Twists and Turns . . . Philosophy Adrift by Ruel F. Pepa

twists and turns philosophy adrift Ruel F. Pepa 2014

FOREWORD twists and turns . . . philosophy adrift is a collection of essays on a variety of philosophical issues beyond the bounds of academic prescriptions. The free-flowing thoughts in every piece may lack the sophistication of formal academic philosophizing but they somehow sustain the fact that the mind can be spontaneous and at the same time critical.

Though basically non-academic, this modest volume could in some unexpected ways be a challenging read even for professional philosophers. Whatever the case may be, these are essays on no-nonsense issues of ordinary human life in its twists and turns which is the most fitting locus of practicable and meaningful philosophizing.

RFP

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE HUMAN INDIVIDUAL Rhythm of Feelings

3

On Pleasure

7

On Solitude

11

Memories

18

When Time Stands Still

23

Can We Create Ourselves?

29

THE HUMAN SOCIETY Social Interconnectivity

37

My Fault . . . Your Fault

43

Truth, Lie and Offense

49

Love = Sex?

55

On Love of Country

63

On Puppets, Puppeteers and Puppetry 68

PHILOSOPHY, ONTOLOGY, PEDAGOGY & AESTHETICS The Risks of Philosophy and The Philosophy of Risk

79

Reality or Fiction? . . .

A Question of Being Teachers . . . Learners Art-Value

87 97 106

THE HUMAN INDIVIDUAL

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Rhythm of Feelings

¨Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.¨ –Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet ¨There comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it, and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy.¨ –Kiara Sellars

These are feelings common in the human condition as we deal with people, events, objects and the future. In the face

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of an event we either feel thrilled or creepy. In anticipation of a possible circumstance we are either excited or apprehensive. In meeting another person there seems to be a spontaneous fascination or outright antipathy in us. In the presence of something we feel an impulse of fondness or aversion. We are ¨programmed¨ into these and there is no outright justification or instantaneous reason to explain all of these ¨good and bad vibes¨ as they recurrently occur in our daily lives.

In Sigmund Freud´s theory of the unconscious and Carl Gustav Jung´s theory of the collective unconscious, we are led to believe that we cannot be totally free from the distant and recent past which generally accounts for how each of us has been ¨conditioned¨ or ¨programmed¨ or ¨reinforced¨ to do what we do in the present. The whole situation defines a human being´s person with the way s/he behaves and acts and reacts and thinks and looks at her/his so-called ¨reality¨. It doesn´t therefore need a lot of ¨erudite¨ explanation to give details on why something is delightful or repugnant to us. We just feel it. There´s a certain kind of feeling that instantly ¨vibrates¨ in us and it instinctively triggers either pleasure or irritation within.

In the context of the people of a primitive society—or even of primitive-minded people in a modern society—¨good and

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bad vibes¨ are generally construed as an attitude of deep superstition. There are certain ¨spiritual¨ components in human individuals that give off automatic signals to accommodate benevolent energies and avert malevolent forces. However, Freud and Jung transcended this ¨unscientific¨ outlook without ¨throwing the baby with the bath water,¨ that is, without dismissing the validity of the issue of ¨good and bad vibes¨. Some aspects of which had been taken up by the behaviourists of the PavlovianSkinnerian type but with a serious flaw in absolutely focusing solely on environmental conditioning and totally disregarding the equally significant genetic factor. In more recent developments, the Cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake has forged a better synthesis in his theory of morphic resonance (cf. The Presence of the Past) which places more importance on the genetic factor over and above the environmental, though with a novel twist that the genetic does not actually mean innate at all but only habitual (which echoes Hume´s epistemological theory of constant conjunction in the context of human experience) within the primacy of the reality of changes continually occurring in the evolutionary process. ¨Good and bad vibes¨ are within our system. They are matters of feeling that transcend discursive explanation. It

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doesn´t however mean that our inability to get to an articulate description of their details dismisses them outside of the epistemological frontiers. At least, their reality could be meaningfully—though subjectively—understood even on the fringes of knowledge. The American (of German-Jewish extraction) philosopher Michael Polanyi devoted an entire volume—The Tacit Dimension—on the issue that there is a kind of knowledge in us which is inexpressible in a detailed discourse but whose existential meaningfulness in the reality of our being cannot just be relegated to insignificance. In fact, this is the category of knowledge that gives distinctive confidence and sanity in us to cope with the complex simulacra and contrapuntal voices that characterize actual life in this world. © Ruel F. Pepa, 24 July 2013

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On Pleasure Pleasure is a freedom-song, But it is not freedom.

It is the blossoming of your desires, But it is not their fruit.

It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high.

It is the caged taking wing, But it is not space encompassed.

Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedomsong.

And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing. 窶適ahlil Gibran, ﾂｨOn Pleasureﾂｨ in The Prophet

Pleasure is feeling good while having an experience of something in a particular situation at a certain point in

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time. It is a state of enjoyment either while alone or in the company of other people, i.e., friends, acquaintances or just anybody. It is a condition of being satisfied about a delightful encounter with an expected or unexpected state of affairs. Pleasure in normal circumstances is basically a sensation where there is no pain. In some events, however, pleasure is a transcendence of pain.

Pleasure in certain instances is contagious. It is shared and is likewise experienced by other persons to whom such pleasure is passed on. Though there are smiles not emanating from pleasure, the most obvious physical manifestation of genuine pleasure is expressed in a smile, in fact, in a hearty laughter at most. Pleasure uplifts and transports one´s spirit from the boring and ordinary flow of everyday life and takes it to a higher plane of appreciation.

Pleasure is a celebration of life in every pocket of wonderful experience snatched from the drudgery and pressure of daily work activities and social engagements. It is a feasting over what we have cherished as a precious moment of genuine personal freedom. Though in many occasions, pleasure is visibly displayed in carnivalesque revelries, its more profound variety is inward. Pleasure refreshes the heart and enlivens the mind. It inspires

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playful thoughts and arouses creativity. Pleasure stirs humour and makes us realize that on the other side of pain and sorrow, of grief and tragedy, is a place of respite and healing where sense and sanity are restored and braced.

Pleasure may not be long-term and lasting but it is more real than ¨happiness¨ which is not only nebulous but elusive—just a concept conjured up at the height of one´s emotional turn. Oft times we talk of happiness in figurative terms through the overpowering poetry that springs from a moment of pleasure. And when we look very closely at the reality of the feeling, it is nothing but pleasure, no more, no less. Why search for happiness like the ancient explorers who dreamed of drinking from ¨the fountain of immortality¨ and reaching the summit of ¨the golden mountain¨ when pleasure is right here and now in this world that we humans have created and re-created in the incessant advances of an evolutionary journey?

But pleasure has another side to which the road is much less travelled. In fact, the faint in heart hesitate to pass through it for making even the very first step is a painful try. These are the squashy type whose limited take of pleasure is the easy life of zero challenges and no bumpy roads to walk on. Pleasure to them is a no-sweat encounter

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that doesn´t test the strength and courage of their being.

This is utter hedonism in the guise of pleasure which even Epicurus condemns from the grave: ¨Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.¨ The élan vital—the life-force—of existence (cf. Henri Bergson´s Creative Evolution) has bestowed on us the power to enjoy life so that the gift of pleasure is not extinguished in everything we desire to do at work, in study, even in every struggle we face and willingly engage in despite the modicum of peril that hangs about on the path towards its resolution. Pleasure is hence not always dressed up in the comfort of an easy life but could be in the deep-rooted yearning of a visionary whose enthusiasm to achieve the dream of her/his life regardless of the perceivable hazards along the way is the supreme expression of the vigorous pleasure raring to be released from the inner sanctum of her/his heart. This is the pleasure of a warrior who doesn´t take life sitting in contentment. This is the ¨will-to-power¨ of Nietzsche´s ¨Dionysian spirit¨ in the ¨Ubermensch¨ whose sense of pleasure is still and always a ¨Yes-saying¨ to and thus a celebration of life. © Ruel F. Pepa, 19 November 2013

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On Solitude This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me.

The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s watchmen —

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links which connect the days of animated life.

–Henry David Thoreau, ¨Solitude¨ in Walden

A communion with oneself. . . . A state of being alone within the confines of one´s self-consciousness. . . . . A singular moment of intimate encounter with one´s soul. . . . A spontaneous course that takes one to the infinite terrain of her/his inner space. . . .

In most instances we don´t purposely get into it. There just seems to be some potent energy that pulls us into solitude and settles our minds in it to better understand ourselves as well as certain circumstances in life and the particular space we have in them. It is a mental state that seeks respite and tranquility. To be in solitude in this sense is hence a natural impulse.

It has some degree of depth and intensity that leads fragments of experience to converge at a point of meaningfulness and enhanced awareness. In a lot of instances, solitude heads towards enlightenment and the emergence of new insights. It is a moment that renews and refreshes one´s being in the silence of the heart.

In solitude we know ourselves much better as the moment

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leads us away from what we think we should be in the presence of the others. It is one vital opportunity for one to veer away from the expectations of other people. Solitude endows us with a rare chance to examine ourselves and the events of our lives without the fear of being observed from the outside. It is a one-on-one dialogue with one´s very own self where there is nothing to hide. One´s state of solitude is a moment of truth. It is an integrating point in time that in one way or another brings one´s humanity its fullness not in the sense of perfection but in the realization of an innate power to face the complexities of life with renewed care, commitment, courage and creativity.

In solitude we find ourselves more concretely experiencing the essence of personal and individual freedom which in many instances is lost in a flurry of social commitments, demands and pressures. We are too socially (even, too politically) attached most of the time and the whole situation hurts the very human in us as the will is lost in the frenzied commotion of the chaotic crowd.

Social attachment seems to be as inherent as our existence. We generally see ourselves as perennial social beings and extraction from it is a settled preclusion. The human will is hence inseparable from its social location. We

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have deemed it a given that society is our ontological arena—the absolute ground of our being. ¨Attachment is the situation where the human being´s understanding of her/his humanity is generated by factors of power that emanate and flow from sources that are not in—and hence outside of—the human person´s individuality. Attachment in this sense, occurs as the strong force that draws a human individual to the fold of a system characterized by interconnected demands, invented obligations, and institutionalized mandates. Through these considerations, the human being circumvents the meaning of freedom in artificial and alienated—even alienating— terms for such terms are imposed from the outside of the human individual and not something that is felt and willed from within her/himself. Very often we sacrifice our own humanity by capitulating to certain demands and expectations of legal, moral, social, political and economic nature among others. These are situations when the will is de-activated and in the process our very own humanity is held in abeyance. We therefore temporarily lose our humanity. ¨Attachment is caused by a paradigm shift that has led us to accept without any question an interpretation of being and life fully submitted to the dominance of an allencompassing system and the more specific sub-systems within it. In this connection, the meaningfulness—as well as the meaninglessness—of human life is therefore entirely determined by that very system itself. Attachment is attachment to the concrete constituents/elements of a system both in general and specific terms.¨ [from Ruel F. Pepa´s ¨The Principle of Non-Attachment and

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the Problem of Human Meaningfulness¨ in SOPHOPHILIA (http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Sophophilia)] In solitude we find ourselves released from these attachments. In the process, we get into a situation where better insights pop up and bring us to a broader horizon where new possibilities are not only ideas but practicable concepts couched on promising realities to boost the potency of meaningful life.

The creative impulse that intensifies one´s moment of solitude brings forth intricate exquisiteness captured in artistic expressions as well as spiritual profundity that finds articulation in philosophic formulations. In this sense, solitude is a gift of our humanity. It affirms the very human in us by way of self-reflexivity, appreciation and a sense of synthesis. It is a state of being that allows us to look within ourselves. If ever we wish to explore the location of the sixth sense, it becomes manifest in a moment of solitude.

In his The Philosophy of Solitude (available on http://www.amazon.com/philosophy-solitude-John-CowperPowys/dp/090424718X) John Cowper Powys opines that we often get into unhappy situations because of too much involvement with others and their life circumstances.

Solitude is hence the way to extract ourselves from them.

However, solitude is not a means of escape from the hurly-

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burly of life in the world of social interactions. It rather provides us with a reflective space to strengthen our individuality so that our presence is not only magnified in moments of social encounters but also meaningfully acknowledged through the sensibility of our resolve when decisive action is essentially called for.

Solitude is an occasion to silence—i.e., to calm—the mind.

In Chapter Three of the Tibetan Buddhist volume, The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind [http://www.lamayeshe.com/?sect=article&id=139], titled ―Experiencing Silent Wisdom,‖ the author, Lama Yeshe observes: ¨At certain times, a silent mind is very important, but ´silent´ does not mean closed. The silent mind is an alert, awakened mind; a mind seeking the nature of reality. When problems in the sense world bother you, the difficulty comes from your sense perception, not from the external objects you perceive. And when concepts bother you, that also does not come from outside but from your mind’s grasping at concepts. Therefore, instead of trying to stop problems emotionally by grasping at new material objects or ideas, check up silently to see what’s happening in your mind. ¨No matter what sort of mental problem you experience, instead of getting nervous and fearful, sit back, relax, and be as silent as possible. In this way you will automatically be able to see reality and understand the root of the problem.¨

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On a philosophical note, we may appreciably conclude the present discussion with the acknowledgment that solitude is a locus of great consequence to realize the Socratic challenge, ¨Know yourself¨ by way of self-examination for ¨An unexamined life is not worth living.¨ © Ruel F. Pepa, 6 November 2013

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Memories Mem´ries light the corners of my mind Misty watercolour mem´ries of the way we were Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were Can it be that it was all so simple then Or time has rewritten every line?

If we had a chance to do it all again Tell me, would we? Could we?

(Lines from the song ¨The Way We Were¨)

Things of the past that cross the threshold of the present . . .

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Consciousness here and now that gives access to bygone events . . .

Images that force their way into one´s mental landscape . . .

Memories may be exciting and thus desired; they may be tragic and hence exorcised. We don´t get bored and tired rehearsing the former while in case of the latter, we always try to look for an escape route. But is there really such an escape route?

Memories of great and stirring things are at our beck and call in moments when we need to get inspired. They seem to be subservient to our will for we can instantly bring them to mind. In moments of solitude, they are just around the corner of our wakefulness ready to be tapped. They may not be originally fantastic but the mind at the moment of recall has the power to embellish every detail in their sequential order. They are like snapshots we breathe life into and instantly get transformed with the vividness of stunning imagery. Like in the lyrics of the famous song, ¨The Way We Were¨ popularized by Barbra Streisand, these are memories ¨of the smiles we left behind, smiles we gave to one another¨; these are memories of the ¨laughter we will remember.¨

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But likewise in the same song is heard that ¨memories may be beautiful and yet, what´s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget¨. There are painful memories. But can we just simply throw them away in the sea of forgetfulness? Are we in control of these sorrowful memories in the same way we hold in our hands the fancy of those exhilarating ones? It seems that these sad memories have a life and power of their own. We just don´t have the strength to be in control of them. They persist and assert themselves in our consciousness and dare the frontiers of our sanity. We don´t easily get rid of them. In fact, they could be likened to perennially fresh wounds that never heal even in a lifetime.

Memories inspire the human soul and stimulate one´s heart´s desire. . .

Memories dishearten the spirit and intensify sorrow and pain. . . .

Memories bring us to a mountain-peak high . . .

Memories lead us on the brink of a dark abyss. . . .

This is the human condition which is always being reckoned in terms of the abstract present but the past doesn´t seem to want to let us move on. The present qua present is

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flitting and elusive so that what is concretely held in abeyance is the ¨persistence of memory¨ (with apologies to Salvador Dali) and the lure of the future. The present therefore becomes the convergence point of what already happened and the things yet to come. On the one hand, we have unrelenting memories of things gone by while on the other, we are suffused with the will to bring forth the realization of our dreams.

Nevertheless, in a lot of times, memories relentlessly bombard our consciousness and in the silence of our heart we ask, Are they the most fitting essence of how we should look at human existence? Are memories the most unquestionable evidence that sustains the reality of the mind and hence the existence of what transpires in it? More than being riddle-solvers, we are also castle-builders and the power behind these abilities does not simply rise up from each of our unique individuality at this point of time but has long been marching on from the collective memories of our ancestors since time immemorial.

Our reality is much larger than the individual life we have had since the first time we saw the light in this world upon birth. Our reality can never be divorced from the unbroken trail of past events, distant and proximate. We boldly claim our prowess to create the future and such has been

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concretely demonstrated through generations. But we must humbly and reticently accept the fact that we are fashioned by the memories of our humanity etched on the tablets of our cultural legacy. In this sense, there is a much deeper way of looking at memories than those we have in our individual conscious minds. The reality of the collective unconscious is genetically embedded in our psychophysiological assemblage which is not only an instance of the psychological persistence of memories but also of their cultural endurance in the biological infrastructure.

In the final analysis, we are creatures of memories both in the personal sense as well as in the cultural. Š Ruel F. Pepa, 10 December 2013

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When Time Stands Still . . . ¨. . . The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a ´self´ out of it. Don´t misunderstand.

Attention is essential but not to the past as past. . . .¨ –Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now The good life whose exhilaration is now a thing of the past. ...

A tragic event that has caused a deep scar in one´s psyche. ...

Then time has stood still and what lies ahead is a dark abyss. One´s reality has suddenly changed on the spur of the moment and the drive to move on sputters and quits.

And ¨the deep silence of the heart¨ creeps in and reigns.

The sense of the present—much less that of the future—is lost as one floats forlorn in the sea of the past which has

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swallowed the very expanse of time itself. The past is able to capture and imprison a grieving heart and a soul in anguish. The past has the power to prevent the sorrowful to stand before the noontime sun of the present, much more before the sunset that promises a dawn filled with new hopes and opportunities.

The sense of the past is truly a category within our mental framework and we ought to see the past objectively as it is.

As far as our temporal existences are concerned, we are participants of the present, spectators of the past, and conjurers of the future. The past indubitably teaches us a myriad of lessons that give credence to George Santayana words, ¨Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.¨ The past serves its epistemic and cognitive purposes for us as its lessons allow us to better understand the whys and wherefores of the present.

However, present participation in the past is not only a blunder but a grave delusion because the past is final and irrevocable and we only view it in hindsight. Time travel remains a fantasy and there is no way that we can ever locate ourselves in the past at this point in time for such is a distortion of the logic of time—a contradiction in terms.

We are always located in the present and the past from the point of view of the present is a matter of memory.

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In view of this, we say that, on the one hand, the human condition precludes the present´s participation in the past.

But, on the other hand, we acknowledge the fact that the past´s participation in the present is a reality. In the words of Rupert Sheldrake—which is also the title of his major treatise—there is ¨the presence of the past¨ in every conscious species on earth. We who are in the present are in a lot of ways consequences of our respective biological and psycho-social programming—an aspect of the past that constantly remains in our human constitution. In this sense, the past present in us is a natural reality of which no one can totally get rid.

Nevertheless, this reality is not a circumstance that holds us back from treading the progressive path towards the delight of new experiences and the promises of new possibilities which make life worth living. The past present in us as an inherent actuality of our existence may even be portrayed as a leading factor that points us to new and refreshing insights and discoveries to inspire not only our own ascent to higher and more refined intensity of being but even those of others´ and even those of the coming generations´. In other words, the intrinsic process that possibilizes the presence of the past in us is not in any way an impediment but a dynamic that defines where an

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individual person is and where s/he is not, as well. The boundaries of our personhood which owe their reality to the past present in us is in a significant way facilitative of how we ought to face present realities and conjure up future possibilities in a purely realistic way. The past present in us at this point in time is therefore not an impediment.

The past becomes an impediment in the context of a delusion wherein one makes her/his present—i.e., her/his ¨here and now¨—present in the past. In this event, a human individual dwells in a past which has irrationally made her/him a powerless captive either of an extremely delightful phantasm of a bygone experience exclusively persistent in the landscape of her/his own imagination or of a tragic circumstance that has shattered every fibre of her/his sanity and no ray of hope is seen over the horizon for even the horizon itself is nowhere found and there is only a dark abyss.

It is one thing for the past to be present in the present and another for the present to be present in the past. The former doesn´t constitute the past as an impediment but the latter does for the former is a spontaneous reality while the latter is an empirical absurdity. It is not difficult to find the past in one´s ¨here and now¨ but for one to locate her/himself in the past at this point of time is an

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impossibility. When memory operates, it is not a case of putting oneself in the past but rather an instance of appropriating the past into the present. It cannot be the case that there is meaningfulness in the present being pushed towards the past; meaningfulness is magnified when the past is pulled towards the present. The latter´s highest point of achievement is called history, whether it is one of an individual or of a nation.

The truth of the matter is we cannot live in the past and to attempt to do so in an absolutely illusory manner is an impediment to the natural course of human (as distinguished by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his The Human Phenomenon from biological) evolution. On the one hand, we see the normal world marching onward to higher levels of achievements with the optimism of an undaunted warrior. On the other hand, we find the ¨romanticizers¨ of a bygone era who are left behind embracing the petrified relics of a glorified past that will never be revivified, as well as the ¨low-spirited cynics¨ whose lives have been mired by past tragedies and thus failed to see and much less beat a clear path towards a promising future.

As co-creators of this evolving world, we know that the past is truly final and irrevocable. However, it is not quite

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accurate to think that being final and irrevocable, the past cannot be changed. We as self-conscious, creative individuals are endowed with the power to signify the past for our purposes and such signification we call ¨history¨. It is the lessons of history that enlighten us to better understand the present and to more intelligently approach the challenges of the future which we ourselves are likewise tasked to create. The great Lebanese sage, Kahlil Gibran, remarks: ¨The consequences that cause sorrow and rapture are the seeds that the past has sown in the field of the soul, and by which the future shall profit.¨ (¨On Wisdom¨ in The Vision . . . http://4umi.com/gibran/vision/10 ) History as a matter of signification is therefore an interpretation as well as a re-interpretation of the past. To be relevant to the state of affairs of every generation, the past as history needs to face the challenge of continual reinterpretation for the purpose of drawing inspiration from it amidst contemporary challenges. This is ¨being in control¨ of the past; this is ¨changing the past¨. This is a defiance of the past as an impediment to growth and progress both personal and social. © Ruel F. Pepa, 27 November 2013

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Can We Create Ourselves?

This question needs to pass through a clearing house: 1. Can we: Are we able? Do we have the abilities? Do we have the inherent power? Are we inherently empowered?

2. We: In general, i.e., taken collectively as in the context of society or taken individually?

3. Create: To cause to come into being, i.e., to bring forth into existence through a process or a series of actions?

4. Ourselves: Our being taken collectively as in the context of society or taken individually? Our personhood in general or the individuality of each of us?

With the above-considered matters, we may recast the question to:

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Do we have the collective inherent power (or ability) or individual inherent powers (or abilities) to cause to come (or to bring forth) our being or existence as persons—either individually or collectively—through a certain process or a series of actions?

Let´s simplify the issue and specifically focus on a more fundamental question: Does an individual human being have the inherent abilities to cause to come into being the individual person in her/him through a certain process?

Has there been an instance wherein a human being created her/himself? In other words: Can we cite a case wherein someone caused to bring into being her or his very own self? And what about the self? Is it the person that presents her/himself in the world as a perceivable human body endowed with life, consciousness and more uniquely, selfconsciousness? Let us start off from this point.

I have not—and am almost sure nobody has—witnessed an instance wherein a human being is in existence in this world at this point in time after s/he fully created himself, i.e., after s/he caused her/himself to fully come into being.

Nobody has been able to cause her/his physico-chemical

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components and breathe of life to come into being by her/himself. In the Prologue of Nikos Kazantzakis´ The Saviours of God: Spiritual Exercises [http://www.angel.net/~nic/askitiki.html], it is written: Life startles us at first; it seems somewhat beyond the law, somewhat contrary to nature, somewhat like a transitory counteraction to the dark eternal fountains; but deeper down we feel that Life is itself without beginning, an indestructible force of the Universe. Otherwise, from where did that superhuman strength come which hurls us from the unborn to the born . . .

But there is an aspect of a human being which s/he is capable of creating and that is her/his unique individual person—the non-physico-chemical component of her/his humanity—through the operation of her/his conscious mind. However, the conscious mind is not alone in the process of this particular dynamic of creation as it interweaves and interacts along with the genetic factor and the social milieu in a systematic confluence. Theoretically, we could say that the present existence of a particular human being had long been a possibility in terms of genetics. In other words, he had long been ¨created¨ to a certain extent. The genetic component of a human individual is permanently written thru the DNA language that defines her/his individual uniqueness. In this sense, s/he did not create ¨her/himself alone by the operation of

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her/his conscious mind. However, the process of creation does not stop there; it goes on and on as the human individual lives and continues to ¨create¨ his person through the conscious mind that operates side-by-side now with the genetic factor and the social milieu as well. These three aspects of being are therefore ¨co-creators¨ in the spontaneous flourishing of the human person.

A human being´s inherent abilities to create (to cause to come into being) her/himself (her/his individual personhood) through a series of actions is a chief component in the interweaving and interacting factors constituting the reality of human flourishing. In this sense, we are not only talking of creation but of constant systematic re-creation. There is a dynamic process that unceasingly goes on in the life of every human individual geared to cause the coming into being of certain new things that enhance her/his person. This dynamic process is grounded in the genetic order and the environmental location—internal and external.

The human being upon birth is not a completely and perfectly finished product. Borrowing a special term from Jean-Paul Sartre´s Being and Nothingness [http://philastockton.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sartre__being_and_nothingness1.pdf], a living human being is a

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¨being-for-itself¨ (etre-pour-sois)—a conscious being or a being of consciousness—that is open to changes and new possibilities. S/He is Heidegger´s Dasein and Karl Jaspers´ Existenz. The Sartrean ¨being-for-itself¨ is a project-in-themaking; an incomplete and imperfect yet progressive being experiencing ¨anguish, abandonment and despair¨ [cf.

Sartre´s ¨Existentialism is a Humanism¨ (http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/273/documents/sartr e-existentialism-squashed.pdf)] as well as relief, exhilaration and wonder in the here-and-now.

The ¨being-for-itself¨ is not a passive spectator on the sideline of life´s struggles but an active participant endowed with a unique kind of creativity in forging new realities. S/He is a willing challenge-facer—even a risktaker—to create the future not only for himself and for his generation but for the coming ones even if s/he knows he will not surely be rewarded to witness their realizations.

The ¨being-for-itself¨ in the Nietzschean parlance is a ¨Yes-sayer-to-life¨. This notion affirms, re-affirms, confirms and re-confirms the reality that the ¨being-foritself¨ is not only a creator but also a re-creator—even a co-creator and co-recreator of new realities with the other ¨beings-for-themselves¨.

Conversely, there is the ¨being-in-itself¨ (etre-en-sois)—

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non-self-conscious, closed, complete, non-creative, nonhuman. Š Ruel F. Pepa, 22 October 2013

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THE HUMAN SOCIETY

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Social Interconnectivity ¨Social networking¨ is the third-wave (cf. Alvin Toffler´s Third Wave . . . http://www.gobookee.org/alvin-tofflerthird-wave/ ) redefinition of the concept of society via the highest stage of technological evolution achieved so far in the present era which is also known as the cyberspace age.

It is the actual realization of what Marshall McLuhan calls ¨the global village¨ in his The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man published in 1962 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/87539506/the-GutenbergGalaxy-the-Making-of-Typographic-Man ) and Understanding Media: The Extension of Man published in 1964 (http://beforebefore.net/80f/s11/media/mcluhan.pdf ). It is a transcendence of space-time, not that our sense of space and time is vanished but is likewise redefined as society has passed through the same process of reconfiguration. For

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one individual person to connect with another, geographical location is immaterial. Someone in the US may have a live virtual conversation right now with another in Ukraine in real time. This is virtual reality. The reality of the shrunken world figuratively spoken of some decades ago is an absolute actuality here and now.

Redefined along with the concept of society and the spacetime sense is the concept of personhood. The human person, in the context of cyberspace has been essentialized while physicality of being is set aside. It makes some real philosophical sense in a way as it has been classically held that the core of humanness is fundamentally defined in non-material/non-physical terms and hence a distinguishing factor that separates the human being from the animals. It is our material/physical reality that links us with the animal world. It is however our self-consciousness, creativity and spirituality that put the demarcation line between our humanity and the animal world. In cyberspace, such nonphysical/non-material core is magnified and has redefined personhood as an instance of dematerialization. The human person is essentialized in a dematerialized state of affairs.

While converging on a social network (e.g., Friendster, Facebook, Twitter), human physicality is a secondary consideration and what matters to a large extent is virtual

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presence manifest in the articulation of thoughts and expression of feelings as well.

The ontological configuration of cyberspace or virtual-world reality is all in the mind. It is the ¨post-modern¨ realization of the subjective-idealist theorizing of the Irish philosopher of the early modern period, George Berkeley. ¨In terms of the digital technology of our contemporary world which Alvin Toffler calls the ´third wave´ era, the Berkeleyan paradigm is closest to the notion of ´virtual reality´. . . . ¨Berkeley´s conception of reality denies the existence of matter. He simply believes that matter, as this concept is used in physics, does not exist. . . . . ¨Berkeley´s reality—the world we experience around us on a daily basis—is virtual reality. In this reality, the ´computer´ that processes data is God whose power is far more immense than what we limited humans could come up with directly absorbing and processing all our experiences and sensations in our minds. We, in fact, actually explore and move around in the world that God has created in the same manner and capability that we can explore and move around in the spatio-temporal milieu of a man-made virtual reality. Yet both these worlds—in the Berkeleyan sense—are nothing but illusory. Reality, therefore, rests alone on one´s experience of them and on the power that processes information to generate them.¨ [From Ruel F. Pepa´s ¨The Matrix Movie Series: A Berkeleyan Affirmation of Reality¨ pp. 171-173 in Introduction to Philosophy: Readings in Academic

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Philosophy (with Logic) . . . http://issuu.com/ruel56/docs/intro_to_philo ] Virtual reality in its post-Berkeleyan rendering is no longer particularly concerned with the denial of material/physical reality but more especially concentrated on the importance of the mental, dematerialized aspect of being. In other words, cyberspace ontology capitalizes on the de-emphasis or de-signification of spatio-temporal materiality. The cyberspace is therefore a landscape of boundless possibilities that stretches on in self-generating dimensions whose regulating factor is the infinite flexibility of the imaginative and creative expanse of the human mind.

A social network, whose operational arena is the cyberspace, is a dematerialized system of human interactive energies that forge relationships regardless of locational instant. Facebook as a case in point is a social network where people can relate with each other without having necessarily been acquainted physically, i.e., as warm bodies concretely present at a certain space-time point called paramount reality. In fact, friendships ranging from the most superficial type to the most intimate are established, nurtured and sustained even without necessarily getting into an actual face-to-face encounter in the so-called paramount reality. Information from the most

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banal to the most essential in terms of personal or social importance are exchanged, disseminated, shared, discussed and debated on in a social network. A pressing issue can get viral online through a social network and draw the attention of prospective advocates of different degrees of commitment and detractors of varied levels of dissatisfaction.

A social network is a post-personal conduit that is capable to yield the most detailed information or hide the most guarded facts about individual persons depending on the degree of their relational intimacy with or level of impersonal alienation from each other. Its functional base is in the hands of individual operators engaged within an agreed-upon parameters wherein one does not only have the power to control her/his limitations but also the possibilities that could be triggered by the degree of her/his openness towards the other. At a certain point, social networking is a power game.

A social network is also utilized as an effective tactical channel of profitable business or commercial enterprises, both small-scale and big-time, to advertise/endorse/promote goods and services on a virtual person-to-person deal where travel time and transportation cost are non-issues as far as salesman-customer meet-up

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is concerned. This is post-modern salesmanship where even a well-furnished business office with actual location address is a thing of the past. In this case, a social network makes a business appointment less businesslike and more personal. Online deals via social networks bridge the gap between, and hence dissolve, the traditionally held personal-formal divide in interactive engagement.

Social networking in many instances is a potent instrumentality that raises issues and advocacies of political import on local, national even international scale. It is an effective tool to upgrade the awareness of stakeholders in a particular setting by way of substantial and detailed information dissemination. A social network is an operative agency to rally people to decisive action based on principled platforms aimed to effect an imminent event to change a social order. As a political tool, it could be reasonably inferred that social networking is both creative and destructive. It should not therefore be underestimated as a basic means able to topple a government and inaugurate a new one. Š Ruel F. Pepa, 13 November 2013

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My Fault . . . Your Fault ¨What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.¨ –Friedrich Nietzsche ―If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. ‖ (Monseigneur Bienvenu in Les Miserables) ― Victor Hugo

The tendency of people to blame others in the occurrence of untoward incidents seems to be a spontaneous reaction.

As such, we take the matter as something normal and in many cases, blaming gets the approval of the majority in a society wherein a general consensus has been reached. The highest point attained in the act of blaming is at the level of condemnation. An event whose harmful—even destructive—effect on the people is of tremendous

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magnitude ¨naturally¨ results to a level of condemnation wherein it is not only the act that is slammed but more so the perpetrator(s) of the act. The act of blaming is grounded on a moral foundation. By and large, nobody blames one who has done something considered moral in a particular socio-cultural context. However, in another context where the ¨cultural operators¨ (as in a gang or a criminal syndicate) value more the opposite of what normal and decent people consider to be good and acceptable, the finger of blame is pointed to someone who has failed to toe the line. Thus, we may say that blaming in general is an act of disapproval, a kind of censure to the failure of someone to achieve a desired result.

In actual instances, though, the act of blaming has a certain degree of complexity especially if we focus more on the subjective perspective because experience has made us get used to the common tendency of individual persons to lay the blame on others when there has been a failure to achieve what the former originally desired. In this sense, we may say that at least blaming is rather utilized as a defence mechanism and at most, an escape route, so to speak. Blaming others therefore becomes an automatic way out to save one´s ass. In the process, it involves a ¨narrative,¨ a story or a interpretation—even a reinterpretation—of the issue at hand to generate

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sympathetic agreement from the majority of interested observers through which the latter are expected to be convinced. In a lot of cases, such narratives are distorted accounts of what really happened particularly in circumstances where the blaming party holds more power by virtue of the space of prominence it occupies over and above the other side that heaps the blame.

Socrates´ tragic experience is a case in point. He was blamed and accused by his adversaries, the Sophists, of poisoning the minds of the young people of Athens. On that basis, he was indicted in court and was given the death sentence. We all know through Plato´s accounts that the event was characterized by a distortion of facts. The real reason why Socrates was condemned is because the Sophists´ traditional reputation and unchallenged prominence in the splendid society of ancient Athens were at the brink of ignominy. As we reflect on this event, we see that the blamed is the victim.

However, it is not always the case because there are states of affairs wherein the ¨blamers¨ are the victims and the act of blaming is prompted more truthfully and is hence morally legitimate. In such cases, we find people who have been entrusted with serious responsibilities along with the appropriate resources for them to act judiciously and with

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integrity to accomplish such responsibilities. But along the way they have shown an attitude of appalling carelessness, even excessive negligence and idiotic recklessness in the performance of the duties solemnly delegated to them. In fact, worse than carelessness, negligence and recklessness are the conscious and aggressive efforts on the part of these ¨trustees¨ to impudently ruin the trust bestowed on them and to even squander the very resources handed over to their care for conscientious disposal.

Related to this are states of affairs in government wherein the accountability of an elected official is deemed a public trust. The cost of failure is lofty and the wayward infringement of an official´s ¨contractual obligation¨ to the electorates is a mortal transgression. To be stoned, therefore, with a truckload of blames is the logical consequence more than merely expected but rather actively called for. Stealing public funds budgeted for national development programs in hundreds of millions of euros or dollars not only once but regularly annually within the span of a government official´s term of office is an absolutely heinous crime of sheer plunder and high-level economic sabotage of grand scale.

But a new level of complexity gets in the way as we reach this particular point of consideration because in some less

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politically mature societies where there is only a simulacrum of democracy superficially seen in certain practices and instrumentalities as the election of candidates to government offices, the blame should not solely be flung on the elected public officials but likewise on the electorates themselves. It may be reasonable to blame the corrupt and incompetent public officials who have pulled the country to extreme poverty as they enrich themselves with the people´s money they steal from the national treasury. But it may likewise be equally reasonable to blame the people themselves who have put thieves and incompetent people in public offices to victimize them and make their lives miserable. What we see here is a condition wherein, on the one hand, the victims get to a point where they relentlessly blame and ruthlessly condemn the victimizers, while on the other hand, the more critical segment of the ¨victim class¨ which constitutes the minority likewise gets to a similar point where they woefully blame their gullible colleagues and lamentably accuse them of utter stupidity.

While veering away from a theoretical discussion of the act of blaming, it is perhaps more practicable at this point in time to problematize the trajectory of the act itself. Along the way we ask the questions: What then is the pragmatic end-point of the act of blaming that one does? Is our act of blaming an issue or a perpetrator of a blamable deed

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heading towards transformation? In a more succinct way of asking it, Is our act of blaming creative/constructive?

The tragic end of reasonable, judicious and prudent act of blaming is for it to fall on deaf ears and aimlessly fly like dust in the wind. . . . a fruitless endeavour . . . an exercise in futility. Š Ruel F. Pepa, 24 September 2013

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Truth, Lie and Offense

¨When anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach me.¨ Rene Descartes ¨Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.¨ Marcus Tullius Cicero

To take offense at someone´s remarks or at something being brought to one´s consciousness is basically a matter of subjective feeling, i.e., to feel upset by another person´s words or acts or by something taken as personally abusive or insulting. An offense´s point of origin could either be intentional or unwitting. The former is consciously meant to

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harm feelings while the latter makes the human source at least sincerely apologetic and at most deeply remorseful upon recognition of the pain s/he has caused towards the other person.

There are however instances of the latter type wherein despite the realization of the unwitting offense, the ¨offender¨ doesn´t take an effort to rectify things and appease the feeling of the offended. With the self-insistence that s/he didn´t actually mean to hurt the other person´s feeling, s/he doesn´t feel obliged at all to at least utter an apologetic word. What persists is the thought: ¨I meant no offense and what I said was just an objective assessment of the circumstances where s/he has incidentally been into.

Now that s/he feels offended, that is her/his own take of my view and I don´t intend to apologize because I don´t owe her/him an explanation. In fact, an explanation from my part could even be further misinterpreted and taken as a rationalization just to kill the unpleasant effect of the ¨offense¨ and hence deepen the grudge on the part of the offended as an afterthought.¨ But among friends and to sensitive gentle individuals, an apologetic remark or a regretful attitude towards the offended party is a spontaneous move.

On the other hand, an intentional offense is of a different

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grain. It is premeditated to denigrate the person and circumstances of at least an individual human being or at most a group, a society, even a nation. A most recent case in point is the intentional offensive remarks made by a certain Devina DeDiva, a Singaporean national of (Asian) Indian origin, who hurled vulgar and blatantly racist statements on Facebook upon learning that a Filipina—the beauteous Megan Young—won the Miss World title in the recently concluded international beauty pageant in Bali, Indonesia. DeDiva started off with the following post on her FB Timeline: ¨Miss Philippines is Miss World? What a joke! I did not know those maids have anything else in them. Ha Ha Ha¨ The post generated a thread of critical comments from different individuals who vehemently disagreed with DeDiva along with De Diva´s extremely virulent countercomments and heightened attacks not only towards the Filipina Miss World but towards the Filipinos in general and could be summed up in a broad-spectrum insult that Filipinos are a bunch of contemptible, filthy, reeking and indigent dregs of humanity unworthy even of the least honour that may ever be bestowed on ordinary human beings in normal circumstances.

The matter has gone viral on the internet and has triggered Filipinos and Filipino-loving foreigners all over the world to launch heavy and ¨solid-steel¨ discursive missiles spewing

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condemnatory lines on toxic scale. The aftermath when the gunsmoke is finally cleared has left the soul-devastated DeDiva alone by herself. She even had to decide to close her Facebook account and has to eke out a living the harder way this time that her job appointment in a firm managed by Filipino administrators in Singapore has been irrevocably terminated. There has even been some news from the Philippine community in Singapore that she rarely gets to the street and busy public places because of the fear of getting mauled. DeDiva´s case is a particular instance wherein someone has created a ghost out of offensive remarks—a nasty and destructive criticism—made not only towards a single individual but to a people.

Nevertheless, not all so-called critical remarks are as overwhelmingly malevolent and damaging as the previous case. Some sectors might take certain remarks to be malicious and hence offensive whereas other sectors would give them a run for their money and take them with a grain of salt, so to speak. When the controversial Dan Brown in his most recently circulated bestseller, Inferno, portrays through one of the novel´s protagonists (Dr. Sienna Brooks) the city of Manila as ¨the gates of hell¨ with the city´s ¨six-hour-long traffic jams, suffocating pollution and a miserable sex trade . . . I´ve run through the gates of hell,¨ no Filipino took offense at it except the lone out-of-

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tune voice of the Chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority, Francis Tolentino, who was massively booed and heckled at by no less than most of the Manileños themselves and practically by the majority of the Filipinos who totally agreed—though with deep sadness in their hearts and rancour towards the past and present administrators of the city—with Brown´s characterization.

As we have initially established, taking offense is basically a matter of feeling. But for an individual´s feeling to take offense at someone or something, there are certain instances when such feeling has to connect with an awareness of truth and falsity. A critical remark grounded in truth may therefore not be offensive but rather construed as a wake-up call to intensify the plea for a person´s or a society´s obligation to seriously get involved in the urgency of a situation that needs to be attended to, rectified, transformed or eliminated. Corollary to this is the issuance of a critical remark that is automatically construed as abusive, insulting and disparaging because of its essential aspect that brazenly distorts the truth and tampers with reality. This is offensive.

It doesn´t however follow that if a remark is grounded in truth, nobody will ever take offense at it. There are instances in the human condition wherein certain well-

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guarded truths harmless to both the keepers and the public while concealed should rather be left in the tacit dimension than be divulged under the noontime sun, so to speak.

These are delicate information whose truths are unquestionable but their public disclosure would mean personal pain to the keepers. Let us not therefore stir the pond under which personal truths harmless to both the keepers and the public rest in perfect tranquillity.

Nonetheless, hidden truths harmless to their personal keepers but harmful to the public while held in secrecy must be sought after, found and exposed to the public eye to be opposed, criticized and condemned. In an event of this nature, the ¨personal keeper¨ of a truth previously held in secret is expected to automatically take offense at its public exposure. But such is a ¨pseudo-offense,¨ for during the entire time when that truth had been kept in secrecy, that was also the period when it was causing harm and pain to the public. Now that it has been revealed, the ¨real crime¨ is made known to the public who reasonably take offense at it. Corrupt governments are liable culprits at whose fraudulence and perfidy the citizens of a country do take offense once such heinous crime is publicly exposed. © Ruel F. Pepa, 7 October 2013

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Love = Sex? ―Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling – the equality of all lovers. . . .‖ –Martin Buber, I and Thou ¨There may be an attraction that is initially sexual between two humans. If they start living together, this cannot endure for that long and be the fulfillment of the relationship. At some point, sexual/emotional [attraction] needs to deepen and the transcendental dimension needs to come in, to some extent, for it to deepen. Then true love shines through the personal. The important thing is that true love emanates from the timeless, non-formal dimension of who you are. Is that shining through the personal love that is to do with affinity of forms?

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If it is not, there is complete identification with form, and complete identification with form is ego.¨ –Eckhart Tolle, ¨Personal Love¨ http://www.eckharttolle.com/newsletter/april-2011 The Biology of Sex Sex and love are two distinct and independent ontological spheres. One stands without the other. The latter is not required in places where the former is sought. It is just a matter of being there where one gets into an agreement with another either for a fee or just for the heck of it—no strings attached. In such cases, the condition could be open, casual and fearless. However, it could also be so private and discreet, even extremely secretive and with a lot of risks involved if divulged.

Sex, being biologically instinctual, is basically amoral. In normal circumstances, experiencing sex entails diverse levels of thrill and exhilaration. In this sense, sex between two (or more) consenting individuals is fundamentally an outward expression of natural psycho-physical desire mutually felt by one towards the other. We humans like those of the so-called lower species in class Mammalia are animalia sexualem. In fact, the eminent (though highly controversial) Austrian psychiatrist (later psychoanalyst)

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Sigmund Freud robustly theorized that sex is the foundational and determining factor—the begin-all and the end-all of meaningfulness—that sets into motion the complexities of the human condition in the unending experiential trails of pains and pleasures that characterize the constancy of human existence. Whether we agree with Freud (and there have been a lot of more sensible and erudite scientific minds who have vehemently disagreed with him and vigorously lambasted him as well) or not is not our present concern.

The Sociology of Sex But there is more to sex than the plainly biological.

Focusing on the human realm, we enter into the sociocultural domain with all its moral ethos and traditions, standards and conventions. Sex in this light is hence contextually seen contrasting in the distinctive loci of permission and prohibition. Instances where its practice is moral on the one hand and immoral on the other are socially decided, established and instituted in both written and unwritten principles, rules and decrees. In certain cases, the moral is eclipsed by the legal while in other occurrences, the moral just has to push the legal aside. But one thing that stands out and transcends this whole morallegal landscape is the matter of feeling—human affection at

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its most passionate point prone and persistent to defy social mores and cultural norms.

Society is basically defined in terms of human association and interaction. Personal relationship is a primal consideration that makes up a society. In this connection, social relationships assign certain roles to people as relatives, neighbours, friends and colleagues among others.

Beyond this issue, however, is the emotion factor involved in a relationship. One´s feeling of intimacy towards another is reckoned in terms of the degree of their closeness with each other but such closeness is set within the distinct bounds of socially defined and accepted areas of interaction. Society is hence formed in, by and for human relationships wherein social roles determine the scope and limits of the expression and measure of affective closeness one is supposed to show towards another (or others) in a particular type of relationship. This is the specific point where the subject of love enters.

The Sociology of Love and How It Intersects with Sex Love is expressed and qualitatively viewed in terms of the degree of intimacy in a certain type of relationship. In this consideration, we should look into the various types of relationship in society and distinguish from them the different expressions of love shown in diverse degrees of

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depth and breadth of intimacy. A child´s love to her/his parents; a parent´s love to her/his children; a brother´s / sister´s love to her/his sibling(s); an individual person´s expression of sisterly/brotherly love to her/his close friend; a husband´s love towards his wife and vice versa; a girl´s love towards her sweetheart. There are myriads of instances wherein love is conveyed in various degrees of feeling. In fact, the term ¨love¨ is even used to express one´s feeling towards pet animals and highly valued objects as well. But for our present purposes, we specifically use it in the context of the human condition.

Love in the landscape of human interactive relationship is a broad terrain. It doesn´t require the essence of sex to fully define and describe its substance. It is an entirely distinct sphere as sex likewise is. In reference to David Hume´s theory of causality, there is NO necessary connection between love and sex. Using the mathematical model of set theory, it is a given that sex and love are independent sets.

However, it is also an empirical reality that there is an intersecting area wherein sex and love connect. In the Humean formulation, we concur to the notion that they do not actually have a necessary connection but the area of intersection reveals what Hume called a constant conjunction. The connection is therefore not analytically (or

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logically) but rather synthetically (or empirically) established.

Philosophizing on the Interconnectivity of Sex and Love Within the intersecting area, sex becomes an expression of love. The intensity of love in a zealous commitment between two human beings is not only given expression in the sentimental meeting of souls intimately connected but also in the explicitness of physical engagement as a performative celebration of such commitment elevated to the level of a mutual erotic passion. Sex in this particular context makes love exhilarating, even electrifying. So that love in its erotic form achieves a completeness and sex as it is performed in erotic love is spontaneously raised to the level of aesthetic exquisiteness. Sex in this sense becomes an art.

The interconnectivity of sex and love in the present specific context is an ancient one. It is characterized by a lofty metaphysical formulation enshrined in the mythological traditions of antiquity. And there is something splendid in this interconnectivity.

Love in these mythologies — more pronounced in the

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Mesopotamian tradition — is viewed as a primal life-force characterized by 1) fertility (possibilizing-of-being); 2) formity (molding-into-being); and 3) formality (orderingof-being).

In the Greek tradition, it is a primeval energy that cyclically flows from a universal timeless ocean — the Primordial EROS — to the ―lakes‖ of gods/goddesses-in-time-andspace — Aphrodite and Eros — to the ―rivers‖ of human passion and back to the universal timeless ocean.

Egyptian mythology dramatizes that in the ―rivers‖ of human passion, love expresses itself as 1) physical desire (ka love); 2) sharing of the soul (ba love); and 3) commitment of the spirit (akh love).

Ontologically, the love portrayed in ancient classical mythologies cannot be boldly signified if not viewed as the spirit that ―inspires‖ the embracing arms of creation and destruction, order and chaos, peace and violence. In Greek mythology, love (Eros) is the intensifying passion that calls into being the sting of destruction/violence (Eris).

Love is, hence, an ancient wave that vibrates, interpenetrates, and interconnects the divine and the human in an eternal cosmic dance that makes life dangerously exciting, poignantly challenging and desperately imminent in its expression of a ―longing for itself‖.

[From: Ruel F. Pepa, ¨The Dynamics of Love as Fertility, Formity and Formality in Ancient Mythologies: A Critico-Structural Excursion into the Classics¨in SOPHOPHILIA: Critical Readings in Philosophy, pp. 58-59. . . http://issuu.com/kspt/docs/sophophilia]

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Conclusion In conclusion, we affirm the independence of the spheres of love and sex from each other. Nevertheless, we likewise affirm the reality of a context where the two spheres intersect and a wonderful interconnectivity is hence established. There is a specific ontological location where the association of sex and love perfectly fits so well. To distinguish it from other ontological locations where different forms of love are found is thus important and will lead us to an intelligent vantage point where we will never get into the error of always associating sex and love across the board. Š Ruel F. Pepa, 3 September 2013

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On Love of Country ―Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.‖ ―Bertrand Russell ―A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.‖ ―Edward Abbey ―The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.‖ ―Julian Barnes, Flaubert´s Parrot

Patriotism is basically an expression of one´s love towards her/his homeland taking into consideration all the circumstances like people and culture related thereto. It is characterized by a deep attachment a citizen of a country feels obliged to consciously acknowledge as a reality that cannot be dispensed with. Generally, it is considered as an

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inherent spirit that connects a human individual not only to her/his immediate family but to the socio-cultural roots that have sustained for generations the community life where s/he is meaningfully located now and the communal values that have shaped the core of her/his humanity as well.

Patriotism is the leading factor that goads people to pull their acts together and face imminent threats to the very institution that has given them social character and cultural identity as a nation. Patriotism strengthens the national fibre of a country and gives its denizens a sense of integrity, self-esteem and cohesive dignity.

In certain instances of historic significance, patriotism is concretely tested and aggressively realized in courageous acts aimed to defend an embattled motherland. It is essentially a persistent power that transcends and overcomes oneﾂｴs fear of death for it endows her/him with a selfless foresight of ideals that might not be fully realizable at this point of time but more feasibly in the generations to come. Patriotism has therefore created heroes both exultant and tragic. What uniquely stands out though is the fact that its inspiring strength has moulded warriors of impeccable characters窶馬oble defenders of their most cherished patrimony. It is the solid wall that constantly

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prevents the erosion of a people´s will to defend their sacred sovereignty against aggressors and colonizers.

Patriotism is the primal factor—the most fundamental cornerstone—in the formation and reinforcement of a stable nation. Furthermore, patriotism is a matter of zealous and hence non-negotiable commitment to the preservation of a national culture. In this sense, it is not only in the battlefield that patriotism is witnessed but in every act of fortification directed to institutions that promote and instil in the minds of the present and the next generations the pre-eminence of the socio-cultural condition that has provided and will continually provide them with a kind of national pride and dignity unassailable in the international front.

Nevertheless, in the deep ¨winter¨ of national impoverishment, fragility and economic uncertainty, patriotism hibernates. It is not something that is always awake, alert and enthusiastic. Patriotism is simply set aside and ignored when in the depth of severe destitution and scarcity, a powerful and wealthy nation turns up and offers its resources as an act of salvation that promises a life of comfort, contentment and leisure. Patriotism is effortlessly blown away in Faustian capitulation to a trouble-free and

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painless achievement of one´s heart´s desire. At the end of the day, it could be plainly perceived that the grand design of the powerful is really to extinguish the fire of patriotism in the heart of the subservient nation now utterly subdued.

But patriotism is not without its fault; an overdose of which results to an impediment of progress. At its most extreme limits, it is a key that credulously locks the gate of a nation and prevents the inroads of new concepts and initiatives in varied fields facilitative of a better, finer and more creative advancements in the human condition. North Korea, in its ultra-patriotic posture has missed and even been deprived of so much of the new technologies the modern world offers–high-tech gadgets, instruments and equipment which surprisingly are being profusely enjoyed by its paramount leader who is taunted as one of the twenty richest leaders in the world today.

Ultra-patriotism is anathema to open-mindedness and spawns fanatical dogmatism and uncritical mind-frame. It is not therefore astonishing to find it an ally of both religious and political fundamentalism. In this event, what we have is a rabid adversary of rationality at least and at most of scientific analysis and investigation. Ultra-patriotism is a defeatist stance that underestimates and stamps off the natural flow of the human creative power; it is only for

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those who have chosen not to think. Soldiers in the armed forces are generally programmed to achieve this level of stupidity by initially letting them swallow hook-line-andsinker the motto: ¨Obey first before you complain.¨ And in the performance of their duties as ¨patriotic¨ vanguards of national interests, they instead turned into subservient minions of manipulative and exploitative leaders in government whose interests they bigotedly defend at the expense of the common people´s security and well-being. © Ruel F. Pepa, 4 December 2013

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On Puppets, Puppeteers and Puppetry Are we puppets?

The question makes sense metaphorically. Literally, we ask: Are there external forces that manipulatively control our thoughts and actions of which we are not conscious?

But how crucial is the role of consciousness on this issue?

Does it imply that if we are conscious of such external controlling forces, it could not be construed as a case of manipulation? What if we are conscious of them nevertheless we allow ourselves to be manipulated by them? I am of the opinion that ¨puppetry¨ is real in both instances.

Even the case of not being conscious of such forces triggers a deeper question: What more fundamental events in the

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life of a self-conscious being bring him to a certain point wherein s/he fails to be conscious of the manipulation being done on her/him? One who has gotten used to a situation of manipulation likewise gets to a point where things are normalized, even the very experience of being manipulated.

In this case, manipulation becomes normal and common and the ¨puppetry¨ continues unabated.

But are we not all puppets of our genetic configuration and social programming? Behaviourists of the PavlovianSkinnerian variety think we are. We have been conditioned by certain genetic and environmental factors from which there is no way out. We are captives of the past and every decision or action we make is predetermined by how we have been individually ¨engineered¨. In other words, human freedom is a fiction. We are not free moral agents, have never been and will never be. We are all ¨puppets¨ being manipulated by some mysterious hands that have put in order the genetic chips of our individual existences and placed us in social milieus where we find ourselves here and now.

But how does one get to this generalization when I am not only conscious right now but likewise self-conscious? I am aware of who I am and where I am at this point in time and anything I do or plan to do later is within the sphere of my

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volitional capacity. I am free to do what I want to do and resist getting into a situation where I don´t want to be.

Now that I am aware of manipulation and the possibility of getting manipulated in certain circumstances, I will see to it that no one can ever get me into it. It is within the scope of my individual freedom to prevent any manipulative act of anybody to influence me and desecrate the freedom which I believe defines the authenticity of my person.

Yet, at the end of the day and in the silence of our hearts we get into a much deeper reflection of these matters and face the question: Isn´t this whole scenario simply a psyching up of ourselves to sustain a delusion we have been made to believe in since time immemorial? Could it be construed as an arrogant posture of one who has been led to defend the illusion that the sole basis of our humanity is the reality of freedom? What if we are not truly free? What if one´s consciousness of the notion of manipulation and the possibility of getting manipulated in certain instances doesn´t definitely prove that one is free? What if we become aware at a certain point that there is an uncharted corner of our inner life permeated by a kind of absolute weakness susceptible to manipulation? What is that overpowering force that is able to instantly dissipate the rhetoric of freedom fiercely asserted on a variety of platforms? And after all the diatribes and treatises

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vigorously backing up the proposition of human freedom, we turn around and find ourselves in the convention of real life amidst the instrumentalities of actual daily manipulations dominated by true-to-life ¨puppeteers¨ in a world of ¨puppet shows.¨ Real-life puppetry is a power issue and it is extensively pronounced in the realms of politics, economy and religion among others where we find power-wielding protagonists who are not only in control of their lives but of the lives of others. In the area of politics, they enact laws and exact duties. In the domain of economy, they own and manage the means of economic productivity and dictate the tempo and mode of goods and services production. Furthermore, they control the markets in terms of price manipulation and distribution priorities. In the sphere of religion, they formulate dogmas and deliver ¨hell-and-brimstone¨ sermons to instil fear in the hearts of the so-called believers.

At this point, we are brought to a realization that we are living in a world where on the one hand are the powerful manipulators and on the other are the manipulated powerless. We are caught and eaten up in a world-system where things are dictated from a modern-day Olympus, the mighty abode of ¨gods and goddesses¨ whose global

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powers do not only manipulate but likewise exploit the politics and economies of less powerful nations on earth.

They create wars and destroy peoples they abhor or whose wealth of natural resources like petroleum they intend to monopolize . They make weak nations get much weaker and sow the seeds of poverty to extensively disempower them. These political and economic ¨puppeteers¨ have even been able to control the channels to situate and track the most modern developments in science and technology whose most current efforts are in the area of meteorological manipulation that creates violent weather and climate changes (e.g., the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program or HAARP in Alaska).

Human manipulation/exploitation as ¨puppetry¨ is not only seen in genetic and socio-cultural programming. The common citizens of a country are generally puppets of the state power machinery that in a lot of ways controls the lives of people through laws, orders, obligations, prohibitions, taxation, restrictions and a myriad of other control mechanisms. These are matters that the more critical members of a society are very much aware of. In other words, they know that they are being controlled and manipulated in an intricate maze of conditions, constraints and requirements carried out by the powers that be in a society which they call home. And it is the insufficiency and

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even the utter absence of the people´s united resistance to oppose such sheer manipulation that sustains and continually possibilizes ¨puppetry¨ despite the fact that they very well know such reality.

In a stricter sense though, they cannot be construed as puppets because a puppet qua puppet does not and cannot know that it is a puppet. However, in a looser and more figurative sense, they are as they allow themselves to be so. They are ¨puppetized¨ and hence viewed as puppets.

Subservience to the manipulative, exploitative and oppressive whims and wishes of a political or an economic or a religious power is an absolute case of human ¨puppetry¨—an utter infringement of one´s human dignity as a moral agent supposed to be endowed with the nonnegotiable factor of free will.

But are we truly endowed with free will? At this point, we are being dared once more to justify the reality of free will.

If our persons are defined in terms of genetic assemblage and environmental programming, does it still make sense to talk of free will? It seems we have gotten to a point where the most rational resolution is to accept the fact that human personhood is pre-determined and free will is just a persistent illusion that is hard to die. And even right on this front, human ¨puppetry¨ remains strong.

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If such is the real human condition, then moral responsibility dies with free will. One´s ability to distinguish and judge what is good and what is bad (evil) as well as to do what is right and avoid what is wrong is a matter of free will. If everything we do is just an outcome of what we have been conditioned or programmed to do, then nobody should be held responsible in destructive, harmful, injurious, vicious and violent acts perpetrated by a human being since such acts are precisely consequential to her/his genetic assemblage and the social condition wherein s/he has been programmed.

Such consideration is fundamentally deemed scientific and sensible nevertheless fractional for it de-emphasizes what a human being is capable to do in persistent resistance to and open defiance of an obvious expectation grounded on well-defined and clearly identifiable social orientation and programming as well as evidently traceable hereditary characteristics and peculiarities. This is the very locus where free will emerges. As such, it is a flawed configuration to reckon free will within the sphere of genetic and environmental determinism. A single counter-instance that disconnects itself from the train of such determinism destroys the universal presupposition that precludes the reality of free will. In fact, a clear case in point is in one´s refusal to be coerced. This is a genuine act of free will. A

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person who has the guts to resist and defy the coercive forces applied on her/him to yield to certain demands detrimental to his moral integrity is a clear ¨materialization¨ of the reality of free will. In specific instances where free will manifests, human ¨puppetry¨ dissolves.

Are we puppets? No real puppet has the high-level capability to ask that very question. But why do we often find ourselves in situations where we seem to be puppets?

Because we allow ourselves to be ¨puppetized¨. In such instances, one knows within her/himself that s/he is no puppet at all but s/he appears to be one from the point of view of the powerful puppeteer. Where there are no conscious ¨puppets,¨ no ¨puppeteers¨ in human society will ever thrive. © Ruel F. Pepa, 19 December 2013

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PHILOSOPHY, ONTOLOGY, PEDAGOGY & AESTHETICS

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The Risks of Philosophy and The Philosophy of Risk ¨Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.¨ –Katherine Mansfield

―We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint.‖ –Robert Frost

―Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.

Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way

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people do when they have a dream to follow. But when the person looks back-she will hear her heart‖ –Paulo Coelho

As an initial clarificatory remark, the focal point of the present discussion is on philosophy as a discipline and not in the sense where the concept is used as the raison d´etre or the mission-vision of a corporate entity. Neither is the term understood as an expressed conviction or principle of an individual or a group. Philosophy as a discipline is thus viewed in the present context as basically a cognitive tool to clarify meanings to linguistically facilitate understanding.

The contemporary focal point of philosophy is linguistic because many problems, controversies and hostilities, big and small, in everyday life arise from misunderstanding and confusion due to language. Two people get into bitter discussion and hard bickering because each of them is using words or statements whose meanings are not clear to either of them. One uses a word or statement whose meaning to her/him is very much different from the latter’s meaning because they have differing contexts. In other words, there is misunderstanding and confusion of meanings because of contextual vagueness or undefined context. A word, a statement, may have different meanings in different contexts. A context is a defining locus where words or statements are used according to the understanding of their user. So that, for someone to be philosophical, s/he should first ask for the meaning of the word–or statement–as it is used. Hence, it is genuinely

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philosophical in the contemporary linguistic analytic sense to ask the question, ―What do you mean by the word or statement you have said?‖ or ―In what definite sense are you using that word in that statement?‖ [From: Ruel F. Pepa´s ¨THE RELEVANCE OF LINGUISTIC ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ERA¨ in https://www.facebook.com/notes/ruel-pepa/the-relevanceof-linguistic-analytic-philosophy-in-the-post-industrialera/185846801450834%5D In this context, philosophy utilizes the analytic and synthetic procedures of criticism and appreciation through reflection and discourse in the major philosophical areas of metaphysics (cosmology and ontology), axiology (ethics and aesthetics) and methodology (logic and epistemology) [Cf. William Pepperell Montague´s The Way of Knowing or The Methods of Philosophy . . . http://www.amazon.com/Ways-Knowing-MethodsPhilosophy/dp/1417903503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8 &qid=1378723451&sr=1-1] Philosophy may no longer have the overarching ascendancy it used to enjoy in the pre-Socratic ambience of ancient Greece but it has remained to be a hovering panopticon over a wide range of disciplinal spheres both academic and non-academic, whether scientific, religious, political, social, economic, or what have you. Philosophy may have passed

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the age of being a super-discipline dominating the sciences and the humanities but it has never lost its relevance in vigorously engaging them in sensible discourses and dialogues not only to challenge to prove and/or appreciate the worth of their claims and conjectures but also to propound constructive insights pertinent to the concerns of ethical valuation, epistemological signification and ontological expediency.

The different scientific fields may no longer be reckoned as philosophy (as they used to be prior to the advent of Aristotle) but there will always be—as there has always been—philosophical inquiry in every theoretical assertion and inferential hypothesis articulated and put forth by any of these scientific fields. Religion or politics or whatever field one has in mind may no longer be subjected within the general category of philosophy as in the ancient western intellectual conventions but there is and will always be philosophical discussions—even debates—on religious and political issues among others. In other words, philosophy (as doing philosophy or philosophizing if you will) remains meaningful in its reflective and discursive engagement with the world equipped with the tools of analysis and synthesis for both critical and appreciative purposes. At this point begins the risks of philosophizing.

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Philosophizing is at risk in the face of dogmatism, either political or religious. In political and/or religious circumstances where freedom of expression is curtailed, the risk of critical and discursive philosophizing (pursued both analytically and synthetically) is extremely far above the ground. As a case in point, getting into a balanced critical and appreciative philosophical deliberation (reflection and discourse) on the Israeli-Palestinian political conflicts and controversies right inside Israel with politically fired-up Israelis both intellectual and non-intellectual alike is a risky engagement. What is specifically tolerable in such a particular context is ¨imbalanced philosophizing¨ (which is an oxymoron) wherein one is only allowed to DISCURSIVELY APPRECIATE the merits of just one side of the political divide over the other and never to be critical of the downsides discovered on the same side. Of course, the other philosophical operation of REFLECTIVE CRITICISM doesn´t get apparent, much less obvious, in such condition as it is forbidden to see the light of day. The risk lies in an open defiance of the restriction and could even be a matter of life and death. Similar to this was the situation in the erstwhile Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites during the so-called Cold War era. Discursive criticism even

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within the strict purview of philosophical analysis and synthesis of certain political principles and theories operative within the system was a proscribed exercise whose violation could put involved individuals in a gulag, a mental asylum or at worst before a firing squad.

In such kind of atmosphere, the only brand of ¨legitimate philosophizing¨ approved of by the powers that be is one that applauds and pays tribute to the coercive system.

Though no superficial risk of external origin is implicated in this type of pseudo-philosophizing, more serious INTERNAL RISKS emanating right from within the core of honest-togoodness philosophizing painfully persist for the very discipline of philosophy is itself exposed to jeopardy. A ¨philosophizing¨ subservient to the whims and wishes of the political and/or religious power-wielders is a grievous desecration and a severe violation of what is supremely held to be venerable and reputable and illustrious in the discipline of philosophy. In this particular category, what we have are not authentic philosophers but ¨intellectual prostitutes,¨ ¨cerebral sluts¨ and ¨thunder-stealing sycophants¨ of the first order.

In Socrates we find a genuine philosopher who faced the external risks of philosophizing and never compromised the reputation of his treasured discipline before the threat of

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internal risks. Never had Socrates capitulated and bowed down before the arrogance and conceit of his nemeses, the power-seeking Sophists of his time. His was an exemplary life of a philosopher who epitomized the courage of facing the external risks of doing philosophy in a social environment hostile to the achievement of truth, virtue and splendour in earthly life without putting philosophy at the internal risks of self- stultification, self- desecration and hence self-destruction.

Philosophy always faces and will continue to face modica of risks whenever and wherever it operates on a critical scale over certain controversial issues and concerns before closeminded and dogmatic adversaries who have never learned to appreciate open-minded discussion and to listen and understand in reasonable terms the views of others, much less get to a better formulation and consideration of sensible arguments woven in logical arrangements. This type of external risks makes philosophy an exhilarating endeavour, a stimulating venture in the limitless breadth of the ¨life of the mind¨ experiencing and exploring the wonders of being and the significance of existence and giving them expressions in comprehensible terms. In this case, one´s exposure and commitment to balanced philosophical inquiry is worth the external risks of doing philosophy.

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What should strictly be avoided in doing philosophy are the internal risks that damage the philosophical equilibrium in terms of approach, attitude and method. Approach imbalance is seen if there is unwarranted reflection at the expense of discourse and vice versa. Attitude imbalance is caused by excessive criticism that blinds one´s appreciative faculty and vice versa. Methodological imbalance is perpetrated by too much analysis that almost totally disregards synthesis and again, vice versa.

These are the risks—external and internal—of philosophy. © Ruel F. Pepa, 13 September 2013

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Reality or Fiction? . . . A Question of Being Is it possible for something not to exist?

In the ordinary-language reading of the question taken in the spatio-temporal sense with the definitive understanding that (1) ¨something¨ is any object perceivable by the five senses in the world of human experience (¨extended substance¨ in Cartesian terms and simply rendered as ¨extension¨ by Spinoza) and (2) ¨existence¨ is being located in such a world of space-time order, an affirmative consensus is the generally expected response. It is possible for something (perceivable in space at this point in time) not to exist (anymore later).

In the Platonic/Aristotelian ¨realm of particulars,¨ anything is temporal, alterable and even destructible. In other words, no object in that context is permanent, unchanging and indestructible. It is therefore possible that a wooden

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chair at this point in time could be destroyed and thrown into the fire and thence be non-existent anymore. In the course of such an event, the next question is: Is there still something called chair that exists? The common automatic reply is: There is nothing. This very statement leads us to a corollary problem of serious and classic philosophical consideration: Is there nothing? If there is nothing, then: Nothing exists. ¨There is nothing,¨ taken in its ordinary-language sense, does not provoke a philosophical controversy. But the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in his monumental but very controversial Being and Nothingness has a distinct take on this issue—which is actually an elaboration of what his teacher Martin Heidegger brought up in his equally significant Being and Time—and in the process affirms the significance of ¨the Nothing¨ as a condition of a being-foritself that is incomplete and imperfect, constantly changing and open to possibilities in a world that is never predetermined/predestined but challenging to human creativity.

In such a ¨reality,¨ the human being qua human being perennially confronts the Nothing which is the undetermined futurity of her/his existence that possibilizes—i.e., challenges the potentiality of her/his

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humanness towards—transcendence in affirmation of human authenticity as a being-for-itself. The Nothing, taken metaphorically and in the Sartrean existentialist sense is therefore significant. In a similar vein, the human being as a philosopher confronts the Nothing like a painter standing before a fresh canvas that challenges in an exhilarating way her/his unbounded artistic creativity.

What is so philosophical–deeply philosophical–about the artist but her/his enormous capability to be excited/elated/exhilarated by the challenges of the Nothing.

S/he looks at the blank canvas before her/him not as nothing but as a space of unlimited possibilities–a Nothing, a not-yet, a Becoming–that belongs to the future. The present Nothing promises a future Being–Nothing Becoming Being.

And all depends on a creativity that is purely human–a creativity that merges with a sense of the future that is likewise absolutely human, no more no less. Had this not been so, humanity couldn’t have seen the wonders of comfort, sophistication, information and ease that revolve around the present reality like a merry-go-round in a seemingly endless carnival of life.

Human creativity . . . a sense of the future . . . a philosophical defiance of certain programmed limitations where nothing is nothing, where zero is nothing. Rather, a philosophical affirmation that Nothing is something–that Zero is significant in the formation of hundreds, thousands, millions . . . ad infinitum.

The artist guides the philosopher. . . . May the former find inspiration in the latter.

At the end of the day, may the artist find a common

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convergence point with the philosopher so that th9e two become one.

[Ruel F. Pepa´s ¨The Artist as a Philosopher (or The Philosopher as an Artist) before the Canvas of Nothing¨ in Sophophilia: Critical Readings in Philosophy . . . http://issuu.com/kspt/docs/sophophilia] Looking at the matter from a different perspective, it is generally regarded by philosophers in the linguistic analytic tradition (e.g., C. I. Lewis, Graham Priest and Willard Van Orman Quine among others) that absolutely no distinction is posited between ¨there is¨ and ¨exists¨. However, some other philosophers categorized within the same camp (e.g., Alexius Meinong, Terence Parsons and Edward Zalta among others) have a dissenting view: There are instances wherein ¨there is¨ and ¨exists¨ have to be distinguished from each other: There is A, but A does not exist. And this spontaneously leads us to a clarification of the concept of existence which is one of the key concerns of this essay.

Taking the latter view, it is perfectly valid and sound to say: There is A which/who doesn´t exist.

At this juncture, the issue at hand draws us to a more serious philosophical exercise. It is deemed significant at this point to consider the meanings of certain key concepts like ¨something¨ and ¨existence¨ which are actually

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constituents of classical philosophical problematizations that go back to the pre-modern periods and more critically analyzed particularly by Aristotle (during the ancient period) and Thomas Aquinas (during the medieval period) and their disciples as well who unanimously held that existence is a condition and NOT a property of something´s—i.e., an object´s—being. In the Platonic/Aristotelian sense, something or an object is either a percept located in space and time which is called the ¨realm of particulars¨ (perceived by the senses in the world of human experience) or a concept ¨located¨ in the mind which is basically an idea (mentally conceived) in the ¨realm of forms or universals¨.

Henceforth, early modern philosophers like Berkeley, Hume and Kant among others and later ones like Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus fame among others had espoused, elaborated and by way of their lengthy expositions brought to the contemporary philosophical arena a similar, if not an absolutely identical, understanding of the issue: Existence is a CONDITION and NOT a property of an object´s being.

In other words, we call X a thing or an object because it exists. Existence is therefore a NECESSARY condition—an ESSENTIAL state—of something. Using the terminology of ancient philosophy, existence is never accidental but

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essential, never contingent but necessary, to the thing-ness of something, to the object-ness of an object. In this sense, existence cannot be predicative of anything; the existential condition is therefore self-contained in a thing or an object which in this light may likewise be properly called an existent. To say that ¨X exists¨ is as tautological as ¨A black cat is black¨ or ¨All bachelors are unmarried males¨ and hence actually doesn´t say anything at all. These are analytic statements or statements of logic.

Appropriating Frege´s and Russell´s formulations, things or objects may either be of first-order or second-order category. First-order objects are basic percepts (objects perceived through the five senses in the world of experience) whereas second-order objects are concepts (objects conceived in the mind through the formation of certain properties and qualities of percepts that are imaginable and hence accommodated in the ¨mental space¨ but without the necessary condition of being materially constructed to become percepts and occupy the space-time order, though in certain ways they could possibly be because of the non-contradictory properties and qualities of the concepts). The existence of first-order objects is therefore in the physico-material, spatio-temporal dimension while that of the second-order objects is in the mental or thought dimension.

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Using these two paradigms in considering the original question being resolved—Is it possible for something not to exist?— and elevating it to the more philosophical formulation, ¨Is there something that does not exist?¨ we may draw the following evaluative statements: 1. Yes, there is something—a percept—that does not exist in the thought dimension, for the existence of percepts is only in the spatio-temporal dimension.

2. Yes, there is something—a concept—that does not exist in the spatio-temporal dimension, for the existence of concepts is only in the thought dimension.

Further focusing on the second-order category located in the thought dimension, we have concepts like an animal with one horn which is called a ¨unicorn¨ or that of an imaginary person called ¨the present king of France¨ or sought-after ideals like ¨the fountain of youth¨ or ¨the golden mountain¨. Many of these concepts in the thought dimension—viz., cartoon characters and fictional super heroes popularized on the TV screens and movie houses— have even been given physico-material expressions and hence accommodated not only in the ¨mental space¨ but actually perceived spatio-temporally to the delight of their young and adolescent fans.

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Drawing his assumptions from the thesis of Gottlob Frege´s ¨Sense and Reference¨ [http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Frege,Gottlob/Freg e,%20Gottlob%20-%20Sense%20and%20Reference.pdf], the later Ludwig Wittgenstein (of Philosophical Investigations fame) demolished Bertrand Russell´s referential theory of meaning wherein the latter contended that a statement whose subject does not have an objective point of reference in reality (i.e., the spatio-temporal world of perceptual experience) like, ¨The present king of France is bald¨ is meaningless. Wittgenstein vigorously advanced the notion that the issue of meaning is outside of the epistemological concern which is after the truth. The statement may not be true since no king of France is in existence nowadays. Nevertheless it is meaningful because the concept of a king of France may be accommodated in the ¨mental space¨ by imagining a kingly appearance of a bald person. In other words, such an imaginary person may be mentally conceived because no contradictory components are encountered in the properties and qualities of a king who is in France and who is bald. In consideration of the meaningfulness of the statement, there is therefore a king of France who is bald and the existence of such is in the thought dimension being a second-order object.

However, such king of France though he doesn´t actually exist in the physico-material dimension may be given a

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spatio-temporal expression as a fictional character in a movie or in a stage play. [cf. Ruel Pepa´s ¨Wittgenstein and the Problem of Meaning¨ in Sophophilia: Critical Readings in Philosophy (http://issuu.com/kspt/docs/sophophilia)] It was the Austrian mathematician and philosopher Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) who seriously problematized the distinction between ¨there is¨ and ¨exists¨ in his critical and controversial treatise ¨The Theory of Things¨ ( whose English translation was done by Isaac Levi, D. B. Terrell and Roderick M. Chisholm) [http://www.histanalytic.com/Meinongobjects.pdf]. His basic thesis is: There is something that does not exist. Or to put it in agreement with the present question being resolved: It is possible for something not to exist.

But Meinong exaggerated the matter and got out of bounds to further contend that certain combined properties and qualities of percepts may be conceived as an entity and hence may exist in the second-order category even if such a combination leads to a contradiction like in the case of a ¨square circle¨ or a ¨round square.¨ Certainly it is not imaginable and hence cannot be accommodated in the ¨mental space¨ in the second-order category, much less in the first-order. But there is a glimmer of chance in this

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Meinongian consideration because a ¨square circle¨ or a ¨round-square¨ may be something we can talk about like what we do now.

In this connection, I´d propose for the formulation of a new category to locate Meinong´s ¨square circle¨/¨round square¨. I´d call it ¨third-order category¨ wherein properties and qualities of first-order objects may combine to produce a contradiction impossible to be accommodated in the second-order category being unimaginable but nevertheless could be spoken of terminally, i.e., towards dismissal as a percept or a concept. In other words, thirdorder category objects are only called objects being words or phrases ¨imprisoned¨ in a linguistic construction that cannot be given an imaginative expression, much less a perceptual realization. © Rue F. Pepa, 15 October 2013

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Teachers . . . Learners ¨There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. . . .

Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.¨ ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Fundamentally, teaching and learning spontaneously go together. The general condition of learning occurs as a consequence of teaching not only in the formal (e.g., classroom) sense but in any circumstance that creates a significant impact in the life of a conscious species—an animal of either lower or higher category. Nature—this reality that presents itself to consciousness—is the ¨cosmic classroom¨ where the teaching-learning experience transpires. Planet Earth is the main campus of the real universe-city where empirical events are the ¨teachers¨

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and the conscious entities in it are basically the ¨learners¨.

In other words, the world we live in is a ¨school campus¨ where every bit of information (consciously synthesized data of perceptual experience)—which reaches a higher level of conceptual concentration in the human realm—is the basis of all the ¨prescribed textbooks¨ read to cope with the demands of survival and of progress which forms what humanity has agreed upon to commonly call ¨culture.¨ The nature-to-culture trajectory is therefore possibilized by the spontaneity of the teaching-learning event on cosmic scale. In this particular framework, no gap between teaching and learning is, hence, either possible or perceivable.

In Chapter 9 of the scholarly volume, The Human Nature [http://www.essayandscience.com/upload/ficheros/libros/2 01105/mosterin__cap__ix.pdf], the eminent Spanish contemporary philosopher Jesus Mosterin says: Learning is the process through which information that is not inherited is acquired by an animal and stored in its brain, it its long-term memory, in such a way so as to be recoverable at a later date. Learning is a process of individual adaptation of the body´s behaviour to its environment. The specific things that an individual learns depends on the nature of their species, as expressed by their genome. Eacn animal species has a hereditary disposition to learn a specific set of abilities, which

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determines the things each individual in that species is able to learn. . . .

Learning can be social or individual. Through individual learning one acquires information through trial and error, imprinting (learning certain guidelines during a specific stage of life), classic conditioning, or other methods. . . .

In social learning, one assimilates information transmitted by others, which is acquired through imitation, communication or teaching. . . . ...

Social learning through teaching is learning through observation, where the appropriate behaviours receive positive reinforcement in the form of rewards and those that are inappropriate receive negative reinforcement in the form of punishment. With mere imitation, the model that is imitated is passive; faithful reproduction of the imitated behaviour is neither controlled nor corrected. In teaching, the imitated model is active and rewards or punishes the imitator according to their correct or incorrect imitation.

Although active teaching processes have been observed in chimpanzees, in humans they have reached their highest level of development, as proven by our numerous public and private teaching institutions. Humans also use telecommunications for social learning. . . .

In the human condition, the general notion of the teachinglearning experience is basically understood as: Teaching aids learning and learning is achieved through teaching. We learn something because we have been taught of it either through an outside teaching agent or by our very own selves. Being self-taught is at all times within the natureto-culture trajectory and thus precludes the likelihood of a

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gap disconnecting teaching and learning. Learning in this sense is a natural occurrence within the range of what is deemed significant in terms of our personal evaluation and judgment of an event as well as in terms of the degree of an incident´s impression in our consciousness as something satisfying, interesting, challenging, terrifying or at worst, tragic. We call this a learning experience taught by and in life.

But the gap between teaching and learning occurs likewise and exclusively in the human condition, though—as we have pointed out earlier—not in all instances because human sensitivity to the fundamental character of the nature-to-culture trajectory will prevent the chasm. To be more specific on this issue, it is in the formalization of the teaching-learning event in the hands of human initiators that the gap gets in as a resultant disorder—even a syndrome. In this sense, formalized teaching doesn´t always result to learning. In certain cases, formalized teaching (as in a school classroom) simply gets so far as the level of a mental assent—a theoretical approximation of a subject matter whose empirico-pragmatic location in real life is nowhere found. Learning—if we could call it as such— in this case is hence short of realization.

I may know the basic theoretical rudiments of driving a car

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but it doesn´t in any way mean that I have already learned how to drive and can actually do it at this point in time.

Here, we find a gap between teaching and learning which may only be appropriately filled in as the teacher her/himself sits on the car side-by-side with the learner on the steering wheel to perform the actual driving on the road. The present example illustrates a pragmatic development that moves on from teaching to learning (process) to being (a) learned (individual). A genuinely learned individual doesn´t only have the knowledge of what s/he has learned but also the wisdom—the acquired and ¨lived¨ understanding—of it which is demonstrated and confirmed by the sheer proficiency and mastery of the skill in the actual performance of what has been truly learned.

The teacher-learner divide has been complicated by the modern institutionalization of formalized system of education traditionally called ¨schooling¨ wherein the teacher is culturally regarded to be ¨omniscient¨ at least in the field of discipline s/he has been formally trained. By virtue of such formal training, s/he automatically assumes the role of a teacher before a group of learners initially considered to be ignorant of the elements of the field of discipline they have subjected themselves into with the objective to substantially learn from what the ¨omniscient¨ teacher is supposed to teach them. In this particular

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situation, ¨schooling¨ is equated with ¨banking¨ wherein money is deposited and withdrawn by clients. In institutionalized formal schooling, canned information from theoretical sources are ¨deposited¨ in the memory banks of students and later withdrawn from them through examinations. The human mind in this process is treated like a sponge with the capacity to absorb and retain water until the sponge is squeezed to release the water it has absorbed. In his monumental magnum opus, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (http://www.users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/edreformFriere_ pedagogy.pdf ), the great Brazilian philosopher of education, Paulo Freire, calls it, ¨the banking concept of education¨.

A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a Narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.

The teacher talks of reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to ¨fill¨ the students with the contents of his narration—contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied

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of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated and alienating verbosity.

The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. . . . The student records, memorizes and repeats . . .

Narration (with the teacher as the narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content.

Worse yet, it turns them into ¨containers,¨ into ¨receptacles¨ to be ¨filled¨ by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. . . . This is the ¨banking¨ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. . . .

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. . . . The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. . . .

[Pages 71 and 72 of Freire´s Pedagogy of the Oppressed] In bridging the teacher-student gap—which in effect likewise automatically bridges the teaching-learning gap— teachers are not supposed to project the sole image of and

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hence be treated as an omniscient master in the classroom but as fellow learners, co-discoverers and co-creators of new knowledge with the students who are not supposed to be narrowly treated as only learners with no capacity to impart significant insights but also as co-teachers, codiscoverers and co-creators of new knowledge. In all circumstances of life—whether inside or outside the four walls of a classroom—the human being is both teacher and learner. The gap of separation emerges only in a situation of alienation wherein convention compartmentalizes in definitive terms roles strictly bounded by superficial and artificial norms that render such imaginary boundaries impenetrable. In the final analysis, teachers are actually learners and learners are likewise teachers.

Socrates is a perfect epitomé of a teacher-learner who severely berated the professional ¨omniscient¨ Sophists of splendid Athens when he declared to them that upon consultation with the Oracle of Delphi, it was revealed to him that he was the wisest of men because ¨he knows nothing and he knows that he knows nothing.¨ In Socrates we have a teacher who at the same time is a perennial learner.

Let me end by quoting Kahlil Gibran´s words ¨On Teaching¨ in his magnum opus, The Prophet [http://www-

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personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/prophet/prophet.htm#T eaching]: Then said a teacher, ―Speak to us of Teaching.‖ And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth. © Rue F. Pepa, 1 October 2013

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Art-Value

¨Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.¨ –Oscar Wilde

The term could mean a lot of things to different people unless we define the ¨language-game¨ where it belongs.

From the viewpoint of an art collector or an art gallery owner/administrator, value is more calculated in terms of the pecuniary aspect. Though, such aspect largely depends of course on a few factors like the exquisite intricacy of the art work which in a more basic sense depends essentially on the prominence of the artist. The more widely acclaimed the artist is, the higher the price the artwork commands. It is almost always the thinking that the bi-condition between the artwork and the artist is pre-established and hence

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defines the ¨value¨ of the artwork: The artwork is highly priced IF AND ONLY IF the artist is extensively celebrated.

But this bi-conditional statement is not an inherent truism for it has passed through an evolutionary process. To say that a Dali is highly valued/priced because of the fame of its creator is a later development. Originally, what mattered more was the creator—Salvador Dali who initially was not famous—later became a celebrated world-class painter because of the first exquisite artworks he produced which captured the discriminating taste of respected art connoisseurs of equally world-class significance. In a more reasonable sense, the value of art is in the exquisiteness of the artwork itself that delights and captivates the appreciative sensitivity of its beholder regardless of who the artist is.

In certain instances, though, the ¨pecuniary value¨ may not be totally divorced from an artwork´s aesthetic value.

Genuine patrons of the art who truly understand the aesthetic worth of an artwork spend a fortune to claim such a treasure as a lasting possession. However, there are also the ¨filthy rich¨ who basically do not have an iota of artistic taste. But to keep up with the standard of their more ¨cultured¨ acquaintances, they would compete with them by making their presence felt in an art gallery show and in

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shelling out a lot of money to bring home an artwork deemed to be very well commended by discriminating connoisseurs milling around the place. They are the ¨socialclimbing¨ variety of the ¨filthy rich,¨ so to speak.

But there is more to the issue of ¨the value of art¨ than the exclusively pecuniary and that is the purely aesthetic.

Aesthetic valuation is basically human discernment/judgment of the beautiful. Its most fundamental media are the five senses of perception.

Nevertheless, sensitivity towards the exquisite and the attractive that pleases, delights, charms and captivates the heart is much deeper than what is materially comprehended. Truly there is something cultural in this valuation but such is not ¨culture¨ in the language-game of ¨high society¨ but in the more primarily sociological understanding of the concept of society and culture.

Though not always cultural (in the sociological sense), but at times more personal and purely individualistic, even idiosyncratic, art finds a most meaningful expression in the culture of a people, more particularly in its material component. Art is the concrete/tangible/substantial materialization of the human creative impulse to convey her/his most vital desires and needs. Art is the channel that facilitates the release of humanity´s imaginative urge that

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makes life more liveable and more worth enhancing. In a broader sense, we may even contend that human life in its truest essence is art itself. It is the artistic spirit of humanity that sees beauty in the natural environ of earthly existence. The course of life on earth provides magnificent inspiration to the creative human being in the furtherance of the world which s/he started to create millennia ago and has been the focal point of her/his most determined struggles to survive, to improve and to make life more meaningful despite myriads of troubles, adversities and tragedies.

Even long before the human species invented the ¨art¨ of writing, cave-dwelling homo sapiens had already been actively carving pictures—pictographs—on cave walls which even appeared in colourful designs to express and communicate their ideas and thoughts. In the course of time, primitive societies composed poetry which they recited and even sang in public functions. Genealogical stories were formulated, recited and likewise sung in celebration of the dignity of a tribe´s origin. These artistic expressions were even enhanced and made livelier by kinaesthetic activities as in the dance performed before an audience. This is ¨spectator¨ art where special talents are called gifts which are not generally shared by many.

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Primitive life was doubtless suffused with art. Even the fabrication of hunting equipment, farm tools and household paraphernalia required the ¨artistic¨ creativity of the primitive human. This is ¨utilitarian¨ art in its most basic form. In this particular category, there is a very thin line that divides art and technology. We know the basic pragmatic value of technology from its most archaic formation to its most exceptionally sophisticated configuration and along the way of its evolution is the interwoven presence of art. In carpentry and masonry, in fabric weaving and pottery, in engineering and architecture among others, the omnipresence of art is indubitable and persistent.

But more popularly perceived in the contemporary scene, we identify art more with its ¨spectator¨ kind—the socalled ¨fine arts¨. Art for us is painting, sculpture, music, literature, the theatre, culinary refinement, fashion elegance, among others. Special talents performing in these areas of artistic location are the ones most often—if not exclusively—called ¨artists¨. And they are rightly so because of the single-minded profundity and authenticity of their steadfastness to their respective artistic

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commitments.

Without undermining utilitarian art as a category closer to pecuniary valuation than spectator art, utilitarian-art practitioners and spectator-art performers, in a broader sense, are both artists. In the final analysis, what genuinely matters is the qualitative value of their artistic deeds more fairly reckoned in terms of their intense commitment and profound dedication to their crafts as the prime and foremost factor over and beyond the pecuniary consideration. The ultimate judge of the value of utilitarian art is the benefited technology-user while the final adjudicator of the value of spectator art is the appreciative observer who sees the noteworthy circumstances of real life—hers/his and that of humanity in general—remarkably reflected in an artwork.

In conclusion, we may say that the value of art is basically subjective for its appeal is more ¨coronary¨ than ¨cerebral¨. One piece of artwork could be delightful in the eyes of one beholder but hideous from the perspective of another. One thing is sure though and that is the value of art is the value of life because life is sustained by art and art is nourished by life. In the words of the great British

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wordsmith, Oscar Wilde, ¨Life imitates art far more than art imitates life¨. © Ruel F. Pepa, 30 October 2013

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ruel F. Pepa is a non-academic philosopher and a regular of PhiloMadrid, a weekend pub-philosophy gathering in Madrid, Spain. He is also a contributor writer on the global news website, News Junkie Post.