There are only two possibilities that are open to us – either we can become ‘machines’, or we can become ‘philosophers’. It’s as simple as that! It’s as simple as that – there is no middle ground, we’re either one way or the other. We’re either conscious or unconscious and – unless we’ve put a lot of effort into it – we’re in the latter camp. We’re unconscious but think we’re not.
We’d laugh long and loud at such a statement, of course. We’d roll around in the aisles – if we didn’t laugh at this statement then it wouldn’t be true. If we knew we were unconscious, then we wouldn’t be. To quote Lao Tsu –
When the fool learns the way, he laughs at it. Yet if the fool did not laugh at it, it would not be the way. Indeed if you are seeking the way, listen to the laughter of fools.
When we hear this statement (about there being only two possibilities open to us) then we’re always going to dismiss it – it sounds too stupid to take seriously. For one thing, we probably have little to no regard for philosophers, and for another, we don’t think that we’re machines. In fact, we’re convinced that we’re not. We couldn’t be more convinced. We’re certain about this just as machines are always certain; machines never doubt themselves, they never doubt themselves (since they are necessarily / fundamentally incapable of querying the orders that they are running on).
We are machines however – that’s the default state of existing in society, that’s our unacknowledged starting-off point. We are machines because we do everything on the basis of thought, on the basis of the thinking process, and the thinking process is 100% mechanical. The only way we would not be machines would be if we could do something without there being a thought behind it, without there an agenda behind it, without there being a notion of what the world is behind it, and this is something we never do. We don’t know how to do something without there being a thought behind it, a reason behind it…
The degree to which we are spontaneous (which is to say, the degree to which we can ‘do things without a reason’) is the degree to which we are not machines. Machines are predictable, spontaneous human beings are not; machines conform to the pattern of behaviour that has been given, spontaneous being conform to nothing! Being spontaneous is the one thing that thinking can’t do – thought can’t do a thing without there being some sort of precedence, some sort of directive, some sort of reason (or ‘rule’). That’s what thought is – it is the enacting of an abstract rule.
If the actual nature of thought is that it is ‘strictly mechanical at all times’, (a ‘following of the rules’ and nothing more) then thought is our master, our governor (which it is) and this means we are machines. We are mechanically produced (produced according to the rules) and so we cannot be anything otherwise than mechanical ourselves. We would love to claim otherwise of course, but we have no claims grounds for such a claim – we’re glorifying ourselves for the sake of feeling better about our situation (since confronting our mechanical or unfree nature is an extraordinarily, appallingly unpleasant perception). This is however unwarranted self-glorification therefore – we’re deluding ourselves for the sake of avoiding a painful truth and deluding ourselves for the sake of avoiding a painful truth is of course the classic mark of a fool. That’s what makes a fool into a fool.
We are dealing with a difficult situation by pretending that it isn’t there, by pretending that everything is fine, which is very easy for us to do; it is infinitely easier than confronting it, obviously, but the drawback is that it only creates more problems for us (rather than solving the one that was there to start off with). We are doubling down on the mistake that we’ve made rather than acknowledging it as such and in this way we are making more and more trouble for ourselves further on down the line. We’re kicking the can down the road. We’re digging an ever-deeper hole for ourselves whilst imagining the whole time that we’re solving the problem (or that we’re escaping from the problem). We are 100% deluded, in other words.
If we were able to think outside the box like this and look at things in a different way to the way everyone does (i.e., if we were able to think independently or originally) then this is what we’re calling ‘being a philosopher’. This isn’t to say that we automatically believe the contrary point of view just to be different, or anything like that; being a philosopher has nothing to do with being ‘keen to believe stuff’ – it just means that we are able to have the discussion, it means it just means that we are free to think about things for ourselves. It means that we can play about with ideas in an unbiased way.
Normally, we hop merrily from one unexamined belief to another and we think nothing of this; just so long as we have something (or anything) to hold onto we’re happy. We don’t look beyond this immediate comfort – any belief will do just so long as it assuages our existential insecurity. Our secret agenda is always to prove that the picture or idea that we have of the world is true, is right, etc. According to us we’re ‘above board’, according to us we’re trying to ‘find out what’s out there’ in an honest and authentic way (we say that the endeavour we’re engaged in is legitimate, in other words) whilst the truth of the matter is the reverse of this. The truth of the matter is that the only thing we have any interest in is not uncovering the truth.
Once we have this ‘assumed framework’ firmly in place then we have to do is make sure never to look beyond it (and also make sure to punish anyone who looks as if they might be guilty of either doing this or thinking about it) and our wish (which is ‘the wish to have a concrete unquestionable worldview to believe in’) will be granted. All we have to do is ‘let thought run us’, all we have to do is let the idea or concept that we have about the world be ‘our boss’. This is why we are machines – because we have elected to be ruled by a mechanical tyrant. Being ‘averse to living in a world that is incomprehensible to us’ (when this just happens to be the only type of world there is) is what makes us into machines. When we strain our perceptions of the world through a mechanical filter that removes everything that we can’t understand (via a rule-based template) then we cease to be properly alive – we become marionettes who believe themselves to be autonomous beings, we become flickering shadows which falsely perceive themselves to have a genuine existence of their own…
We are machines because of our demand for certainty, in other words. We become generic thought-produced shadow-beings because of our unreflective demand for the unreal security of ‘knowing what it’s all about’ (which is just another way of talking about fear). If we insist – as we do insist – on being certain about things, on having unquestionable positive knowledge about the world and ourselves, etc, then we are going to be operating in Mechanical Mode. The only way we can cease to be in Mechanical Mode is by letting go of this non-existent certainty, by experimenting with being in the world as it actually is (in all its unfathomable mystery), and not in the banal, generic way that we have chosen in advance to see it…
It takes courage to move away from Mechanical Mode – we don’t know what’s going to happen to us when we do this, after all. We might disappear entirely. We would be taking an unwarranted risk in letting go of our unquestionable guide, which is a risk that frankly terrifies us. In effect, we’re opting to live meaningless mechanical lives that we can’t see beyond (and which we are therefore totally trapped in). We are abdicating all responsibility therefore, but instead of taking the responsibility with this, we double-abdicate and buy into the story that says, ‘acting out of a fixed framework is the right thing to do’, or ‘the adult and responsible thing to do’. In summary, then, we can say that we become machines (in place of the spontaneous beings we originally were) because of fear. It is fear that shuts us down and rather than becoming aware of this we make it into a virtue. We make a virtue of our cowardice, of our grotesque conformity.
We don’t know what it is that we have given up for the sake of comfort, for the sake of security, however. What’s more, we’re not capable of knowing. We’re not capable of knowing what we have lost because our approach to the world is now strictly mechanical, which makes us incapable of grasping it. We are now proper, no-nonsense machines and machines don’t understand freedom. Machines think they know what freedom is, but what they understand as freedom is ‘the mechanical analogue thereof’, which is a different beast entirely. The mechanical version of freedom is – we might say – freedom for the machine to carry on doing whatever it’s doing without there being any impediment to this. Freedom – when we are in the Mechanical Mode of being, means the freedom of the machine to enact its agenda, no matter what agenda might be. What that agenda actually turns out to be is entirely irrelevant.
What the rational mind really wants to do is to be able to do the machine-type stuff that it is designed to do, that it has been set up to do – it wants to carry on with its ‘machine-like existence in an uninterrupted way’, it wants to ‘carry on being unfree forever’. Freedom would mean that we can no longer perceive our pre-programmed / conditioned responses as being authentic to us; it would mean that we are no longer ‘working under compulsion’, it would mean that we are no longer ‘living in a predetermined way because we have to’. It would mean that we see through the show of the conditioned (or puppet) self. When fools hear of this sort of freedom therefore (i.e., intrinsic freedom) they will burst out laughing – they will burst out laughing because can’t make the slightest bit of sense of what is being talked about. They will dismiss the idea immediately, by reflex, because it is far too uncomfortable for them, because they simply don’t have the ability to look honestly at themselves. If fools didn’t laugh when they hear about intrinsic freedom, then it wouldn’t be intrinsic freedom at all. It will be ‘business as usual’, it would be the same as what always do, which is ‘being the totally unconscious slave of mechanical rules’.
Image credit – ncronline.org
