The Incompleteness In Philosophy

“If you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realise is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.”

― Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing and other Essays (1942)

I really enjoy the study of philosophy (the love of wisdom). Over the years, I’ve read a lot of it. I’ve read everything from the old Greeks and Romans to modern thinkers, and I suppose I know just enough to be dangerous. In reality, I really don’t know much at all. I’ll save that for another time.

After reading Becker, I have a different view on philosophy. Now, it feels like the major philosophical theories are only halfway there or not complete; they feel unfinished. Russell’s quote (above) is a good example. While I completely agree with it, it doesn’t finish the thought. It falls short without Becker’s theories to complete it. All philosophy feels this way to me now: always referring to the answer but never really answering.

I'm not saying I disagree with the major philosophers about life and ideas on the human condition; on the contrary, however, I believe Becker's ideas are at the top of the philosophical pyramid. Everything, including all human behavior and thought, comes below his theories. His ideas and theories answer questions about the human condition. And they answer them definitively—at least in my mind, they do.

I know this is a bad analogy, but it’s a lot like treating the cough when you have a cold and not addressing the virus. That’s how it feels to me. I want to address the virus, not the cough. Becker gets to the heart of these matters.

I’ve always been a person who seeks the truth. I want logic and rational thought in my life. I’m not a believer in magic or superstition. In the context of life philosophy, those things seem trivial and unimportant. If there are no answers to the "big" questions, I’ll live with that. I don’t have the desire to make something up to say that I know the answer.

A good example of this today is the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories. These are "answers" that attempt to satisfy complicated questions or outright fantasies. The people who believe in these kinds of things feel empowered because they know something that most don’t. Feelings and opinions are irrelevant to me in the context of facts. I want evidence for positions and ideas put out there for discussion. This is where Russell’s quote is spot on.

I digress.

So let us address the virus, not the cough, of life's big questions. Let’s be clear and definitive when we have evidence for our position. Becker gives us those tools. He answers the most vital and important questions in life through his theories. And Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski go on and give us empirical evidence to show Becker’s theories are correct.

“We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.”

—Ernest Becker

“Rocky Mountain Cotton Grass—Blown Away"—a cyanotype on waxed vellum paper. The wind is blowing away the last seeds of the Rocky Mountain cotton grass. November, 2022.

The last light of the day sets on an old Ponderosa Pine tree stump. Many years ago, it was struck by lightning.

Almost 40 paper negatives (calotypes) I’ll make more of these over the winter. This is a good start for what I want to do for the project.

Turtles All The Way Down - The Song And The Print

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” - William Faulkner, The Paris Review, 1956

TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
The print is a photogenic drawing of the pigweed plant. These are “one-off” direct contact prints—kind of like an Ambrotype or Tintype. The plant was laid on top of a piece of paper that I salted (ammonium chloride) and sensitized with silver nitrate. I put the paper and plant out in the sun for about 3-4 minutes. I washed the print (removing the free silver), toned the print (with palladium toner), fixed the print, and washed it. That’s it. I’ll do more of these in the future. They are special in that the actual object is in contact with the paper. The void is what makes the print. A lot to talk about there, philosophically speaking.

When I removed the plant from the paper, all of a sudden I had thoughts of the song, “Turtles All The Way Down.” The lyrics jumped right to the forefront of my mind. It was strange and powerful. Thoughts of near-death experiences came to mind as well. There were words like “universe” and “big bang,” all in this tiny little plant. It seemed to hold all of it and express it so beautifully in this print. The seeds that fell off onto the paper were a powerful reminder about life and death too.

Turtles all the way down is also the title of a book by John Green. He wrote “The Fault In Our Stars” and “Paper Towns.” I haven’t read it, but from my understanding, it’s about a young woman and her struggle with mental health issues. Anxiety and OCD. She’s trying to solve a mystery about a billionaire.

So where did the title spring from? “Turtles all the way down” is an old phrase that was used as a rebuttal for the existence of God. In his book, “A Brief History of Time,” Stephen Hawking describes its origin: The well-known scientist Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’

The idea is really rooted in infinite regress. The definition is, “a sequence of reasoning or justification which can never come to an end.” It’s about infinity, something that we can’t comprehend, and if we think we can, we’re delusional.

The specific lyrics that came to mind in reference to the print:

“I've seen Jesus play with flames
In a lake of fire that I was standing in….

Met Buddha yet another time
And he showed me a glowing light within…

There's a gateway in our minds
That leads somewhere out there, far beyond this plane
Where reptile aliens made of light
Cut you open and pull out all your pain..,”

The song really touched me when I first heard it. I couldn’t believe the lyrics: country music gone psychedelic. In this song, there’s no beer, bars, or women that left him. The pro-psychedelic position really made me pay attention. I think they (psychedelics) have a great future in the treatment of certain mental health issues. Anyway, listen to the song, and read the lyrics-it’s posted below.