My Personal Worldview

More or less the thought process behind how I got to my present worldview

Recently xavier asked me about why my philosophy is so strange and how the different parts of my worldview connect to each other. If I explained myself to myself from a couple years ago or perhaps even if I just had to understand my own ideas coming from someone else I would have been hard pressed to make sense of it. I have made some other articles which are related to the ideas presented here. However, this should serve to answer the question of where I’m coming from generally and how I arrived at my worldview/religion.

Me and Myself

Axioms & Aims

What are my starting points? What issues concern me most and must be resolved? What is my present condition and what tools are available to me for the resolution of these issues? These are the questions that will be answered to begin. By this you will also see what I believe are my axioms, what I begin with, and from there I can walk you through my logical progression or perhaps illogical progression.

I am here, my senses deliver information to me, I have access to only this. There may be what is called truth: that knowledge I can be certain of, elsewhere outside of my senses but this I cannot know. Am I in a simulation? A brain inside a vat? Any scenario I could imagine that is unverifiable cannot be considered by me nor dwelt upon, for I will never know one way or the other. There may very well be dimensions beyond my understanding which secretly govern all, this I will not concern myself with for I cannot know it one way or the other. I must develop knowledge about my situation, that situation as recounted by the senses and lived through the senses. Here I begin with an empiricist epistemology¹. Although I never presume to grasp the absolute of absolutes.

Many attributes of the physical world are made apparent to me by my senses, even further tools which enhance the senses reveal further information to me. This is all very nice, but what is also apparent to me is something which seems cannot be solved by mere observation. I have a need of a purpose, every living instant I make a decision upon what I should pursue, or so it appears I make a decision. Do I really have a choice in what to believe? Well I could choose to accept or reject the notion that I have no free will so I must have free will. Pressing on from that minor worry which if I accept would instantly collapse all sense in these beginnings.

Beginning The Search

What is my right end on this earth? Immediately my instincts drive me in some directions: comfort, status, family or even wisdom to be used to achieve all three. But why should I settle on any of them, does instinct have a claim to being the director of action? Don’t dogs also live by instinct? Am I such a creature as that? Maybe well and many others around me seem to act like dogs, so why not me. Well I am searching for truth and the right guiding principle. I do this in a way that no animal could. The right end for an animal is indeed instinct for it unlike I has no choice in the matter and as Aristotle says the only question for an animal is whether it serves its undeniable aim well. But this is not me, for I may choose to select my end. What else could I be doing in this very contemplation now?

Perhaps let me consider how I arrived here for search of some meaning and also maybe where I will end up after all is over. Some context ought to help me justify my ends. I have entered this world by my parents, or so memory serves me, why shouldn’t I doubt the past? Well it seems that each letter I write now could not have appeared on this page should I have a faulty memory or poor inductive ability. Every picosecond I slip from past to future yet all is retained coherently. This must have been the case from time immemorial. Even if I had a hole in my memory it is known that all men come from families so naturally I must have suffered the same fate. So may my origin provide me with a meaning, a justified guiding principle? No it seems not, there are things like my place of birth, parents, ethnicity and such demands of me, but what claim do they have? Are they the authors of the universe, who know the truth about the meaning of life on good authority? It seems often that older generations were just as confused as we are on such things. I must look further back.

Meaning In The Objective World?

Before man there were animals and lesser animals. The learned biologists of our day explain that man came from the principle of evolution, out of smaller and smaller organisms and the first organism came from something or other. I see now where my instincts have their origin: the principle of evolution and indeed why animals are guided as they are. Once again it cannot be for me though I must go further back.

The rocks and particles that once apparently came together, stars and such. Will they tell me what I’m doing living on their once barren surface. No, it seems they have no dictum for even themselves, unfeeling things. Meaning must be a thing only of life and further only of man! For does a fox question what he will do each of his days, surely not!

Perhaps I must go forward then, to the end of my days, see what my end will tell me about what I should do with my life. By watching others die and reading the accounts of death it seems that bodies do fall to the ground unceremoniously. The lights leave the corpse behind without further trace. Ghosts are only fairy tales, for I have never seen a ghost. I cannot believe in immortal souls as Plato did. So then after death is an exit from this realm and then nothing, my goodness nothing?! So what does it matter what I do with my days at all, let them all rot or be random. My life can only end only way regardless and then nothing will follow. Damn it all then.

But how can I have a nil answer, surely I haven’t helped myself at all to unravel my original quandary. Now I proclaim that I cannot find any end worth pursuing for they are all equally meaningless! But alas I must do something, for even to do nothing is to judge nothing worth doing! It seems that by this conclusion the only logical step would be to end it all. How terrible. But even that is a value judgement as foolish as any other to some degree. Let me reconsider. How did we really get here? Where did the stars and grand planets come from anyways?

Could they create themselves or come from nothing? Perhaps they had always existed, coming into being along with time itself so that there was nothing before them and truly no before them at all. But then they are forever backwards so that there can be no starting point. How is this possible? That a universe of matter materializes itself and then at some point places me within itself. Do we have a case of random chance? Did these events happen infinitely many times before and this happens to be the only one which formed a man like me who could bother to experience it, a mere selection bias then? No, it is not so. For even that law of randomness, the boundaries of the chaos that sets what is possible is determined and set up by something. There must be something truly infinite before all of this which could have set things in order, surely I could inquire of that thing why it bothered to make me and for what purpose I was set up here. But how will I identify him or her, or some cosmic force, does it have a mouth or perhaps are we the mouth of God itself, us as the creation forming the language of our creator. That’s all foolish speculation, I want to find something real. If I cannot, I must give up on this idea and find something else.

Strange Men, Strange Ideas

Come to think of it, there are many strange men on this earth who claim to know the creator. Monks in mountains making seance, what do they claim to know and is there anything to that but stories and mysticism? Many ramble on about a man who was raised from the dead, God as man walked on earth. Why would God concern himself with such trifles anyways? I assume it begs the question of why he bothered creating all of this at all. Are a thousand rocks and sun moving in a fixed pattern as interesting as the tears of a single man. It seems not, shouldn’t I hear what they say anyways. For just as I do not believe in ghost stories I do not believe that one can defy death, where’s the proof?

So then I was beset by histories upon histories. It seems that I alone in my modern day am the foolish one to doubt ghosts and ghouls. For all the men of days of old had their wizards and witches. But none were as powerful as the one they called Lord and God. What a strange prophecy that could not be told by a man such as I. For in Hume’s vain I hardly know what will become of me tomorrow. And how strange is it that he says such things that ring true. Not only for me but for the world, the law written on our hearts, to have one God: the creator. That man’s lot is to suffer and in that suffering is goodness. So that is why I arise each morning as Christ rose from the tomb, so that I might make a poor imitation of him and his commandments. But these things are hardly logical, I cannot see the God nor miracles. How could I believe such a thing for I sought out to make a philosophy of this world, that experiential world which I am forced to live in. But these terrible things that I come strapped with: that need for purpose, what in the rational world can tell me anything about it. Only a revelation from the divine seems to satisfy and what else could fulfill such a burden of proof anyways.

The Makings Of Man

What about love and hate, right and wrong regardless. My attraction and revolution. Do these things befit a rock floating in space or a dog chasing a bone. Do dogs love one another as we do. No, they do not, so where oh where could I look for some clarity on these most essential issues. It seems that by rational attainment of a revelation outside the realm of human reason is my last avenue. Only the divine wisdom can understand such a thing as purpose and love. Only demons can enact hate it seems equally. For these things defy all explanation and when I come crying to my absurdly French brothers or English pool players or Russian lovers of the dirt they first shrug their shoulders and then begin to shout at me “We cannot know these things!” And yet you go on romanticising Sisyphus, buying booze and hookers and writing until the ink runs dry. Why oh why do you do these things my good philosophers without good reason?

Even Hegel, the lover of contradiction, had to appeal to God for some justification of his contradictory system. It seems that to attempt to resolve the plight of man without use of rationally accepted irrational is still more foolish than the irrational itself. So would I rather be a wise man who humbled himself as a fool or a fool proclaiming himself to be wise!?

The Greeks knew this well but were not so vexed, for the world of forms and plenteous pagan Gods they had awaiting them at their temples and afterlives. Funny how I resolved the issue of death by accepting God as well, things tend to work out in a funny way. Like finding the last piece of a puzzle, all has become clear at last, my actions are now grounded and justified, my philosophy with less and less leaks. I’m glad I found some way out of that dark forest, now all that is left is to actually live this lovely religion of mine and make good on it.

Last Words

It is fun to ponder the questions which are totally meaningless to me, things of science and such. But none of it worries me deeply. What worries me is what worries any good man: action, for we do live lives of action ultimately. Lucky are those who get to be judged only by their thoughts.

So this is the basis of my thought. Please feel free to inquire, as man must naturally always be doing.

1. More accurately an epistemology like that outlined in Rand’s Objectivitist Epistemology