Lucretius, and the man who saved his work from oblivion, sparked our modern world

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern – Stephen Greenblatt (2011)

            The intellectual progress of humanity is never smooth, and quite often fraught with violence, pride in ignorance, and just plain old bad luck.  Sometimes an artifact from long ago is rediscovered, or translated, and then becomes a touchstone for a whole world of new thoughts and ideas.  This book is about one such re-discovery.  There are few writings from antiquity that have shaped and informed the modern world we all live in quite like the work On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura in its OG Latin form) by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius.  Stephen Greenblatt does an amazing job of uncovering not only the history of Lucretius himself and his seminal work, but also the history and life of the sometime Papal Secretary, and lifelong lover of literature and antiquities, Poggio Bracciolini who through his diligent exploration unearthed a 400 year old handmade copy of Lucretius’ masterpiece and shared it with the world.

            Lucretius did not create the ideas espoused in his poem.  He was a Roman citizen at a time when the Empire was in decline, and many thinkers were looking back to the golden age of Greek thought and ideas to try and gain some sort of insight that would bring back the glory of Rome.  Lucretius was interested in the work of a specific Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who lived and created a school of philosophy nearly 300 years earlier.  This philosophy, known as Epicurianism, is central to the ideas of Lucretius, and forms a base for him to explore the nature of reality, life, and the universe at large.  Democritus’ idea, atomism, is that all matter in the universe is reducible to tiny non-reducible parts called atoms, and that because of this all matter is similar across the Universe.  Epicurus started his explorations at the age of 12 when his teachers could not explain to him the meaning of chaos.  He took the atomist idea and ran with it, positing that everything, planets, stars, the Sun, us, etc., were all a part of the natural order of things, and that the same principles that govern life and change on Earth do so in the heavens.  Because of this, he stated that pleasure, derived without hurting anyone or anything else, is the highest goal of life.  Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul, seeing it as just another part of the living organism, which dissipates at the time of death.  There is no afterlife, and yet one should not fear death.  “Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved I without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”

            Consider this, using pure thought and reason, and before any scientific method of empirical experimentation was even conceived of, Lucretius had taken the starting point of Epicurus’ philosophy, and intuited some deep truths that, to modern, post-Enlightenment minds, come off like predictions of the advancements of science in the past 2,000 years.  As listed in this book by Mr. Greenblatt, here are some of the elements of the Lucretian challenge put forth in On the Order of Things, as stated by the author, Peter Greenblatt:

·         Everything is made of invisible particles (There are no non-natural forces or deities creating existence)

·         The elementary particles of matter – “the seeds of things” – are eternal (Neither destruction nor creation have the upper hand.  Everything is in a constant state of change and mutation of form.  The philosopher George Santayana called this idea, “the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon.”)

·         The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size (Lucretius intuited that there is a hidden code of matter, and a specific set of rules by which they combine into the substances of our existence.  He could not have known about molecular chemistry, or genetics, or any other such thing, but his reasoning told him it had to be true.  Amazing!)

·         All particles are in motion in an infinite void (Every high school science student learns this as part of physics.  Einstein understood this as well and it was the basis for his Special Relativity.)

·         The universe has no creator or designer (There is no purpose or end-goal for the existence of the universe, only ceaseless creation and destruction.  This is a very similar concept to that of the endless cycles of time in many Eastern religions)

·         Everything comes into being as a result of a “Swerve” (If particles all moved in one straight line there would be no interactions between them.  Lucretius stated that “at absolutely unpredictable times and places they deflect slightly from their straight course.”  He was thinking of a minimally slight adjustment, enough to cause an infinite variety of combinations.)

·         The “Swerve”: is the source of human free will (if all motion were one pre-determined chain of events, there would be no room for free will, with cause following cause for eternity.)

·         Nature ceaselessly experiments (There is no single moment of creation nor an end to creation)

·         The universe was not created for or about humans (There were forms of life before humans, which no longer exist, and there will be forms of life after humans cease to exist.)

·         Humans are not unique (We are made of the same stuff as all other life and non-life.  We can find many life-forms that share traits we consider human, such as compassion, altruism, regret, and love.  As Lucretius states, a calf recognizes its mother cow just like a baby human recognizes her mother.)

·         Human society began not in a Gold Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival (Lucretius understood that life is harsh, and was especially so to early humans who had no tools, no medicines, no social organization, and no language.)

·         The soul dies (The human soul, or any other living thing’s soul, is as much a part of the body as the eyes, and also dissipates upon death.)

·         There is no afterlife (the afterlife has been a consolation and a torment to many humans.  However, once it is grasped that the soul dies alongside the body, one can grasp that there are no posthumous punishments to worry about, nor any rewards to be expected.  Life on this Earth is all we humans have.)

·         Death is nothing to us (Once the body and soul die, there will be neither pleasure nor pain, longing nor fear.  “You will not care, because you will not exist.”)

·         All organized religions are superstitious delusions (Humans become enslaved to their own dreams.  They experience sequences of misfortune and feel that they are being punished by some deity.  They feel awe and wonder while gazing at the sky above and assign that beauty to some magical being that must have created it, regardless of the natural explanations for such phenomena.

·         Religions are invariably cruel (They promise hope and love but their deep underlying structure is cruelty.  “The quintessential element of religion – and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core – is the sacrifice of a child by a parent.”  Lucretius was writing this nearly 60 years before the currently prominent sacrifice myth began.  He was aware of Hebraic myths such as Abraham almost gutting Issac cuz some voice in his head told him to, and would have understood the prominent display of images and statues of a bloody, murdered son.)

·         There are no Angels, Demons, or ghosts (All are entirely unreal and best forgotten.)

·         The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain (Lucretius believed that there is no higher purpose than the facilitation of the pursuit of happiness for oneself and one’s fellow creatures, and this includes all living things.  “All other claims, such as service to the state, glorification of gods or a ruler, and the arduous pursuit of virtue through self-sacrifice, are secondary, misguided, or fraudulent.” as paraphrased by Mr. Greenblatt.)

·         The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion (Lucretius believed the principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire and gnawing fear.  Our ability to imagine the infinite, whether infinite pain, infinite sorrow, or infinite joy, keeps us from accepting or enjoying the finite pleasures, rising up from finite sorrows, and controlling the desire for infinite joy.)

·         Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder (For Lucretius, humans engage in many poisonous beliefs that prevent us from enjoying the wonder of the world around us, including the idea of an eternal soul that will be punished or rewarded indefinitely.  This keeps humans from living in the now, and lets them accept the wrongs and horrors of life as just a way-station into the next world.  This is deep poison, and keeps us from doing our best to increase happiness worldwide, and reduce pain worldwide.  It is the source of much of the evil in the world)

          For hundreds of years, Lucretius works were forgotten, until the world changed and people started exploring the old Greek masters again.  Due to the inherent bias in christian researchers, they praised any philosopher whose ideas seemed to correlate to the tenets of christianity while excoriating or outright destroying the works of any philosopher who held what they believed to be “pagan” or non–christian ideas.  Because of this, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius were consigned to the “pagan” pile, and their ideas and works ridiculed outright as part of Catholic dogma.  Ironically, it took a bibliophile like Poggio Bracciolini to travel to remote monasteries to rediscover these old works.  The masses in the intervening centuries had become dumb as rocks and highly illiterate.  The monk copyists in these secluded monasteries would copy old works, many times purely by eye, as they could not actually read old Greek or Latin.  Poggio’s discovery of On the Nature of Things, and his subsequent dissemination of the work, occurred before the invention of the printing press.  Once that was invented, copies of Lucretius spread far and wide, influencing many of the thinkers, artists, and writers that led what is now called the Renaissance.  These same writers went on to influence the Enlightenment, and through that, the modern world we all share. 

          This book is a great treasure, and should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the underpinnings of our world, and the many ways in which the enemies of free thought and free ideas fight and kill to keep their lies alive in the minds and hearts of the masses.  We currently live in a world where too many factions are seeking to distract humanity back into religious factions of “US” versus “THEM.”  If it is not one religion against another, it is upper classes against the poor ones, citizens against immigrants, or civilized people against uncivilized “animals.”  Every one of these con-artists, and they are ALL con-artists, seeks to force us to see the world in the manner they prescribe, for their own ends.  It is such a joy to find heroes in the past that help me fight the near-endless waves of stupidity and evil that seek to keep humanity under control.  Those who fight ideas do so because they KNOW these ideas shatter their bullshit lies.  Long live the life of the mind.  Lucretius was one bad mo-fo.

(To read On The Nature of Things - Lucretius (translated by William Ellery Leonard) click here: http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html) 

(To purchase The Swerve - Peter Greenblatt, click here: THE SWERVE )

Schopenhauer, where have you been all my life?

Essays & Aphorisms – Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)

            Philosophy, as a field of study, is fascinating to me.  Ideally, it is pure thought/reasoning, utilized to explore and understand ourselves, the world around us, and the workings of existence, providing answers that empirical data cannot.  This is the purported goal of philosophy, yet too many philosophers undercut themselves right off the bat by assuming certain basic truths to be unquestionable, and proceeding to extract their philosophical thought from this basis.  This error results in whole streams of thought that are easily discounted by anyone who does not assume their initial postulates are verboten.  It also makes it very easy to justify horrible things, such as the subjugation of women, the superiority/inferiority of this or that race or people, or the idea that the state of being alive is a punishment meted out by a vengeful creator deity and which, if we suffer through the horror with dignity and the proper rituals/beliefs we will be rewarded with everlasting joy and happiness once we die.  Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to start off his work without the crutch of pre-existing, non-verifiable beliefs, and man, does it make for extremely interesting reading!

            I feel that the field of philosophy is one where the individual great thinkers should be studied, not for the truth they uncovered about the world, but for how they saw the world they inhabited.  Too many pedantic people get fixated on one philosopher whose ideas about existence so mirror their own ideas that other philosophers are neglected.  This is the sign of a closed, simple mind, one that cannot comprehend that it is in their best interest to read widely,  think deeply, and then to come up with their personal ideas about existence.  This is the best way to read philosophy.  It is a map to human thought, not a set of rules to live by.

            I had heard the name Schopenhauer mentioned in much of my reading over the last 20 years.  Many of the writers I admire see him as a crucial point in their own development.  In his life he wrote extensively but the book he published early on, his masterpiece The World As Will & Representation, is really the definitive statement of all of his extremely well-thought out ideas.  I will read that one day, but for an introduction I am glad I found this book which collects many different writings under various subject headings, such as religion, ethics, women, the arts, psychology, and writing itself. 

            Schopenhauer is described as an atheistic, philosophical pessimist.  This description is due to where Schopenhauer chose to begin his exploration of philosophy.  He did not start from the tenets that any specific religion’s ideas were a priori truth.  His philosophy was the first that took all of the recent scientific advancements for its basis, instead of the theological arguments that most philosophers use as a crutch when creating their thought.  Schopenhauer saw through the lies inherent in organized religion of any kind, and because of this, his philosophy is truly a humanist one.  The supernatural is never evoked as the cause of anything, nor as the redemption of anything.  This does not mean that he did not find beauty and value in the ethics and wisdom found in religious texts.  Not at all.  He was widely read on the Christian texts, Buddhists texts, and was the first major European philosopher to read and understand the value of the India Vedas, mythological tales which preceded most of the monotheistic religions by thousands of years.  He was a world thinker in the best sense, and understood the deep correlations between the Buddhist philosophies (Buddhism being an atheistic religion) and the Christian philosophies that Jesus preached in the New Testament.  He understood the warped desecration of these ideas by the organized church. 

            Some of the greatest writers and artists are ignored in their lifetime and only praised and championed once enough time has passed to allow the indignation to die down and the work to be seen honestly for what it is.  The list of greats that were directly influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer reads like a who’s who of the greatest minds of the last 150 years.  These include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Rank, Gustav Mahler, Joseph Campbell, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis Borges, to name but a few.  I am so glad I finally dove into Schopenhauer’s world.  It is a world I will keep returning to and exploring my entire life.  I wish I could just quote endless passages from Essays & Aphorisms but perhaps a few will do.

            On Ethics: “Every good human quality is related to a bad one into which it threatens to pass over: and every bad quality is similarly related to a good one. The reason we so often misunderstand people is that when we first make their acquaintance we mistake their bad qualities for the related good ones, or vice versa: thus a prudent man will seem cowardly, a thrifty one avaricious; or a spendthrift will seem liberal, a boor frank and straightforward, an impudent fellow full of noble self-confidence, and so on.”

            On Philosophy and The Intellect: “If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it.  But if you do that you will produce nothing great.  If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.”

            On Thinking For Yourself: “A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone truly belongs to us.  This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar.”

 (This book is available for purchase here:  AMAZON  )

Philip K. Dick, a Mystic for our Modern Times.

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick – Philip K. Dick (2011)

As a life-long science fiction reader, and avid follower of the nuttier, “fringe” sci-fi writers, I would hear the name of Philip K. Dick (PKD) spoken of in reverential tones.  He had died in 1982, soon after my family moved to the USA from Puerto Rico, and did not actually penetrate the mainstream culture until years later.  Because of that I did not get around to reading any of his works until I was in college, in the early 90’s.  At that time I had the good fortune of knowing other freaks who liked freaky books, and I began my dive into the world of Philip K. Dick.

It was easy to see why so many people idolized his work.  It was deeply inventive, highly cynical, and overflowing with insights and questions about topics which the standard sci-fi fare never bothered to analyze. PKD explored ideas about consciousness, what makes a person real, what makes thoughts real, what is the difference between thought and reality, and what can we truly know about the world around us when we have to filter it all through a very imperfect instrument (the human brain).  This was perfect for the Gen-X nihilists that found in PKD a sort of cultural prophet.  Here was a writer asking very deep and esoteric questions about the human experience without relying on the standard answers otherwise provided by religion, politics, and society at large.  He was a weirdo’s weirdo.  If Kurt Vonnegut was the caustic, depressed but funny grandfather of Gen X, then PKD was its warped, wasted, ranting uncle, disrupting all family gatherings with his inability to go along with the bullshit.

In-between February and March of 1974, PKD experienced a neurological/spiritual/pharmacological event that changed the course of his life from then until his death 8 years later. In one of the simpler re-tellings of this story, PKD went to his front door to answer a knock, encountered what would be described now as a “goth” girl standing there delivering something.  He fixated on her “Jesus fish” necklace and when he asked about it, she touched it and at that moment a pink laser light filled his whole sensory world.  This “light” spoke to PKD, shared inconceivably vast amounts of data in the forms of a sickeningly fast sequence of images flashed into his brain, and in every single respect scrambled him up pretty bad.  This experience, and several other similar ones that continued for the next 2 months or so, became the sole focus of his internal life until his death.

For a human being wired to instantly analyze and explore any new idea that came into his head, this event proved to be too much.  In the course of the next 8 years, PKD would repeatedly and exhaustively explore the event, the “knowledge” that was imbued in him, and the changes that this event brought to his mind in every way that a man like PKD could think of.  He analyzes it in letters to friends.  He discusses it from every possible angle.  He finds an answer, that answer is then negated, and another answer is found, eventually leading him to what is a maze of metaphysical thought.  PKD would sleep very little as he stayed up night after night, ingesting massive amounts of amphetamines in an attempt to stay awake and process what he experienced.  This led to over 8,000 mostly hand-written pages exploring the event of 2-3-1974.  (PKD always named the event 2-3-1974 as it happened between Feb-Mar of that year)

The human mind can explore a subject so deeply, that it becomes hard to tell if what is being thought is of any use.  It can quickly devolve into vicious logic circles.  For example, at one point PKD thinks that what happened must have been the “soul” of a former friend, a Reverend Pike, who came back to impart knowledge to PKD.  This is explored for possible correlations until PKD realizes that even though Reverend Pike knew Latin (some of the messages “beamed” into PKD were in Latin, a language that PKD never knew), he never knew ancient Greek, and some of the “messages” PKD received were in ancient Coptic Greek.  This led him to thinking that perhaps he had somehow connected with a re-incarnated Greek deity who had also happened to have incarnated as his friend Rev. Pike.  It goes on and on.  PKD, no matter how he turns the problem around in his head, cannot come to a satisfactory answer.

Thank goodness some of PKD’s loyal fans and editors got around to working on those 8,000+ pages.  The Exegesis contains around 900 pages and it is hard to imagine how much more recursive and self-referential the other 7,100 pages must be like.  PKD was a man who loved to learn for learning’s sake, and because of this his head was as full as any library.  He brought all of his prior studies and reading to bear in his attempt to explore the events of 2-3-1974.  A simpler man may have latched on to the first somewhat satisfactory answer and lived the rest of their life thinking an alien from Sirius came to visit him, or that he had somehow tapped into what esoteric mystics have described as the “Book of Life,” which contains all the information that the universe has ever, and will ever create.  Not PKD.  Every conclusion he arrives at can be turned on its head, since it is just his own assumption.  This makes for a very engrossing, frustrating, yet intellectually arousing philosophical work. It was never meant to be published or shared.  It was a personal exploration into his own mind.

Not many people have the ability or the temerity to fully explore the truly life-altering events of their life.  Most of us just move on, trying to forget the strange stuff, and shuddering when the memory comes back at odd times.  Others change their entire lives and blindly follow what they feel is the true interpretation of what happened to them without questioning any deeper.  Philip K. Dick was willing to exhaust himself to understand his own experience.  That takes a lot of guts and a maniacal devotion to truth, even knowing that the final Truth will never be reached.  This is a kick-ass book, and I recommend it to anyone who has read PKD’s works and wants a deep glimpse into the mind behind them.  It is not an easy read.  It is not a clear and logical read.  It is however, one of the very few mystical explorations we have into a metaphysical event from a thinker of our modern times.  In time, I could see this Exegesis being codified and worked into a visionary treatise, much like the Prophets of the Old Testament.  It may all have been a hallucination brought on by a stroke, a vision brought on by too many drugs, or a genuine inter-dimensional communication, but the fact that it happened, and PKD chose not to ignore it, is amazing indeed.

(This book can be downloaded (VERY large file) in PDF form here: Exegesis of Philip K. Dick )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )