I came across an amazing article today – The illusions of abstract philosophy: Thought is never deep. I cast my mind back to university days and my times spent with a friend of Polish origins, English education and living in Germany. He is fluent in the three languages, and perhaps others too. He was in the German-speaking faculty of theology and I was in the French-speaking section. The two differed not only in the language used for teaching and working, but in the essential outlook. The French section essentially stuck to the Ressourcement ideas of men like Louis Bouyer, Danielou, De Lubac, Ratzinger and others, essentially formed by a scholastic basis with more interest in biblical theology and patristics. There was also a keen interest in Eastern Orthodox authors. On the other hand, the German section was largely based on ideas that were so intellectualised they they became incomprehensible – and I suspect irrational. My friend Roman would imagine a male penis on the forehead instead of its proper place, and would move his hand over the imaginary penis as if to stimulate it. It was his crude image of the widely used concept of intellectual masturbation, a way to find self-satisfaction but one that was totally sterile outside the subject.

Physical masturbation (onanism) is a solitary sexual act intended to bring satisfaction to the person in question but outside of a relationship. It is enhanced by a phantasm of a desired person, but without that person’s knowledge or consent – or by a fetish for some inanimate object (paraphilia). Classical Christian morality condemns it for its selfish finis operis and its sterility, sexuality being primarily for the purpose of procreation. I will refrain from any other moral judgement in this context so as not to get bogged down with academic moral ethics.

Applying this idea to thought and intellectual life, we consider the ideas of self-satisfaction and sterility, the thoughts in question having no purpose, sense or real meaning. We also have the notion of gobbledegook, talking for the sake of talking. Perhaps my own diatribes on Romanticism fall into the same category, and that my treasure is someone else’s trash! I would do better to go sailing, clean my house, do something in my workshop, spend a time in prayer, seek some social company and degree of friendship with others…

The thing that made my university friend and I question everything was the way students would argue with each other, for example about poverty, citing the things they had read, and would never reach a solution about the subject in hand. Poor people would continue to be poor. I find the same thing today with the Just Stop Oil activists blocking roads and destroying works of art, and they cannot answer the simple question of how we live without energy without the time and technology needed to find better solutions than fossil fuel. None of them will say that we need to go back to the Middle-Ages (without the faith, beauty and art), live in shitty hovels, forego nutritious food and medicine – and cull the majority of humanity without appearing to commit mass murder. The problem of much of modern politics is that it is a lot of talk (sometimes mendacious) without considering the means to bring about positive change and improvement.

The article to which I gave a link is quite long, and it needs to be read several times. I did wonder if its author was committing the same sin, but there are some ideas to show light between the words. However, the article needs to be read. Myself, I have spent my life divided between what I am now doing on my computer keyboard and going to do something practical. I did not do well at school because of social difficulties that I later found to be largely caused by my high-functioning autism. I was advised on account of my liking for woodwork and organ music to go in for organ building. My social difficulties closed that particular avenue. I was also attracted to learning to think and express myself, and regretted not doing well academically at school. I ended up accepted into the faculty of theology at Fribourg University on my way to the priesthood.

Someone came up with a theory of the dark satanic mills mentioned in Blake’s Jerusalem, that they were not the first cotton mills in the north of England in which former farm workers found slightly better-paid employment, but the universities. Does this idea hold water? Universities should be teaching people the skills they need to work as doctors, lawyers, bankers, architects and every other profession. Do they? My own experience is extreme, since autism makes the abstract completely inaccessible. I could never deal with pure mathematics, but I saw the use of geometry for things like marine navigation. I need to know where I am in relation to fixed landmarks and where I’m going. Differential calculus was a subject I encountered at school, and I was totally blind to it. It is a method for rationalising the notion of change in physics – but don’t ask me how. Perhaps someone will give me a good practical explanation. Angles and distances are self-evident for making things in the workshop, navigation, measuring objects or parts of our planet. Arithmetic is essential for managing money and other quantities in everyday life. I can handle that by doing sums the old way or using a calculator as we all do nowadays.

Is there a purpose to the way we are using our brains and minds? Usually metaphysical questions revolve around the meaning of life, whether our consciousness and awareness of existence go beyond our physical death. What or who is God? Where did we come from? We ask the same questions as we did as little children. What is reality? What is truth? What is love? These are things that differentiate humans from lower animal species. Are we worth no more than the pigs we kill and eat? We have to accept that many things are beyond us, that we yearn for them, but never get there. This is the essence of Romanticism, or the simple desire of sensitive souls to smash a hole through the abstract intellectualism and make progress by imagination and intuition.

Something we observe in modernity is that human beings working in groups lose common sense and become stupid. We have corporate management, meetings about meetings that cost a lot of money but achieve nothing. Education makes people stupid. In his De Profundis, Oscar Wilde expressed these prophetic words from his prison cell:

He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea.  But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God’s Kingdom.

That said, crass ignorance is not a virtue. I meet many culture-less people, but who are no more virtuous than the bureaucrats.

When anything is made into a system, it dies. This is why I question my use of the word Romanticism. We have to use words to communicate, but words also destroy. Modern “woke” ideologies set various minority categories against the majority and even other minorities claiming inclusion. Nietzsche spoke of the death of God, not that God actually died, which is impossible, but that He was flogged to death in churches and theological faculties.

The point of the article is emphasising the priority given to the quality of the thinker’s life rather than his ability to bottle and package thought for the consumer. My own chaotic life goes beyond the comprehension of most people, who have conformed to the status quo, stuck to the mainstream, made a success of school and professional training, got into a stable marriage and so forth. In my daydreams, I have often tried to recreate my life, but with a warning. Another bit from Oscar Wilde :

The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go there.  They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more.  A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be.  That is his punishment.  Those who want a mask have to wear it.

We have to come to terms with what we are. Perhaps I am (or have been) unstable, whatever that word means – anything from being mentally ill to being morally deregulated, or just out of the box. The word unstable has been used by clergy to discourage me from seeking the priesthood. Would I be more stable in some other calling, or simply out of their way? We have above all to come to terms with the inadequacy of human language. This question of experience of life is capital. I still have not joined the two ends, but I no longer envy the “successful”.

It is not a question of my ego, something of which I am increasingly aware as I get older.

The individual, the selfless I, is irrelevant to matters of fact, and that, we are told, is what we are dealing with here. Except it isn’t, is it? Philosophy is not primarily about matters of fact, but about the ultimate “cause” and quality of those facts. Philosophy is supposed to address itself to pressing questions of existence, to the reality and nature of consciousness, love, art, beauty, god, self, sex, death, creativity, madness, addiction and freedom, none of which can be reduced to rational fact and logical argument any more than the taste of orange juice can be reduced to a description of the effect of water, sugar and citric acid on the relevant cells of the body.

This article taught me some elements to answer my own personal questions. I prefer my “unstable” life to the boring life of someone stuck in mainstream mediocrity, in the Machine, the Dark Satanic Mill. We begin to find the key to breaking out of our solipsism towards the light of gnosis.

I think that what I am trying to do through this blog is to give, to educate, to enlighten, and not to try to impress others through technical jargon. There is however a limit when trying to serve other people. My treasure is their trash. The person who is outside my dwindling circle of friends (their deaths) and my family is as unfathomable as the bottom of the ocean or some other part of the universe. Many people talk of the unity of mankind. I fail to find it outside a few persons I know, something that can make altruism and empathy difficult. I live these contradictions, even when I am alone and supposedly experiencing the greatest fulfilment. I find it very difficult to deal with intolerance, bigotry and ideology, which seem to be the final step before full-blown sociopathy and evil. To what extent am I guilty of the same frames of mind and refusal of grace?

I’m getting there slowly, through the right kind of reading and the experience of practical life. I find that people respect my ability to do work that others have to have done by professionals. I go more by intuition and reduction of entities (Occam’s Razor) than by official standards. I live in an old house. Short of demolishing it and building a new one (a little out of my financial budget) things like electrical systems and plumbing have to be adapted. Knowledge of principles more than codified standards enable solutions to be found whilst working for the safest installation possible. This is how my electrician and I worked to obtain something both affordable and safe. This is how I work and think, even when writing something like this posting.

Whatever we do in life, we need to see the whole picture and avoid being blinded by details, rules and obstacles. This is my main difference from French Cartesian hyper-rationalism, which is rife wherever I go. I have to dialogue with it, perform reality checks on myself, and usually find that my intuition was right. I know that it sounds arrogant, but we have to see the wood for the trees.