Pretty busy, and as always unable to multitask.  Book's coming along nicely, should be something of a surprise for people, decided to take a new angle for it, it's looking good so far.

In other news I've been commissioned to write a piece, so that'll be coming up as soon as I can get it done, it's a book review of quite a weighty tome, but a good one, so it should be fun for all and sundry.

If you don't like checking back to see if there's been an update the subscribe box is a good idea, you'll get an alert when I next post.

Today's question is simple:

Where are we going with this? What is the end result of doing all of this work, this searching for truth? Interacting with the world in a better way? What is trying to be accomplished. At this point the only thing pushing me is simply curiosity. Is there ever an end or a perfect understanding? It seems the original goal was to make the world a better place, but lots of people don't seem to be all the concerned about this. So what is the end goal?

When I was young, I had an insight.  I rarely speak of it, if ever, because it is so easily derided and mocked.  When I sought to make it happen, I put it aside, because I knew that those who heard it would dismiss my work as utopian, and its goal as unrealistic.

My work is utopian.  To the bone, to the core.  It has always been so, right from the start.

A utopian vision of a better world.

We are not a people friendly to such things.  The many catastrophes of our modern age have always had such at their heart.  The millions who died beneath jackboots or tank treads, choking in gas chambers, starving in famines, blinded and crazed.  Fields of corpses and shattered lives mark the tally of every utopian vision our species has yet conceived.

We do not look deeply into things, as a rule.  We see the surface, and it is sufficient for our ends, which are to strike a pose, a moral pose.

It is very easy to strike a moral pose in opposition to a utopian vision of a better future.

The difference is, I suppose, I think mine was realistic.  A realistic utopia.  For me that makes a difference, and in that difference you will find the secret to all my drive.

Of course everyone who has such a vision always says such things, and if the way in which you decide your life's path is by gauging the appearance of things only, and never looking deeply into the substance of them, you will find nothing in this.

I do not write this here to persuade you of it, nor of its realistic nature, nor of its value.  For me it was important, and it mattered.

But the question was asked, and so I will tell you why, and what all this was for.  What this all leads toward - or at least, what it would perhaps have led to, were people kind enough to share it.

The vision rises from a very simple thing, and it is this - that no matter how dark we are, no matter how cruel or callous, no matter how selfish and no matter how savage, human beings always cast their understanding in terms of compassion.

When I say cast, I mean, they interpret.  They take the situation, and cast it in a moral light.

But what does it mean to be moral?

Well, if you look at the Nazis, and their terrible crimes, and look at how they understood what they were doing, you find some very interesting things.

Firstly, they saw the Jews as inhuman.  There was no empathy, the Jews were understood to lack (having no homeland) the ability to be patriotic, and thus to sacrifice, and this, the Nazis said, was the most important thing a human could do.  Dehumanised, then demonised.  As anti-life, as evil.  Evil Jews deserve death.

Having no land, the Jews had not this ability, and so were not human.

I looked at rapists, as well.  How do rapists understand what they do.  Again, the lack of empathy is key, the dehumanisation of women.  The demonisation of women.  Evil women deserve rape.

Deserve.

Deserve.  Very interesting word.  What does it mean to deserve?

The idea of justice, of this for that, it is fundamental to how humans live.  But they do not abide by it.

Instead, what happens seems to be closer to this - that in admitting the idea of justice, of good people and bad people, a burning insecurity arises in the human mind.  Am I good?

This, I think, is the key driver of the moral divisions - we actively seek out, create and entrench moral divisions, so we can answer that question, that question that gnaws at us - am I good?

The question, of course, arises from the act of condemnation.  If you condemn something as evil, you allow the assumption that you might also be, and this occurs at a level that is deep and unseen.

Our condemnations lock us in this assumption, lock us into a fictional world of good and evil, where our screaming need to be good makes us demonise others.  Jews, women, your neighbour with the cat, whatever.

Even things like "Anti-Racism" or environmental crusading, other things more palatable to our society, even if they do address important things (and racism is bad, and the environment does need looking after) rapidly become this.

This critical insecurity - "am I good?" - arises when humans condemn.

Condemnation carries with it assumptions, and you cannot condemn without entering that world.  The world of good and evil.  And when you have no self, and it is a fiction, that world is a very fraught place, and so we are a very fraught species.

The Nazis were the heroes, from the point of view of the Nazis.  They were noble beyond measure, sacrificing blood and innocence for the sake of humanity.

And rapists also, are often heroes, from the rapist's point of view.  Evil women, getting what they deserve.

The Nazi/rapist thing is useful, I find.  If you're looking at human cruelty, you really should start from the purest examples, and I can't think of anything much purer than that.

Here's the question - why?

Why bother making yourself out to be a hero?

Why not just do it?

I mean, why not just rape?  Why not just kill the Jews?  Why all this heroism?  What's the point?

Surely, you don't need to convince yourself you're doing good in order to do evil?

Surely?

Do you?

What?

That was key, looking back, that insight.  The insight that you had to convince yourself you were doing good in order to do evil.

That no matter how dark it got, that was always there.  And in fact - the more I looked at it, the more it seemed that there was an even stranger thing.

That the more convinced someone was that they WERE doing good, the more likely they were to do VERY nasty things.

Exhibit A:  Christianity.

Exhibit B: The Inquisition.

Case closed.

The more I came to look at it, the more it seemed that what we understand as morality, is a very suspicious thing indeed.  Profoundly destructive.  Toxic beyond measure.  Corrupting and abasing human life, and we, it's willing participants, cheerleaders, accomplices.

Strange.

But why good?

Why bother?

Why cast what you are doing in a heroic light?

And why does everyone do that?  Why does everyone do that without being taught to?  Why is it common across all cultures?  Why is common across all periods of recorded history?

Why?

Where is this coming from?  Why is it so fundamental?

Could you be sadistic and cruel toward someone you DID see as human?

Could you?

Well, yes, but you'd pay a very steep emotional cost for it.  The guilt would be extreme.  The more you see the common humanity you both share, the harder it is for you to be cruel.  It's actually pretty linear, I suspect completely linear, although I don't have exact metrics to prove it.

On the other, nastier hand, the less human you see someone as, the easier it is to be cruel.  In fact, it's more than that - the more inhuman you see someone as, the more tempting it is to be cruel, and the crueller you will be.

Why?

Because being cruel to the 'inhuman' feels like justice, and, for a time, answers that question - am I good?

If you're burning witches alive at the stake, you know you're a good person.  Killing evil Jews?  Raping evil women?  Yeah, you know you're a good person, because you're being cruel to evil, and that makes you good.

Justice.  The idea of justice.  Not quite as pretty now, is it?

The lie of human justice is the driving force behind all human atrocity.  That question - am I good - howls for evil so it can attack it, and prove goodness.

But then also - goodness.  Why goodness?  Why must our cruelty be cast in the form of compassion?

Why bother?  Why is it so critical for humans to believe themselves good?  Why would we reorder the whole world, and our understanding of it, just to see ourselves as good?  Why?

Because there IS something good.  Life.  The life that is, human life - it is good.  And our lies must conform to it, in order to survive.

Compassion is the fundamental essence of human life.  And this can be proven, by the simple expedient of seeing how total it is that every cruelty, great and small, that you or any human has ever committed, has been reworked in terms of compassion, and understood as that, because only in doing that can a human being live.

This is the fundamental dynamic behind human cruelty, and I first worked it out when I was 17.

I cast around, looking for others who had also understood this, and found no-one.  Many people had parts of it, this part or that, and would build a 'school of thought' or a 'school of philosophy' around fragments of it.  No-one saw the whole.

The closest anyone had come was Socrates, way back when.  Here's a passage from The Republic, I hope you understand why, when I read it, I decided to name this insight, the insight of the core mechanism of human cruelty, after the place where this passage was written, Athens.

"Is it, then," I said, "the part of a just man to harm any human being whatsoever?"
"Certainly," he said, "bad men and enemies ought to be harmed."
"Do horses that have been harmed become better or worse?"
"Worse."
"With respect to the virtue of dogs or to that of horses?"
"With respect to that of horses."
"And when dogs are harmed, do they become worse with respect to the virtue of dogs and not to that of horses?"
"Necessarily."
"Should we not assert the same of human beings, my friend — that when they are harmed, they become worse with respect to human virtue?"
"Most certainly."
"But isn't justice human virtue?"
"Yes."
"Then, my friend, human beings who have been harmed necessarily become more unjust. "
"It seems so."
"Well, are musicians able to make men unmusical by music?"
"Impossible."
"Are men skilled in horsemanship able to make men incompetent riders by horsemanship?"
"That can't be. "
"But are just men able to make others unjust by justice, of all things? Or, in sum, are good men able to make other men bad by virtue?"
"Impossible."
"For I suppose that cooling is not the work of heat, but of its opposite."
"Yes."
"Nor wetting the work of dryness but of its opposite."
"Certainly,"
"Nor is harming, in fact, the work of the good but of its opposite."
"It looks like it."
"So is not the just man good?" 

Boom.  Is not the just man good?

No.  The answer is no.  The just man is not good.  Human justice is the engine of human cruelty.

You may have noticed the "Athens" insignia knocking around my work.  The stylised parthenon in the circle, it's a reference to this insight, and this hope.  I have it tattooed on my left shoulder, so that I would be permanently marked, no matter what I was doing, with a sign that told me what I should be doing.  I like to think of myself as a philosophical version of the man from the film Memento.

I tried telling people.  No-one would listen.  They would instead, listen for a little while, maybe three or four sentences, and then start harping off with ideas they'd picked up from books, or TV.

I went to University to do philosophy, I was so excited.  I had a golden ticket.  I could tell this to someone, someone in charge, someone with academic weight, and they'd see it, as I did, and work with me, and we'd do great things.

Didn't work.  Just the same reaction, as everyone else, but with bigger words.

Eventually I learned not to talk about it.  Everyone I tried to tell either ignored it, and if I pushed, eventually they left.  I lost a lot of friends that way.  I lost more friends trying to hide it, trying to hide the passion of my heart, and pretending to be this 'normal' guy.  Just came across as fake.

But the vision was this - cruelty obeys laws.  There is a deeper law to human nature than the laws of men.  We are not as complex as we flatter ourselves to believe.

There are two levels of human evil.

One is the invented demons we create, so we can fill that void inside that howls "Am I good?"

The second is the monsters we actually become as a consequence.

What is the end goal?

For me, now?

I've got nothing.  I don't see any way that any of this can be of any use to the world.  People don't care enough.  About each other.

No-one I've brought this to is very kind.  They might be nice to me, or they might be nice to each other, as long as it doesn't hurt them to do so.  But as soon as it does, even to interrupt a night out, or a college course, or heaven forbid a career, and the goodwill evaporates like flecks of water on a red hot stove.

But what it was?  What it was that I was reaching for?

You want me to say, it, I'll say it.

A world of human beings who see each other as human. A world of people shorn of cruelty or hate. A world of brotherhood, and kindness.

Where compassion, the deepest cry of all our hearts, was the driving force for all our efforts.  A place a of laughter, and kindness and light.  A shining species, great and humble, creative and decent, courageous and strong.

A place where people actually are like what each of us thinks we are.  Where the goodness and decency of life shine forth, and we are like angels, golden people, strong, kind, into a future so bright and amazing that they will look back on us as we look back on the worms from which we evolved.

Now, I've had long experience of explaining this to people.  Not recently, as I long learned that people have a limited range of responses to this.

1 - You disagree, and grandstand.

2 - You agree, and grandstand.

And in this, I still find myself where I always was since I saw it - unable to get anyone else to look.

You might look at my words, might think of these ideas.  But you won't look at the world, see how people consume each other, how simple it is.

You won't look at yourself, see these dynamics playing out over and over, around every single act of 'morality' you ever did.

You won't look at the future, and see how meaningless and dark it is without humanity being free of this.

You won't look at the past, and see how wretched our species has been because of this.

And you sure as hell won't do anything about it.

I think humanity has moved beyond a kind of moral event-horizon.  The idea of kindness is far more important to you than kindness is.  I did not want to believe this.  I wanted so dearly, and so much, to believe that people would care, would care about each other enough to create a better world if a way to do so, a way that was realistic and solid, was found.

I found that way.  And nothing.  Nothing.

And so what is my goal now?

Well, eat, drink and be merry, I suppose.  Explore humanity, find some more cool stuff... that's just how I get my kicks now.  And all the insight I have, I can use that to fund my life, and do some stuff.  I might go travelling.  I haven't decided yet.

What is your goal?

Well, it sure as shit isn't 'save the world'.  That's way too cheesy, and besides, you're far too 'humble' to attempt anything like that.  Besides the fact that people would mock you if you did, and God forbid you should ever get mocked.

Whatever.  What your goal is, isn't my concern.  What I can do though, is revolutionise your ability to achieve it.  The level of insight I have developed into human nature - your nature - is so extreme that the help I can give you makes the finest available, cutting edge psychological theories out there look like the crude babble of a gibbering, drug-fuelled shaman.

Whether or not you're sharp enough to see that, some people are.  Some people, reading my work, are sharp enough to see that I can help them in a way that is not available anywhere else.  And for the kind of help I give, my fee is extremely reasonable.

It really depends on whether you're willing to invest in a better life for yourself.

Because no-one I've spoken to is willing to invest in a better, more loving world, in which to die.

.

A quick update - there's a lot of questions being thrown at me, so I've decided to open up a new way for you to hire me, if you like.


I'll answer questions, or write articles, and generally keep this blog updated, but if you would like my attention on a specific question that's sticking with you, you can commission me to write an article on it.  It costs £100 to commission me to write an article, and if you do, I will put together a piece that will blow your brains out of the back of your head.

I will also credit you in the article as the person who commissioned it, and put up a link to your blog/site if you're interested in that kind of thing.  You don't need to do that if you don't want to.

I'll put together a list of 'commission-able pieces' on the sidebar of the blog.  Sometimes people hammer me with a series of questions - if you want me to respond in depth to a lot of different questions you have, you really need to hire me to do that.  But there are some good questions being asked, so I thought I'd give you the option of getting my input on them on a one-shot basis.

So, £100 buys you 2500+ words on a subject of your choosing.  As with all the work I am hired to do, I will bring my absolute A-game to it, and make it something very special.

If you wish to commission me to give a serious, sustained response to any question you have, just send an email with the word "Commission" in the subject field to my email address, which is ruthlesstruthdotcom@gmail.com

Look forward to hearing from you...

Why do you appear to reject so many people's ideas offhand but also challenge people to always consider "what if this idea is true"?

I've spent the majority of my life looking deeply into things.  I didn't crack enlightenment on my day off, and I didn't stitch some dogma together.  I worked a long time, digging into the truth of things.

It is a straightforward thing to use the scientific method of conjecture and test to advance the understanding of human nature, as long as you're prepared to be a lab rat as well as a scientist.

You cannot do something like this, relentlessly, for years, without developing an exhaustive understanding of the terrain, and I have a very detailed understanding of human nature, the nature of reality, our perceptions and the structure of the delusions that trap us.

If you haven't done this, and you've only just started to look at these things, or if you've never really taken a serious, experimentally based approach, but have instead simply collected and connected interesting ideas, or things that sound or seem profound, the level of detailed understanding you have of the terrain of the human condition is not (and there's no real shame in this) in the same kind of league as someone who has.

I'm someone who has.  As such, many of the ideas that people bring to me are things that I wrestled with as a teenager, or a young man.  On top of this - what you see of my thought, which is to say, the things I publish?  They rest upon a lot of research.  Sometimes people come to me with things I haven't considered from that angle, but generally it's extremely straightforward to see not only the answer to the question, but also, where the question is coming from, and the internal state of a person necessary for such a question to be considered credible, or important.

It's not that I'm particularly gifted with this stuff, although, yes, I always did have a flair for it.  Mostly it's just the time I've spent, and the understanding that gives me.  It is an unusual skillset, I don't know of anyone else who has it, but it's not magic, it's just the result of pressure over time.

As far as considering the truth of things goes - that's on you, that's on everyone.  It's not a "you rub my back, I'll rub yours" deal.  Regardless of the time I spend on the ideas people give me, or whether or not I'm accurate in my responses, the responsibility for taking the time to find the truth of what's being said - here, or anywhere else in life - rests most with the person who cares the most about what's going on.

Which is to say - I'm not setting myself up as an example to be followed.  I'm not asking everyone to sit around in a circle, considering everyone else's ideas in a polite and genteel way.

The truth exists, and your life, the life of everyone you know, and the world at large suffers terribly because of a lack of it.  In this situation, only a hunger for the truth bordering on rabid can, I believe, be considered sane.

As such, I do not ask for or expect special attention or kudos because of the skillset I've developed, this whole thing isn't about me.  But it is about the truth, and that means that it really is on you to consider everything I say, and honestly compare it with what's really going on in your life.  It's up to you to push for clarity through the haze of what you want to believe, and it's up to you to find the truth for yourself - and REALLY find it, not just accept something you made up because it sounds nice.

And that's got nothing to do with me, that's just how you really should approach everything in your entire life, because only an uncompromising stance like that is going to get you the clarity, simplicity, and insight you need to live well.  And as far as that's concerned, it shouldn't really make a difference what I do, what I seem to do, or anything.

Ok, so, question time.

The whole thing is pointless is it not? You or whatever you call it, has no control to change anything, nothing to change and all that jazz. So what is your beef? I mean change who? You speak of people, and others as if they exist. As if you exist. Yet you write, write to whom? There are no people here, there is no one to save, nothing to say. i don't know, but you can, and if you can then one day I can. So stop bitching about the idiots go further. I am just a stranger, so who cares what I say. In the end who cares what you say. Move on.. finish it

I get comments like this every day.

Many of those who learn of the idea of the absence of self - and (which is far more tragic) even more of those who see it, say "there is no me, so there's no reason to do anything."

Or...

"There is no me, so there's no me to choose, and so I don't need to try to decide anything."

Or...

"There's no me, or anyone else, so there's no people to free."

It's constant, and relentless.  And people bring these things to me, and always there's that underlying current - if you don't answer this, Ciaran, I don't need to do anything, so I'm off the hook, and not to blame for my inaction.  If anything, Ciaran, I'm really insightful to see this, and so I am superior, and very good, and wonderful etc...

I have answered these questions over and over.  Literally, every time they came up, I responded in full, and in full, was ignored.

Here it is, for the final time.

You are the only fiction, life is real, love is real, truth is real, humanity is real, human life is real, human pain is real, human destruction is real, human damage is real.  And life matters to life.

And all you have done with everything I have given you is turn it into just another excuse, another thing to let you off the hook, to justify indolence, apathy, and the abandonment of life.

If you would only admit that the reason you do not want to believe this is that you are afraid, something could be done.

If you could only bring yourself to admit that it scares you, but vanity will not allow this, and you do not care to challenge things that do not challenge you.

And so you are trapped, and will remain so.  Living in fear, because you will not admit that you are afraid, and so you will never address the real problem.

I wish you were honest enough so I could reach you, but you are not.  So believe what you will, and live the life you have betrayed to failure for the sake of a lie.  And quote whoever you want, for there are many who are not honest enough to admit to their own fear, and who greedily accept the lie that flatters them.

When I say that there is no you, what I mean is, the you that you think is reading this, it is an image that has no worth or value, and I treat it as such.  You are worthless, you have no heart, you have no spine, you are nothing, literally nothing, and no honest person could ever respect you, for you are a lie.

The life that contains this lie, that matters.  Life matters to life.

But your life has been twisted and warped into the service of an image, and because you live for this image, you cannot and will not bring yourself to admit that you are afraid.

I didn't really want to answer this one, but I'm just getting so many comments like this now I felt I needed to address it lest I drown in a sea of intellectual faeces.

Tomorrow, I'm going to answer a question from someone else - someone who does have the honesty to admit that what they're dealing with is fear.

If you're not prepared to do that, and you want to strike a pose about how profound you are, please address all your comments to the brick wall to your immediate left.

.

Just for a little while.

I'm currently putting together a very big post, it's going to be a signature piece, something on the kind of scale as Demon Theory or The Thunder And The Sunshine.

I may even turn it into a book, it is looking quite interesting, but we'll see.

I want to keep this blog updated, but I don't want to split my focus too much, so here's what we'll do.

If you have questions you'd like answered, shoot them over as a comment.  Anything goes, try to make it good.

Every day, until I've got this beast written, I'll pick one question that's sufficiently solid, and lay some killer insight on you, so you can get a sense of the kind of insight you can get if you're willing to hire me.

So, fire away, I'll pick up the first question tomorrow.