[MD] Long Climb into Light

[John Carl]

There is always an end to any drop, unless you're in a black hole.   Newton
knew that even tho he  didn't know any black holes and he didn't know the
Big Dipper at the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz neither.  but if he hadn't
invented gravity, neither would work as we know they do, so props to Sir
Isaac.


On the Big Dipper, after the  swoop into darkness  and sudden banging turns
therein, the bottom is reached and a brief moment of respite comes as a
relief.


The first impressions are of the sight and sound  of the glimmering and
twinkling reflections from the constantly moving chain which attaches and
pulls the cars at the bottom and whose constant clanking, along with
intermittent screams, defines roller coaster noise.   The walls of the
enclosing wooden cave allow us only the tunnel vision of the bright track
and clanking chain and the wooden walkway and railing along side the  soon
to be rising train of cars.


And of course, the cars themselves and the fellow passengers are revealed in
the light.


In our metaphysical journey there is likewise a bottom.  A place where you
arrive after diving as deep as you can go under the surface of things.  A
place where you know you can't go any deeper.   But like the roller coaster
ride, this place is not invented, but discovered.  Just as I did not build
these tracks or manufacture these cars, I find myself in my
meta-speculations confronted with the fact that I didn't invent this
language or formulate the rules of logic which keep me riding along in my
thoughts.


You have to take what is presented.  You can think about the car you are in,
but you can't think your way off the car you are in.  Even if you decide
that the language/logic paradigm that drives you forward is going to a place
you don't want to go, you must acknowledge that anywhere you are going is a
continuation of where you have been and that connection of history controls
to an extent what comes next.


And yet there resides alongside this momentous  momentum,  there is a choice
to be made.  It resides in my self.  Here we go, getting higher,  it is what
makes me self.  The ability to choose, even make foolish choices like
jumping off the train or into the already full car behind me, the ability to
choose is always present.  It is this choice, which defines "me", my mind,
my consciousness, my intellect.  Not just the choice, but the ability to
choose.  Even the thought that there is a choice reveals an opportunity to
believe, or not believe in my own ability to choose, and thus proves that
self is self-evident even as choice is self-evident.


The main difference I see between life and non-living is the ability to
choose, this path or that.  Thus this "choosing" ability is in every case a
definition of other selves around me.


This is what starts to drag me out of the bottom.  But this would not take
me far if there was not something to choose from - an outside world of
presented facts exists for me to decide upon.  We keep climbing, more
becomes obvious,  we pass obstacles such as the wooden tunnel walls and soon
we can see more of where we have been, more of where we are and more of
where we are going.


For if choice is absolutely a component of self-hood, there not only must be
something extrinsic to choose from, there must be some standard by which to
choose.  You can't truly choose if there is no value system *by* which to
choose.


A self without values is like a roller coaster in space.  No up and down
makes a roller coaster meaningless and no good and bad makes a self
meaningless, or obviates the self, even as choosing to believe that free
will is an illusion, obviates the self.  A guy can say he doesn't exist, and
believe it, and it becomes true for him.  Likewise, a guy can say there is
no such thing as free will.  He has chosen a certain way of looking at
things which is self-demonstrably true in that he has chosen to forget that
he has a choice in how he looks at things.


Still a choice, but a self-obviating one.



Quiet reflection  leads to a way out of darkness.  For every thinker who has
reached a metaphysical bottom, there is a thinker who subsequently climbs to
the well-lit tops.    We shall consider two disparate thinkers, Josiah Royce
and Robert Pirsig as we analyze this climb together, and the way they both
addressed this idea of the self  and other being defined by values.   They
were definitely in different cars, but they climbed the same mountain.
Pirsig's story you know pretty well.  Let me tell you Royce's.


Royce always knew he wanted to be a philosopher.  He started philosophy
young in the same way Phaedrus started science young.  With an intensity and
purpose to get to the top.   There was a lot to plow through.  Mid to late
19th century intellectualism was nearing its apex.  He grew up in San
Francisco and went to Berkley when it was just starting out and didn't even
offer courses in philosophy.  So he went to Germany and learned German.
Good move, for a philosopher in those days, Germans were world leaders in
philosophical thinking.


Royce came back, got his Dr. and a good job at Harvard teaching english and
freshman comp and contemplated his metaphysical bottom.  Like Phaedrus,
waiting for certain dilemmas to be solved, waiting for the first flash of
light ready to lead him out of that darkness.   As you know, for Phaedrus it
came when he came to the question, "What is Quality?"  And you know the rest
of that story.  For Royce, wrestling with skepticism which sees possibility
for error in almost any line of mentality, it came when he asked himself,
"What is Error?"  And then proceeded to demonstrate logically the absolute
irrefutable existence of error.  Rock solid concrete, right there, and then
using all his knowledge and abilities, what the existence of error implies -
a transcendant Value in which we have our context and being.  And went to
the top of his mountain.  You should read him sometime.


So as we near the top, we have sight already of what it will look like when
we get there.  We can see pretty much everything there is to be seen from
the top, even if we haven't quite apexed yet.  Value is generating our
experience, we have metaphysical assurance and more faith than ever that the
rickety thing isn't going to fall apart - confirmation from more than one
source.



 So far it has been a steady one-way pull up to where everything is clear
and obvious.   All the forces are in a statically-held dynamic tension and
peace and tranquility alongside a certain nervous excitement.  No screams.


Yet.