In my 20’s I destroyed myself philosophically (unknowingly of course) and mostly at the hands of Nietzsche. By his wanting to rescue us from a reality of false beliefs, timeworn values and religious superstitions, he powerfully rejected the parameters and confines of culture and folklore; his poetic, both beautiful and crushing, naturally had a shattering effect on me. Socially self-alienating, isolated, and gripped by the fear that any or all activity was futile and meaningless, I struggled deeply with what to make of these new yet continually forming ideations.

Nietzsche’s nihilism, often mistaken for pessimism, is not a conclusion but rather a starting point for comprehending the self. Nihilism forces one to explore the position in the world they find themselves cast with no immediate purpose or place. Encouraging one to introspect and lay waste to dreamy optimistic perspectives of cultural meaning, social truth, or religio-life purpose. God is indeed dead but in its place we find ourselves worshiping ourselves, only without achievement or accolade. Twentieth-century science and philosophy had reduced the human experience down to mechanical parts, ignoring the whole as well as its relation to all else… for what are the stars without the eternal darkness that surrounds it? The leaf blowing in the wind? The tree for the forest? and so on. But I digress…

Suffering drives the will and the will often finds an immanent, internal intention to crusade against. If not, suffering becomes an endless pastime, a suffering of indifference against the indifference and without escape. Ambiguity, purposelessness, lack of identity, orientation and meaning dominate Western culture. Culture has stagnated. It is no longer aspiring; capitalism, postmodernity, excessive prosperity expressed as material consumption and at last groundless optimism devoid of human truth(s) have manifest as the result of avoiding the deconstructive qualities of nihilism (philosophically speaking; or, in other words, occasionally hitting the ‘reset button’), the great leveller of false belief, clearing the way for something opposed to no-thing.

Floating on the surface of life, suitably detached, a dark and bottomless abyss below me; on the one hand a sense of freedom from the shackles of inherited norms and beliefs, and on the other utterly lost and alone. Out of this meaninglessness and indifference I sought refuge from this existential crisis with Sartre, seeking a release from a nihilism that untethered me from following a conventional life. [Chapter 3 of So Dark, the Con of Man has eleven pages of out-pouring of grief; the synthesis of the despair and suffering I endured during this time of my life.]

Understandably, the pursuit then of “meaning” and purpose (if any) in an objectively meaningless and indifferent world was the next great mountain: How to reconcile such competing actualities?

A return to Jungian pschology and notions of individuation – the self individualised from all others as determined by our own conscious and subconscious elements, a process of lifelong psychological differentiation, experience, and growth. Accompanied with Alan Watts’s breadth of works (as well as those of Talbot, Swimme, Joseph Campbell, Ernest Becker, and others) painted being and reality in a far more holistic union than the reductionist dominated mindset of Western thinking.

Artistic expression was still laying dormant at this stage; the need to reach an understanding of life and reality more paramount during this period. After years of searching, where did this leave me? Out of the meaningless we create meaning, which at the same moment does not really exist yet is justified and felt deeply. This feeling towards and as a reaction to life is, for me, undeniable.

We cannot conceive of true reality, we can only look in its direction, and everything in our symbolic world attempts to point (and not point) us that way: Art, philosophy, science, religion (dare I say) – these are not evidences of reality in themselves but signposts. In defence of optimism, pessimism must come first; it is what forces us to deconstruct false belief and lay ourselves bare to the objective meaninglessness of existence a priori the biological state. Then, we realise, we are free to choose: Enter Sartre.

“Human experience is freedom” and “man is free to choose… to give his life personal meaning.” In this we are condemned to make choices for our self and even not choosing is still a choice. Sparing oneself the paralysation of “existential angst” or suicide, the nihilist or pessimist finds himself in a rather self-contradicting quandary. Ultimately, a person must make the active choice to follow through with desires and intentions whatever they may be (and to this we can ignore morality and ethics). This is what Sartre calls commitment (engagement): “One must be committed to social, political, and moral beliefs, or one cannot hope to give himself definition.”

Of course life is still a paradox; on the one hand we cling to it and all the glory it has to offer (often too much so), and yet we do this knowing full well (or in full knowing denial) that it will all one day be gone, that everything we’ve come to know and love will be dust. Yet within this sublime state of melancholy, this sought-out awareness of objectively meaningless impermanence, we discover those things, just for oneself, that are meaningful (somehow); this is what makes living worthwhile – the sweet and bitter knowledge that everything can only be felt and savoured for the briefest of moments and appreciated in only such a way that is for you and you alone. This is the human experience reduced.

However: Late capitalism, the billowing of the middle class, keeping up with the Jones’s, FOMO, me-me-me, the romanticised self-indulgent postmodernist ego-centric ruled culture has a problem: We run the risk of living a life of superficial hollowness filled with false sentiment and satiated only by instant sensory gratification. Such conditions (which are unconsciously accepted) ultimately make all action permissible and therefore meaningless on a deeper, intrinsic level (for we rarely explore or allow to plunge deep within us that which is truly meaningful; rigorous self-examination is a rare past time). To avoid the rat in the cage, the cog in the wheel, the sheep following the flock, and so on, one must invoke Sartre’s ‘Commitment Man’ who “must not be indifferent to his surroundings. He must take a stand, make choices, commit himself to his beliefs, and create meaning through action” (I have glossed Sartre’s choicest bits; there is of course acting in bad faith; actions that deny our freedom to choose and deny the self-responsibility to/of those choices in order to escape the crushing weight of reality). This, I would define as, a life in constant search of (and action towards) authentic meaning, joy, and individual and subjective purpose. The use of “authentic” here must refer to something true, real, objectively accepted; this is humanism: an approach to life that is both biologically and philosophically entwined.

I charge that we should live by fully embracing the subjectivity of our lives and that this is the only means by which we can truly live and truly feel the depths of our human experience. Furthermore, the life and death paradox man endures is not something that should mock or belittle existence, but rather humble us and affirm that each individual life is unique and that alone makes it worth living. Inherent in this lies a hidden passion for us all that transcends the shallow monotony of living we have a tendency to be governed by. [Read cosmologist Swimme’s The Universe is a Green Dragon for a breathtaking condensing of the universe in relation to the human self; amongst other things, the sentiment “you are the universe perceiving itself” was, for me, life altering.]

I believe that art can reveal truth despite its form only being a depiction or representation of true reality. Art does not have to be necessarily pleasurable/enjoyable (romanticised, especially as we see in the indulgent postmodernist); often there is pain in truth, a discomfort in realising a previously held belief has been shattered for us. I feel only a deep truth, or reflection of, can have this transformative affect. And this is what I’ve hoped my works convey: A revealing of some truth or truths about reality and the human experience; a point to living beyond the dread of our inevitable end and a catharsis within the story as content or character embrace the Hegelian dialectic i.e. deal with the conflict of their worldview being challenged, giving rise to a new and previously unknown existential state and awareness.

Not surprisingly, my philosophical position drifts into my artistic expression. I inherently explore a kind of meta-catharsis in my work thus far; yet I concede that it is a sedated and almost contradictory offering, as in the post-structural society we find ourselves caught between truth and untruth, meaning and the realisation there is none (not objectively at least). The romanticisation of postmodernism we find at its crescendo in late capitalism, whereby mainstream society are unconsciously aware and vehemently defend (though without known cause) that there is no objective truth, only the process towards truth (even this is too articulated), and we are justified by nothing more than our existence to do as we please.

There is of course a contradiction here; is not the pursuit of one’s own “individualised purpose and meaning” describing the absurdity of postmodernism? Whereby life is a process towards truth though never reaching it. In defence of such hypocrisy, there is an illusion in the West and that is to reach an answer for any or all things: None more so than, ‘Why are we here?’ Removing any such longstanding yet groundless divine response, the answer is simply, ‘We must discover that for ourselves.’ Due to the Western-scientific mindset that everything is or should be or will be knowable, quantifiable, observable, etc. this answer hardly seems satisfying… which is likely why the notion of a “God” is still somehow popular or “there is no absolute truth, only the process towards it” is quickly becoming the unarticulated prevailing ideology.

Still, for me, continual rigorous self-examination followed by the earnest pursuit of subjective meaning trumps the tragedy of existential meaninglessness and human impermanence. Of course, below this meandering life is still an inexplicable mystery: Man conjures meaning from where there is none and although he is condemned to choose it is the necessity to do so with the illusion of meaning that stand as the ultimate achievement for mankind, paving the way for triumph and beauty. The triumph being the joy of living experience over the horror of our inevitable death. Although there is truth in the Tragedy, I do not subscribe to its view that to live is to suffer, only to live without finding a joy in the world is to suffer.

As my once dear friend would always say: “Woe, Will, Delusion. Dare to live the life of the tragic man, and you will be redeemed.” Perhaps I am weaker than he for I cannot carry my suffering to such depths. I am too astounded by the beauty we reveal to ourselves out of the nothingness to remain in despair.

[2016]