One Hundred and Sixty Four

When Socrates was told the oracle had called him the wisest man in Athens, he said he knew nothing. Fools call this a paradox.

Socrates was the wisest man in Athens, but not the wisest man in the world.  He therefore asked himself why most men don’t do what’s good, and decided it’s because they don’t know what’s good.  They need wise men to teach them.

We’ve had many wise teachers.  Most of them became frustrated by the seeming inability of their students to put their teachings into practice, and distilled their wisdom into a few simple rules.  These rules have been refined over the generations – Confucius’ negative Silver Rule (Do not do unto others as you would not want them to do unto you) became Jesus’ positive Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) - but they remained essentially the same because we’re limited beings who can hold only a few ideas in our heads at one time.  Our teachers restate the same old ideas in new words because we can’t or won’t follow them. 

Our teachers were fools to think we would.

We need men with special skills or knowledge to teach us how to build a boat or a society, but we don’t need them to tell us the right thing to do.  All we need is common sense; and common sense teaches us our society is badly built.  Our rulers don’t obey the rules they make for others, and exploit those they claim to govern as parasites exploit their hosts.  When might makes right, only fools obey the law. 

Most wise men use their wisdom to invent reasons why we shouldn’t disobey the law, which common sense tells us is the right thing to do in an unjust society.  Some tell us we’re slaves, and should obey our masters as children obey their parents, trusting them to do what’s best for us.  But the relationship between masters and slaves is comparable only in that not all parents are good and/or wise.

Others tell us we’re predators and prey, like all animals, and should behave accordingly.  But all animals have a sense of right and wrong.  Humans differ from other animals only in having reason, which we mostly use to justify doing what we know is wrong.  Other animals kill out of necessity, but we kill for sport; which is why humans also differ from other animals in feeling guilt when they do what their reason tells them is wrong.  

We know we’re not like other animals, but we don’t know how we differ.

In order to know myself, I must know what is not myself.  I must know not only how self and other differ, but how they’re the same.  Because they’re both.

Those who imagine they know the truth imagine it’s either one thing or its opposite, but not both.  Wise men know it’s always both; but when they tell that to others, fools call it illogical.

Cogito, ergo sum, said Descartes; but knowing only myself is the knowledge a parasite has.  It knows the host on which it feeds only in relation to itself and its needs

All life is food, say the Hindus.  Life feeds on life.  We all know this without needing to be told.  We differ from other animals in that knowing some must die in order for others to live has always troubled us.  It was one reason – perhaps the main reason – why we invented religion.

Our first gods were spirits of the animals we killed and ate, who we pretended died willingly and unselfishly so that we could live.  Next were our ancestors, the people who gave us life.  Last were great leaders of the hunt, who we still follow in death as we did in life.

Often these gods ordered us to do terrible things in return for their patronage, such as killing the worshippers of other gods to prove our loyalty to them.  We could bear the guilt of doing what we knew was wrong because our gods ordered us to do it.  But no longer.

It’s not because we’re wiser than our ancestors that we can no longer believe in gods, as they did.  It’s just the opposite.  We’re not clever enough to invent plausible myths that justify doing what we know is wrong, as they did. Neither are we clever enough to find a way to change, and do what we know is right.

Like Socrates, we were the wisest of animals because we knew we knew nothing.  Now we know too much, but not enough.

We’ve always known we're not like other animals. Other animals kill out of necessity, in order to survive. We kill for sport. We are the world's greatest predators and all the others are our prey as long as we follow our gods.  They lead us to victory and forgive us when we can’t forgive ourselves.  But no longer.

Now we know it's not because we're god's children that we're the most successful predator in the history of the world, but because we’re omnivores who prey on each other as readily as we do everything that lives. But most of all because we live not in the real world, but in a fantasy of our own making, in which everything we do is right; and that delusion gave us the courage to do terrible things.  We know better now, but that knowledge is not power.  We don’t know how to stop being beasts of prey and become what we’ve always pretended we already are: human.  

Waking from this dream hasn’t freed us.  The reality of what we are and what we’ve done – and continue to do - is a nightmare from which we’re fleeing even deeper into fantasies that our supposedly ignorant ancestors would ridicule.  They sought to know what we seek to forget.  So we've stopped evolving, and are now devolving into Stone Age barbarians armed with Atomic Age weapons.

One Hundred and Sixty Three

A big house.

No, not a house. A room.

It wouldn’t be a big room in a big house, but it’s big enough for us. We all eat here, sleep here, shit here.

We’re all children. There are no adults.

Are we brothers and sisters, children of the same parents? Is that why we’re all together in the same place? Sometimes it seems so. And sometimes it seems we’re strangers who’ve come from different places, and ended up here only by chance.

I'm the oldest, so they defer to me, as though I know more than they do. What I know is that, like Socrates, I know nothing.

There are other people here, in other rooms. Sometimes I hear them through the walls, and sometimes I see them in the halls. But we don’t speak to each other.

It’s not a house. It’s too big. It seems as big as the world.

It reminds me of a dream I once had.

I often dream I’m lost in a big building, or a big city. Once I dreamed the world was one big prison, and we’re both the prisoners and the guards. But this wasn't a dream. It was like those moments of clarity I used to have when I was a child.