by PF

“Being, in order to be true, has to be spontaneous.” - GW

Imagine there is an analog signal that contains frequencies between 100,000 Hz and 25,000 Hz. In this analogy this is our Being. Practical metaphysics aims at an experience of this wave, and ontological philosophy aims at the intellectualization of it.

However each organ of human perception has a sampling rate below these frequencies. The body might have a sampling rate of 20,000 Hz, in this example. The emotions might have a sampling rate of 10,000 Hz. The mind, which operates by habituation most of the time, has a sampling rate of 5,000 Hz.

The original signal has to be reconstructed from what is picked up by these organs of perception. Needless to say its impossible for a 100,000 Hz wave to be reconstructed from samples taken at 5,000 Hz



However what is not impossible is that, if this device (the brain) continues to grow in size and complexity, and remains obsessively focused during its evolutionary history on a few survival-relevant facets of reality, it will become useful as a feature-detector and pattern-detector for processing this 100 kiloHerz wave.

In order to do this, it will focus primarily on external things, which register merely as impressions on the eye and models in the memory. We could say that these are very low frequency, very superficial modulations in the high frequency carrier wave that is our Being … things like social appearances, the meaning of words, the possible ramifications of an action for self and group, who is mating with whom, threats from outside, possible sources of food and shelter, and ways of keeping oneself alive. Not because these things are important in any deeper sense, but they lead to survival.

Alternatively, if we had spent our evolutionary history in a glass cage where a mysterious third party forced us to choose bananas based on the appearance of their peels, then the outward texture of the banana peel would probably tell us volumes about the nutrition and moisture content of the banana concealed inside.

As is, we cannot know how a banana will taste just by looking at its peel. But we might measure the intent and purposes of another human being based on a glance, on a gesture, on the intonation in a line. Women do this to a degree that boggles the imagination, and it makes sense that they would develop an apparatus for it, given that in history they depended on others for sustenance and had to know when a relationship, a family tie, or a promise was about to go sour and take away from them a source of food and security. One of the fun things about experimenting with Game is that you get to realize how transparent you are to women who you approach, when you do this in the wrong mindset.

We know this thing has some great predictive value, the mind. How did we find out that life is a 25,000+ Hz wave, and the mind inadequate to properly know it? One accomplishes this by sitting up late at night with models of reality, and with the realities themselves. You then look at whatever reality you are looking at with an eye to self-criticism, and an awareness that you might be unconsciously inserting foreign elements of structure into the thing itself. In other words you look at reality with an eye to properly and deeply know it, and a suspicion that your thoughts and resources are likely to be inadequate. Where did you get this suspicion? Well, I assume you have been trying to model complex experiential realities for some time, and have had the experience of having to rip up your notebooks again and again, and start from scratch.

We will return to the example of Game - which has great practical value as an example because, unlike theories about history, about virtue, about the One-Thing-That-Is-Necessary, this one is actually testable. In the case of Game you have both a reality - the woman - and a knowledge system - yourself + the internet. The goal is to use the latter to understand the former enough to experience something pleasant. You can always test your understanding of the mating game, by playing it. Some form of immediate feedback is usually available. So here is the opportunity for sitting up late at night. You can sit up late at night with a hypothesis, and with your memory of the experience that resulted from implementing the hypothesis. “I have to be a jerk” - OK, hypothesis. “Getting kicked out of her apartment for being too forward” - feedback. “I have to be sensitive” - OK, hypothesis. “Gaining trust but never achieving intimacy” - feedback. From here on out I assume you will refine the definitions of either term, and work it out until it becomes an emotional algorithm and a method of self-relation which is uselessly articulated by the mind as “be yourself”. The advice from all the older cohorts, which is absolutely a valid description of what is happening, and which is impossible to absorb when articulated through the mind, it being merely a description of how a way of self-relating *looks* from the inside. You can’t pattern-recognize a method of self-relating that is nonverbal, though, you have to actually do it. Here we have a concrete example about how:

1) Experiential knowledge cannot be effectively approached through thinking,

2) A thought process meant to restore access to ancient paved-over essential functions (mating!) is elided into inarticulate experiential knowledge

Why does knowledge of the correct way to mate not crystallize into a structure in the mind which is henceforward easily downloaded to other minds via articles on the internet? Why do all who actually gain the ability to explore these realities, subsequently discard and disavow all mental models? Can it be they are recognizing the supremacy of another organ of perception and knowledge source, other than the mind? Can it be that mating requires more of a man than that he think a certain fixed succession of thoughts?

Back to our analogy. The mind samples the signal that is Being at 5,000 Hz, and doesn’t even take exact values. Instead it does a running average for a small time-window, to find an approximate value. It does this for two points, and then it simply generates a line connecting those points - this is the reconstructed signal. What looks like a flat line between minima and maxima is actually, in the original signal, many, many cycles of local minima and maxima which are simply lost. Being, in order to be true, has to be spontaneous, but nothing in the mind can ever fulfil this requirement exactly or consistently. Beneath its thought-blocks and glyphs, which are the recognized patterns in reality, is a true signal which must constantly be betrayed. Looking back at other minds and trying to sample their signal, one falls prey to the difficulties of trying to reconstruct a signal from outside oneself: always a partial victory, and always the reflection of the attempts at sampling one’s own signal. Knowledge can be relatively more or less objective with respect to other knowledge, this is the reason why not all perspectives about Adolf Hitler contain equal truth value or information content. But no knowledge in the mind can be metaphysically objective.

This is why our thought-based knowledge may be consistent in its predictive value, yet is not absolute or foundational.

In spinning interpretations of history, people are looking for foundational knowledge. A great deal of the Culture of Critique’s thrust was simply this: we can find a level of resolution on which your thought-structures no longer hold. Period. That’s all they did. Our society, not having any sort of awareness about the relative nature of all our reality descriptors, capitulated to them. Had we known that our knowledge of all these thought systems which were overturned - primarily group strategy and group identity - was not foundational, was not absolute, but merely pointed to absolute things (our Being individually, and our collective Being), a better resistance could have been made.

One reason why we fell so hard, in other words, is because we believed in the validity of these things so much. As Sam Davidson pointed out, if we were given but a platform to aim their own analytical artillery back at them, their structures would likewise turn to dust - their assertions have no metaphysical objectivity and even fail many simple truth criteria. It was the moment of the Frankfurt School laying down multiple critiques in a society purportedly founded on Principles (i.e. abstract notions which rule over the lives of men), where they were seen to triumph by successfully problematizing a society’s assumed foundational knowledge. This moment was celluloided and replayed again and again in thousands of movies and songs, a whole cultural edifice devoted to a perpetual re-enactment of the laying down of this hand.