Empirical Existentialism

Disclaimer: The use of the word existentialism is not meant to draw parallels between my ideas and those of the many eminent / supremely mindfucked thinkers to whose philosophy, the moniker has previously been applied. If anything, the idea behind empirical existentialism is to develop a wholly personalized and purely experience-driven approach to philosophy and to life itself.

This is an attempt on my part to arrive at a systematic yet personalized approach to the development of an ever evolving set of heuristic approximations to aid in decision making, or in less exact terms, a way of life. The basic premise of this approach is to treat my experience of existence, i.e., my life, as emergent behavior arising from the interaction between two complex adaptive systems, namely my consciousness and the universe. Having decided on the overall approach, the next step was to evolve basic frameworks using with to regard my consciousness as well as the universe as I experience it.

I view the processes of my consciousness as taking two basic forms, perception and cognition. At first glance, this list appeared to be missing physical actions. However, upon further reflection, I came to view physical actions as a tool one may employ in the pursuit of perceptive and/or cognitive experiences. Next it appeared that emotion is another element which belongs in the above characterization of my consciousness. However, I have come think of emotion as higher order cognitive behavior, i.e. part of the response of my consciousness to interactions between itself and the universe.

The next step is to develop a basic framework using which to regard the universe as I experience it. The way I’ve come to think of it is as the context in which my consciousness operates. The nature of my consciousness affords me varying degrees of control over some aspects of this context. At least in my case, it is a given that human society is a vital part of my context. However, I have also noticed wide inter-individual variability, not to mention temporal variability, in the form and degree of the individual’s need for social interactions. Therefore, I feel it would be a good starting point to determine the sufficiency conditions that must be met in order for my need for social interactions to be fulfilled.

I thought it best to take an experimental approach and determine by trial and error the minimum, sufficient context to satisfactorily house my consciousness. However, these experiments deviate from the scientific ideal in three ways: I, the experimenter, have only partial control over experimental conditions; I am not afforded an independent point of observation on account of being the principal subject of my experiments; the interventions, conditions and outcomes are not quantifiable in the form of well defined parameters. Therefore, the approach I have devised can best be described as pseudo-reductionist. Further, it is important to note that this is by default an infinite, iterative process and will constantly yield parts of a solution that is far from time-invariant. In spite of these significant limitations, the utility of the process lies in enabling me to identify non-essential and more importantly, unfavorable interactions and thereby, enhance the efficiency of the process of living.

Based on systematic, iterative changes and observations made over the last two years or so, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that I have achieved rather satisfying and apparently sustainable steady state that has demonstrated little susceptibility to external perturbations.

P.S. Importantly, this is accomplished without the use of what I would call “cognitive over-damping” – suppression and concealment of unresolved thoughts/emotions – having engaged in it rather recklessly and to my considerable detriment in the past, I feel confident in my ability to identify it.

Dead Man Talking

Disclaimer: If you are incapable of laughing at jokes about death, feel free to read on but DO NOT bother me with stupid questions.

Why is there an almost pathological insistence in so many cultures on the value of deathbed confessions? Even the law treats dying declarations with much deference, the whole system wanting to believe in the notion of the unquestionable veracity of the ‘dying declaration’. Why? Is it really that far-fetched to believe that a man/woman would lie with their last breath? As a member of the species, let me just say, our record speaks for itself when the question comes up as to how low we can stoop. Besides, if you are a believer in the idea that all dying men are in search of redemption and therefore, compelled by their conscience to speak nothing but the truth, clearly, you have not run into ME. (Also, you probably do not know what a sense of humor is, do you?) I would gladly summon my last breaths to toss out a couple of plausible-sounding fibs. (All this, in my own time… To any nutfuck reading this, let me make it clear: this is not some kind of cry for help asking you to help me along. You may choose to disregard this advice at your own peril.) Imagine some soul(s) earnestly investing hard work into some venture based upon my final utterances. Just the hilarity of it – priceless! Being a nice sort of devious bastard, I feel it would only be fair to give humanity fair warning of the sort of grand pranks my mind is capable of churning out. If you still fall for it, it would be that much funnier.

So, in the interest of the gentlemanly spirit of the grand game of “Gotcha!”, here’s my fair warning to you. I shall detail here and now, some of the ideas floating around in my head. Importantly there are more than the sort of things I may choose to do; I encourage anyone reading this to utilize/modify them.

1. Le fake confession: If you know you’re about to breathe your last, confess to someone you know well, who trusts you (the combination of those traits may be quite rare) that you’ve long burdened yourself with a terrible secret and no longer wish to be so burdened. What follows could be anything from a simple “I know who killed Kennedy… it was…” to an absolutely explosive “I am your father, Luke.” You are limited only by your imagination (and your choice of confessor).

2. The last words: Let them be something absolutely spellbindingly absurd. Charles Foster Kane’s “rosebud” was pretty good. Search your lexicon and come up with a good one like say, “the towering cannoli”, “lemurs” or “magnificent acreage”.

3. The suicide note(s): Can you imagine the wonderful confusion you’d cause by leaving behind a suicide note or better yet several and then dying of natural causes? Were you planning on committing suicide? Were you unhappy? Was it their fault? People would be stumped. In fact, I’m a fan of the multiple suicide note idea, a couple of serious sounding ones mixed in with a few absolutely outrageous ones. Make the serious ones real good so that people can’t easily dismiss the rest as a product of senility and delirium. Remember, the rest are a place to have some serious fun. Here are some of the things you could do.

a. The absurd reason: Say something like “I must end my life… I must do it for the bear cubs and rusty bridges.”

b. The accusation: Accuse some people you know, some you don’t (the Pope?) and others who don’t even exist of being responsible for your decision to end it all. Better yet, say “The following 5 are responsible…” and list 8 names.

c. Gibberish, in verse: This will have them running in circles for a good bit. Write some utter nonsense, but make sure it rhymes. You’re golden!

d. The crazy wishes: Make outlandish requests of some of the people you know – like “Jeremy, I want you to shave the word GLOVE into your hair.” An added twist would be if Jeremy were totally bald.

e. The conspiracy theory: “Disregard all you’ve been told and uncover the true nature of my demise.”, pretty much.

f. The warning: “Beware of the blind pastry chef and his army of scissors!”

4. The will: This is easily one of the best ways to screw with people. Right off the bat, one can see a number of ways in which to do this:

- Leave to people things that aren’t yours.

- Leave to people things that don’t exist.

- Leave something to a total, random stranger, say picked from the phonebook.

- Leave things to people you know, but throw in some crazy conditions. For example, ‘X can have my comic book collection if X dresses up in a Godzilla costume to a busy market in their hometown and walks around for 47 minutes or longer screaming “Hayaku! The wolfman cometh!” before stripping down to their skivvies and running home.’

- Have people invited to the reading of the will with the promise of inheritance and have the executor of the will read a letter to them berating them harshly before handing them a bag containing some candy and loose change.

Here shall this post end, rather abruptly.