it is a lie to call a poem a poem it is just an assembly of words and not even that they are an assembly of letters which are themselves an assembly of atoms, just so a society is not a society they're just people and they're just atoms anyway, of course the idea of teaching kids that 'those stars up there' mean Orion is probably the first thing to go (which makes me very sad for some reason, there's a wonderful bit in In Memoriam and/or Maud where tennyson speaks of 'Orion low in his grave', i think he prophesied the death of metaphysics...remarkable) and anyway so you see yeah how the desire to destroy an overarching prescribed metaphysical interpretation of the world such as Christianity or a restrictive set of social morals or all those things that people rightly hated and were frustrated by in the early 19th century, has progressed to a steady destruction of metaphysics altogether, at first all in the name of human freedom to arbitrate one's own metaphysical interpretation, but then ah SCIENCE get's hold of the progress away from metaphysics and the whole thing is done and what you actually have now, where you will be contradicted if you yearn to say that 'no those stars do actually mean something do me, yeah they symbolise this or that', (and perhaps one day, although of course i know it is insane to say so but it is worth at least imagining the most extreme extents of the philosophical dynamic you will be thought to be deceiving yourself against the facts of science if you say, 'this group of people are my friends they are not just a group of atoms' etc etc or even 'this is a rock, not just atoms', or even 'i am a human being, not just atoms') to repeat, what we have now, or will shortly have, is slavery to reality. So you see the whole progression i have explained, intended to free people from the yolk of a restrictive and imposed metaphysical interpretation of the world, has in fact just led to the other end of the spectrum where you are a slave to reality. It is the ultimate horror in my view. That is what tennyson is about, and me - imaginative appeal, the human right and the human need for metaphysics, and for individual freedom also, yeah. Ah but it probably can't work. anyway hope this random outburst doesn't freak you out it was quite good for me to be able to try to explain the thoughts i've been developing over the last few months. If any of this doesn't make sense let me know because i'm serious about this it's important for me to get this right - hah, anyway yeah if you're interested in any of the stuff about George Eliot or Oscar Wilde i've got fucking good essays on those two so let me know.
Cool, and be brave
when and where is this pinter thing?
Sammy