No, but seriously folks...

*ACHTUNG* This entry includes my being serious about something. I've not experimented much with this state of mind, and the results may be disturbing. Or utterly boring. But you got an *ACHTUNG* so no bitching.

Music (and this time it relates to some of the post. I know... frightening. Lock up your women): Listening to Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, one of Gus Mahler's 5 songs set to texts by Friedrich Rückert. Both the text and the music speak to the listener of transcendence and separation from the world at large, of a state in which one has reached complete restfulness and peace. Now, prompted by a number of my fellow bloggers who decided that last week was Philosophical Life Outlook Explanation Week, I'm devoting part of this post to my inner self. I'm sure you all think that I expose myself quite enough, thank-you-very-much, but this time it may come out differently. Call me shallow for doing this only because everyone else was, but it could also be an intense snobbery which prevents me from consciously ignoring the current online literary trends. Um, in which case I guess I'm still shallow. Fuck.

So yeah, this piece of music. I'm listening to it for the Mahler class. This last week has been mostly a discussion of Mahler's philosophical background and influences (he certainly considered himself to be as much a "thinker" as a "composer." At least in the sense that he was all-consumed with trying to figure out life's little conundrums). In order to better understand our subject, we've been reading treatises by a number of clever German-speaking Herren, namely (in the order in which they lived) Kant, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche. In their respective nutshells, Kant says, "Life sucks and then you die," Schopenhauer retorts with "Maybe so, but there are loopholes around the dying part," Wagner does his own thing with, "Jews suck and then you die. Oh, don't eat meat," and finally Nietzsche with his Übermensch or Superman, who sounds like he'd actually be pretty hot and would he like to go to the opera tomorrow night around 7:30?

So it goes like this for me: the more I read Schopenhauer, the more I'm like, "Wow, how did he know how to explain what's happening in my brain better than I did?" Now I'm not some kind of Schopenhauer disciple, and you wont see me with pamphlets at the airport, but many of his ideas are pretty interesting to me, particularly his ideas of artistic transcendence. There's this thing called the "Will," you see, and this Willy is the essence of all beings. It is sentient, and ruthlessly driven to a single purpose: survival. The ultimate goal of man is to find Will's address, go hang out and shoot the shit with him, and then beat him senseless. To know the Will, in a sense, is to defeat it. Still with me? Good. There are two ways to defeat Will and reach this kind of pinnacle of existence (sound Eastern? He was heavily influenced by Buddhism):
1. Accept the Kantian notion of a sucky life. Yes, life blows chunks. Poor people die of starvation while rich people grow fat, and in our struggle, we are ultimately crude beings. Accept this, and be cool with it, and you've figured life out, so says Schopy.
2. Create artistically. It is only in the creative mind where one can glimpse this Will and be influenced by it. Inspiration is a direct result of contact with the Will, and a true artist is simply a vessel for said inspiration. (There are heirarchical levels of art, by the way, but let's not go there for right now).

So maybe right now you're thinking about what a psycho I am for buying into this. Here's (finally) where I'm getting, though: No, I don't agree with Kant. Life can't altogether suck some hairy ones. But I'm not convinced with Ayn Rand, either, in thinking that life is INCREDIBLE and so let's selfishly milk it for all it's worth, environment and human life be damned. (And no, in case you're wondering, I wasn't waiting for some books to come along and tell me how I'm feeling... they just have been helpful in the illumination process). I feel as though I'm in a position between the two, in that:
a) I believe we are selfish beings, in the sense that our "will" to survive takes precedent over all else. That selfishness, I believe, also often motivates our "good deeds." I believe that what one does for others is motivated primarily for how it makes one feel about one's self. I strive to be my best because it makes me feel good, and I'm attracted to others who feel the same way because these people, like myself, tend to be generally happy. Everything they do is done for them... life can be whatever we make it to be if we employ ourselves and this "selfishness" to its utmost. That's the "Ayn" side talking.
b) Ok, so a) is a bit of wishful thinking, perhaps. Sure, if everyone had the capacity and good fortune to be able to pursue this selfishness, we'd all be in some heaven of technological and personal advancement. However, the "Schopenhauer" side of me doesn't want to leave the rest (meaning those unable to persue only their own desires) behind. If life is suffering, I believe that the overall quality of life for the masses (call me a Commie) should be placed in the foreground. I'd rather fight the "Life sucks and then you die" principle with my fellows, to try and be a match for the will (or God or whatever) and it's ruthlessness, than ignore it in the pursuit of happiness. I'm selfishly motivated to fight, perhaps, but so what? It is action, not motivation, which is the end goal. I fight for (and with) these masses because they are my friends, my family, my fellows, becuase Humanity, the marvel that is the pairing of the human heart and the mind, is my religion. If the end goal is the end of this suffering and the transcendence over the Will, then I want it to be our goal together--if this means it takes longer to get there, at least I'll have company when we do. I believe in first getting to the point where we are all free to try for "a)," and I don't believe that "a)," despite its merits, has a monopoly on happiness. Art is the overcoming, the lasting, and the ultimate triumph of man. There's the transcendence, right here on Earth: through art, we discover ourselves, the process by which our own unique selves mix with the whole of humanity. There is no mass v. individual, there is no struggle there: the struggle is with the ancient suffering and its casting off. I will do the best I can for my own benefit and for the benefit of this race which I love. This is not trickle-down theory or diluted Ayn. Their arguments are dependent upon the idea that one must choose to be an individualist or a socialist. I'm suggesting that there should be no difference between the two.


ALRIGHT, so now that you've waded through that one... heilige Scheisse that was a crazy bit of abstractness that I got lost in a number of times, and that I'm sure you did too, and I apologize. DISCLAIMER: Go ahead and find loopholes. Hell, I found some of my own. But this is a work in progress, this whole figuring out life thing, one with which I hope I am never done. I think one can always do to have a open mind.

Well, now this blog has gone on far too long for me to continue on to fun Vienna stories, so I'll go ahead and publish those in another entry. My intention was to merely dally with the philosophy stuff, but it got away from me.

Music: Ancient French troubadour tunes from the 12th and 13th centuries--the beginnings of polyphony (using more than one melodic line). I'm listening for homework, but I also felt like my brain was too fried to listen to anything more complex than 2 singers.