The Philosopher’s Attic

Décidément… des choses bizarres se passent. Umberto? Alors si c’est vraiment une manifestation spéculative de qui je crois… dis? Tu n’aurais pas sû trouver un nom un peu plus subtil?… ou alors mettre ton vrai nom? Mais il est vrai je pourrais me tromper. Après tout, qui sait quoi sur les speculations, les intellects ou les indications de voyage? gt; Merci pour les voeux de Pacques, trèsor…

After that nice meta-message to a ‘not lurking anymore’ character here (I’m feeling like being shadowed by a conspiratory Casaubon *clears throat and desk*), I’ll get back to topic… which is… nothing of importance.

I did clear up some issues with my book, discussed a new/old book project and got handed a new article to write. Fun, fun… and again FUN. No, seriously. I’m wrestling this translation down, slowely but it’s going down. And that’s a good thing. Work is basically the only thing on my mind at the moment since all doubts and insecurities come from there and my hope is that once I clear those my head will eventually stop spinning. Health is still bad, but hey… the sun is back. *gg*

I just went through the poems of the last three months and one thing strikes me as odd. Apart from the fact that most of the time I cannot remember having written what stares at me from the paper (sic!) there is a strange double articulation in these writings. On one side they express a clear and even obvious love and nearness to people, shared pain etc. and expectations. On the other hand this is mostly articulated by a vocabulary that designates a distance of space and physical removedness. I have always had a passion for ambiguous expressions and choosing the lesser obvious expression over the well used one. This can really be seen in my stories where there’s a constant game going on between me writing something and playing with the subconscious auto-completion going on in the reader’s mind. For instance (a recent example): my Lancelot - while being struck down by an evil, evil Saxon - hits the gound… with ’sickening simpleness’… or when someone (Arthur) opens his hands in acceptance and let’s go of everything dear to him, they open like ‘withering flowers’… Too much lecture of Rodenbach and the Symbologists, I know.
But this nearness-removedness thing going on in the most recent writings is unsetteling me in a way. And most of all, it adds to the doubts and some choices I have made and am about to make. Or is it just the expression of this? What a nice causality puzzle for the philosopher…

Doubt can take up different forms while creeping up on you. It can do a lot of things for you or against you. In fact doubt is one of the main tools in the line of the work I am doing.
Technically speaking doubt is what you get when you assess your opinions, beliefs and stances of and towards the world and the situations of life. Opinions, beliefs ans stances are falsifiable, meaning that they can turn out to be wrong or wrong ones turn out to be accurate. In this rough sketch (JM, please don’t send me a copy of Brandom’s last article…) that hundreds of philosophers have tried to put so much better than I could do it, all turns around one little word: ‘…can…’ (replace that with a ‘could’ if you happen to be an external realist).
The whole modality of doubt runs from this verb.
In our everyday lives we are not thrown off balance by the fact alone that things turn out to be wrongly assessed or inaccurately described, not by the fact alone that we err, are wrong about things, people, situations…
What starts the perpetuum mobile of that tiny little voice or the little devil sitting on your shoulder is the uncertainty that flows from this. In the monumental set of our everyday stage it may only take so much as a changed iota to cause us to plummet. Because: if I was wrong about this, I could be wrong about that as well…. etc. And suddenly are our beliefs, opinions and stances are bracketed, put on hold, set under close scrutiny.
That’s what doubt really is about.
The futility of the reality we make up for ourselves. The fact that certainty is a mathematical illusion and that the world is literaly spiralling towards chaos. Doubt can be the one question you’re asking in class to be sure about an ascertained theory, it can be the feeling that someone just lied to you or it could be the switch that makes the light go out forever.
Some people turn towards faith or ideologic systems to rebuild some foundations that the doubts cannot reach or are not allowed to reach. Others make doubt their new ideology. Others again commit suicide since none of this seems to matter anyway.

Doubt can take up different forms and it can do a lot of things for you or against you.

I’m aware of the fact that this sounds all a bit weird and that I’m still under the influence of rather heavy codeine pain meds, but don’t worry. I am in no way giving in to the doubt. If anything I’d say the last year and the few months of this one have been filled with a huge load of doubts… and I am still here.
Doubt has a life of it’s own, not unlike bacteria it has a very cunning way of adapting itself to changed situations to survive. And as our beliefs and opinions of the world change, doubt mirrors this change. Not only that. Doubt is multi-layered. It comes in long or short term versions, minor insecurities or a major ‘I don’t know what my future holds’ crisis.
Whatever form it takes, it’s always a chance for reassessment, recalculation, reassurance and empowerment.

Doubt can take up different forms and it can do a lot of things for you or against you.

Quote of the Day.