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In the matter of “like” (those things in which we find affinity) and likeness, there is much to be said. Were we to strip away all matters of affinity due to their emotional provocations that often stir our consciousness, we would most likely also discover how much of what we think we know also being stripped from us. We rarely consider how much of (what we consider) our knowing is merely attributable to such affinities. Our predilection to want to believe and know certain things and resistance to others; that we either go on to establish as known true to us, or seek to negate…that are simply based upon “like” and dislike, runs deep indeed. This has been touched upon.

We may even be persuaded within that we “like” the truth, or want only the truth. Even to know the truth. That we are and would be above all (truth be known!) the securest of guarantors for its safe keeping if, or in, its granting to us. The fickleness of others we may see and even eschew greatly of their multiple and manifest hypocrisies…but we trust ourselves to act and be, differently. It would be funny but for the ravages wrought of those thinking themselves able, and able to be, more right. Who could escape judgment for this?

Yes, here consciousness shows itself quite double edged; for to believe one knows a thing rightly comes with it some pressing to be consistent to its rightness of knowing that we find unable to fully uphold. We simply don’t like being nakedly displayed as hypocrite and liars. (Why that is is for another time) But…we do not like it. Suffice it to say for now we hate being shown how insubstantial (without substance) we truly are of ourselves. We like to think (and very much so) ourselves as real…even substantially…real. With all our capability to thence decide what is real. And true. Of some internal integration toward truth and upon such integration to truth that we esteem our own integrity.

Oops, there’s another knowing we hold attributable to only “like”. A pressing to see ourselves as being a certain way. In such way we want to.

Listen if you can. I surely don’t know where, or on to whom, these words might land. And if it appears as some picking on any in particular, it is enough to say there is enough hypocrisy to go ’round.

One holding to a purely materialistic view (if believing all that current science tells) that is, that all is simply, basically…even truly particulate in nature, even down to subatomic particles and built up to what is seen and known due to inherent forces present in, and of, and acting and interacting upon these particles; a purely deterministic view is likewise inescapable. In order for anything in or of that system to believe in choice (or such as would appears so, or be described so) would imply that such being of this thing called choice or option-ality is of position to control and effect all these most fundamental forces and particles of matter. For if consciousness is only a matter of these things, quaint notions as reason with attendant (or so called) rejection of illogic become not merely moot, but untenable. How could a thing of consequence (consciousness) owing in all to a certain order and arrangement of necessity for its being, hold sway over that to which it owes its being?

If you need a ridiculous example, I am not shy about being ridiculous. It is akin to a person telling their parents to mate so that he might be born. And yet, who of us most practically speaking does not embrace our own ability to effect, even and including to the judging of others for the effects of their being? But such hypocrisy is not limited to the merely materialistic minded, it would even be hypocrisy in that instance to embrace such a notion as hypocrisy as most would understand that word. Yet we act and react with others according to the extension of a principle embraced inwardly “I can effect…(and make choice how to)…therefore…I can rightly judge others according to this same measure for the effects I judge as to their being.”

And this occurs to such measure in each that together and in some agreement (are its foundations made more sure by agreement…if they are already all of false?) that “legally” it can be decided (chosen?) in the extreme of agreement that one can have such effect(s) by chosen action as to merit what we consider nullification of their being (death penalty). But what is one, or many…removing? Nullifying? The effects of certain particles…so arranged? But who of us isn’t (in that case) merely and also no more than certain particles…so arranged? Yes, it is rather hilarious that certain agglomerations of atoms think themselves “better” in some ridiculous notion of what is commonly called morality. But, who of us doesn’t?

Hypocrites (if hypocrisy exists) all.

But, and if, morality is itself also a consequence of consciousness (at least to, and in, man’s mind) the very consciousness we embrace as real to ourselves (at very least, our own) is no less the very consciousness before which we all stand accused.

How double edged it is having consciousness! On the one hand we would celebrate it (at very least, our own) as our supremest having, (even being terrified of its possible nullification) but eschew the very thing we find so inimical to our celebrations, no less carried in it, bonded to it, present without contradiction as suffused also throughout all its (consciousness’s) being…guilt.

What a party pooper.

Things are.

This precise order in word(s) may not enter our consciousness as such, but were we to clear away all other matters accruing to this most fundamental stating of the estate of our consciousness, is that not what we are left with? Things are.

We may not have any understanding of the “how” of the things that are (by full knowledge of their working in expression), or even the how many of the things that are, but wouldn’t it be fair to say we fully believe in being? Are-ing. Things are is-ing. Existence…is.

How we participate, what we do about (at least) all the things that to us are made known as in existence (believing wholly in it, existence itself) and in our relationship(s) to them, from thoughts (even consciousness itself) to people, to the color(s) we prefer for our house or the shoes for our feet…everything we do or consider is based upon the most basic assumption of us…that things are. And our doing about them, and such as what we do about them is what constitutes what we call our life.

I know here I am toying with the absurd, or at least reductio ad absurdum. For the man who would think to himself in such terms as “I am neither philosopher, nor engaged in philosophy (literally “lover of wisdom”) but simple and practical in all” cannot deny that his exercise in to what he attributes being and existence no less includes those judgments of what is/are not (in being and existence), and neither can be. In that sense the truth about existence, or the reality of matters which may sound like an intellectual or philosophical pursuit, is really engaged in most commonly. And whether he admits it or not, such matter as truth and what is true in any or every sense (at least to him) is always at work in him. Let him hear his wife was seen at lunch the other day with another man and suddenly truth and matters of it become more than a dalliance of the philosophically minded.

What is true in existence and about it/them (those things) does not make us philosophers, we already are. At least in the practical sense…but whether we are truly “lovers of wisdom” in some fuller sense remains to be seen. From what might be called the coldest, hardest, most stern discipline of the utterly mathematical mind…this matter of truth, as in the rightness or wrongness of the most convoluted equation, holds sway. Oh, the numbers can exist on the whiteboard in whatever array of presentation (that is fact)…but the fact that they be there…does not make them true to any rightness. As much as perhaps we are practical philosophers we are no less practical mathematicians working in the reality/realities we “know” trying to make sure we have things add up…rightly. Even truly…to us.

But it’s kinda late for each of us, isn’t it? All the factors “in there” (of our consciousness), and so many of which were placed before we even had any sense of having a bouncer at the door (our judgment) of what is worthy to enter or be turned back has too long been formed. This “1” I carry to the next column…is that mine or my father’s 1, my mother’s predilections or displeasures…and/or understandings? Whose way of looking at things…summing up things…is really only my own? That I might even “know” as mine? Add in all the “commonly accepted” matters in community or history, things of which we have neither time nor inclination to test for ourselves to verify (or are unable) and we discover how much we move in a trust of knowing, even if it not be ourselves. How many people do you imagine would be using cell phones if it were limited to only those who fully understand their workings? TV? Automobile?

Ha! Yet we use our consciousness/reason/mindfull(?)ness to appraise a thing we call (a or the) reality as to what is, might be, or cannot be true in it, or about it. This is fact…but is there, even in the slightest thing in its regard…true about it and its use? Like the whiteboard we can string our numbers and equations to whatever sequence we do so… and place the = sign just before our answer as to what is reality. Do you doubt we do this? Feel/sense an even total and irresistible need to make answer for what we believe…real?

And why.

Do you know because your father(s) claimed to? Or do you resist his/their knowing due to some form of a motivating to resist? Either way…the ones who have gone before remain the governing factor of reception or rejection.

Or maybe, you just don’t like…me.

To hold an unfair advantage is to both hold and be held in, and by, unfairness. To be its prisoner. And yet we speak of justice as something; even a something real, and a something achievable. And not only so; for even if, or when, we may concede to its supremacy as something that is sublimely in all fullness beyond our full grasp, it remains as to us a most worthy impelling, a noble pursuit of all un-impeachability. It is impervious to insult, being noble.

Like the pursuit of knowledge, or what we would call truth, a man may wrap himself securely to himself if convinced his ultimate motives are so based. He seeks to be impervious at heart, to hold something of himself unassailable; uncompromised and uncompromisable by any and all circumstance as simply a thing he knows of bedrock establishing. He secures himself to himself as knowing in such a way. Man must have something upon and from which his being is established to himself; for sifting of all, or trying to stand and proceed from the shaking of all, no man makes progress from. Where he steps is no less shaky than from where he left. So, he must convince himself he at least…knows something. Something if, or when, all else shows itself of less than full substance he can retreat to for re-establishment when all other “ergos” that have perhaps shown some fault by his excursions upon them in trust, are shown less firm.

I think, therefore I am. “Cogito ergo sum” said a man. His thinking established himself to himself as having being. We can leave off for now all the significance and possible implications of his mention of “I am” to any other reference(s) that easily come to mind. It is enough to see that at least to him (if he is being honest) his being is reliant, to him a dependent thing, only informed as real by his thinking. And let’s give him some benefit of the doubt that he is not making an exclusionary statement but only speaking of himself and for himself in the how “being” is established to him. He has to know himself as thinking to satisfy and secure his knowledge of estate. Yet, can a man “think wrong”? Even…all wrong? And therefore, not only be wrong about his own being, but wrong in the sense of its establishment and true nature…of what “being” is?

What will he do when he meets the rock? Must he also ascribe an ability for it to think…in order for it “to be” to him? Is…the rock? Does the rock “have being” no less than he to himself, that he only establishes to himself by thinking? You obviously see the quandary, but perhaps more…how this trail of thinking as sufficient for establishing runs into further question(s). Does the rock have being only in consequence to the man’s thoughts of it? His thinking is required for anything “else”…even everything else, to be and acknowledged as having being? His agreement to it? Yep, there’s something presumptive about, or in regards to, a thing having consciousness…for what it establishes itself by, as having being, now finds that consciousness must allow (or does it?) for the all in which he neither sees it, nor finds it. Even of such presumption it can “insert itself” into places where it says…there is none.

It cannot differentiate, yet believes it does…and can…from consciousness to, and consciousness in. For when any man’s consciousness informs him of his being he cannot but allow for a dependence upon, and there even if, or though firmly resisted in his own reason he cannot but find himself no less in proposition that consciousness is necessary for any and all being. If he concedes to his own reason/consciousness as having being in the universe, he will either make the false presumption his own reason is for the universe, or he will (though he cannot will himself nor reason to it) there is reason to the universe. There is reason…why he even believes himself…to have reason.

A writer of some note undertook to describe such a man in some logical/reasonable extension of this presumption in the extreme. But that is what reason does, doesn’t it? At least in some masquerade as reason…an attempt to reduce to extreme and most fundamental principle that upon which other is founded? Like the why of why, though opposite charges attract (we so often think only in oppositions, and not complementary to a unity) electrons do not collapse upon a nucleus of protons, or why protons are not pulled out of their place. Force and forces holding all in seeming contradiction to reason. Reason itself having some foundation as, and in, opposition to…utter unknowing…or what would be addressed as nonsense; non sense.

Anyway, this writer obviously understands the presumption of man by his seeing of it, his almost too perfect description of it by its plain reduction to this sentence uttered by that character:

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”

Yes, this is an extreme statement, yet not at all made less true by its extremity. We each, in some way, hold this unfair advantage to ourselves over creation, over all the things that be…that to us, if are not known, are as good as non-existent. And if, by circumstance matters that enter our consciousness of knowing do so, they are not allowed to reside apart from our consenting to their being.

Yes, it is a very strange operation whereby we consent to the being of things, yet we do. And individually we no less extend this in all (self) unfairness of advantage of our own being, unable to accord the being of anything else as something a bit less than our own, and to which we, at best, consent to their being.

Equity and justice in such a case is all and only in measure attributable to our own largess, another thing we merely consent to, as deigning to acknowledge or render.

“I see men as trees walking.” A man said before a second touch.

But who can do anything about the self? From that perspective whence all judgment issues?

What will it do when it meets the rock?

Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.

Yes, the words of Jesus Christ while hanging on a cross, a stauroo (Greek), a torture stake. A thing devised to display a man naked, stripped down to all his fundamental inability to move or do and barely allowing breath to speak. Reduced to no more than a thing hung for display of its powerlessness, utter weakness, its being shown in all as subject to the greater force(s) upon it, as exposure and gravity work to undo its life. Stuck like a bug in a display case while yet alive to be seen, noted, observed as warning. The end is not rehabilitation or turning of offender, just display as a total reduction and caution…even threat…to all observers. Man is reducible, divisible from all his prior activity while yet alive to a thing able to do no more than barely squirm against its pinioning. And perhaps consider its own finitude, its utter limitation in such squirming.

Someone wrote somewhere of being a “worm and no man”.

Now, many understand those words in only the context of that particular circumstance, that that plea for mercy and forgiveness for what “knows not” is solely made in reference to the ignorance there, of executing an innocent man, even the man as the Son of God. As though their (our) “knowing not” was of particular highlighting, or a thing only of applicability there, and note. But this is not so. Jesus was not shy nor reluctant to make mention of this “not knowing” as endemic to man’s estate. One need only read the scriptures, those writings about Jesus to see how often he referred to man’s inability to know and his estate in not knowing. Even going so far as to plainly state there is no knowing apart from its being a given thing, and that from above. And this is a very pointed thing to tell any who are already convinced in their self of their knowing. It provokes hostility.

Yet, truth only answers to truth.

No, as much as Jesus is not a religious icon nor even a religious figure, he is not a philosopher engaged in epistemology. He offers no investigations of methods, no dissections of terms, no musings about how a man might know. Man does not…and cannot. Neither can he do anything about this of himself. That door is irrevocably closed to any and all knowing in truth, of truth, unless another open it and give. Man cannot appropriate it, reason by sense or senses to it; truth will always be as elusive to him as his own self eludes him in all fraudulent construct. Because man as liar…is. In a self he cannot escape. Both in all lying to himself, and thence communally sharing…for some agreement, for endorsement, for a feedback from all other liars to some consensus which somehow then is able to mark the threshold of truth. But liars can never agree. Homo sapiens…really? Man as free? Really? To even name himself?

Thinking he knows himself.

Such descent into the heart of the earth, into the void that is man, into all the emptiness of spaces (even allowed discoverable by man) as even now knowing himself no more than the swirling of molecules assembled, agglomerated only in and to pulsing electrical signals, was made. This fancy dirt holds…nothing. Neither can it but of such pulsing it calls life, which is only at best metaphor, with a consciousness itself that is only, and at best, metaphor. And yet it calls this of the real stuff by which all undertaking is undertaken. But who could see such dire estate? And what would, or could even care enough about man…to let him…know? It would take man as no other, able to pronounce such dire assessment (even knowing the consequences) but without trepidation, without concern for a self useless to him for anything, without denying his too, is of such like in forming.

Of myself I can do nothing. He said.

No, not philosopher. Not guru. Not theologian. Not iconic religious figure. A man who would not lie about man, forsaking all and any advantage that is commonly shared amongst them in maintenance of such lie to the hiding of the complete impotence of self.

Of myself I can do nothing.

He told on us when he told on his own self.

And, he is right. Made willing to be merely a self among other selves.

Yet he speaks of how all things are.

I used to believe “my own man”, too.

Then another came to show what a liar he is. And how easy slaughter is to it.

And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

The some, few, or many that find those words either odious in their reference (to what is commonly called a religious figure, Jesus Christ) or offensive in some implication of their necessity to be forgiven for their not knowing, they nevertheless stand:

“Forgive them Father, they know not what they do”

Here a man is speaking in a conversation we are now made privy to. He is not talking to us, but before us. But now the words are there regardless if one considers them one sided and not a conversation at all, as though the man is “only speaking to thin air” with no hearer addressed for bearing of witness. But now…you hear them. You are now in that place as hearer. You are now witness to those words….even if knowing they are not to you, can you resist the knowing they are “about” you? Do you think you can impeach them as “not conversation”, as not communication from one to another? Or will your witnessing as a witness prove you impeached? Do you…know?

Accepting the impeach-ability of all of one’s knowing is a work far beyond any operation one man could exercise upon another. Oh, we may receive instruction in part (as we all have) and according to our own arrangements as in “I will sit under this professor (but only) because I acknowledge his expertise, skill, or experience as outstripping my own”. But to engage with one who (as mentioned several pages back) can and would say “You have no idea of what you are doing…do you?” would at least provoke some resistance in either as forthright a response as “Who do you think you are to say that?” or even the more subtle attempts to show one does indeed know what they are doing, as proof of negation. And so they would…do. And continue to do till either they could prove themselves as knowing or proof to them they do not was made plain. And of course, I cannot prove this to you.

Even were one to concede in any part that their own consciousness (which sits supremely and presumes to utter of its objectivity to each of us) is found merely a hodgepodge of balls and strikes pitched to a self by parents or guardians, intellectual aptitude, experiences, friends, enemies, experiments, and wonderings in all limited to what that self has contacted in all circumstance(s); still the mind is trapped in that lie it tells itself…”I can rise above in all reason to survey it, and from there find the sense and reason of it all and hold objectivity“.

There may be nothing funnier to hear than a man (even any man) speaking of objectivity.

Yes, the pretty who girl who seems to find out early how to open doors with just a smile might like to think she can know other…but it is far too late. For even were she to set out to know how “less pretty girls fair”, she has already been set to her place from which such undertaking is even motivated. Our desire to know is actually the plainest proof that we do not. And to find we can do nothing about that, well, who could either bear to say it, or receive it?

And maybe as equally funny to hear is the man who thinks himself enough (or thinks of himself as enough) to utter “I am really just seeking the truth”…as though entitled to it. Even as though what by admission is lacking it in the consequence of seeking it, would know it if seen.

Truth only answers to truth.

Was that man in conversation?

Is he even still, now?

What do you know?

If you have, in any way partaken in any portion of these few words, I am your debtor. And it is a debt I am totally unable to repay. There is a charge against my account as a man of which I am only barely aware, and of which (and of myself) I am in all disability to discharge. In one sense it matters not if I continue, as though incurring more charge, or desist; what is done by thought, word, or deed has already been done and I am in no position other than any other man to make an accounting for myself to any satisfaction. I am as stuck as any in a vanity and frustration made aware to me well before I tapped out anything upon this keyboard. I am a man who cannot…undo.

The “do” of me, once undertaken in all blithe mimicry I did not avoid nor could have of myself, has been presented to me of some adequacy. I can only leave you to judge whether adequacy in this case is accuracy. A self which in the beholding of “other’s doing” prompted a response to either do in accordance or resist of obstinacy. A self of some form of consciousness presumed adequate to judge according to its own knowing. At whatever moment this took place remains hidden to me, but that I am sure it occurred somewhere, and at some time, leaves me little doubt. “I will be like some others, and I will not be as some others”. Here mimicry is no more laudable than resistance. And recalcitrance, obstinacy…even rebellion when accounted, have all the same root. For the mimic and the resistor are all of one in the self same…self. A self considering itself…as adequate to itself. It can do no more than it sees or even imagines. Yet at any and every point it remains convinced “I know what I know”. (To ask here whether you agree would be the mootest of all matters)

But listen here, if you can. If you can. From where I write is to some form of another self, and I can either assume you are in some way no different than this self writing, or altogether not at all “like”. Either our “selves” hold some commonality or they do not. And I am to one either betraying some form of consciousness of self to another, or must appear to some “other” one as a traitor (betrayer) of reason…even of consciousness. A fool and liar dressed as a man. How this is all “out of my hands” is made too plain to me. Gibberish or some appeal to a likeness I once foolishly thought in my control.

This self from which I compose and have done my doings, has known a thing as regret. It has done according to some impetus toward an imagined end. But at the point of its doing, at that or those moments of impetus toward, it did not know it was all and only dealing in imaginings; it actually embraced to itself the knowing of outcome. “If I do this, this must surely happen” (or such and such will not happen). Only later by failing or failure (whose depths are measurably equated to experience of regret) did it come to be seen as not knowing but only imagining (as self created image). And being surveyed then as either a lesson “learned” (trying to eke some success out of failure, even if painful) the failing was never truly addressed as to its true nature. The failing was assumed to be only in execution, and the depth of regret became the tutor, the taskmaster to ensure that the “knowing better now” remained the knowing better now…to ensure better execution. Taste regret…and remember. See how it tastes? Yuck! Remember. Do better…now. Yes, I was (and often remain) in that circumstance with regret as tutor…until I am disabused.

Yes, I am inclined very much toward acknowledging regret and its consequence of shame in failing as the most potent teacher my self can know. And such knowing is and remains most potent until such disabusing comes (by rebuke) that makes too plain a thing as stated above…I cannot undo.

I am forbidden a fruit I am all inclined to taste and enjoy. That from failure or failing in whatever experience I am allowed to “take away” (eke out a success) by embracing “now (or more saliently “but now”) I know better.“

For the rebuking question, and questioner…has come. Not of my bidding, nor surely not of my will nor desire. For I would in all, and in every circumstance (but for the rebuker) always opt, choose, desire, to think of myself no matter what pile of failures trail me…as one who “knows better…now”.

But ahh, that rebuker!

His question cuts to the heart of it, shreds in his advance past all my imaginings (as vain as they are) shown by supreme ease with which he cuts through them. Where I was stopped he advances. Where I saw end, even end in proposition of “better execution” to avoid shame and failure…he cuts through as sharpened iron swung through vapor. All my thoughts of doing better…because I now “know better” are shown as the rank vanity they are.

His question is supremely simple, yet in it holds all deliverance from regret and shame though it appears as most shamelessly asked, too brazen, too bold, too extreme of rashness for myself to either accept or even conjure. Yet it is…the question…something or someone brings to “my self” in consciousness. It’s light is too cutting. Too precise. This consciousness invading…is other.

No, it has not been my execution, that if perfected would ensure better and shameless outcome than of knowing failure and regret. That is and always has been the limit of my knowing. The “How to do.“

The question above all that either comes or does not, but is nevertheless there, regardless, has all to do with the man who sees now what he did not know “then” and is even moved to consider “If I had only known…” (in admission of his not knowing) is simple…

“Then why (or what is it) that caused you to think you knew (then) when now you know you did not?”

This one asking is far more about the being of man than the mere doing that is the limit of all men.

The question is again, simple, and though mentioned already it always bears reminding to my self, repeating from a place other to the place of my self. Addressing even all my inclination(s) always to embrace “but now I know better”.

Whatever “then” I occupied prior to my knowing of failure and such regret or shame that accompanied in falling short, was not, nor ever due to execution at all. The failing was in the impetus itself by which such doing ensured itself.

And the impetus was a confidence in my knowing.

Therefore the question provokes “If I no less thought myself as knowing then which has shown itself inadequate to perform to success by its consequence of failure and I am now the man in consequence to that failure, whence comes any assurance “I now know better”?

I do not fail, I am the failing one.

Yes, surely I thought I knew then…enough to do…and did. Just like…now. I am that man.

I cannot undo…that then. Anymore than I can of myself escape any thinking I now know better. I cannot undo…what I am.

How could any man escape the bondage of their own consciousness if that consciousness were always in continual lie to him about its knowing? Fraudulently representing itself as judge and arbiter of what is…and can be? Even to such point that the man could think or say “If I had known better…” (as though he could “replace” himself there, in that other moment he now sees of not knowing) and telling the man he can be “better”.

Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.

Seek the consequence of that man’s doing. He knows what He knows. He is unfailing.

.

It really is not whether one is cynical or optimistic (about man in his consciousness of knowing) as those words mean little in the context of this discussion. For both, whether describing themselves or being described, would consider themselves realists. The cup half full is the same cup as half empty, neither view can dis-annul the other. Nor establish itself as the more correct.

We are more the cup itself thinking we can hold anything of substance to our own determining; as though we already have some knowledge of how and what a full cup would appear as. And thence determine with some accuracy gradations along the way. But what man ever sees himself clearly of all relativity, being self convinced that at any and every point he could mention or measure…his own consciousness is presently as full as it can be? And, no less, as right as it can be? What could bring a man to see, no less admit, I am right about no thing? How much of such relativity would need be seen, revealed, understood…before a man might say “All my knowing is as nothing in its attaining if I labor according to some measure against all knowing?” And laboring against all knowing is neither a peculiarly nor cleverly phrased description. We walk…to an end. We run to some end of running, we do to some end of doing. And we are conscious to some end of having, or being, conscious.

Yeah, we are deep enough in it now; whether one thinks of it as off into the tall grass, or waist deep in the big muddy, or just the plainest and most common apparition apportioned to every man; his own death. That hour of no more dawn. And where each is moved by a consciousness made exquisitely conscious of its own limit though unable to receive it as so. Consciousness cannot enter the place of its own non-being, and even so, it looks, it devises, it becomes as death is becoming to it (as one writer whose quote I have never been able to find again, put it) all and only metaphor. Surely it perceives and has, others dying…but to itself death is merely a symbol, a metaphor…whose reality is incomprehensible to itself. Even the most rational thinking (or those touted so) and man full of his own reasonings (as atheist or agnostic as he may be) cannot forbid himself from all his own illogic in taking a “peek”.

“I have looked, and there’s nothing there”. (Except me…to come back and report)

Or is it ill logic?

It’s been said elsewhere that a man’s not knowing or not knowing much about a thing has never prevented him from speaking about it. To ourselves we are (please disagree) pretty much experts about the reality of things. Lacking claim of knowing everything does not in any way diminish our own persuasion that we are, and to ourselves, as much in touch with reality as any other…(and often persuaded, more so). We know what has happened to us or around us, what things have touched us by experience, what things reinforce our knowing of what we know, and/or that we even do…know. Things that reinforce to us our knowing, and that our knowing is real. We are fully persuaded our own consciousness is real, and more, that it could never be found as all working in us according to fraud.

For who could take kindly to this statement “You have no idea what you are doing” or if followed by this question “Do you?”…? For we all believe that fundamentally we have reason for what we do as according to who we are. And for as much as either time would allow or inclination be abundantly present we could supply all the reason(s) we are what and who we are, and why and to what end…we do what we do. We are quite sure in such matter all our reason and reasoning is sound, or else plainly…we would be someone else. We are sure we are who we are…with reason. And to the extreme…with even good reason. Who could bear the facing, could any bear such facing(?) that all our own reason (and reasoning) are merely an invented thing of our own self? Is there anything a man considers more sound to himself than his own reasoning?

I do not mean to rehash what was stated previously, but it is inescapable. If reason only exists as a product or construct of man in a material universe, that is, that it has no reality to be found in or for the universe prior to man’s appearing; it cannot be identified as either a transcendent matter or even native matter…but only a construct, a contrivance, an invention of man…and as such is as malleable, as subject to manipulation and revision by any man as anything else man creates. Our (even if total) agreement as to how reason is accorded some place of immutability (not unlike truth) is also, and no less, such a construct. Again we find foundations in which we were once sure of immovability, or even supreme compass, is as fragile and useless as dust to us for navigations. Yet we are full of them. Reasons and reasonings whereby we undertake all we undertake.

And we live here, thinking (our) reason in some ways supreme, yet notwithstanding able to easily pronounce when vexed by question of its supremacy…”Don’t be concerned, “I have my reasons”…(for doing or being such and such). And so reason, as no less truth, is as easily assigned to being “one’s own” (as in “speak your truth”) and is de facto no more than opinion. Its self claim of supremacy is also therefore cleverly cloaked in total immunity for every man freely possesses what is “his own”. And who can deny every man not only holds his own opinions overall, but is also and no less assured, he is entitled to them?

So, it is not even so much that reason and reasoning might be manipulated, it is already the all that can be, and is…totally, constantly, irrevocably. Man manipulating all he is subject to of himself, a god of his own creation as over him, but in all ways, and no less, subject to his whim and circumstance. The man who says “you should never steal” on one day, full of all his reason(s) for saying so (or even believing it to himself with all reason) might find in a week of starvation an untended loaf of bread. And how much more reason now dictates something else. Throw in a starving family for whom he feels responsibility, and you have the makings of all immunity from prior statements or convictions. Man tries to secure himself, even assure himself in all reason, till he finds he cannot. And how easily he may learn of circumstance thrust to him, or upon him, for which and by which his reason is totally powerless to inure against.

But is it really so necessary as to require explanation of how man becomes all indebted in, and to, matters of his own creation? Even life dependent? Let the lights but flicker and find how easily thoughts are turned.

Man’s gods always need attending. And maintenance. Yes, even his reason and reasoning.

I find myself at this point facing that vanity mentioned, that frustration of sorts inherent in any and all of man’s undertakings. But this is no strange circumstance as though overtaken by some unanticipated resistance suddenly appearing or sprung up. It is the square facing of a truth any sober man must face as having any recognition of himself as being man, or “a” man. Any will or desire to know or understand (anything) speaks most plainly of the de facto estate of not knowing, and not understanding. How can it not be so? The very will or desire to know as a hunger, or a hunger of sorts, is the most plain evidence of lack. Who could hide it? And more to the point perhaps, if considering any matters regarding truth….why? Why would man, even any man, find such as might be shame in not knowing that he either try to hide his plainest hunger…or by lying, deny it in “I already understand”?

It kind of turns the notion of homo sapiens (if one cares to identify as such) from the Latin for “wise man” to “man who wants to know if wisdom exists”.

Do you see a “trap”, perhaps even the trap of all first laid if we proceed in blithe acceptance of knowing ourselves first as such…that is…wise? Yet we all “step out” from a somewhere in all assurance that that somewhere is of knowing to us…”I know…and step out in will to now know more.” And if this is at all our condition, even such as might be called all presumption of all false assumption…who could reverse it? Simply put…who therefore could even know…they do not know? What work could make that...work? Something would need cause us to see all first assumptions about our relationship to the real, even matters of our own selves are at very least skewed; and at extreme, of no foundation at all. We would have to enter the dark of all not knowing. Even with consciousness. For if first premise(s) is/are wrong, all coming after as built in consequence upon will be error.

It’s easy to see that here any and all of my own contentions, propositions, and observations over these last several thousands of words must fall flat. Totally frustrated to isolation apart from any understanding of another man. It cannot but be so. My “self” holds no superior position to any other from which can come any convincing that a man, or any man’s consciousness is in all, questionable. I must no less be subject to such question if seeking to present question to any man in that regard. It is inescapable. And even if taken to extreme of all agreement it is all undone, no matter if multitudes concur, by the opposition of only one. This is why kings cannot sleep well knowing opposition to their rule can exist. Princesses and peas, kings and dissension…even if only imagined whispered, are enough to churn through the night.

A man once said: “You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” Thus the concept that necessity of agreement is a necessity for support of truth is all undone. And to many this must only appear as frankest invitation to crazy land to what cannot imagine or think otherwise. But the question then remains as asked several thousand words ago…”Who is the high priest of your sanity?”

I’d like to ask you another question. Do you understand why solitary confinement is often both effective and so widely employed as a means of bringing about compliance? It goes a bit farther than merely grasping man as a social animal is able to be made to suffer by the loneliness of isolation. A fully isolated consciousness with no recourse to any confirmation of itself except as from itself becomes terrifying to itself.

When some approach is made to its recognition of itself as being formed of all relativity and the untenable place is entered (or thrown into) of being ruled by itself with all previously assumed foundation of bedrock now exposed as all of shifting sands, the now unavoidable abyss beneath (as has always been beneath) is shown beckoning. It is not as though by this description one should presume a precipice is in proposition. No, not at all. It is not an eroding away of shoreline approaching and threatening a light house’s standing but rather that the lighthouse already sits only upon a cloud of densely constructed presumption with no foundation other. And that it is already, and only by such presumption, only seemingly hovering in an abyss. But it is already falling. Even inwardly and only upon itself.

Of course you do not like such, nor of considering gravity’s relentless work in beckoning all. For here no physical (material) mass is either implied nor to be inferred as necessity for such gravity. Think instead (if you can) in the terms better understood by such saying as “the gravity of the situation” in its complete and utter dreadfulness. And dire fullness.

An isolated consciousness is terrifying to itself. For it can only collapse upon itself.

Painting one’s self into a corner, skating on thin ice, biting off more than one can chew, being in over one’s head…really…who isn’t? (And not knowing one is does not mean one isn’t) This commonness of circumstance, if especially in consciousness, is either so common as to be on the one hand not worthy of mention; or by its commonness, the only thing we do have in common of any worth mentioning. For only by it can any communication (if it can take place) does take place. One either understands this as one understands the significance of the Rosetta stone, or one does not.

Without some “commonness of link” understood, recognizable, interpret-able from “one thing” to another…all is code. Indecipherable without a key.

You do not like any implication of the possibility communication is only of futility? Not that communication is of itself a futile “thing” (another “thing” that can either bear being called a thing in existence, or not) but that all appearances of it, or what we may assume as to its being “as we think of it” is so far distant from the reality of it as to be all illusory, and by that illusion…actually is in that way leading away from any truth of it. But, you don’t like this either. Who could? Not merely the opening of the can of worms that is “how then can I (or any) know anything true?” but a bit more of that bridge we would like to already think is “too far”…that one is already in such delusion as concocted of illusions.

I don’t feel like relenting of anything said earlier, so I will not to. Truth can be played with, mused over, handled like a philosophical dainty or delicacy one either cares to indulge for consideration or forgo…but when rubber meets roads, or a man is being flayed, dissected, or vivisected; he will discover a thing he may not have cared much for to consider as of paramount importance is now all and only the matter of all matters to him. And regardless of the how the relative measures of things may appear in difference or distinction, no man escapes testing. To one it may be flaying, to another a tumble in the Dow index.

And one might even discover they are being tested…by pleasure, in pleasure, and responses to pleasurable experiences. But that often appears the more rare acknowledgment of testing, for the curious default of man is more usually that comforts not be investigated as to their whys, but everyone wants to know about the pebble in their shoe and “take care of it”. How it got in there, and if it can be prevented.

Yes, I do not relent that truth is of paramount importance. Even if one wants to take any issue with such matter of what is above called “testing”. One may not accept such as a fitting or proper understanding, or such assignment of term to these matters of experience. One can simply say “That’s life…things happen…and man generally just does things about, and in response to, things that happen” no need to call it, or any of it, testing. And be no less right in their statement. But to say so is already an admission such a man believes he is, and has been, truthfully informed as to what life is, and specifically as we speak, the life of conscious man. Or man in consciousness.

Yet, he (and if it be you) could be in all denial of the testing we ourselves do most continually within our own selves. Even how much we live by test. Right now, you are even testing these words. Sense? No sense? Useless? Why, at all? Yes, why…at all? Somewhere the testing for resolution of the “all” that is brought to a man’s (even every man’s) consciousness is taking place. Somewhere inside, in his or her little laboratory everything is being measured, sorted, assigned a place of assignment according as one’s consciousness dictates to them.

And all believe their consciousness true…not merely as being true (or “real”) as in just existing, but true in no lesser sense than any absolute that might be assigned that word. It is absolutely true to them, to each, and even to such measure that any or all understanding of what truth is…is submitted to it; their consciousness as arbiter. Even truth, this thing we might in some way consider not arbitrary, as a thing universal and overarching in its being and consequence as both “real” and what is the ultimate of “is”-ing is, is all and only arbitrated (and could only be presumed to be) by a consciousness accepting of itself as a priori, true.

Yes, to most, many, if not all…to begin to muck about in such considerations seems an invitation to “crazy land”. To even for a moment consider in whatever sense it may be framed to, or by, or of a man, that the possibility that my consciousness is not “being true” to me…well, (any seeming invitation aside) does one not see how this matter of “truth” is indeed, paramount?

Therefore I do not relent.

Really, who can? Or could surrender to the notion that one’s consciousness, as is really “all they are and have” is not at all being “true to them?”

What could a man say therefore beyond “Everything I say is a lie”?

And would that be…true?

Someone, most out of their own mind to themselves, and probably in appearance to many others as no less “out of his mind” wrote a sentence, “Let God be true and every man a liar”.

But who can know their own mind lest they be brought out of it, to even see it? Where it, itself…is up for testing?

And what could do that?

And of course you cannot believe me, because you believe…yourself.

Is some futility of, and to, what appears as communication now not a supportable contention?

Fear not. Neither you nor I will ever find enough time to explain…ourselves. There is, nor ever was, nor ever shall be…enough time for that. Let that be settled to us, even as resistant that seems to all or any settling. “Let me tell you why I am who I am” is a fool’s work from a thing that is always changing. Neither steadfast, nor immovable.

Are you conscious of motion? Of being moved? Of being…changed?

How many men can one man be if he is always being moved? Changed? Changed from one…or is it to one?