Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

Unchaining Prometheus
Q: Do you like being you? A: I wouldnt if I was but Im not so I do. - Jed McKenna. Who are you? No really, who are you? Have you ever wondered this about someone? You probably have. When you were cut off in traffic by that neatly trimmed highly polished short skirted open bloused but dammit not quite open enough blonde office gal with perfect make up texting behind the wheel youd been ogling for a while in your rear view mirror wondering when shed finally overtake you again so you could have another stealthy sneak peak. When someone offended you. When you believed a politician took away yet another slice of your freedom by increasing taxes, again. When the boy, girl, man or woman of your fancy proved remarkably immune to your subtle or not-sosubtle pick up lines and blew you off with a look of disdain. When the burly tattooed guy in the bar elbowed you hands full of beer out of his way without even dignifying you with a glance. When your mother told you that youd better abide your curfew, or else! When your best friend knew better than you and simply had to have the last word for the umpteenth time. When you were judged. Especially when you were judged. In such an instance you may have muttered under your breath something along the lines of who are you to tell me what I should be like. Followed by an indignant how dare you! or, more contemporary, fuck you! uttered silently or maybe even out loud. Which is nice. But have you ever wondered who you are though? In earnest? Like a grown up? Utilizing the most serious of thoughts? Chances are you have not. Most likely you frolic through the world that is your life believing that you are, well, you. So, lets talk about you for a change. And wonder who are you? Smart bomb There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. - William Shakespeare, Hamlet. But before we begin, formal introductions and the plotting out of a course are in order. So lets consider what this essay isnt about. It isnt about me, your humble writer. You neednt view me as anything other or more than a finger pointing at the moon. All the rest is fluff, and that is something they do in porn. This essay isnt about philosophy either. It isnt about fancy theories into which we cram our understanding of the world, dreamed up by philosophers with gargantuan brains and sod the pieces that get left out because we can always dream up another paradigm for those. No. Its about one thing and one thing only. It is about truth, and the sin of ignorance that opposes it. We dont need philosophy for that. But lets first in spite of ourselves do indulge in a brief bout of philosophy, so we can get the point across that it is not needed here. Consider the word is. The Aristotelian idea that in order to understand something we must know what it is, has proven to be a veritable minefield riddled with booby-traps and high explosives in which many a philosopher and
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Unchaining Prometheus

Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

scientist have lost arms and legs, not to mention heads. So the idea has been abandoned in one science after another, for the pragmatic reason that the simple word is introduces so many metaphysical assumptions that it isnt even funny anymore. Not wanting to be the punch line of a metaphysical joke, we decided not to open that can of worms again, preferably. So now we dont talk about what anything is, but we talk about what model or which map or which whatever your preferred flavor of representation is can best be used to further our understanding of whatever it is that we believe we are thinking and theorizing about. This is how the horror of formal logic came about. Modern western philosophy began and stopped with Ren Descartes. Everything before and after him is merely a footnote. Descartes cogito was the perfect smart bomb to blow up the illusion and uncover truth. Believe nothing. Question everything. The Deus Deceptor, summe potens, summe callidus is there for only one reason: to deceive. But Descartes only built the bomb. He never set it off. He ejaculated prematurely into thinking that if there is someone wondering if he or she exists, then ipso facto he or she must exist to wonder. He never questioned one simple untrue belief: I believe I am a thinker. I am that which thinks. I am that which doubts. I am that which wonders. Had he, he probably would have found the truth and western philosophy as we now know it might have been entirely different. Who knows, it might have even spoken of truth. What remains however, is that most if not all philosophy consists of merely more false belief to confuse us into thinking we are what we think we are, namely us, and that we understand. That we control. That we know. That we rule the world and it is our birthright to machine and to tame it, as Francis Bacon would have. Philosophy serves to blunt the sharp edges of our intellect in order to prevent us from seeing the abundantly clear truth that is expertly hidden in plain sight: you dont exist. To quote Bill Hicks: Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is but a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the weather. Are you for real? If somebody thinks theyre a hedgehog, presumably you just give them a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves. - Douglas Adams Thomas Metzinger believes the brain is an ontology engine. According to him it perpetually creates a model of reality constructed from assumptions about what exists and what doesnt. Self is a stream of information freely flowing through the brain as the embodied brains self model. Metzinger is partly right, and mostly wrong, which means hes wrong altogether. He sees the brain as an outward focused agent that creates inner representations. A cool as hell reality simulator that takes in what it assumes to be real and then creates a representation of this reality with all the richness of flavor that belief can add to it. The brain however is not an outward focused entity. It does not create a representation of the perceived world, filtered through and colored in by belief.

Unchaining Prometheus

Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

No. It is the other way around. Come again, you say, in the choir words of the Virgin Mary? Yes. You heard right. Your brain creates the world you believe to be real. If you would be able to switch it off, the 3D holographic full-tilt tits n ass n everything sensory pict-o-rama it creates would very quickly shrink back into itself until plop! nothing. Like switching off your TV. Like ripping the wrapping paper off of a present only to realize there is in actual fact no present there, just the wrapping paper. It would not at all resemble falling stage curtain, it would be like discovering there is no curtain at all. In 1964, Dr. John S. Bell published a demonstration that still has physicists reeling. What Bell seemed to prove, was that quantum effects are non-local in Bohms sense; that is, they are not just here or there, but both. What this apparently means is that space and time are only real to our mammalian sense organs; they are not really real. Yet you believe your world to be real. But what is belief? What does the belief you hold that your world is real actually constitute? Lets check. Of what can you ultimately be sure? There is only one way to find out and that is to actually go about finding out. You could begin by asking what the bloody hell is really going on and see where that takes you. Are you a human being, born of this earth? Are you a man? Are you a woman? Are you a child? Are you a father, mother, son or daughter? Are you a scientist, philosopher, student, benefactor, philanthropist, mogul, ordinary Joe or postman? Are you a name? Are you a label? Are you a history? Are you a projection into the future? Are you a past memory? Are you a story? Are you a thought? Are you, actually? When investigated thoroughly and with great courage and perseverance, you will swiftly come to the conclusion that there is only one thing you can be sure of to be true. This is of course your own subjective sense of being. Not even that you are, because that implies there actually is an actual you to be, and that Im afraid, is merely another belief. So since youre now tentatively getting used to doing some serious grown up thinking, you will swiftly recognize some harsh facts. First: you have never really thought before. You assumed. You believed. You speculated. And you trusted your paradigm to be true. Based upon that, you cognized, sort of. Second: no belief is true. And thats a grim reality to wake up to, when you really start thinking some serious thoughts about it. This sentence is false. How can you determine whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state. - Plato, Theaetetus All belief is arbitrary, and more importantly, false. Hence you live in an arbitrary, false world. And not only do you live in a false world, you yourself are false. That which you think you are is only a false belief and more false belief about even more false beliefs which yet you believe to be true, a cocoon of false belief enveloping you so thoroughly that you live your life navigating without headlights through a thick dense fog, blundering from event to event

Unchaining Prometheus

Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

and wondering why on earth all this must happen to you. While the irony being that this fog is actually only the thinnest of veils, hidden in plain sight, always right there to be pulled back to unveil the truth of what you are. But you never looked. Perhaps you never knew you could. The bible speaks of seven deadly sins, but there really only is one, and that is ignorance. Nothing you believe is true. Nothing. All your belief is contingent on there being a you to believe the beliefs. But you are not true. You are not there. You dont exist. There is no you. Your whole life has been a lie of your own making, just like everything in it. You operate at the utmost lowest level of consciousness ignorant of the fact that you dont own your beliefs, they own you. This might come as quite a shock to you. It does to most people, and understandably so. Some people get offended, and wonder who are you to say these awful things to me! and cry out how dare you! An indignant fuck you! may be uttered, even. It usually doesnt go over well with people when being told that nothing they have ever experienced is real. People have ended up in straightjackets from realizing this truth. Fathom it. Youve never loved. Youve never lost. Youre not a son. Youre not a daughter. Not a father. Not a mother. Do you believe you are a thinker of thoughts? And a prover of thoughts? Think again. Youre not a philosopher, or a dentist, or a student, or a street sweeper. Not a night watchman, or a flame keeper. The first time you fell in love. That time you cheated death, but only barely. When you lost your job. When you were so ill that youd just as well be dead for all you cared. When you broke your heart. And broke it again. The embarrassment you felt after premature ejaculation. Everything you thought, everything you felt, everything you believed, all your judgments, all your verdicts, all your lamentations, all your pledges and all your prayers. Not merely unreal, simply not real in any way, shape or form. Try that one on for size next time youre whistling past the graveyard of your broken dreams and forlorn hopes. You are unconsciously ploughing your life through layer after layer of debris, crap and rubble of false belief that infests the sewer of the lowest domain of consciousness that you inhibit without even being aware of it. Youre not ploughing out of it, mind you, as much as maybe youd like to think youre special and you are. No, very, very likely youre behind the mule like everyone else, ploughing in it and through it and wallowing in it, reveling, hating, loving, resenting and believing every second of it. And you know what? Its okay. Theres nothing wrong with that, other than your life being a lie. And hey, if you like your lie, more power to you and so what. Commit to the sin of your personal brand of ignorance, why not? But now you know. Maybe you dont know that you know yet, but you suspect. Realization will come. It is inevitable. This could have you go from wanting to crawl out of your own skin from disgust for that ridiculous concept that you thought yourself to be, to having you blubbering all over the place in ecstatic relief. Most likely it will be both, alternating, and youd best simply enjoy the ride. Is there anything we can do to get out of this hellish ordeal, you will want to know soon enough. It will not be mere intellectual curiosity. It will be a necessity to know, a survival imperative. Yes. There is something we can do and it is simple. Unchain Prometheus. Get real or die trying. Be brutally honest. Face yourself and

Unchaining Prometheus

Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

brace yourself. Search for truth until you find it. Heres a clue: truth is that which cannot be simpler. Occams Razor. Yes sure, you say, but how to search for that truth? Again, the answer is simple. You start unbelieving your world. You can, you know. Youve done it time and again already. Quite likely without you even noticing. After all, youve hardly been paying attention in your life so far, have you? Tell me, does Santa Claus exist in your world? If he does, we might need to have a little chat. Or Batman? Is he a reality in your world? If so, what do we do? It is simple, as the Joker would have it. We kill the Batman. How? By pointing him out. By dragging him out of the shadows were belief lurks into the full and bright light of our scorching consciousness, to which every false belief ultimately succumbs. Until there is none left but that ultimate belief at the final frontier of all belief: the belief that you are real and separate from everyone and everything else. And when that last belief is annihilated, truth reigns forever. Come, and see for yourself. Enjoy the ride Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream. We humans are flawed by design. Yet to believe that we are designed is merely another false belief. We possess the extraordinary capability to believe just about anything, and many a philosopher is in awe of this idiotic faculty. Billions of people around the globe consider it no problem at all, thank you very much, to believe in some sort of gaseous entity called GOD who in spite of being sort of like, you know, gaseous, still has a long white beard and looks like a wizened and seasoned male grey haired Caucasian dressed in white robes who hovers around and above us or whatever and tortures at will anyone who refuses to believe in him? It? Exasperating. We believe and defend our stories with such vehement and fierceness that we are willing to crash jumbo jets into skyscrapers for them, thus killing thousands who believe otherwise. We go to war over our beliefs. Millions, no billions of people have died over them in the course of history. Guns dont kill. People dont kill. Religion doesnt kill. Nations dont kill. Belief kills. This is enlightenment theory at its very core. Not the Enlightenment of Reason that produced so many of the great philosophical theorems to be in awe of. No, this is enlightenment theory in its most binary form, and it really cannot be simpler. One is true, same as not-two and all the rest isnt. Truth exists, and you arent it. It is there to be seen all the time and youd have to be moronic, idiotic, stupid and ignorant not to see it. Youd have to bury your head in the sand never to take it out like an ostrich in perpetual terror not to see it, yet there you go and here you are. It is the most obvious of obvious but you do not see. Many if not all do not see. For the longest time I did not see. How is this possible? Well, youd need a mechanism, some sort of energy that binds the illusion together and prevents you from seeing. That energy is the engine

Unchaining Prometheus

Marcel Becker, s1573403

Essaycompetion RUG Faculty of philosophy, january 2013

of belief, which expertly creates a micro-environment around yourself resembling a one man aircraft with a 3D interactive in-flight movie that all your senses are glued onto which is so engrossing that the mere thought of looking beyond it simply does not occur to you, and if it does, it instantly gets dismissed as utterly ridiculous. So you forget you are floating in unreal space, utterly alone, believing youre in a world full of stuff and people and drama and meaning. The illusion is kept in place by two other auxiliary engines: emotion and intelligence, focused outward. These engines power your beliefs and make them appear true to you. And all the while you believe your beliefs, you float aimlessly through nothing forever in your one-person bubble called delusion. Film at eleven. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, the world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think its real because thats how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. Its got thrills and chills and its very brightly colored and its very loud and its fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question is this real? Or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say hey, dont worry. Dont be afraid, ever, because, its just a ride. And we kill those people. Because the reality of it is that we dont want to wake up from delusion, however much we might say we do. The mere thought of it is terrifying. Why lose everything that is of value to you? The price of truth is everything, and when youve paid that price you understand that it actually means nothing. Nothing at all. It is the paradox to end all paradoxes. Enlightenment? Gimme a break. There is no you to be enlightened. The irony is that it really only takes three minutes of powerfully focused thought to find this out. But, as A.E. Houseman said, thought is irksome, and three minutes is a long time. So, here is the final answer to your final question: why does my life suck? And why doesnt my girlfriend? Simple. Because you believe your life into being, you believe it is supposed to suck, and she isnt. The gain of ignorance is equal to the price of truth: everything false and nothing real. But hey, thats just me. And who am I, right? Right.

Unchaining Prometheus