Lemniscate

(a slightly modified version of a 02/07/2007 post
at Symposium on Aristotle's Ethics)


(x² + y²)² = a²(x² - y²)

OK, some thoughts. Chime in as you please, this is a no-offense zone.

Know thyself, I am myopic, makes me very difficult to live with and makes conversation incomprehensible at times.

Anyway . . .

Recently, relatively (02/07), while discussing Aristotlian ethics, I was actually arguing toward the same goal as Aristotle but was inept at expressing the ideas within me to Others. The Frame of Reference between individuals is different, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, but almost always different . . . the times it's not different, I posit, are the times I and the Other(s) have become one -- in the way of the hermaphrodite myth. That myth, we know, states that present-day humans are half of a whole, and each half seeks it's other half to be whole.

The problem is we look at the myth too literally and apply our own sexual and social mores upon it. The effect is that we don't see the real message -- there is a power, an emotion, a virtue, that we wield when More-Than-One Become One. We have no common classification for it though we subsume a lot of its characteristics under the words Love & Hate. That's why we commonly see these two emotions as more powerful than any others, and controlling the others. Apathy is the dearth of either Love or Hate -- it is not the mean, and it is not on separate two-dimensional lines, one for Love and one for Hate (that's not how humans work within themselves, compartmentalized and distinct -- those are our outward characteristics). Apathy is the starting point for rays of emotion that emanate from it, and gain in strength the further away from the start they get. Two of these rays are labeled Love and Hate. There are other rays emanating from Apathy, but my head is spinning right now . . . so back to the original tack.

There is a thing of power, an energy that is the connection of one Human with an Other Human. A characteristic of it is Jungian synchronicity: the concurrance of two events having a peculiar correspondence between them. Make no mistake, coincidence of this sort is not controlled by chance -- remember quantum mechanics, and the impossible becomes possible (and ain't that the definition of human existence?). The most powerful expression of this synchronicity, this thing of power, is sexual union when it culminates with the mystical, ever fleeting, simultaneous orgasm. (gasp)

Yes, gasp if you will, but how can we understand what is Good for Humans if we don't understand why we seek fullness of understanding with an Other. I posit that the same energy of understanding that comes during orgasm is the same energy of understanding when two Humans successfully communicate Ideas. The energy is the same whether in the Realm of the Physical or in the Realm of Forms (ha! sayeth Plato from somewhere within a cloud overhead) -- perhaps it is our pathway between the realms. Regardless, there can be no understanding of what Human is, or what Good is, unless we include this. After all, isn't this the same energy religion seeks to control, and spirituality seeks to understand?

Why are our friends, our friends? Because it feels good to have people around us who understand things similar to the way we do within ourselves. The closer a friend is to understanding us, the more likely we are to have sexual attractions -- which our society and culture have enslaved to the word Love with the shackles of legal and heterosexual marriage. We are confused by these sexual attractions because they lie outside the narrow parameters society & culture allow us to think about them. So when we think about these feelings we are usually puzzled as to 'where they came from." It is simply the energy of union of one Human with an Other Human(s). We also call this feeling charisma. But we call it that when One is so good at communicating that many Others feel the bond. We know what happens in real life to those with powerful charisma . . . their sexual partners and/or needs are prolific, and if denied explode out in some other fashion (e.g. JFK, Hitler). There's a reason for that. There's a reason inside every emotion, and an emotion inside every reason -- and if we don't examine Emotion the same way we examine Reason . . . we will continue to fail to understand what it means to be Human.

At this juncture let me repeat an important bit of info: I got no answers. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I can surely feel it. And since nobody else has come up with an answer yet . . . ain't no reason I can't try my own way. 2000 years plus, guys . . . either we ain't been working on it, or we got the wrong plans. I can't wait another 2000 years, I may not have 2 more days.

Anyway . . .

We like that bond, that feeling of union. We seek union just as surely as those half-humans seek their other halves in the old Greek hermaphrodite myth.

My concern here is only what the word "Good" means to us when we say it. I say it means "Human." Aristotle also, but in a different way. That's the crux divergent point. Human = Good.

Therefore war can be just and good, if it ever can be just and good, if it is waged and comported around equal human rights. An example: it would be good to kill the people who will not stop tormenting the refugees in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains. Of course, Aristotle would not agree, and he would side on Khartoum's side -- the side of the slavers because they are the stronger and wealthier, and they can trace a historical lineage of being master to the Others historical lineage of being slave. It is all very clear cut to Aristotle: "There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."

Note, when someone says, in so many words, Aristotle was right about anything . . . remember, he was only if some people are naturally born elite (like him) and some people are naturally born to slave (like you). That is a fundamental Aristotlian building block upon which he designed his entire philosophy. You heard him: ". . . some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient . . ."

I don't agree with Aristotle on slavery, but I can see how slavery can be good. No, not the kind of slavery we call human trafficking nowadays. We know the slavery i'm talking about as indentured servitude as a result of criminal actions. In other words, putting someone in jail. When we jail a criminal we enslave the criminal -- no wordgames here, that is exactly what it is. Been there, done that, got the wool blanket. Why not make the slavery beneficial for both the criminal and society? How? Teach the criminal a trade and make the criminal do fulltime work for the state for the duration of incarceration. Is that not slavery? Is that not good?

Yes, slavery too has different strengths and feels. Yes, slavery too can be put upon Aristotle's two-dimensional lines. We love following Aristotle's example and, like him, try to fit everything in two dimensions. But reality is four or more dimensions, and we must necessarily lose a majority of the information when we two-dimensionalize things -- when we buy into his false Dualism paradigm. So, while slavery can be put on Aristotle's all-encompassing two-dimensional lines, what I just said about a good in slavery cannot without some duplicitous manipulation. For how can a true criminal act, a bad act, create good? It can't in Aristotle's logical and reasonable universe -- which is exactly why Aristotle needs the born elite and the born slaves; for justification of his definition of Good. For to Aristotle, the Good is focused on the born elite, not the born slaves.

Got it? That's why the rich do not have empathy for the poor.

Regarding Aristotle's two-dimensional view of Love and Hate I have to say there are many rays that ride the waves between Love and Hate, not just two emanating in opposite directions from the mean. No thing is truly separate from any other thing (if we were completely separate how could we ever hope to communicate?). Maybe Love and Hate are the two halves of a lemniscate, with Apathy being the point of nothingness that connects them, and within the globes of Love and Hate swirl many, many emotions and reasons.

No.

Perhaps Love is the all-encompassing center point, and globes of Hate and Apathy contain lesser and greater parts of all the other emotions.

No.

Maybe our individual conciousness is the center point, and the flowing waves within the globes that emanate from us are all the emotions in greater or lesser quantity. Each of us our own personal lemniscate of power.

Things that make you go hmm . . .

Ahhh, I love my (x² + y²)² = a²(x² - y²) Lemniscate!