The Three Houses - Part 1

When you get depressed with the state of the world, the seemingly impossible task of making a meaningful contribution, I suggested the only real alternative is to have Hope. As explained in that post you could either choose a mystical or rational theory on which to construct this hope. A mystical solution by its nature offers other worldly solutions and is sufficient fillip to hold any demon of depression at bay. Rational answers though are prone to a serious defect: a crippling sense of pointlessness.

My rational example said: You trust in mankind's inherent will to good.... BUT eventually you arrive at the conclusion that it is all meaningless. This in turn triggers a wave of thoughts: What is the point then? This trust in mankind is a bit of self deluding hot air injected to give buoyancy to your emotions and really doesn't mean anything. Why go through all this hypocrisy when we might as well by pass it and go straight to the source? Embrace chaos and be done with it once and for all. As the texts say - from dust to dust...

Traditionally, this kind of response is treated as a negative outlook that is inherently harmful to yourself. The despair that this conclusion evokes has been the creative fodder for generations of artists and philosophers. It is also the basis for many self destructive acts where the primary concerns are not food, clothing and shelter. The destructive potential that such questioning unleashes in itself acts as a natural dampener and over the years - especially in the last 30 or 40 - some staple responses have evolved and in most cases it has been relegated to an academic exercise. The typical answer these days is: Sure, life is meaningful. But don't you go intellectualizing it and fucking with my head. The meaning of life is what I give it...

• a positivist escape: even though there is no deeper meaning to life, nevertheless it must be lived and lived well. Choosing this answer however closes the door to any further meaningful inquiry into the nature of things. You accept the physical and psychic forms that culture preaches. You choose your goal from the make-busy menu list of occupational or vocational choices. Your primary goal after striping away the layers of sophistication is still roti, kapda aur, makan (Food, Clothing and, Shelter). Some schools of thought argue this is the only legitimate method of existence. Unless you are taking care of your own resource requirements, you have no real rights in society. Society will provide you with the props of modern civilization as long as you make a contribution to keep society going.
• the cog in the machine argument: as a biological life form, your primary motivation is what your cells want to do - the transmission of the genetic information of your species, all other activities are illusionary fallacies. According to this story your job is to fuck, have babies and die. Propagation of the species. Survival of the fittest, and so on. Cog-in-the-machine is more or less an academic response. Practically it is unimplementable and those who do advance this theory are more in the business of scoring brownie points at dialectical bash fests than seeking actual solutions to serious questions.

These responses however do nothing for those who cannot accept the fact that life is meaningless. Both the positivist and cog-in-the-machine arguments provide a mechanical response within a cause-and-effect framework which is hard to escape. The persuasion lever used to force you to accept this view of reality is a barrage of evidence backed by the positive force of passion on one hand and the unspoken negative threat of riducle on the other. Listen dickhead you better accept what is served or you better have SOLID, RATIONAL, DEFENSIBLE reasons for doing otherwise. In a moment of surreality you hear the Vogon guard bellow in the background Resistance is futile! The feeling of claustrophobia is overwhelming.

For free men who hold that the cart of civilization need not be pulled just because it is there, all this pressure to accept, becomes suspect. What the hell is going on? you think. Why this dash of sculpted rational perfection in response to an innocuous age old question? One thankful side effect though is that the feeling of pointlessness vanishes, at least temporarily. Something stinks, but you are not sure what or where. You reason, find the stink and you will have found the source of all this life-is -meaningless drama. As you listen to the various responses to various queries you begin to see the dim outlines of a pattern. Press this button and you will get this answer. Press that button and the potential responses are a, b or c. Open that door and you can be sure of what snakes you will find there. And even if you dont know the specific response to a specific trigger there is a system to find out somebody who does know. You realize that what you are now looking at is what is prosaically known as The System. More cliched echoes from movie land, Smith telling Morpheus: Have you ever stood and stared at it? Marvelled at its beauty? Billions of people, just living out their live...oblivious. A cause and effect description of reality that seems to be so all encompassing that you know the format envelope of the answers even before you speak. An intricately interlinked, rock solid lattice work of thought structures. That feeling of claustrophobia returns with double the force. Accompanied this time by panic, hysteria and crushing despair. Is this what life is about? This, this, this ugly patchwork of problems-theories-solutions? And every solution becoming a source of more problems which are again patched ad nauseum? BLOOOAAAAAHHHHHHH.....And as you wipe the vomit off, Morpheus echoes mocking: Welcome, to the desert of the real world.

How did it get to be like this? you wonder. Reading Pirsig you understand the problem, or at least part of it. How Socrates, Plato and Aristotle hijacked the whole of Western thought, locked it in a substance oriented metaphysics and threw away the key. How the inclusion of non materialistic ideas has become an anathema...

In disgust, you allow your subscription to this version of reality to lapse and you wander in the large empty open spaces. Diving into this valley, climbing that mountain, bumping into this and that. Half recognizing and little caring, till one day you see this tall mountain on the edge of thoughtscape and you climb it impelled by nothing more than the innate curiosity of the goalless seeker. And on the peak of that mountain you think you finally see it: The Three Houses....