Thursday, January 26, 2012

Don't think about it.

Think about it: "it" being anything.

Think about it because you have to.

Consciousness has to be about something.  It always has a direction.  Consciousness cannot exist on its own.  Consciousness is a relationship, not an entity.

Think about it.

Because you have to.

So how does this effect experience?  Dismissing the infinite reduction of defining consciousness of something as an experience in itself (are you conscious of the conscious experience of that something?  are you conscious of that consciousness too?), we see that consciousness is the antithesis of experience.  The necessity of being about something requires consciousness to be dependent on time and perception (intangible ideas are also perceived).  Experience or being or existing is an absence of time.  It is an infinitesimal pinpoint of pre-reflection.  Perception, and thus consciousness, is reflective: you are always a nanosecond behind the perceived.  Consciousness is temporal and rational and ephemeral; existence is timeless, irrational, and foundational.  Consciousness is a means; experience is an end.

I don't wish to minimize the enormous importance of consciousness.  Our ability to consume our immediate environment, chew it up and regurgitate bite size pieces of meaning allows me to shit in a toilet instead of the dirt and to communicate with pixels instead of rocks.  What I am trying to say is that the packets of information, the ones and zeros, the rational articulations of otherwise meaningless atomic relationships that constitutes the intentionality of consciousness is not a state of being.  We are so wrapped up in the creative usefulness of the objects of our intentions, we lose sight of their purpose: that our forks and knives, our two-party systems, our dogmatic deities, our investment portfolios, and our misplaced and overanalyzed personal identities should enhance being.  They are means.  The goal of these and all conscious intentions is to eliminate conscious intention; to become pre-reflective.  The goal is to be.  

So don't think about it.


Tuesday, January 17, 2012

I'm back but nothing I say means a damn thing.

I'm back for what that's worth.  Back in the sense that I am writing today.  The experts are in deadlock whether I'll continue tomorrow.  There is speculation, odds, percentages, gut feelings, but in the end no one knows if I'll be back. 

But never fear.  What I don't say carries the same weight as what I do say: nothing.  My words are meaningless.  My blank space is meaningless.  What you get today is what you'll get tomorrow.  Meaninglessness is perennial, omnipresent, a trusted friend.  Meaninglessness is ironically something you can have faith in; a place to hang your hat when Jesus' or Buddha's coat rack isn't quite the right size.

Why am I meaningless?  A better questions is, what does meaning mean?  A hammer is a hammer in the context of nails and buildings and people who use nails to make buildings.  Otherwise it is wood and metal.  Of course, wood and metal carry their own meanings.  So it is atoms and electrons and neutrons and other microscopic round revolving shit that meet to form hard, heavy, and cool.  And, of course, hard, heavy, and cool require someone or something to perceive it. 

Meaning is relative.  It is shared patterns.  It is tones in conflict that, if left alone, would simply be a monotonous alarm but together mark Beethoven's Fifth.  For the little black pixels that make up letters and sentences and paragraphs and pages to become a thing, a hard, heavy, and cool ideological hammer, I need some kind of nail.  And I need something to build.  

The problem is I have nothing to build.  I have no nails and no direction.  I have fingers tapping out some unknown code whose origin is still not clear.  I am not building I'm exploring.  There is no relationship to my words.  They exist as they are because whatever I am exploring (me?) exists as it is.  My words are as meaningless as my silences and my silences are as meaningless as me.  They simply exist just as I simply exist.  

Or at least I wish I could simply exist.  I wish I wasn't a description to those who know me nor a calculation to those who don't.  I wish I ate spinach and believed "I am what I am."  In the end, I wish that my meaning was derived from my being and not the other way around.  I wish what I say really doesn't mean a damn thing.