Premises: Man is best understood as a creature of dual psychic nature having two simultaneously operating judgmental systems each presenting its judgments in its own language. They are Analogos and Logos using the languages of Sensation and Symbol respectively. There are many sublanguages within each basic language.
The judgments of each system are responsible for Awareness and Consciousness respectively. Their languages statements can be said to have meaning. Analogos creates the world of Actuality; Logos creates the world of Reality. In other words, the phenomena of Logos provide the 'contents' of Reality while the phenomena of Analogos provide the 'contents' of Actuality. These 'judgments' provide the mental phenomena which can be conceived of and frozen in thought 'as' the furniture of the mind. We are 'aware of' or 'conscious of' something. Awareness/Consciousness are said to be intentional in that they always have an object. These 'objects' are now realized to be 'judgments-made' and are 'language statements of Analogos and Logos.
Fact: We are only one in Analogos. BUT IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND IN THE WORLD AND LANGUAGE OF LOGOS, Logos (we persons) require CONTRAST. This in turn requires that we make some DISTINCTION. The distinction is to differentiate between the grosser & coarser sensations arising from the three evolutionary judgmental systems of Analogos (Reptilian Brain-Mind, Paleomammalian Brain-Mind, and Neomammalian Analog Brain-Mind) and the exquisitely delicate sensations of Logos called CONCEPTS. Concepts are models of experiential phenomena or mental models created out of experiential phenomena. In this sense CONCEPTS are considered SYMBOLIC. However, I sense concepts to be shimmering and tenuous, almost chimeric sensations which, however static they seem relative to the coarser sensations of Analogos, are nevertheless truly sensations at bottom. Hence, the world of ACTUALITY is comprised of the SENSATIONAL EXPERIENTIAL PHENOMENA OF ANALOGOS; the world of REALITY is comprised of the SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONAL PHENOMENA OF LOGOS. For man, there is no more!
And now to demonstrate the distinction in the discussion of meaningfulness, by which I refer to the meaningfulness of life itself. Is life meaningful?
First to address the world of Logos. This is the symbolic world of data acquired (interpreted and translated) from experience, from observation, FROM THE EMPIRICAL WORLD. In Reality we are quite informed (put into the mode of 'form') of our place in the universe. We now REALIZE that we individual human creatures are quite small when measured against the size of the earth, against the size of the sun, compared to the size of our solar system and the unimaginable immensity of the universe. Secondly, we are informed of and now realize our recent appearance in the universe and even on our own earth, encompassing only the last few moments of the conceptual time-line. We realize our own transient natures, having read history and paleontology. The data tell us that 98% of all species which have ever lived on the earth are extinct. Will not we also be extinct one day? Are we not informed that this humungous Earth will one day vanish, one day be encompassed in the giant red fireball of the Sun in its last days? Is not our permanence written only in the granite-dust of earth? Are we not destined to perish totally permanently? And regarding the stories of those who have returned or risen from the dead, where are they now? And are these not but anecdotes to be dismissed out of hand by any sophmoric scientist, having NO JUSTIFIED PLACE WHATSOEVER in the world of Reality? For all of our fear, cowardice, wishful thinking and desire, there is nary of shard of evidence for our continued being after physical death. There is not a piece of lint or a single hair for the coroner's microscope! which is to say, there is no concrete evidence for the scientist of Logos to grasp and which can serve as the cornerstone of any life-after-death theory, AT LEAST NOT IN THE ACTUAL WORLD! Of course, it all comes down to WHAT ONE WILL ACCEPT AS EVIDENCE. Here we divide ourselves into the mush-heads and the hard-heads. I am a hard-head (to the shocking surprise of many).
And so we must conclude, in the world of REALITY and in the LANGUAGE OF CONCEPTION, that we as individuals, we as a group, mankind as an organism, earth as a physical entity, and even our solar system and more, are dynamic but transient manifestations of THE POWER from which all were created. We must accept the belief, in spite of strong desires that it be otherwise, in spite of the ability to create conceptual antitheses, in spite of our ability to generate new and alternative possibilities, that whatever we do, no matter how grand an enterprise or clever our deed, that in the end, all is meaningless. And in Reality, as has been said, "life is an inane story, told by a madman, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing." And in Reality, HOPE and FAITH are our greatest enemies. For these represent WISH and ACCEPTANCE in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. I'll leave CHARITY alone!
Let us now leave this conceptual judgment where it is, in the world of Reality, in the world created by Logos, the intellect, and located more or less on the left side our brain-mind. Let us keep the pathway to Logos closed, creating a physiological block at the corpus callosum. We'll cubby-hole it and keep it boxed up by its own method. Now let us turn to the other world, the world of Analogos, the world behind Logos.
We must now become phenomenological. We are forced here to use symbolic language, the language of Logos. But you must not search the world of Logos for the referents. You must read and immediately search the world of Analogos, the world of your grossest sensations, the realm of emotions, feelings, sensory impressions, of color, sound, smell, reverie and dream. You must dredge up your intuitions. You must now search the world of experience including preperceptual experience, postperceptual experience, and feeling experience. For now we will refer to the judgments presented in terms of sensation, all sensations-emotions-feeling-images. And what do these judgments MEAN? What do they tell us?
I observe life, action, and striving! I observe the efforts for nutrients, for air, water, shelter, and safety. I observe the threats, the fights for territory, for mates, for food, for show. I observe people protecting, guarding, reaching, contesting, grasping. I see even the alcoholic who sleeps beneath the park bench, looking for his daily drink and his evening protection from rain and cold, striving even in his desperate situation, as best he can. I observe the drug addict skulking about looking for a possible theft, striving in his way, doing the best he can to continue being what he is, whatever he is. I see living entities striving to continue to be, to continue to be whatever they are, or even to be something different, better or worse, it makes no difference. I see LIFE itself in every form and every situation, striving to continue itself. I see life under every rock, on every mountain. I can catch and culture it from the very air. I see life under all possible conditions of being. Every plant spreads its territory to the extreme limits of possibility. At the edge of the dessert there is the last plant, one drop of water away from death. Yet in the midst of its striving, if it could talk, it would scream to us of its thirst, tell us of its suffering, express the deepest yearning of which it was capable. It would beg for water!
I observe nature's insistence upon life, everywhere, everywhere possible, under all circumstances possible. I observe nature's insistence for the QUANTITY of life. I note the absence of any concern for the QUALITY of life. And in myself I am aware of bodily sensations, sensory impressions of the lowest order, the SENSATION OF BE-ING ITSELF, being itself, upright being, upright seeing, hearing, moving, smelling, tasting, experiencing being. At this moment of WELL-BEING, with needs satisfied and only a dull ache from the muscles behind my neck and in my back, my child playing around me, my woman making breakfast, my brother just passing by, the sun shining on this beautiful morning of summer, my dog eating nearby. I feel all these sensations. And if I only could extract from the pea-soup of experience all that it was comprised of, each point and moment in the fabric of total experience would be a sensation. And each, according to our premise, can be said to be a language statement expressing a judgment of Analogos, having meaning. I have given you some of the meanings in this brief description. And so, it is inescapable that life (experience) is full of meaning. It is inherently "meaningful." Every sensation, no matter how minute of subtle, has meaning which can be interpreted and translated into the language of Logos. Life may not always be pleasant, but it can never be inherently meaningless in the World of Actuality.
And what about SUICIDE you ask? What about those who find no meaning, no desire to go on "as they are"? Are these not evidence to the contrary, that life can seem so meaningless that the desire to go on is forfeited and an end to experience appears more satisfactory than more of the same.? And to this I say you have revealed another example of where the wages of sin are death. And in the case of suicide, physical death and actual death. For only the intellect, with its ability to conceive, realize, to conjure up alternatives, could deem them desirable, and could consciously plan a course of action, preconceived, premeditated, intentional, willful, to commit suicide. Only intellect is capable of committing the act of suicide. And thereby is revealed the worm, another intellectual, a creature of conceptual thought, of planned behavior rather than spontaneous behavior.
Here we have naked and exposed, the persona, the mask, the actor, found out, caught, inhabiting the body, having captured the human being and enslaved him to Its existentialist tasks - and found them meaningless! And it now destroys the human in its anger and bitterness that life was not "found to be more meaningful" for-itself. Dead is another humanist, previously living for the sake of itself, for the sake of mankind (manking), for the sake of "others". There goes another execution, nature's way of stamping out aberrations and the weak. Suicide is always desirable for those who commit it. Those left behind can judge it only retrospectively. Once done, it was right, good, just and demanded by all the powers at play at that moment. It was a universal judgment carried out by the universal power, to stamp out Sin (Logos or intellect).
To the reader I make one request. Please understand that what I mean is that it is good, right and just ONLY TO THE PERSON WHO COMMITS SUICIDE. It is not good, right or just to the rest of us who remain behind, to remember, to witness, to suffer the pain of loss and the sometimes endless remorse and grieving on the part of parents, spouse, children. For us, for whom the bell tolls, suicide is terrible. And for this reason, SIN or LOGOS or INTELLECT and its control of the body as the dominant mode of mentation is BAD, SINFUL, and UNDESIRABLE IN THE EYES OF "WHAT-MAN-CALLS-GOD", IN THE EYES OF HUMAN BEINGS, IN THE MIND OF GOD AND OF MANKIND. But what is truly undesirable is that we so "become" persons in the existentialist sense of "becoming" that we are no longer human beings. And this is what is happening in the world, as intellect or Logos or Sin has become dominant in Western Man especially. As Logos has developed alternatives to VULNERABILITY, WEAKNESS AND COWARDICE. As Logos has developed its weapons of defense and now offense. As Logos has become increasingly OFFENSIVE to nature and humanity. As Logos destroys humanity and the earth. Since war is totally against THE WEAPON, and as the weapons have become increasingly large, devastating and frightening, so the wars against them become increasingly large, devastating and destructive. For this is what is increasingly necessary to stamp out weapons and to stamp out the instrument behind THE WEAPON, the conceptual creature of Logos, personified as SATAN.
Many persons reading this discourse may not read English well, in which case they may not understand well. Others may not speak the language of Religion. In this case they will not understand the insertion of a religious term "Satan" and will be irritated and even take offense at its use (like I sometimes do when a writer inserts a Latin phrase which I cannot translate and which he fails to translate).
Let's sum up this spontaneous rambling discourse. The entire point of this essay is to convey the inherently sensational and meaningful nature of Being in the world of Actuality while contrasting it to the conclusion of Logos, reached by all the scientifically acceptable evidence available to it in the Real world, that existence is ultimately insignificant and meaningless and all of our strivings are vain. Actuality is contrasted to the existentialist position that life is either meaningful or meaningless depending on how one chooses to see it, chooses to live it, being free and totally responsible for it. I argue that life is inherently meaningful, even if miserable and certainly if joyous, in which case, regardless of being happy, pleasurable, comfortable or of being mean, cold, miserable, brutish and filled with pain and anguish.
It is only the absence of sensations, of significant and meaningful sensations (including emotions and feelings) in consciousness and awareness, that life can be felt to be meaningless. Sensations of any nature give MEANING TO LIFE. A truly meaningless life is one devoid of sensation. And one's life is meaningful directly proportional to the INTENSITY AND VARIETY OF SENSATION WHICH COMPRISES IT. Pleasurable sensations, of course, lend an even greater sense of meaningfulness to life, since pleasure seems a yes, a yay-saying, an affirmation, a 'go' to life.
A. Iosue
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