“When darkness reigns we all wish for new skies.”
The death of God has left a gaping hole in the collective psyche of mankind. We have lost our way. We find ourselves heading towards a destination unaware — going nowhere fast, without the historical landmarks of philosophy, religion, and the natural world to guide us to our true north. The double dragon of alienation binds us from experiencing the world in which we have distanced ourselves from, while causing us to fixate our vision on the corpse of the king who has fallen ill — the former self who has been rendered as unfit to enter into the age of progress. This age of progress is a landscape of emptiness fraught with fear and false hope for a future we are now discovering is rapidly disappearing. We have mistakenly believed the fallacy that a future without decay is the same as residing in heaven — with eternal salvation as the crowning reward for the species. To forsake decay is a futile attempt to cheat the lord Thanatos. There is always a harrowing that we must embark upon. We must always remember that reality is not simply apprehended, but that it is both apprehended and created simultaneously.
“Poiesis is a creative mode of being that brings something into the world.”
When darkness reigns we all wish for new skies. We must learn that all skies are reflections of the terrestrial cathedral we inhabit. To look up to heaven is to begin the descent into the labyrinth. We enter heaven through our own descensus ad inferos. It is an eternal shame that we have created societies that celebrate the ritual killings of fathers. A world that discourages all brides from birthing children will not survive. Thrones — where slothful kings sit as hyena queens who reign as deconstructors of cathedrals — will be dismantled.
A darkness that never wanes; a pain that never subsides, a child that is never born, a father never spoken to, a mother never forgiven, a world never cherished, a home never built. To cry is the organism’s attempt to unsee what has been seen. It is here where we discover the difference between sight and vision. “We don’t see what appears, we see what we were engineered to create. Our vision is not photographic in nature, but interpretive and creative. We hallucinate what we perceive to be reality. Vision is not a telos, but is a process of construction.” (Delt. 2020. Cathedrals on Fire).
Poiesis is a creative mode of being that brings something into the world that did not exist before. This is in contrast to the noetic paradigm we currently live in. Noesis centers around intellectual apprehension of the world mediated by knowledge. The post-modern noetic mode of being preoccupies us with the mere functionality of the physical brain, while blinding us to the significance of the mind and it’s life. Although the brain and human experience are correlated, this should not imply that experience is caused by the brain. Mankind has overdeveloped intellect and lost all intuition. We have to open ourselves to the truth in order to receive the truth. We will not arrive at the truth by the apprehension of information only. To simply rely on information to arrive at the truth is to not only reside in darkness, but to be consumed by it. The true goal of the philosopher is to become an available medium through which truth can be ‘un-hidden’ or ‘dis-covered’. To resist subsiding to the darkness that never wanes the artist must always say yes.
“We must unite the body and the mind.”
Unfortunately, we navigate the world as if we are machines. We have forgotten that the brain is an element of the mind. We cannot be-in-the-world because we have believed that we exist only as thinkers. “Let us consider this — body and world are not the exclusive enclosures of Being. Despite our essence being more than body and world, we must take a first step and reclaim the body that we have been conditioned to neglect and destroy. Make no mistake, truth can’t simply be apprehended by thought alone.” Furthermore, the need for us to develop discernment always involves how to accurately ignore irrelevant information and stimuli. We must unite the body and the mind in a more biological mode of thinking and understanding.
“The inner life is the life of the mind. We mask this life with persona. The inner life of the philosopher vibrates outward. It emits a frequency to the universe and utilizes the organism as a tuning device. Whether the organism acts as an amplifier or compressor of what is true is determined by the mood and rationales of the individual man or woman.” - David Delt. “Above the Waters.”
Man becomes free when he no longer desires to be beautiful for anyone other than himself. This notion does not grant a license to indulge in narcissism, but serves as a call to create a proper regimen of self-care. “The development of the self is the start of hygiene. Sanity is not simply a matter of mind but of body. Intelligence as psycho-somatic. Sanity as self-care.”
A Caveat from Narcissus
There is a demand within us to destroy the persona, which is a simulacrum of the Noble Self. Narcissus dies while gazing at a reflection of himself. This is the exaltation of the ego and psyche above the Noble Self. This is death. Modern thinkers and artists are servants to social narratives.
“This age of progress is a landscape of emptiness.”
“The artist rejects the aesthetic of hedonism and embraces Being. The laughter of the crowd signals that we have become successful in getting the better of appetites that lead us to procrastination. We must overcome all resistance in our ethical commitment to create - to be. Walk away from the crowd of beings in the discovery of work and labor leading one to the greatest of all vocations. Social narratives are mendacious in that they disguise and disregard our biological motivations. We must revisit our investigation of rationalism versus empiricism.” - David Delt. “The Artist Says Yes.”
Narcissus does not behold himself in a mirror, which projects a static reflection — he beholds himself in a pool. Herein lies the danger. The organism interprets the ebb and flow of the pool as flow and change. The pool serves as a symbolic metaphor for the age of progress we now live in — an age where decay no longer exists, progress is an abbreviation of the species’ nobility, and the future has disappeared. Narcissus, being mesmerized and petrified by a transitory and dynamic reflection of himself contributes to the deadly rigidity that results in his demise. “Man mistakenly believes he is alive due to his residence in and fellowship with the crowd. The existence of man amongst the crowd is deceptive…” The demands of society are always impossible to fulfill.
“To cry is the organism’s attempt to unsee what has been seen.”
In memory of Lola.