Plague Journal, Roses & Thorns
It is early. There is no sunrise yet. Wondering what to write. Yesterday I began reading an essay by Jean Baurdrillard. The essay is entitled Radical Thought. Here is a short paragraph:
The belief in truth is part of the elementary forms of religious life. It is a weakness of understanding, of common-sense. At the same time, it is the last stronghold for the supporters of morality, for the apostles of the legality of the real and the rational, according to whom the reality principle cannot be questioned. Fortunately, nobody, not even those who teach it, lives according to this principle, and for a good reason: nobody really believes in the real. Nor do they believe in the evidence of real life. This would be too sad.
The author criticizes our determination to discover the truth, thinking that if we but knew what is true, we’d then “do the right thing.” Baudrillard says flatly, “nobody lives according to this principle.” His thesis: that thinking is always in contradiction to “reality.” Our obsession with “reality” is similar to a life insurance policy. What we really need is an illusion (a fiction) that we can work with.
There is much more. These thoughts trouble me and compel me. Reading Baudrillard is similar to learning a strange foreign language. I suspect Baudrillard is on to something. Our confessed hope to know the truth, to entertain a copy, the “facts” derived from the other, is mistaken. What is “real life?” If I only had understood her…. Therefore life is inevitably sad, a lament. There is no univocal real.
One more quotation:
Our world is such as it is, but that does not make it more real in any respect. “The most powerful instinct of man is to be in conflict with truth, and with the real.”
To read Baudrillard’s essay in its entirety CLICK HERE.
I remember writing about this tune before. However it returns to mind to illustrate the thrust of Baudrillard’s argument that thought is always in conflict with the real. There your truth. There is my truth. Full stop. Another possible description of why romantic relationships are unlikely to develop into something more durable. This lyric by Poison, Every Rose Has Its Thorn says it perfectly:
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Roses & Thorns”
Seated here among the evergreens of northwest Washington State there is a sense that what I perceive, what I feel, is akin to a certain absolute truth, a deep and ancient notion of nature as it was intended that connects me to all of life. Yet, as noted in your words today, that truth is mine alone. I have crafted it to fit a personal narrative of an environment in which I feel comfortable. I have combined the tangible and intangible to forge a momentary truth that resides in the dark reservoir of my mind. To believe that this sense is anything but an ephemeral notion is delusional.
As you and I have discussed ad infinitum, most of what we humans consider to be truth is malleable, shaped by nature and nature where is rests within our DNA. Only in the sciences can we declare with 99% certainty that truth, as we usually define it, lives. A formula that is proven out over and over again, generally is a sign that we have stumbled upon a non-porous bit of fact.
My sense is that outside of science, when we throw emotion, experience, and subjective observation into the mix, it is not possible to reference “the TRUE nature of an object or belief”. That train left the station long ago. And so we are left guessing, or worse, making definitive statements about behavior and our own lives using faulty information. We are “truly” an odd species.
Some provocative comments. We are an odd species, the only language-enabled species as far as we know. Our minds are greatly enhanced as a result the symbolic manipulation of language. I have no reason to believe any other species worries about truth, having nothing comparable to be confused about. And yes in science we may have a greater degree of certainty about “truth.” Science has a relatively tight focus upon the nature of matter and of energy and of the infinite relationships that pertain. The language of mathematics provides the exactitude of expression which our measurements require. As it is though, we all live East of Eden, in the land of emotion, experience, and subjective observation. What is to be done? Educate ourselves and aspire to avoid the worst. Be patient with ourselves and with others.