On the Law of Insignificance

 

         Michael James Szymczyk

 

“Take my advice, come away with me now! Inasmuch as the earthly

  Lot of all creatures that live is a mortal one, leaving no way past

  Death for the great or the small, the conclusion, dear fellow, is surely

  This:  live in happiness, while there is time, under pleasant conditions;

  Bear in mind always how brief is your span of existence”

                                                                                     -Horace (2.6. Satires)

 

 

 

                                                   Introduction

 

                 The present work is not without difficulty.  One may have to read it twice.  Whether there is a reward at the end for the industry and patience of the reader I cannot say.  My only hope here is to establish the precondition of all philosophy (significance), to go beyond the hopes and prejudices of philosophy and philosophers (which debilitate us all) and to touch what I can with open eyes and open ears on such a delicate subject as this.  I ask only that what I may pass on to the reader he or she handles with thought and care so that it does not fall to the floor and shatter.

The central tenet of this essay is the act of giving significance and from whence that act originates and to what reality that act has in relation to the variable of time.  The content of this essay is of a descriptive nature.  It describes the state of consciousness in its relation to its antithesis, the unlimited.  The product: the state of insignificance that hovers above all that lives and breathes and also over all that which values.  But this essay is not without the more risky venture, that which is of an assertive nature and whether what I assert will be said to have validity I leave up to the reader.  This essay will describe the significance that exists within the limitation (consciousness) itself.  That is, the significance that is in time, in the moment, and becomes the ground, the value for all future philosophy.  The limitation in its own unique limitedness is all that is real and all that matters.  Everything beyond that becomes insignificant.

 

Terms

Limiting: consciousness.

Limited: world, phenomena.

Resemblance: simulacrum, resemblance between what was and is (for consciousness).

 

 

 

 

 

1.1      Given enough time everything becomes insignificant.

1.2      Logically expressed:  s and t then I
where s stands for significance, t stands for temporal duration and I stands for insignificance.

1.3      Significance, the act of signifying and of giving meaning, has only existence within limitation.

1.4      Consciousness is itself a limitation, a limiting.

1.5      Death (to the acting agents’ consciousness) is merely a symbol for the destruction of that limiting.

1.6      Death makes everything insignificant.  ‘All is in vain, all is for nothing’ one saying expresses thus.

1.7      Significance is not beyond the limitation.  It does not endure.

1.8      To say that something is significant is merely to say that is has significance in relation to the here-and-now.

1.9      Things that have had significance in the past and seem to have significance in the now have so only in their relation, i.e., their resemblance to each other.

1.10    Things that, not yet, but coming to be and which are said to have significance will only have significance in relation, in resemblance.

1.11    The unity of that relation is the limiting.

1.12    It is the limiting that is the ground of all resemblance, all relation.

1.13    This resemblance is the precondition of all limiting (consciousness) towards significance.

1.14    This resemblance is not without the limiting. [1.6 Death makes everything insignificant]

1.15    Without the ground (i.e., the limiting, consciousness) nothing has significance.

1.16    The Idea of significance, of truth, of meaning that persists exists only as a social phenomenon.  There is a resemblance between the grounds (i.e., the individual limitations).

1.17    In this Idea we find the expression of human interest (of wanting things to be the way one wishes them to be), rather than any clear exegesis into the ideal nature of the Idea.  Things may very well be different.  What one may signify may not be the same as another signifies (Saussure).  We may hope that what we translate is the same idea, the same signification as the author intended, but we have no way of knowing to be sure, we are beyond that moment of signification and now in a moment of decision.  There is no guarantee that what we choose is what the author intended (Derrida).  We exist potentially only within a world of resemblances and relations; in actuality the originals lose themselves in the act.  In this respect Post-Modernism is valid.

1.18    The greatest mistake in philosophy has been to confuse resemblance with reality.

1.19    The greatest failure in philosophy has been the failure to realize that despite whatever we may accomplish in this life, given enough time, everything becomes insignificant.

 

2.0      The goal of all philosophy should be the recognition of insignificance.

2.1   The first task of a philosopher should be to ascertain why he philosophizes.

2.2      To know why one values is to know what one values.

2.3      To know what one values is to know oneself.

2.4      To know oneself is to know oneself momentarily.  One loses oneself in the past as the moment gives way.  One is left only with a resemblance of himself to a signified reality of himself as such, which differs as new situations react different responses from the agent.

2.5      Any attempt at an Idea of self-knowledge that will span the time of the limitation’s existence is futile.  A man is not a fact.

2.6      The best a man can hope to do is to come to an acquaintance with himself, with the resemblances and the relations that are his past and potential future and the reality that is his present, that is, the totality of the relation between what he was and what he is and what that totality pushes him toward.

2.7      The only fact that man consists in is that he is.  It is this fact that gives him significance.

2.8      What is becomes what was.  It is this fact that, given enough time, makes man insignificant. [1.6 Death makes everything insignificant.]

2.9      Knowledge that was, and now is, exists only as resemblance, not as reality.  What was signified may not be the same as what is now signified.  There are those that assert knowledge has a strictly independent existence.  They are wrong.  They confuse what is with what is known.  What is, that is, the world (noumena) in all probability does exist apart from the limiting (consciousness), but that world would be as blind to itself as Schopenhauer’s will.  Knowledge is always knowledge of something, it presupposes a knower, a limiting, without that limiting knowledge has no existence, hence no significance. [1.1]

2.10    Without significance, knowledge has no purpose.

2.11    Imagine: the mind exists isolated in a chaotic wasteland; four white walls, an even whiter ceiling and a floor that has no color surround it.  It is this limitation that protects it from the harsh weather of insignificance that lies outside.  Over time these walls slowly close in towards the center and when they meet they vanish along with everything else.

2.12    Truth is power.  It is the power to signify this is this and this is that.  Despite the different theories of truth all agree that truth is affirmation, agreement.  Between what is not our place here to discuss.

2.13    Truth has its existence solely in its relation to knowledge.

2.14    Truth signifies, makes significant a statement in conformity with something (object, speaker, et cetera).  Therein lies its power.  If knowledge is a horse then truth is the rider who gives it direction, gives it meaning.

2.15    Truth is abused as a concept.  In reality, we find no Truth, only resemblances that we are forever confused of. (That is, we have no way of determining whether what we signify is in fact reality or resemblance).

2.16    Historically ‘Truth’ has been the attempt to clarify the resemblances from the reality.  The assumption that reality can be found.

2.17    A resemblance can become reality.  (A relation can determine the signified now).  That reality can become shows that truth is not, but is created.  Created in conformance to what?  To what is, but what is, was, and what is now is different than what was before.  The nature of limiting.

2.18    Truth determines what we see as reality.  (It is the act of signification).  What we think we know as truth we know only as resemblance. Truth is power; it is the tool of war in the battlefield of ideas.

2.19    If Truth has no reality, that is, if it is nothing more than a signification of a relation, and not of a reality, then what purpose does truth have?  [First question for 2.1]

2.20    Resemblance is mistaken for Truth.

2.21    Resemblance is resemblance to what?  To what was.  Insignificance does not lie in resemblance, in objectivity, it lies in the relation, in the limiting that does and cannot last.  (That is, this is not a question of the validity and significance of the world, but of that which gives validity and significance to the world, the limiting, i.e., consciousness).

2.22    Resemblances in relation, that is images, concepts that are logically symmetrical can easily be confused by their logical solidarity for what we commonly label as truth.  This however does nothing for the consciousness which, given enough time, finds itself insignificant.

2.23    Philosophy is the science of the relation, the relation between subjectivity and objectivity.  There is no science of pure subjectivity; science is the study of objective relations and resemblances.  The subjective is the limiting, the objective that which is limited.  The relation of those two is the Life-World, philosophy the science of that Life-World.

2.24    Philosophy stands before science as a man stands before the heavens.  Stars, however, do not feel, do not value and are not aware of their existence.  The stars would not be significant without the limiting which sees them.  So too with science.

2.25    Philosophy can deal with things which science cannot.  Philosophy is a science of values.  The science of values is the study of what is significant in life.

2.26    The determination of what is significant is difficult.  It is not a matter of pure subjectivity, nor is it one science can deal with adequately, its investigations lie in the relation between the two.  The ego of Fichte is not applicable here, if it were a matter of pure subjectivity it would be a matter entirely defined by the individuals tastes and preferences, (and there is nothing said here against the individual creating for himself-apart-from-others his own values of what is significant) there would be no method to determine which tastes are good, and which bad.  If it were a matter of pure objectivity there would not be taken into account the ground from which that objectivity derived, it would annul itself.  (i.e., the failure of various political and organizational ideologies is perhaps due to the fact that they place an Idea before that of the individual who gives that Idea reality).  It is thus in the relation, in both tastes and preferences, along with a scientific method that philosophy sets out to study what is significant.  However, whatever is given significance is significant only in the moment it is signified in relation to the limited that at that moment is (the objective and subjective variables that create that specific moment in consciousness).  Philosophy is thus always busy at its task.

2.27    Some of the greatest tastes in life are acquired (i.e., the taste for classical music, learning, exercise, solitude).  A man should set himself out to acquire good taste.  Above all, he should first set out to determine just what good taste is.  What in the limited time of this limitation in its totality, that I call life, what will be most beneficent to me?

2.28    A resemblance that is coherent serves the same functions as that which is called truth.

2.29  Concerning the validity of knowledge, we may have to resort to a pragmatic conception in order to retain some sort of significance, in the short span of our lives, of truth.  A thing is called true if it works in explaining what is at hand, a given things truthfulness consists in its efficacy at explaining, that is, that is most true which works best at explaining the situation at hand.  Let us not forget: [1.2] if we look at things long enough, everything becomes insignificant.  This is what our truth teaches us, and it is not without value.

 

3.1 In the Life-World we dance and play as children, lost in a moment that seems (is) significant, but which upon reflection loses all meaning to one who lives for a deeper significance. 

3.2    We do not need to look beyond this life to judge the significance of most human relationships.

3.4    When in love, one should read Lucretius.

3.5    Suffering makes valid the act of significance in the moment, in the moment we suffer, suffering has total significance.  We feel in the act of suffering as if our suffering will never end, as if we had spent an entire life suffering, but all this gives way to a moment in which we do not suffer.  Given enough time our suffering becomes insignificant.  A person would do well to keep this in mind.  They would do even better to take measures to reduce the factors that cause suffering in their lives. ²

3.6    Regarding ones dealings with other people: Expect nothing. Receive everything.

3.7    Our relationships with other people lose significance in time.  With each goodbye we expect less and less from each hello.

3.9    People are difficult.

3.10  If one expects nothing from other people, people become less difficult.

3.11  A person who does not expect anything from other people does so because they receive everything from themselves, i.e. they are self-sufficient.  Self-sufficient in the sense that they look to themselves as being responsible for what may happen in their lives, and not to others.

3.12  A man should strive his best to get along with the world, with other people, i.e., to make things as smooth and simple as possible.  He does best who minds his own business and ignores the ignoble business of others.  A man should not care what others think, and should only care what they do when it affects his life.  A man who follows these guidelines will find his time of being-in-the-world freed for better expenditures, i.e. for being-towards-his-ideal, the ideal, which in terms of the totality of his life gives it a unified significance.

3.13  A man finds his life significant in its totality if at the end he can say to himself that he lived a life worth living, i.e., that is, if before he slips into insignificance he can say that in his life he lived for and obtained an ideal so that what was, still has significance in relation to what is, if only for these last few moments.

3.14  It is the mark of a common mind to think that everything is for him significant.  In a respect he is right, in that moment everything (in terms of his intentionality) is significant.  The mark of this type of man is that he never looks beyond the moment.  If he did he would drown in the sea of insignificance, in the realization that what is, becomes was, and what was no longer has any significance (except for in relation), and what is, given enough time, becomes what was, that is, no more (hence the relation loses significance).  If he could realize death he would realize [1.6. Death makes everything insignificant].  He would realize that he is no different than the countless number of human organisms that have come and gone before him, who found their significance, much as he did, in bodily and social pleasures.  He would realize this moment which has been given had for him its significance not in its primacy (in the moment itself) but rather in its secondary qualities, that is, the relations to those social and bodily pleasures which he has strived for, he would realize that the moment, which is most significant because it is primary (all else is secondary from it) had been forgotten, and that the life he had been living he had not been living at all.  He would realize that what he had hitherto found significant was, given enough time, truly insignificant, and what had always seemed insignificant, the moment itself, was the most significant, simply because without it, there would be nothing.  A man’s significance lies in truly living in his moment.

3.15  Each man finds the good in his own way.

3.16  A man finds himself (that is, finds significance) in his ideal.  That is in his becoming to be in the world.  In what he is to become.

3.17  A man who knows insignificance does not bother with the superficial farces of being-in-the-world, he bothers himself with what is truly significant, qua, his ideal. While knowing that even that is determined to become insignificant.

3.18  A man determines his ideal in relation to his good.  He lives in accordance with his ideal (primacy), rather than society’s (secondary), the latter which ignores the primary significance of being.  The latter is also that which turns a man away from himself.  A man finds his ideal in his own way.  It is his way of coming back to himself.

3.19  Happiness consists in a being harmonious with itself.  In a subject’s relation to itself that is affirmative, and not without clandestine operations and routines (i.e., the neurotic mind that affirms an image not its own, to avoid confrontation).  Despair, consists in a Kierkegaardian sickness, a self which does not want to be itself, that is, it consists in a subjects relation to itself which is negative, which does not affirm that which it is.  The problem of happiness is a very simple one: one must simply change ones attitudes towards oneself, one must simply affirm who one is.

 

4.0      The value of art consists in its effects.

4.1        The primary effect is the effect the artist intended, the secondary that which not intended, happens to affect (i.e., the feeling one has in the midst of a beautiful sunset).

4.2        Any criticism of art, that is, any attempt to determine a given piece’s value must take into account both factors, intended and unintended effect.

4.5        In nature the secondary effect is primary for the recognition of beauty, i.e., we know nature did not intend this to be beautiful, but it is, and we feel overwhelmed, and thankful to the chances that played there part in making this sublime sight possible.

4.6        In art the primary effect has significance over the secondary, without the primary the secondary loses its value, its meaning, its significance.  It seems to us poor taste, poor craftsmanship, puerile as soon as we know the primary effect is either non-existent or thoughtless.

4.7        I view a piece ‘The Sick Child’ of Edward Munch.  At the moment I view it I perceive the intended effect, a certain situation and the emotion it contains.  The viewers reaction to this will depend on his own subjective experiences, that is, if he can relate, create a relation between what was (or is) and what is expressed.  If he cannot he will walk away to the next painting with a strictly intellectual enjoyment of Munch’s work.  If he can (and does) create a relation then the effect becomes affectual.  The viewer’s memory activates, he sees the painting, he sees himself, and out of that comes the relation.  He remembers what it (the situation, resemblance to situation) felt like and in that relation feels a bond with the painting, a connection.  Art is relieving because it enables us to feel that we have not been alone in what we have felt.

4.8        The intellectual enjoyment of art consists more in a pleasure in its sophistication, in its complexity than in its effects (Santayana).  That is not to say its effects are not without value.  We can appreciate art in both ways, much in the way we enjoy a fine piece of architecture.  It has both value in terms of its utility and its aesthetics.  We enjoy both living in and looking at the building.  In fact, we could say without the ‘living’ aspect of the building, the purpose, our value for it would be decreased substantially.

4.9        Music, without the effects, would be useless.

4.10      The value of philosophy is not so much that different than the value we have for music.  A man appreciates music for its effects; its utility lies in its effects.  It is the spice that flavors modern life.  If anyone criticizes you for enjoying philosophy, do not reply.  Ask only he or she who criticizes if they enjoy music, and if they reply in the affirmative, then tell them that much in the way a man listens to music so too does a person practice philosophy.  The value of philosophy lies in the aesthetic effect it can have on the life of man.  It makes life beautiful despite its insignificance.

 

5.0      In the given (the moment, the presence) everything becomes significant.

5.1   The given exists only within the limitation, it is what gives the limitation, qua being.

5.2      Philosophy is the science of what is significant in relation. [2.25, 2.26]

5.3      All that is secondary is insignificant, given enough time, given the nature of time. [3.14]

5.4      All that is primary has significance only in its relation to the given, in the nature of time.

5.5      Truth is secondary to being.

5.6      Being is only significant in terms of presence.  There is no distinction of degrees between truth and being.  The difference lies in that what is now truth, is only resemblance, to what was once being.

5.7      Truth, being secondary to being, consists of the moment of being, in the moment it is signified it is truth, truth has value then, much in the way the given is significant.

5.8      The failure is that those who think they find the truth, think that it applies to all time, to all limitations, when it really only applies to their moment of being.  To their own unique limitation.

5.9      The concept of Truth then is beyond the limiting concepts of man.

5.10    That there is no Truth does not entail there is not truth, that is, what works to explain things.

5.11    Logic makes sense because it limits.  If we were to add term after term, ad infinitum, so that an infinite regress took place, logic would lose its significance [1.2].  Not so much because of the system that is limited (granting that each term remains valid in regards to the system), but in the sense of that which limits and its incapacity to make sense of that which is limited (that becomes unlimited which, not in the sense of truly being unlimited, but which becomes beyond the capacity of the limitation to limit).

5.12    Philosophy should not concern itself with establishing Truth, but only the value for truth, which allows us make a hierarchy of significance concerning all that is secondary in the moment of being, which allows us to make coherent, and make something of the world.  We value truth for its pragmatic effect, its usefulness.  (That is not to say there is no such thing as a matter of fact, but that those facts only have significance (value) in relation to the utility in which they are being used, in the sense that they signify [2.9]).