On the Origin of the World
It might be surprising to some, but there actually is
a god in Mainländers philosophy. Or to be more precise, there was
a god. Before our universe was born, the only thing that existed was the
basic unity*, a being in a state that can only be described by negations:
It was not bound to time or space or matter. It existed in a transcendental
world that has nothing to with the laws of physics or anything else that
we know from our world. All we can say about the basic unity, is that is
has been and is no longer, it vanished with the birth of our universe,
which is the only miracle that ever happened. Everything that happened
after that miracle, the very second the universe was born, is our world
where our laws of physics make sense. After defining the basic unity as
a being that is absolutely different from us and is furthermore the cause
of the birth of our entire universe, we can now give that being the name
it deserves: God. But we can not try to describe this God any further,
because that would mean leaving our reality, projecting logics that only
make sense in our world, into another world. The only thing we know is
that the basic unity must have been killing itself, because it was the
only thing existing before the universe and therefore it couldn't have
been killed by anything else, because there wasn't anything that could
have killed it. Therefore the universe, as we know it, was born through
the suicide of God. God decided that he can't bear his existence anymore
and that he wishes to turn into Nothingness. But he was not able to reach
that goal without thereby creating our world, because the path from his
over-being** to Nothingness required a transition, which is being as
we know it, our universe. This entire world is therefore nothing more than
God's "body", that is in all its components rotting into nothingness
now.
The Universal Law of the Weakening of Power
The course of the universe is therefore defined as a movement
from the over-being (God) through the being (our universe) into nothingness.
The world itself is the decay in the plurality, that means in egoistic individuals
that are fighting each other. This path is predestined and it couldn't
have been any other, any shorter or any longer than exactly how it is.
The universal law of the weakening of the power (entropy) causes the world
to decay in a large amount of unorganic and organic individuals that are
all weakening the power of other beings and their environment and the same
time getting weakened themself by the overall course of the universe. The
purpose of every natural force, every form of matter and every form of
life is exclusively to weaken the power sum of the universe by living the
path through the state of being into nothingness. Every part of nature
is desiring for absolute death, because that is the ultimate goal of every
form of matter and life - to turn into nothing.
Teleology of Annihilation
The universe is in a state of harmony, despite all the
fighting and slaughtering that is going on in it. It is in harmony, because
every part of it origins from the basic unity, the God that killed himself
and therefore created the universe. Each individual once was a part of
the basic unity, therefore it is exactly what it decided to be, when it
was part of God. All the individual beings, no matter if organic or unorganic,
are now representing Gods will to die. Therefore, the will to die is the
driving force of the universe. In the unorganic kingdom we have gases,
liquids and solid substances. The gas only has one striving: to seperate
in all directions. If it could unimpededly exert this striving,
it would become weaker and weaker. If it truly fulfilled its striving, it
would be annihilated. Liquids only have one striving: It wants to flow apart,
to an ideal point, that is outside of itself. The striving for an ideal
point outside itself is obviously a striving for annihilation, nothingness.
Every solid substance or body has only one striving: to an ideal point, which is outside of itself. On our earth this point would be the center of the planet. If it would reach this goal, it would be annihilated
the moment it reached it and turn into nothingness.
In the unorganic kingdom
we have seen the will to die in its blunt form. Now we move
to the organic kingdom, where things are getting a little bit tricky. A
plant grows, procreates and dies. While in the unorganic kingdom "life"
only meant a repression of the will to die by chemical processes, the plant
obviously wants life, because it grows and procreates to turn its absolute
death into a relative death, by spreading it's "idea" into the future.
Therefore, what we see here for the first time, is the will to live.
The plant also has the will to die, but it can't reach it in the straight
way, therefore its life is a medium for the purpose to reach death. Animals are initially plants and all we said about plants also goes for them. But
what seperates them from each other, is that the animal instinctively fears
death. If it realizes any threat for its life it either flees or
fights for its life. Obviously, what happened here is that the medium (life) is putting itself in front of the purpose (death). The animal is, just like the unorganic individuals,
will to die. While plants developed the will to live as a medium for the purpose
to reach the goal, which is death, the animals will to die is now completely masked by the will to live. On the surface the animal only
wants life and fears death, but that doesn't change the fact that it will
eventually die and therefore deep down it is also the will to die,
which is the driving force of everything, because reality itself is nothing
more than a rotting God. Humans are initially animals and all we
said about animals also goes for them. But what seperates humans from the
all the other individuals that repesent the will to die, is that this basic
universal will not only gets completely masked like with the animals,
but it truly sinks down into the deepest abyss of oblivion and the
only thing that seems to be left as the driving force is the will to live.
Humans compasionately love their life and even the slightest thought
about death disturbes them. The medium coompletely covers the purpose,
life is abnormally loved , death is abnormally hated.
Mankind, Civilisation and the Ideal State
The movement of mankind as a whole isn't any other and
can't be any other than the movement of the universe. It's the movement
from the over-being through the being into the nothingness. Every action
of a human, the most nobel just as the lowest, is egoistic. Because just like
the devil can't see his fellow people being happy, the saint can't see
them being unhappy or suffering. Therefore, the devil and the saint, both
act for egoistic reasons and both contribute to the overall movement of
mankid. This movements final goal is nothingness of course, but for mankind
in special, it is the reaching of the ideal state. The ideal state would
be the ultimate utopia, a socialistic paradise to which all efforts
of humanity will finally lead. It will be a world without war, hunger and
any sufferings beside the sufferings of birth, age and death. All sicknesses
will be cured, and people will have lifes of joy with just a very small
amount of work, because work will almost completely be deported to machines.
So let's take a closer look on the citizens of that ideal state. Are they
happy? They would be, if they wouldn't suffer from horrible boredom and
an everlasting emptiness in their lifes now. If they even manage to live
such a pointless life until natural death, they will not be willing to
force new people into this mess by procreating. They have no hope left,
because they know that they already reached the ideal state. Therefore,
they will come to the conclusion that human life has to end or maybe even
that all life has to end, because they finally realized that there is nothing
to accomplish for sentience and that it would be better if they never had
existed. This will be the point where the movement of humanity (or even
the movement of all life on earth) will be fulfilled and the universe would
now have to move on without (human) life on earth, to reach its own final
goal, which is exactly the same: Turning into nothingness.
Apologia of Suicide
The enlightened human being, equipped with the knowledge
about the course of the universe and its movement into Nothingness, should
now overcome all fear of death. Only who truly discarded that basic fear,
created by the illusion of the will to live, which is just a mask
of the true will of all beings - the will to die, is really free. What
should contest an individual in that state of mind? Poverty? He has no
fear of starvation. Enemies? They could in the worst case kill him, and
death has nothing horrible anymore for him. Pain? If pain gets unbearable
he gets rid of his body without hesitating. One can reach that state of
enlightenment by always remembering that deep inside he wants death,
because he is, like everything else, the result of a decision to die,
which was the reason for the existence of our entire world. In fact, everyone
was once part of the basic unity, therefore anything that happens now to
an individual is the result of that very individuals decision that it made back
in the basic unity. That means: That nothing in life can hit me that hasn't
been chosen by myself before the world got created. Our will to die was
created by the suicidal god who decided that not to be is better than to
be. Therefore, if one can't take his existence any longer, he should throw
it away and turn into nothingness, which is the movement of the entire
world.
The View into the Void
The pessimistic philosophy will be for the coming period
of history what the pessimistic religion of christianity was for the past.
The sign of our flag is not the crucified saviour, but the death angel
with huge, calm, mild eyes, carried by the dove of the redemption thought.
Redemption of the individual idea one represents, can be reached by not passing the core of this idea to the future. In other words: by not
procreating. Who doesn't live on in his progeny, will be absolutely
redeemed from existence. And if this form of secure redemption isn't enough
for an individual, it has always the possibility of resigning from its
life by ending it. The course of the universe has now been proven as the
movement from a over-being through a being into nothingness, and therefore
it is secure, that redemption will come for everyone and everything. It's
that a matter of time, and that timespan is exactly as long as it was decided
to be by the basic unity. If an individual wants to phantasize about an
Garden of Eden or whatever kind of paradise after death, we should let
them, in the deep conviction that they simply can't see that the
one and only true paradise is nothingness, which was chosen by the suicidal
God as a better state than "somethingness".
* german: "Einfache Einheit" (I couldn't find a perfect translation, but "basic unity" is close
** german: "Über-Sein" ( I have seen the word "über" being translated as "uber" in engslish sometimes, but it looks weird to me, that why i translated it directly to "over")
Whoever this Mainlander fellow is, he is obviously not an antinatalists, because ANs do not compare a non-existing person to an existing person, but a state of the world where there is no person X to a state of the world where there is a person X. My good friend Francois Tremblay taught me this.
AntwortenLöschenAll very eloquent, but antinatalism has moved beyond primitive formulations like Mainlander.
Antinatalism is more than "Benatar and co.". It has a history. From my perspective it's the other way around. Mainländer goes beyond antinatalism and efilism, like I said in the second Essay.
AntwortenLöschenOkay, but you haven't shown how your position avoids non-identity which Francois Tremblay so wisely has.
LöschenAlso I did not say "benatar and co" so there was no reason to put that in quote marks.
This is very good (I´m shadow from antinatalismo.blogspot.com, it´s just that google merged my account now). Cheers!
AntwortenLöscheninteresting how you genderize the basic unity. i think that, even if the concept of God is kinda useful (or its history at least), its pretty unnecesary.
AntwortenLöschenMainlanders philosophy makes the most sense to me. But was the basic unity intending to create a world and did it have a will or mind of its own or was it just taking the only option it could. Only it could tell us.
AntwortenLöschen