Incredulous I Say! Incredulous!
Pranab Singh
Incredulity is the word of the 21st century. Indeed, it is the defining principle of our post-modern, post-logical, and post-mortgage society. This will hardly come as a surprise for one well-versed in the incredulity of living a meaningful life. In the face of absurdity, the ability to derive meaning from a causally (and thus credible) interwoven narrative is quite incredible after all. Living such meaningful lives, our lives are logically incredulous, which as a statement is itself an incredulously incredible coup de tete of logic upon logic itself.
No longer is there any solace left in belief, no longer do we possess the ultimate and absolute, no longer can we envision utopian heavens. And no longer is there any more of a reason to seek yet another ephemeral belief. No excuse to take yet another fictitious leap into the very same abyss we are falling through. No more mucking around in the romanticism of yesteryears, no more wallowing in the nostalgic visions of paradiseo. Rather let us celebrate, let us cheer, let us exonerate this incredulity that grants us our freedom.
No definition for freedom shall be provided here, no claim to knowing it shall be presented. But it shall use the word freely and will exercise full freedom in using this freedom. And in its freedom shall encourage a free for all with those willing to engage in a free exercise of linguistic rubric. It should be noted that the linguistic style and obscenely delicate grammar is used within this most American of spirit with a fine dose of that fantastic French style. Not to mention, the guillotine of scholarship that we have ready for all those that oppose.
But the freedom we have is not just the petty freedom of using words in different ways. The freedom we have is from the words themselves. This is a freedom from all tyranny, an ideal beyond any ideology, or to put it in simpler terms the freedom to emphasize the dog in dogmatism rather than the ism that grants us supermatism and romanticism and communism and interstellar mediums. Please do note that we consciously walk on mats, to the point of being habituated into grinding our shoes into them.
It is only when we can place ourselves beyond the ledge of ideologies that we can look upon them with scorn. It is only when we dig our own hole that we can see the dirt pile up around us. This is the basis of a new and true philosophy. Too often has philosophy been taken as the doctrine or maybe a doctrine which provides one with a road map to living a or the graceful life. Too often has it been taken as the means to an enlightened state of being. But no, that is and never was true. Truth was never the concern of philosophy. Those who seek a doctrine for life in philosophy want nothing more than a religion.
But philosophy is religion in the most purest of senses. Philosophy is religion in practice without a scriptural lead. Philosophy is the improvised performance of religion. Philosophy cannot be other than in practice, as religion cannot be without a practice. It lies in the very fibers of exhalation. Philosophy is not a means to an end but the means to never know an end. Since it was the talk of the last century, let us jolt it in that death is the end. But now we are stuck in a conventional discourse limited to biological necessities and we talk on two different planes. The inevitabilities are after all not the most incredible things about any life.
Now, the cunning amongst us might point out that what I have laid down as philosophy is but another doctrine for life. But no, no longer is this belief or any other worth living for, let alone dying for. If you die for philosophy, you really aren't a philosopher. Socrates is quite a good example of a fool in this case, not that we would ever have not agreed. But since we are talking of the ancient Greeks let me tell a story of the grand skeptic Pyrrho and his rather skeptical messages.
Pyrrho, if one can say so, was one of the first of our species exposed to globalization as he romped around with Alexander the Great's army down into India. But once as he sat with his students, he said "students, know that the exact opposite of any statement is as true as the statement itself." Hearing this, the brightest of his students asked, "But what of the statement you yourself just made, master Pyrrho?" To which Pyrrho gave a smile of eternal tranquility and responded, "Even that one, my child, even that one."
But let us maintain a distance from this radical skepticism initiated by Pyrrho and brought into cognitive prominence by Descartes. Too strong an absorption of such doubts can lead to hemorrhages, seizures, schizophrenia, depression and mental decapitation. It can over power the body and seize the mind. It becomes a frenzy as it tries to unravel and splatter the mind for the sole sake of splatter and scattering till nothing remains except the incessant drive to grasp and tear asunder.
It takes too much effort and too much time to doubt and redoubt and double doubt, all for essentially nothing more than the satisfaction of a well thought through action or maybe even just a morally traumatized consciousness. But if its satisfaction one is after in the age of incredulity, make no mistakes it comes from some incredible fucking. In other words, in the bare basic meaning implied, getting laid is pretty damn satisfactory. And if it ain't, well, then you might want to engage yourself in a practical course of doubt as to why. As the great Chinese masters assuredly said once, "If there is one thing that is not supposed to be not-satisfactory, then it be the humps, brotha." The word sista didn't come into official popular use till Oprah's sister realized how much she was earning.
Now If this as in "fucking" happens to be your line of work to a greater or lesser extent, I would hope you mix business with pleasure. But moving on from fucking, the point that I would like to highlight that could possibly be taken from this foray into clitoral stimulations is that if you're looking for a good time, philosophy ain't the place to start. Fuck, but then if you know how to pick up girls sprouting philosophies, you might as well call yourself senior Casanova and wear a corset.
It is a long held belief that abstraction and generalization is the way to go in philosophy. Since Plato came up with a pretty lame idea of a puppet-show in a poorly lit cave, and created a grand scale of things this urge to rise above the clouds has been an integral part of literature. Given globalization and the wonders of the English language I have excused the term western in front of the literature. But a more important point of neglection till now is the inherent Marxism with my writing.
Let me explain, the words I write are understandable to a specific set of people, the meaning derivative from the combination of the words as placed further narrows this set to an even more exclusive set. Now to read the whole thing and be able to get anything out of it places you even more within quite an elitist society. Finally, to be one of the few that I choose to have you read it places you at the top of the whole pile.
Let me further elucidate my position, I find myself in a self-styled and self termed but totally externally determined "third-world" country. It's a nice feeling to know that there are 2 other worlds out there, you know? Just in case those guys decide to blow up a few nukes in one of the worlds, we shall have 2 more left.
This piece has gotten long, but I felt that it was necessary to establish the fact that these ideas of post-modernity and incredulity that I delve into are particularly located in western first world countries. Where I come from, much of the world still lives in pre-modern times. Thus, here I am with an incredulous education in a country that demands credibility. For although the majority survive in a pre-modern time, the country is run in the most modern of spirits. Thus, civil war and strife, thus ideologies worth dying for, thus the importance of the greater good over the death of a few thousand. And we compared to some that loiter around in the third world status are doing pretty bad in terms of a head count.
It is unavoidable to bring myself into this, as this is my writing. most hypocritical is that writing that asserts an opinion without acknowledging it as an opinion. And all facts are but opinions of the masses. But the grand standard of a common sense and a common good no longer exist. If they do exist, they are the benchmarks of hypocrisy. But we all live hypocritical lives, only some of us see a problem with it, only some of us learn to see the problem and accept it, only some of us learn, see, accept and finally try to overcome it. It is not the hypocrisy that is at stake, but everything that allows for a hypocritical existence.
No, nothing is philosophy, nothing is truly ever philosophical. If anything it is the exercise of freedom. But for that you need to freely exercise freedom. Philosophy is everything that is not-philosophy.
Here we come to the second nodal point of philosophy for eons: truth. The quest for truth is as much a part of our being as death is a part of our end. Right. Great. The only truths out there, any where, all reek of lies and falsehood. The true lies in all contradictions. The truth in these contradictions is as important as the falsehood present within them. The incredible feat of language that binds them together into a unified whole is the wonderful truth of the incredulous.
To have truth is to believe, and one must believe if one is to live and retain some level of sanity. Then one is to have some form of truth at all points of their lives. Even the mad, crazy and psychotic have truths. Even lower life forms have truths, which they obviously don't really care about. On the flip side, to call it false is to be equally committed to truth and thus to concurrently hold a belief. So, let us just leave it be, a contradiction is after all just a contradiction that really doesn't matter all that much. But that too is just a belief.
After all this, it seems that there is a fundamental need to establish the groundwork upon which we call things contradictions, truths, and falsehoods. Definitions and semiotics some would say. Signs and symbols, society and economics, intelligence and rationality take your pick or make your own pick, but the shit is sure as hell going to hit the fan. Don't trust, don't believe, and if you believe change your beliefs. We are on our own, we have no more.
Leave a Comment