Shepherds of emptiness: breaking through the infinite coping with understanding Volume 1

Brain, brain, how many times I’ve talked to you? We understand, right? Maybe we give wrong (very wrong) interpretations of the fact happening to us. But we put them together in a coherent flux. This is understanding. And we have it. Amoebas, medusas, cats, octopuses, even chimps and bonobos, they are aware of a lot, but they don’t understand. But we do. OK, so what? First of all, we understand the basic: that we are born, that we are alive, that we love, that we hate. And that we’ll have to die. So far, so good. The second step is our social engagement. To do all the basic things as social actor, we need to undertake complicated journeys in our socio-cultural environments. 

Essentially we weave embodied cognitive habits in the texture of our socio-cultural niche. We erect conceptual machinery attached to our body in the form of personal identity. Or you can say that our mind is made of the narratives generate in the child-rearing process we call infancy. Good. But wait for the hot sausage. Narratives are the wild, delirium-like riding of our brains, bumping into each other to produce these self-confirming buildings of knowledge. So when you track down the meaning of a narrative (that would be understanding) you end up in a reference to another meaning, which is another reference, so it turns out that meanings are hot air balloons, self-supporting each other. We call that the “Munchausen effect”. Outside the circle is mocked as “nihilism”. Let’s stick to a kind of Munchausenian semantics. It sounds German, so it must be good, deep and good.

Apart from this deranged, decadent semantic mass-mobilization, the only hard ground of human affairs is the pulse of life, to keep on, to reproduce, to get laid. Look at BBC or Discovery’s program:  from the deepest abysses, to the arid deserts, every single living being is looking to shag a member of its species. Or another. Incidentally we have to admit one manifest truth. We are so obsessed with the unambiguous logic of sex that we easily forget one thing: life is shagging everything that moves, everything that exists. Fishes sprays of sperm the ocean, some of that genetic jam could have impregnated unexpected gonads. Unsure? Well bacteria tend “to do it” horizontally. They exchange genetic material from each other. And when plants are opening their flowers, do you think that a jet of floating Deoxyribonucleic acids and sugars in the form of semen would be rejected just because it doesn’t have the right tag? I don’t think so.

We are in nature world my friend, where there is living information around, we get it. Isn’t it from our species? We happy anyway. So next day when you give solace to yourself alone in the woodland…be thoughtful of your generative power and be a responsible giver: give in fullness.

Anyway, we were saying that from salmons to polar bears, from whales to ants, life is about sex. We are no different, but we politely prefer to consider ourselves more evolved. We have values and principles. We have minds and purposes. Our shagging is more meaningful.

Yeah, alright.

That could work at university’s parties… (Even Dennett says that the “goal” of our life is to attach our existence to big ideals. C’mon Danny, you too are trying to get laid…?).

What is always difficult is that between the “meaningful shagging” and nihilism, well it’s seems there is no alternative. And here come ethics. But between meanings and nothingness there are facts. Please don’t waste time about the issue: facts are created by our meanings. Of course: I’m a Munchausenian semanticist. But when you encounter a slap, that is absolute. A slap on your check is a slap. Tautological? Perhaps. But slaps are to be felt. That’s why they are used to often for teaching wisdom. By the way they must be administered only to disciples who will give it back as soon as they realize the awakening power of slaps. A teacher must be prepared to receive it straight away. That’s why slaps are good in Zen.

So back to facts. It’s the trail of deeds. You can call it Karma. I like also “Mascara”: same principle. Slobbers of your agency.

Now, you may be led to think that deeds, Karma, ethics, are connected to good actions. Like cosmic boy-scouting. Or Christ came, was nailed and tortured, because you committed impure deeds and he loves you. come and take the shit for you because he loves you. No. And that’s because Bruce Willis is not the Dalai Lama (though Her Holiness should stop meddling with the C.I.A…..). And also why Christians didn’t really get a single word of the reverend, poor old Nazarene boy (by the way, peace to you as well). NO.

That’s false. Cosmic things , the texture of universal being are uttermost uninterested in your petty misbehaving. Real “good actions” are not actions at all. If you leave a slobber, that is a negative action. If you boy-scout around, because it means something “good”, you are already slobbering. No matter how good it sounds, you are already in the slug club. Don’t take me wrong: are you helping another bro? That’s good, keep on doing it. Much better than smoking dope all the day. But. Yeah, but.

TO BE CONTINUED....