An Iconoclastic Exercise
Sometimes I believe I am the happiest man on Earth because I think the task of living is, on the whole, futile and absurd, a death sentence from which I gain my happiness in rebellious thinking. Yet if the fundamental task of man is thinking, then to think that life is futile is to think that thinking itself is absurd. Wherefore the joke is on me - I laugh at myself accordingly.
My happiness is found not in nothing per se, but in the rebellious preparation for nothing, as if nothing could actually be something once prepared. And nothing does imply everything that it is not; that is, everything turned into naught. Hence I happily find myself in the smashing of every thought that occurs to me, as if I really existed and could remain as an 'I' without thoughts! In any case, no matter how absurd the thoughts demolished might be, they cannot be unique or original, my very own private property, therefore there is no love lost in the annihilation of what cannot be had in the first place.
My happiness, then, is in virtual rebellion, and not in the empty-headedness my rebellion seemingly strives for. My happiness is not in death or nothingness; it is rather in the joy of metaphysical demolition, the sort of rebellion wherein the rebel metaphysically realizes his naked existence, not as a rebel, but as a permanent revolution, at least to his life's extent, For the same reason the absurd, self-realized anarchist swings his hammer in the china shop, smashing every cultural artifact in sight; whatever remains is good only because there is something left to be smashed; that is why it also represents evil: no good can be found without evil.
Ironically, the foregoing happiness has become the chief complaint of my absurd life. I thought I was happy because I thought life was futile; I believed that I had found happiness in rebellion for rebellion's sake. Yet, to my hysterical chagrin, whenever that thought crosses my mind now, it is accompanied by the counter-thought or antithetical thinking that futility is futile!
In any case, "I think therefore I am" fails to console me when a denial appends to every affirmation, when every proposition suggests a contradiction. If I am my thoughts, then I am essentially self-destructive. Or perhaps I do not exist: maybe I am not at all. That absurd proposition makes me laugh; nonetheless my happiness in metaphysical rebellion wanes in the vicious cycle that destroys it too, along with everything else.
Perhaps what is wanted is company, someone to communicate with by way of smashing everything in sight. Yes, some real smashing with fellow rebels might be more pleasing than metaphysical smashing all by one's lonesome. A company of rebels could march around without a plan or a goal and smash everything for the sheer, unthinking joy of an actively absurd life.
Alas, never mind, for that is not a thinking man's life. Still, I am dismayed to think, despite my recent confidence in futility, that I have been sorely mistaken, that life is somehow in fact ultimately successful and that lasting happiness can only be found in conformity to the shifting winds of reason, the very acid that tends to destroy itself until it falls into the fathomless abyss.
Hence here I exist confounded by the convoluted worm of illusion measured out by Ma, mother of matter, man, and thinking. If I were not so superstitious, I would curse the moment that a thought or counter-thought was born, for the one requires the other for its existence, therefore neither one nor the other fully supports the rebellion I was so fond of until I realized my happiness in it was lacking completion in nothing.
-0-
2001 Honolulu
I feel sure that you do really enjoy life, although sometimes it takes some understanding---it's the people don't you know ;-)
Best wishes
Gerry.
Ron