Ruminations on the Ontology of Morslity

  Chapter 13

  Delusions, Dissimulation, and Reconciliation

  The goal, stated or implied, contrived as it is when in fact I write in part to fill the vacuum of time in this violent red and yellow interregnum, remains to scrutinize the self in various lenses, distant and objective, myopic and personal, to determine whether in the present understanding of the accidents that brought about cosmology, the atomic structure of matter, the fruition of organisms, their evolvement, or in Darwin’s words, “descent with modification69” and by inference, consciousness as well (the latter which could only arise from painful accidents that cause perplexity as to their origin, and because of language, more deliberate inquiry into them), any moral values can be determined unequivocally; and if it is proven to the self, after a fair amount of inquiry to which giving even more time and scrutiny would seem ridiculous, that there is none, to deliberate on the best that man can realistically arrive at irrespective of his lack of purpose in the greater scheme of space and time—ants that our scurrying around seem equivalent to as attested by any aerial view, as that from the top of the Boyoke, and the absolute irrelevance a man, or even a society of men, to that which will come afterwards whose sense of “now,” if intelligent enough to ponder such questions of what was and will be, will, at best, relegate all earlier times to a vague belief in them having existed at all. But this cannot be done constructively without an understanding of the mendacities inherent in reality that keep self-replicating matter operational.

  Self-deception and dissimulation are imperative for survival and to any sense of reality as attested by appetite depreciating a living presence to such a degree that in the mind it becomes a comestible that, in its insolent tendency to scurry away, has to be overpowered and made to that which the mind under the influence of appetite has relegated it as being (appetite itself, or at least the tastes that it assumes, largely influenced, if not directly induced, by the rife microorganisms and mitochondria living within that survive on specific substances), and in descrying a bitch at a local convenience store that is licked into romantic submission of an inseparable three day union culminating in her pregnancy and their rupture and a return to a more forlorn disposition—such being the state of escapism from life’s travails into society and bliss that both redeems and ruins a being, animal or human animal, like a mouse at its first bit of cheese when the metal of the trap snaps down.

  Of man himself, this lesser quadruped in these chemical bombardments breaking all concentration and inducing him toward amorous encounters, the serotonin and dopamine high conflated with a testosterone rush that is part of falling in love is a deliberate cloud to impair logical assessments by making an individual feel bonded in ways that he or she never would have felt if just from associations of common interest or the base act of physical penetration itself. In his state of concupiscence, which overwhelms his sense of logic, he hungers for physical intimacy to the point where all previous experiences proving it as meretricious seem meretricious and, he argues to himself, that this time it seems to be true love, and true intimacy. The marital commitment lasts long enough to force the two to have and raise children, and nothing more than this.

  Likewise, volition seems to be an illusion. If man has volition, let alone a will for power70 this can be undermined by the macrocosm, the state, which can conscript men into soldiers, and from the war, an opposing army can cleft a society, and upset the foundation that a man predicates his life on; and as for the microcosm, it can be assumed that a sperm cell racing against others to reach an egg, if there is one, or a white blood cell encroaching on the bacterial invader that will be its prey thinks of itself, no different than the entire organism, as autonomous, not knowing how it is being used by the larger macrocosm.

  And as for these solipsistic preoccupations to survive and thrive in the world with a fair degree of comfort, rushing around in a capitalistic democracy, banging into each other in the mad celerity for the procurement of money, part which is used for the sustenance of family, part horded and the lack of circulation bringing about more poverty and injustice than even assigning specific jobs higher and lower monetary value, there is no greater absurdity than plowing down others so as to bolster a self that cannot long endure.

  Happiness too is a delusion, as it is empirical and must have, as Kant points out, a continual repetition of the same favorably perceived stimuli for the happiness to continue.71 And as this is impossible, it inevitably falters; so it is no wonder that, to have little sense of it faltering, so many change precipitously from one friend to the next and one experience to the next, dismissing the old when warranted so as to keep happiness afloat, believing it to be one consistency when in fact it is myriad waves from the exhilaration gained from all that is new. Those who prize happiness also maintain it by a deliberate parochial attitude, refusing to consider the negative realities that exist in the world unless it impacts on them directly so as not to depress their exuberance to live. As I stated before, a true romantic is one who squints his eyes most.