Principle
26th installment to my philosophical system.
Principles command everyone’s respect, but very few live after their own. To live after your own means nothing less than to accept your own life after the manner of yourself.
One must always have a mirror to look upon in life so as to be informed by the reflection how exactly one ages with time. Didn’t Dorian Gray lament his eternal youth after seeing the reality of himself in his portrait?
I take it to be the greatest burden of all to live after false principles. Writers, I’m sorry to say, are especially prone to this, for their styles and literary device usages are not determined on their own but rather on what seemed best in the moment of writing, or what author they had most recently read.
Principles are only good insofar as they are followed; anything else is mere folly—a white lie that holds no honesty in it. A principle not followed is merely a rule you make for the sake of breaking purposefully.
People live after the manner of their material conditions, and this says almost everything that needs to be said about them, for it is the only honest basis by which one can address their grievances in life.
Everything that is culled from the world for the sake of perception in our feeble brain is very little in comparison with ourselves. Our very being is unique, special, and abounding in grace and love unsurpassed in all of history. If only more were able to see this in themselves; it is in all of us, we merely have to be awakened to it.
Principle: That a thing as visible as the principles of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to bring to light all these little-known things, all for people to foolishly mock and malign them out of a desire to be viewed as great—this is remarkable.
There can never be peace within the self the more one lives for the sake of truth. A dark storm cloud must always surround the human heart, and thus block out the light of reason for the soul, if every aspect of life is to be reduced to mere premises and syllogisms. It makes no sense to me why man continuously seeks after that which he knows he cannot grasp but which he feels he cannot live without. Every burden is purposefully made for man by man, and upheld by society—and by extension the rest of the world—by other men. Everything by man is necessarily evil, for man only knows that which is by him, and which is, for precisely that reason, evil and wicked. Just think of all the countless tears that have been shed in the face of misery, but which few have ever been able to make up for or overcome in any meaningful way.
The trees sway with the wind, and like them, man moves within the sea of life like a bottle thrown in the ocean amidst a violent tempest.
I feel all I’ve written thus far in this book has only been straw, for most of it was written from the wrong perspective: or rather, it wasn’t honest enough for me—not existential enough, not human enough, not me… enough. It isn’t enough. Nothing, I fear, will ever be enough (for me). I’d be just as happier dead than alive; alive for what? To merely exist, to take up space, to smile around liars and life-deniers.
A life lived not after your own principles is really not a life at all; and yet, look at the state of things presently:—look at the violence, the misery, the lack of sympathy, the systemic collapse, the degradation, the continuation without purpose, the never-ending cycle of misfortune, the long story of falsity and perversity; look at the incentives, look at the state of our economy, look at our youth—on their phones as long as the sun is old…—look at the health of the people, look at the ignorance of the populace, look at the state of friendships and relationships, look at the constant pressure and stress everyone is under, look at the pale faces and unkempt appearances of everybody, look at the lethargy of everyone, look at the bags under everyone’s eyes… is there no end to any of this?
And this is all in America alone, to say nothing of nations less fortunate than us. The whole collective sigh of mankind sounds like a person drawing their final breaths. Our motto today is ruit hora, that is, the hour breaks in, time looms inexorably, it does not stop, it passes. All things pass and sooner than later pass completely into nothingness. Doesn’t life today seem exactly like that, molded after that example of misery?
There’s only so much one can say before repeating themselves. It’s as if in a single hour of writing the whole power of the mind is exhausted; and the only way to recover it is by reiterating past things already written down and dwelt upon, from which one must now dig up and reappraise in order to find some variation by which to spin it upon. All writing, after enough reading, really seems the same—we have nothing but man striving to comprehend his very nature through a narrative of his own creation; people dealing with the same things but expressed in different ways.
Like music, the whole tonal scale by which one can express themselves is finite and well-categorized, but still so vast that it may as well be infinite. Man is exactly the same: finite yet infinite. This is why I called man the synthesis of the universal and the particular. The objective world is what we are, but the subjective world is who we are. We are both, and must live in contradiction every second in order to fully appreciate the totality of our being.
To make principles is to contradict yourself, for it presumes you have enough foreknowledge to actually trust yourself with your life. Why do you think most intelligent men who sought God either became pantheists or absurdists (that is, dogmatic adherents to doctrines and principles which were from without rather than from within). Principles are difficult to keep because they’re always founded on compromises, rather than real evaluations of your present circumstances; and even if your principles are honest, they are worthless if they are anti-dialectical—that is, if they are rigid, rather than constantly shifting and evolving with the ever-changing state of nature.
It’s so amazing to me that people today are more concerned about what others think of them rather than what they think about themselves. I always thought man was destined to be unhappy so long as he considered the masses superior to himself. What is a life lived for others but shallow egoism or existential confusion? If it were possible to make life truly good, principles would not be necessary, for man would simply live after his own design and not interfere with anyone—but this is not the modern world.
Modern existence is dependent on too many factors to remove yourself completely from the world. Man today cannot live after his own image because his image is obscured by all the other people he shares the mirror with. What does a single face become among a thousand others? Nothing but an oval upon shoulders, upheld by a thin, feeble neck. Oh, how I hate how interconnected everything is. How I hate that one cannot live life as they wish because they are forced on pain of death to work for their life. This is not true freedom; and if the ancient saying of Cicero’s is to be held in any esteem (salus populi suprema lex esto—the good of the people is the greatest law), then men today must strive to actually make the good of their people a priority, rather than a luxury for a few.
Life is not that complicated, and yet it is made so because very few are actually capable of making good out of debasing misery, which is the common lot of the average man today. No amount of hard work shall ever overcome the rate by which men are destined to toil for their subsistence. The contradictory nature of occupations (or the boss-worker dynamic) is almost identical to the contradictory nature of life. Everything in life is a vanity because the principles that uphold life are contradictory. The negation of negation holds itself to the fire of the furnace which man labors in in order to buy bread. There is no single, sustaining happiness. No bodily or earthly pleasure can ever remove the fear of uncertainty which constantly surrounds man.
The more and more I look out on the sea of life, the more I see how vast and incomprehensible it all is. In such a situation, what use are principles—to what end are they to be followed, what even are they? The question is too obvious to warrant response, but it always happens that the easiest things to answer for are really the most difficult to interpret accurately. A principle is simply a conviction one has about how to engage with the world.
No matter how many clouds depart, and how clear the sky appears, there will always be some imperfection in it (in life—and the world in general) that would send a sensitive man like myself right over the edge. If only it were possible for me to write and not worry about living. If only I could make writing my living. If only I could be happy with not wanting to have an answer for everything.
To be happy in the midst of learning from a hard experience seems to me the most tragic joy one can get out of life. How dearly must one spend each passing second when pulled from all directions, distraught on every side, confusion abounding in every crevice.
Anything is possible in life, and in that is the greatest despair. There is only so far one can go when attempting to make something good of it. Not everything is doable, but all is possible. The dearest aspects of the world are felt in action, but given eternal life in language. Words hold a special place for me in the world as a writer, but even I see that not making them primary is the end of all honest thinking.
How far must one go to show themselves they’re worthy of life? I cannot begin to anticipate what the world has in store for anyone like me. What is someone with only a passion for learning and comfort to do in a world where none of that is really valued or possible? The end of all ends is death, and that certainly seems good to me. What point, I like to think in my darkest moments, is any of this experience worth if it cannot be alleviated by jests and jokes at its expense. It is easier to despair than to hope, and likewise is it with tears over laughter. So soon, indeed… but not soon enough, can the end come for all humanity. I wish I could say with Goethe, “I’m glad that I am not young in so thoroughly finished a world.” Alas, it is my pain, then, to live on through this finished world; I must adopt the lens of misery and humor if I am to find joy in all the endless suffering I must embody simply for living. Life is a burden one cannot throw off soon enough.
Nothing seems real in our world. Everything is made deliberately simple in order to pacify the truly great sentiments within us. Love and creativity are truly dead things, and no artist today truly understands the meaning of principles in art; where is the ethical perspective on principles? Has anyone ever given such an account? The Germans of the 18th century had a field day making rules for themselves in order to justify everything rationally—on first principles—and how far did any of that nonsense get them? I would say nowhere, for the current mode of thinking art is simply on subjective principles, exactly how it should be. Where is meaning, if anywhere, other than in the confusion one must confront whilst living a very unassuming and sterile life.
Life is best lived sterilely. The time keeps ticking but I barely hear it. I awake, I think, I write, I eat, I sleep, I repeat. It is a great life indeed. The greatest ever, perhaps. Sadly, I cannot do it alone, away from people, without a single soul to communicate with. To be alive around other people as an introvert is like living within a still-life painting—you only capture the moment of a single instance; for the conscious introverted man, however, he must embody every moment after that, but, not wanting to, he wishes only to retreat into a single frame of life, and thus remains forever in a state of inaction—thus comes every mental torture and wish for death.
Only on principles is anything worth doing, for without them, one is merely acting without knowing the purpose behind the act. What good is acting if darkness always prevails over the conscious decision? One moves through the world abandoned by seemingly everything.
There is very little in the way of silence to make peace within a noisy world—a world that is not really good for much. Some days, silence is all you can be when faced with the absurd, but that does not mean resignation; it is merely an acknowledgement that nothing is possible to do. Sometimes, the world is best lived through as if a ghost. The only true principle that one can hold to in life is the hope that in its endurance, in the passing of time through it, something good can come out of it. Without hope, all is futile.
There’s an overabundance of misery and death on Earth. Man is too noble, has come too far in his evolution, to merely resign from the world or end it prematurely. We always return to principles that we once shunned. If principles were as sure as our misery, we could rest comfortably knowing that they will uphold us in our worst moments—experience disproves this… obviously. Whatever good could be had whilst enduring life is almost always too much for us, or so we think, when actually in the immediacy of our misery; it seems better in that moment to either die immediately or forget existence completely—to feel like an automaton. Such thoughts, however, (true-false dichotomies) could only ever be arrived at through reason.
In such moments, only love can save us; love without a reason—simple, unadulterated love… a love for anything and everything, for all things equally. Only in embracing the irrational can life become more pleasant. It is in unreason that all of life persists. If man were given a scrap sheet by which to calculate all his emotions, he would find that in the end his pain was greater than his joy, and his only conclusion (logically following) would be to kill himself right then and there. This doesn’t happen, however. No amount of hedonic calculus has ever led a man to joy; it has only ever contented him in his suffering, and for many, that is enough—but not for me. I cannot give up on my desire to know what lies behind life. Unlike most people, I don’t treat life with contempt, but rather with the highest respect, maybe too much perhaps. It can’t be helped—only when man seeks after what makes him complete can he find a sense of meaning or purpose within all his misery.
Principles only matter if they’re carried out on behalf of life. Only existentially can man make living an end in itself, and in that find what he most desires out of it. If what I say seems too difficult, that’s because it is—indeed, it is impossible to have a coherent framework of life so long as that framework focuses only on particulars rather than the flux of things—but if one is to live, it must be carried out deliberately, with intent, and with meaning. Principles without actions are pointless; actions without principles are blind.