Winding downward spiraling
retrogressive movement
into itself, slowly yet
faster and faster,
disappearing into nothingness.
A relation that everything bears
to the abyss of similitude:
on which reality relies.
Yet what if the abyss were
purely not even itself:
absolute difference?
Then there would be no relationship,
nothing would be anything,
for both must be for either to be,
for if anything were everything
it would be nothing: such is saying
all is the same, all is different.
For all is the same as different;
difference differing even from itself:
yet only in one way and not in another:
Every thing is wholly other
to itself as wholly same: Alterity.
But, to the point, alone presupposes
an other or others to whom the alone
is separate, alone:
solitude presupposes community,
as sameness presupposes alterity
which cannot be other with it
being other to something wholly other
to it - that would be sameness:
The wholly other to otherness:
the alterity to alterity:
The tragic bliss to which we are confined:
L'Haim. Allein.
Yet together, with ourselves.
Life alone: a daunting prospect. A friend used to say: "we are all gregarious people", as if we need the company of others, companionship at a bare minimum, to survive. It is not as he presupposes in his implication (I guess you may have needed to hear his tone and the context to derive what I have from this statement) for we do not need friendly company to survive but only communication with others to attain those things we need to sustain life; but this communication is fostered and improved to aid us in this attainment through friendly company, for sometimes, the man who has never had friends, who does not understand friendship, may have a hard time getting what he wants from another due to his inability to relate to the other on a personal level rather than solely on a business one. Yet some people have this problem even though they have "friends" to converse with: but these are only acquantances that the one uses to further his personal prosperity, not friends, who are those one treats as ends in themselves or for the pleasure of their company and conversation, in mutual good will, and not as a means to the attainment of their personal desires or needs. Although one of the principles of any system of justice in politics is that every human action is essentially selfish, for without this assumption there could be no responsibility, as one could have done something legally reprehensible entirely for an other, who only wanted that other to do that thing entirely for him/herself, and there could be no blame, a friend is one who does something for another friend without there being any personal gain whatsoever, an entirely unselfish act. Yet is this even possible if the personal motivation could even be as little as to get closer to that person or with the expectation that that other would do a similar act in return?
If altruism is impossible we are always alone. Even reciprocal altruism, which is all that I believe there can be of altruism, infinitely separates the other from the same. And even that side that would sacrifice itself to the other, altruistically, is different from the self same self whose intentions are always selfish. We are always alone, separated from the otherness in ourselves that succumbs to the other of our the fear of being alone. Separated from our alterity that imposes itself upon the other, yet only his/her alterity, for this same fear; in some cases, possibly immoral yet debatable, this action of imposition is motivated by pleasure. It cannot be other to these two, these two that are wholly other to each other, and wholly other inside ourselves. We are so comprised of othernesses to our sameness that are all other to each other, inhabiting the realm of alterity, infinitely other to the one single sameness that is in the individual, the that of his/her individuality, that resides in the proper name. This sameness, although everyone has it which means it can be said that simply in our sameness, that we have a sameness/individuality, we are all the same, is always alone in its relation of absolute difference to anything other than itself that has identity with itself or anything other than itself. This is the paradox of the single individual (as higher than the universal). For nothing can bear a relation to all and only those things that do not bear that same relation to themselves (Quine). Perhaps it is easy to escape this by saying that we are all infinitely different to each other in quality and experience, although we can have similar qualities there are nevertheless no ties or draws in singles tennis matches, but that we are all the same in that we all have a self sameness in that we each are who we each are and not another. This, once again, is noticing the identity in the difference between the one and the other, an identity that I believe is all important for the reasons that follow:
If there is an identity in difference there must of necessity be, at times (and in the relation), the possibility that one thing and its opposite or contrary are each other: for at least all the oppositional relationships themselves are the same in that they are oppositional. The next step in disproving the principle of non-contradiction's unwavering application to reality is to show that there can be a difference in identity or a difference between difference and difference, which this in some sense implies (or at least proves the possibility of asking the question), for then we could say that the oppositional relationship is and is not oppositional, at least at times, which would prove that the things in the relationship are and are not opposites at the same time, which would lead to hell on earth, the destruction of coherence, the overturning of language, the beginning of a period of meaninglessness affirmed and confusion: chaos would assert itself as a more prominent member of order than order itself, the beginning and end of order, the absence of ground and the leap of faith into the system would be affirmed. We would all be considered equally as crazy and therefore no one would be crazy. Perhaps my intentions here are selfish.
But the point of this is not to dwell in this and commit logical or even physical suicide, flaggelating oneself as the ascetic ideal willing nothingness out of the tragic realization of the inability to eradicate desire, which itself must be desired, but to grasp ahold of this with ones radiant force and appropriate it in ones life, appropriating ones life to it, aligning oneself with the will of the cosmos, in which, as which, and with which you are alone. You are never really alone, only alone with yourself, yourself as different to yourself (other's influence) with which you can converse preventing solitude, aloneness, but then, to not appear schizophrenic I would have to say that your alterity is really part of you AS WELL. Then, of the part of you that is the same to you, your self sameness, you cannot be alone when dwelling in this, just out of the realization THAT you are the same to the other in THAT you are different even to yourself, to all others, and same to yourself. We are both the same and different to ourselves and to others, which facilitates how we can feel/be alone when with others or even together, gregarious, when with ourselves. And all this without being schizophrenic, so long as you realize you are actually not two different people, but two different parts, in the relation itself, of the same person, different to itself, yet this appreciation and constant taking into account of sameness annuls the difference that overcomes in schizophrenia. There is so much more I can write on this, but it is all in the poem, in need of a stuffit expander.
