A Manifesto Against Manifestos
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A Manifesto Against Manifestos
Apart from Dolly, It's All Chaos
Happy Tuesday, F-WORDERS!
Today we are diving HEAD FIRST into the giant pool of philosophizing, into the murky waters of existentialism, into the uncontrollable tides of WHAT IN THE DOLLY PARTON HELL IS TRUE AND UNTRUE?
There’s drama! There’s dead-ended questions! There’s a lack of answers!
Buckle up, buttercups!
Onwards!
What do Søren Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Simone de Beauvoir, Rumi, and Sun Tzu all have in common?
They were all giant wind-bags who were full of it.
OK! Now that I have your attention:
What I mean is this: each of these idea-professors (as in, ‘people who profess ideas’, not ‘underpaid college educators’), were human beings having a human experience and were limited by their own human capacity.
Do humans have DIFFERENT LEVELS of capacity for intellect and understanding the world around them? I mean, I GUESS. Like, yeah, I suppose there’s a difference between Duck Dynasty’s Willie Robertson and the life works of Immanuel Kant. But really, looking directly at the value we place on “capacity”: this value system in and of itself is HUMAN and therefore inconcrete. It could also be argued that no human has inherent worth over another human because “worth” is a subjective concept.
Ego. Egolessness. Pain. Suffering. Asking. Ignoring. Questioning. Answering. Pleasure. Honesty. Samsara. Being real in a world where reality does not exist.
Is there an “is”?
Is there, in some space, free from human intervention and philosophizing, an “IS” and an “IS NOT”? In other words, does there exist an existential concreteness in some capacity, in any capacity, far beyond the reach of our limited human minds and experiences? Beyond the reach of humanness and philosophizing? Or is everything we see, experience, know, all one big BUST?
(The irony, here, is that if there is an “IS” and I have, in fact, touched upon something true: that very truth cannot exist here on these pages, because I AM human and I AM philosophizing!) CONUNDRUM!
It seems to me that if there is universal, all-encompassing truth that extends beyond our own human condition, it would mean that truth exists independently of our humanness. And, therefore, humanness has absolutely nothing to do with this truth (truth is not defined by humans, created by humans, changed by humans, affected by humans in any capacity). Any all-encompassing truth MUST supersede the human condition for it to count as TRUTH, because we are but one tiny blip on the scale of existence. For truth to exist on a higher plane and for that truth to be independent of humanness, we humans, by definition, CANNOT ACCESS IT.
For anything to be free from human intervention means that humans, themselves, cannot grasp it. We do not have a ticket. We can’t enter the stadium. We can stand outside the stage door, waiting for the band to come out after the show, but we cannot actually attend the show.
We can speculate, we can proselytize, we can even do the human thing and just plain guess, but because we are humans, we cannot touch the place of truth, universal; truth, all-encompassing.
(Or maybe we can? I don’t know. I’m only human, after all.)
Our humanness is our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow…
…because our joys and sorrows are created through our human experience. Everything we experience is perceived through our human lens. Everything we perceive is limited by what we know in this human frame of reference. There is beauty in humanness because there is beauty in things that are human. Friendship, love, surprises, laughter, children, poetry, mystery: it all adds value to our lives, albeit superficial value: because that value system is superficial to our humanness—to our lives defined by this weird human experience we are having.
Take the eight worldly dharmas, lovingly laid out a post-it note for you:
These are four pairs of opposites that are central to Buddhist teachings on hope and fear.
We enjoy pleasure, but we withdraw from pain. We seek and feel validated by praise, but we avoid criticism and blame. We like fame but avoid disgrace. We are attached to getting what we want, but do not like losing what we have.
When we are constantly thrown back and forth between these states, we suffer. That suffering keeps us stuck in samsara, or the painful cycle of life and death.
The eight worldly dharmas point out that with these states of pleasure, praise, fame, gain—these states inevitably exist tied to their counterparts: pain, criticism/blame, disgrace, loss.
But— however true this system might seem, it is still a human created system for defining human experience. Therefore, it is limited by our own humanness, which means it cannot be universally true. The same goes for the tenets of Christianity, of Islam, of Judaism, of Sikhism, of Taoism. For every -ity and -ism that exists, there is a human limitation that exists along with it.
(The ONLY thing Universally True, is that Dolly Parton is a Goddess who we mere mortals do not deserve. “Jolene” was written on the same day as “I Will Always Love You” for f*ck’s sake).
So! Who can we trust with defining our life’s purpose (aside from Dolly)? HOW can we define this? Does a definition exist? Who can we turn to show us how to live this thing called life? How do we move forward without any of these things? How can we ensure that our lives have any semblance of authenticity, purpose, meaning, when the only systems we have for defining these things are inherently limited by our own human experience?
And what of truth and authenticity? Of Purpose and Meaning? How do we even know that these things exist, or that we are, in some way, meeting them? Is “feeling” good about our lives, “feeling” fulfilled in our existence our only measure for truth?
But feelings change! Feelings are subjective! Feelings can be POWERFUL, but they are not objective markers of truth!
Feelings are NOT EVEN REAL because our own experience of “feeling” is human and is therefore a mere signal that we are having a human experience. Our feelings do not hold truth in their own right.
Perhaps this is why we get so attached to our own stories; to our own feelings; to our own ego. In the absence of concrete answers (What is life? What is truth? Is there purpose to life? Does this all mean anything? Who was the best Beatle?) there exists the “need” to cling to something, and the closest thing TO us is our own human experience.
This is our ego.
We forget, though, that the need to cling to something is just a need—it is not a signal or “proof” that what we cling to is inherently true or real. As long as we can recognize that need AS a subjective human experience, and not assign a value system to it, then we can at least remember that our own ego is not the end-all be-all and that we are just humans having a human experience.
And, our human experience is transitory, migratory, cursory. We cannot judge others by our own experience, nor can we profess to hold the keys to the universe through it.
So, as we all grapple with this very-real-thing-to-us (humanness) in the face of there being no reality whatsoever, go and listen to Dolly. She, at least, is true.
Until next week.
Love, light, and hairspray,
Steph xx