Purpose and the death of values

I can't even call this a paradigm slur. It's a shift, a definable shift, where values invert.

Purpose is what we're striving for.

We must have purpose.

We mustn't be purposeless.

We mustn't exhibit purposeless-ness.

We must be purposelessness-less.

- Rowan Atkinson


There's something about the idea of purpose that undermines itself. By thinking about, or talking about purpose, we conceptualize it. When it becomes a concept, it becomes contrived. I still haven't learned how to deal with contrivance. What do you do when you come to understand the purpose of Zen and Daoism, but you can't make the leap from conceptualization to practice, because purpose itself gets in the way? I can see these eastern thoughts as potential saviors, not rivals to a hellish breed of existentialism, but techniques to get around the claustrophobic vacuum of seeming to know too much and see too deep. That still sounds pretentious, and yet I feel it with every respiratory rhythm and circulation of blood - the chemicals slosh through my brain, reminding me of every past cycle. I have no problem anymore with saying it outright: I want to forget. I want to forget all this shit it seems I've learned. Unless there's a way through but I can't see one.

Because after all we don't want to end up, do we?

Like the blind man.

In the dark room.

Looking for the black cat.

That isn't there.

- Rowan Atkinson


If I thought business as usual was possible, I'd vote for it. I'd live in the shallow suburbs and bitch and moan and fill my life with toys and trinkets - I remember the joys of materialism, and I'm surely forgetting the joys of my own materialism, what still keeps me going, flowing, typing on blogger, mostly maintained, with a little fix-it list, and a FUBAR future.

True intelligence is being able to empathize with people you don't know, and situations you're not in. I've never been in a war, but I think this extrapolation sub-routine that so plagues me with purposeless angst is good for allowing me to see that war isn't worth it, except maybe if you're fighting the nazis. If there's any true sign of social enlightenment, it's figuring out what's important before they start the goddamn war.

Once I had a daoist revelation that the inevitable forgetting of that ultimate bliss was the benign cycle of the universe - so I could learn again. That was purpose. I can't trust my "enlightenment" trophy any more because from my current perspective, it seems tied to a rate of change, the dipropyltryptamine delta, propelling me into rapid nirvana. Tranquility was tied to acceleration, accelerating freedom from - whatever bullshit plagued me at the time. There was nothing eternal or infinite about it, my "revelation" was enabled by the time and the place, and even then I sensed that.

Do I even believe in infinity? I'm not sure. Mind expansion means learning every language, travelling the world, seeing inside an atom, seeing Christ die on calvary, historical tourism and society's destiny. Surely that would have to alter my paradigms too. But I can't honestly think how. The burden of purpose seems too heavy, like the bedrock I broke through to. Salvia's still a novelty, since I only smoked it twice.

Now there's something about consciousness that seems overdone, overcooked to me - was it the acid, was it the E, is it getting older, or is it this ridiculous feedback loop? Maybe it's this culture that's played itself out with its glut of novelty, its coke-binge mentality, its market mania, its information age. The information age sounded great to me four years ago, now it sounds like post-modernity's punchline.

Consciousness is a good thing if there's anything good. It creates the good and the bad, but substance beats absence, that still sounds algebraically sound to me. Unless the substance becomes so sick, you wish for absence.

I try to be clear enough to factor wishful thinking into every probing I make into the universe. I wanted, nearly demanded some sort of continuity to consciousness before the paradigm shift. Now what seems like wishful thinking (nevermind what the truth is) is a break in continuity. Dare I even say it, a permanent break? Oh why not, who's God am I offending, what demon am I conjuring? Only my own.

I'm not so far gone I'm really wishing for the void. Hell, wouldn't I like to have the option anyway? But who says we get options in this cosmos?

What comes closest to bringing me the peace of mind I crave is the idea of the death of values. Who knows what death is? But one thing that seems reasonable to suppose is that it's the death of values. Necessary slaughter and the agonizing ennui of tranquility - these could be expunged from the equation - in theory.

Ego is still the great mystery. The death of ego could be the great gateway, the next novelty, or at least true tranquility. This is positive thinking, and wishful too perhaps, but it doesn't sound out of bounds to me, and it doesn't smell like religion or bullshit.

The thing that overrides everything is that I'm fairly certain I probably don't know what I'm talking about. If there's clarity, it's in the fog - agnosticism.