'He's Fascinated With Opening And Closing Doors...'

My nephew has bounced off every piece of furniture in the living room within the space of five minutes. He has also picked-up, played with and discarded every single one of the multitude of toys that are scattered across the floor, nothing seems able to hold his attention for any length of time. All I can see is a relentless little ball of energy that moves in and out of my vision and gets annoyed when I’m not paying attention to it.

Saying that, I’m curiously fascinated by the little man before me: a person in minature, I see shades of my Grandad, Father and myself in his overjoyed face as he begins to rip pages from a cardboard book full of nonsense characters. This act prompts my sister to get to her feet and scold him for his wanton destruction, I’m too blasé to care and enjoy seeing the enjoyment he obtains from this and the lack of understanding of what he is doing.

It’s a pity that as a species, we are unable to remember a time when simply committing an act for the sheer hell of it without worrying about the implications was possible, this is lost in infancy and develops as we become socially conditioned. Obviously, it’s possible to be a hedonist and live in such a fashion and not care about the implications, but deep down you still know that there are bound to be repercussions involved in any act you commit.

I try to imagine a society without bounds or limits, but the notion of anarchy creeps in seconds into this process negating it before it even really begins. The only state a boundless existence can be captured in is the state of infancy before notions of right and wrong begin to form – enjoyment can never again be pure and unsullied due to the constraints of trying to make your own particular existence a good one, as Kant said; ‘The starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me.’

I never found the Categorical Imperative that reassuring to be honest.

So, I’m free, yet I’m bound, this is the contradiction of existence I find most difficult to deal with, I consistently find that I try to do the right thing, but even doing the right thing can hurt and alienate the people you care about most. I consider the notion of my own freedom (real or imagined) and it’s impact on the people around me to be the thing that causes the majority of my neuroses and sleepless nights, and to be honest, I often wish the night were quieter for me. Maybe it would be simpler just to shut everyone out and I wouldn’t have to worry so much anymore – that’s the trouble with ‘letting people in’.

I stumble out of this little reverie…

My nephew has managed to reach up to the kitchen door handle and is trying to open it with his clumsy inarticulate little hand, he knows that my mother is behind the door as she keeps popping her head around it to talk him, my sister or me whilst simultaneously making breakfast in an absurdly large frying pan. For all his effort and growing intelligence, my nephew is unsuccessful in his endeavour and begins to get frustrated and gurney – I shouldn’t find this amusing but I do. My sister turns to me, smiles and says, ‘He’s fascinated with opening and closing doors.’

I think on this for a second before remarking, ‘well, that’s something that runs in the family at least…’

God Is Our Logic:

Or maybe not?

Ok, so you might be wondering where this is going – I’ll concede that its an odd title for a first post. I guess what I’m really trying to do here is set the scene for everything that is going to follow on from this. Let the stories begin…

Around April 2004, I remember receiving a text message from a friend, let’s call him Jed. The small monochrome phone screen confronted me with five words: ‘God is our Logic – discuss.’ My response was suitably defensive and militant, running along the lines of: ‘in order for Logic to exist, it must rest on the principle of a fundamental and inherent human truth, the existence of God is not a fundamental and inherent human truth, therefore, God cannot represent inherent human Logic.’

I was a second year under-grad at this point, swaggering around King’s College Campus in the sunshine wearing a fully buttoned fawn Duffel coat that predated my own existence by two years. The ideas (or ideals) that filled my head were not my own, they belonged to Wittgenstein, Kant, Russell and Kierkegarrde. Like all young men who begin a love affair with philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge I liked to think these ideas had somehow become part of me, and through my participation and understanding, I had collectively become part of them.

In short, I felt intellectually superior, that I had something to prove, that my own ideas would one day rival those of all the intellectual heavyweights whose work I greedily devoured on a daily basis. I wanted to dedicate my life to answering the questions that had plagued thinkers since the concept of philosophising evolved...

Obviously, that never happened.

The thing that surprised me most about the text message was that Jed was a staunch atheist, I had witnessed him engaged in earnest debate with co-workers around the subject of religion defending the atheistic perspective with passion and vigour. What had prompted this radical about-turn and coerced a rational human being into believing that humanity was in some way pre-disposed or hardwired into a logical schema based around a single God?

Something that did cross my mind was that perhaps he had begun to see a pattern in nature that the rest of us were oblivious to, something that could bring this disjointed mess called humanity closer together. The question stayed with me, and I asked Jed about it at work a few days later but he was dismissive of it claiming my argument had nullified the base of his question. Looking back, I realise how ridiculous that sounds, but as mentioned, Jed was extremely intelligent and that old remark about the line between genius and madness being a thin one was loitering uncomfortably in the recesses of my mind.

Jed was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic around two months after I received this flawed propositional gem from him. I worked with him part time in a call centre on evenings and weekends, and although I didn’t see him all that often, maybe a part of me realised he was beginning to disintegrate on the occasions I did see him.

It was fascinating, but slightly perverse to watch someone unravel in this way. The guy was a natural intellect – very bright and always full of great ideas for doing things better – within the company and outside of it. Then the ideas began to change into other things: an obscure reference in a street sign would become a portent of impending doom or the end of the world; he believed that one our managers was the devil incarnate, and that when people spoke, they did so in colours rather than words.

For all my arrogance, my vigour, my propensity to try and understand the true purpose and nature of humanity, I could not understand this individual’s change in perception. Or, retrospectively, perhaps I chose not to understand it – I didn’t want to consider that another human being could undergo a massively radical change in underlying process in such a short time frame.

I lost touch with Jed after he was sectioned, from speaking with mutual friends I believe he still resides in a mental health institution.

So, what am I admitting here? That I’m a bad person? That I should have spent a bit more time and effort with Jed after he was diagnosed? That I’m uncaring? No. I just don’t think that I had the necessary emotional faculties to deal with it at the point in my life when this occurred. If all truth be told, I rarely think of some of the centuries dead philosophers whose work I studied, but the question ‘God is our Logic – Discuss’ pops into my head at least twice a month, and I want, I NEED, to answer it but I can’t.

I’m an Absurdist – the very existence of the question undermines the fundamentals of my position.

Perhaps it all stems from the fact that I am simply unable to understand humanity to the degree I would like to. I’ve always tried my hardest to see the good in everyone but this has become increasingly difficult as I’ve become older, jaded and more cynical. Everyone I meet seems to have become more tarnished, and I don’t like saying this, but more…well…broken…

I think this is called life – I hope against all hope it isn’t, but I don’t think anyone is going to prove me wrong at any point soon.

Its sometimes best to take a closer look at the world when the sun is shining, it’s often when the light is brightest that you see the really minute, deep-running cracks appear.