The Keystone

Hello and welcome to State of Play. This is the keystone. An abstracted version of the architectural baluster, functioning as a centre of equilibrium by which my body of work is supported. The primary idea is to instil an intuitive feeling of the philosophies, values, and metaphysical undercurrents that flavour the various articles here. Akin to visiting the vineyard before tasting the wine.

I will clarify from the outset that the contents of this blog are not altogether serious, although it is sincere, because it is pulled from a well of ardour for comprehending the enigmas of reality. Also in the spirit that it would be conceited to impose ridged heuristics for living, effectively clipping our wings.

The vision for the blog? If you have ever read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, you will know his piecemeal journals are a stimulating account of a kind of holistic and unfettered wisdom unfurling within him in time as naturally as the rhythms of weather, sun, and stars. I share such an ideal, whereby we explore timeless questions together. Tightening our sails against the prevailing paradigms. Navigating in hope or expectation of catching a glimpse of those elusive truths, tantamount to treasure.

As for why you should believe anything articulated here as opposed to anything else cherry-picked from the free-for-all of modern-day journalism. Well, here’s a paradox, perhaps you shouldn’t. Alan Watts, the loquacious philosopher, once likened his lectures to a mountain stream. A passerby may stop to refresh himself, or he may not. The point is, the reader uses their own intuition to guide them.

For anything relating to this vision to have substance, we must first take a spade to the conventional paradigms which structure our lives and lay some groundwork. As we can only begin to forge new paths if we are aware of what we are forging through or against by contrast.

In the first instance, I contend that anyone who sincerely contemplates their seemingly abridged and limited existence, inevitably finds themselves in a basic quandary, in so far as they are compelled to navigate life bereft of an existential handbook. This is to say, without universally informed consensus, or explicit and unequivocal instruction as to how to go about living. No unfaltering means to parse, delineate, or divvy up the world without pitiful reliance on untenable personal bias. How then can a person anchor themselves to a stable source of meaning? Even in the domain of theology, which is overtly concerned with such matters, there is tremendous discord. Those of us uprooted from faith and who all too often succumb to the numbing neutrality of nihilism are no doubt familiar with this, floating-through-life feeling.

This tar pit of doubt only pulls us deeper once one sees that a slew of brute facts, objects, and events that comprise day-to-day experience is no recipe for the easy extraction and distillation of moral oughts. Any attempt to do so quickly becomes an exercise in frustration. To make matters worse, conducting a scrupulous examination of these solid seeming facts results in another source of consternation, as parents, beleaguered by the unabated “why” of rightfully curious kids know too well. Knowledge is a web, not a rock, connected and interwoven with other axioms and assumptions which may be gutted of meaning further still. Understandably, it’s not just parents, but even esteemed scientists and philosophers who are sometimes reluctant to wade into the epistemological morass.

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that there is no moral ground under their feet, defending the view that morals truly exist, "out there" in a sense, and decry those who do not share it, in light of what humanity regards as abysmal acts of malevolence and evil. Indeed, footage from concentration camps proves to be quite unbearable. A moral thread runs deep within the psyche, driving us from the inside out. However, it is when one manipulates this implicit moral framework by insisting that morals be expressed as external and absolute. In other words, granting them a greater reality than thought or emotion, that these difficulties emerge.

Of course, notable persons of all ilks have put tooth and claw to this ball of yarn since the apes climbed down from the trees, and in every generation arise cultural arbiters who tout their particular solution. Prominent modern intellectuals such as Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson have produced recent iterations regarding these issues in The Moral Landscape and 12 Rules for Life respectively.

What can be said without undue controversy, is that much of the conscious or unconscious motives we use to orient ourselves in the world are tethered to a will to survive and to secure said survival into the future. Naturally, this entails a want of certainty and reciprocity in our social environment. The standard moral framework we use today has blossomed from these primitive origins. However, a system of ethics birthed by a highly contingent process of natural selection is by no means a mirror to reality or truth.

As such, the road to a clear and unsullied apprehension of what does or should shape personal and collective action is a perilous one. Even veterans in meta-ethics begin this expedition by stumbling through cobwebs of ambiguity and bias, all before meeting a formidable blockade of relativity just ahead. Relativity has been a divisive thorn in the side of the western contemplative tradition, splitting people into modernist and post-modernist camps. In brief, modernists give credence to a pursuit of 'real' abstract truth and postmodernists do not, holding that due to relativity, no universal truth exists. Observing that neither of these intellectual battalions has been able to plant a decisive flag of victory and that science sits coy on the sidelines of moral matters, we may reasonably feel that if there is a truth that will resolve this moral limbo, it is so veiled as to be impossible to access.

Yet something is. The experience of this moment, reading this, cannot be denied, be it a dream, hallucination, or simulation as now hypothesized. Something is true, for it simply is. Even if there is no particular way that anything is, then that is how it is. Those who beat the ‘everything is relative' drum cannot be arguing against the existence of truth by definition, because if it is the case then it is true. Paradoxically, it follows that if relativity exists it must also be absolute, presenting an apparent contradiction to the prior understanding, whereby morals are not real but a relative human construction. Here we must amend our thinking by understanding that morality is not an inherent property of the absolute, but an emergent phenomenon. Similar to how waves are water molecules, but not a property of them. A confluence of forces are required to make waves. In this way, moral ideation is as real as we believe it to be.

Maybe I'm on the verge of espousing my own self-flattering theory to sidestep the whole shebang? More or less pulling the moral rabbit from the ontological hat? Thankfully not. We need not rely on anyone's personal beliefs or conceptions to be unbound. This is where the magic happens.

Earlier I pointed out how the relative is a feature of the absolute. I neglected to define the absolute. This blog, and everything else for that matter, is an invitation because it is necessarily identical to what naturally, absolutely is. The nature of which can become spontaneously transparent. Specifically, this manifests as the loss of a lived feeling of separation from the world and precipitates from the dissolution of beliefs and illusions that fog the mirror of being. In the death of the illusory individual, nothing changes but all is transformed, affording freedom from the problems and worries that otherwise afflict. Transcendence of the moral bind in lieu of a solution.

If we remain impartial and honour empirical scientific inquiry, we can undress the scripture and teachings of the major religions to reveal their true metaphysical basis. By doing so we are melting down specific religious ideas into their singular, primordial form. Grasping the beating heart of mysticism.

Metaphorically speaking, it's as if we spend our whole lives building castles of meaning from sand. Castles that invariably crumble to nothing when touched, or are washed away in time. After all, do you still share the values you held when you were 15? Still captivated by the stories which motivated you? What about 20 years in the future?

How can a fresh apprehension of mysticism ameliorate our strife? You can easily be forgiven for thinking that enquiring about existence achieves little but frustration and angst. A cliché extraordinaire of armchair philosophy. A superlative exercise in going nowhere fast. Existence is yes, but where’s the punchline? The secret?

One clue can be found in the lifestyles of a persistent minority who live beyond the cultural fold. People who have historically been known as mystics, shamans, or hermits. People who, in general, see status, power, wealth and ego games for what they are and hold them loosely, but without disdain. For they have stepped across the picture frame within which most of us make haste to build our castles of sand, and occasionally return to join in or simply admire the peculiar artwork and the sincerity of our exertions.

Beneath the deceptive allure of our personalities, hopes and fears, is the substrate of all things. The page on which the stories of our lives are being written. A single, undivided canvas of being. The only thing, which is no thing, that truly is. That which transcends all conception, belief, and description. For conception, belief and description happen within it. At the same time, it is so intimate to you as to be you. Thus to describe the absolute is like trying to use a pen to write upon itself. Religious practice can be understood as no more than elaborate lip service to the unspeakable.

There is only freedom or liberation. Nothing at the heart of everything. The limited individual is a dream. Cave paintings across the globe display an outline of a hand rather than a more obvious imprint. It has no reality to itself as distinct from its surroundings other than a faint outline. The hand is only 'there' due to a process of pattern recognition in the mind. The same process as the lines we draw between ourselves and everything else.

The falling away of separation is transformative, primarily because it liberates us from the neurosis and self-deception which prevents us from flourishing as unique expressions of the universe, and permits life to be a celebration. A celebration I would like to channel in the form of this blog.

Hopefully, this article succeeds in providing an honest scaffolding for my content. I'm grateful if you chose to follow or support this blog, but I reiterate its value as entertainment, for what anyone says, thinks, or writes in a lifetime can only ever be a caricature. A distant snapshot of an infinite reality. One I will continue to explore in the State of Play.