The Glaucoma of Western Epistemology

What is in the black space? Something? Or nothing?

I want to post another thought about the West's metanarrative, this time demonstrating why a civilization that reveres both progressivism and knowledge inevitably loses sight of the higher modes of being. This gradual narrowing of intellectual vision, much like the tunnel vision of glaucoma, proceeds on a linguistic, pedagogical basis, and leads to a kind of nihilism that characterizes today's treatment of knowledge.

• Assuming a higher reality exists, we humans cannot express everything, but must appreciate higher existences as things beyond our complete grasp.
• In order to situate the abstract ideas in our intellect and come to a greater appreciation of them, however, many religions and thinkers have licitly applied rational terms, analogies, and words to these ineffable realities.
• Those who learn about higher reality through these words, and properly understand the greater mystery behind them, will teach others using the same words, that they may understand higher reality in the same way.
• However, those who misunderstand these words by misunderstanding the idea behind them will explain what he understands in different words, to suit the meaning of the faulty idea.
• These new words, no longer pointing to the higher reality that the traditional words did, necessarily reduces their meaning to something less than before.
• Between the traditional words and the innovated words, the latter will be accepted more widely and more quickly, because they are more comprehensible (although less true) than the former.
• The repetition of this phenomenon initiates a gradual descent of terms into concreteness and meaninglessness, bringing reality itself down with it.
• The higher realities, once signified by the traditional words of pedagogy, are now empty, black, peripheral spaces that inspire an inevitable nihilism.

Perhaps this is why the Bible is a story. A story is an ultra-simplified unit that cannot be explained in a more comprehensible way than itself. Its meaning, therefore, survives the ages, and may point everyone to the greatest ideas in a universally accessible way.

Against Lawnmowers

Welcome home!

This piece is intentionally given a slight misnomer to maintain grammatical continuity in my series against household items. Really, the concept of lawnmowing in general, rather than its proper item, is the subject of my irk.

Now, in the traditional norm of familial estates, where homes were not stacked atop each other but spaced out for agricultural efficiency, this practice is acceptable immediately surrounding the home. But take a short spin through midland suburbia, and you will observe houses jutting from the ground in perfect reiteration like computerized digits, each exhibiting a pink, heaving, abyssal demeanor, on the brink of vomiting out a black sludge of death. The only protective shield from this horrid spectacle, like epiglottal hairs in the respiratory tract, is the shrubbery of grass on the front lawn, perhaps the only signal that God’s mercy persists amidst the clawing depths of Hades. Lawnmowing (impractical and impossible before the Industrial Revolution) comes along to snuff the final ember of life: this completely non-functional task transforms our quarter-acre lot into a Mark Rothko square, proudly pronounces the eulogy of nature and the plasticity of all reality, and continually tramples down the earth’s erupting vivacity in preference of a sterilized vacancy, a nothingness that is clean in its eternal emptiness. Even primitive, tribalistic peoples are stereotyped to imbue the world with pistons and pockets of electrifying animation; we are further from civility than they, forever whirling the Horns of Satan to slash down green fingers that point desperately to heaven, and, whenever a bit of flora or fauna shine through with their beautiful promise, opting to stuff all of it up our bottomless assholes in frantic hopes that our neighbours won’t notice.

Deliver us from evil O Lord.

Against Chairs

Hahahahahahahaha yessssssssss!!!!!

Chairs, unlike mirrors and clocks, are not unsullied hell spawns that exist solely to reap our fat souls as kindling for hellfire. However, they are inversions, and should be removed from the average household (or at least placed in nearby storage, so that you can easily retrieve them for your next dinner party, where you will of course persuade large swathes of modern people to adopt my anti-household-item mindset.)

First, various forms of physical posture must be considered. Augustine correctly noted that our natural standing position reflects our intellectual access to God: our heads are higher than any other part of our body, giving them in the spatial realm a symbolic priority. Fittingly, this position is proper only to humans, as opposed to animal horizontality. Another consideration pertains to the corporal direction of the eyes and body. Most work in traditional societies was performed standing; here, the body is pointed horizontally, while the eyes are pointed either horizontally or more toward the earth. A cosmic two-dimensionality is implicit here, as our purpose in working is to produce material goods. Now, when lying down, leaning, or “reclining” as the Romans did, the three-dimensional space of the immediate area becomes apparent. In this anti-labouring position, the body and/or eyes assume a vertical aim, which is why prayer and contemplation are closely associated with rest. Chairs nullify this effect: one prolongs his horizontal gaze when seated upright, and is never positionally disposed to gaze at the stars. Suitably, the explosion of materialist industry and technology now mandate the performance of current work from a seat, and the post-Trent innovation of pews in churches is no exception to these psychological effects.

Are these pieces of furniture really as historically rare as I’m implying? Kind of. A quick glimpse at the “chair” Wikipedia page immediately shows that they are historically synonymous with “thrones.” They were totally symbolic of an elevation over others; even when resting, the divine king occupies a higher realm than the layperson. In our technological, Promethean era, we are all gods; we must all be enthroned. But what about elderly people who need to sit in a chair to rest? This stumped me for a moment, until I realized: either elderly people actually did not need chairs in those times, and this is simply a phenomenon of modern man’s hilarious nosedive in health; or, in accordance with reverence of elderly wisdom characteristic of traditional societies, thrones were fitting for the corporeally and intellectually mature. The dilemma is solved either way.

This is only the symbolic side, not to mention the abundant health detriments of sitting. Especially when you’re shitting, the sitting position pinches the channel of your rectum, which is why shits on a toilet are never really satisfying. Ideally, you should shit in the squatting position; the shit will flow naturally, producing a euphoria that rivals the pleasure of pissing.