Without Being
We previously joked by asking whether one can “be before thinking” or if one must “think before being”. The issue is that this can be a serious existential question. The preamble mentioned the following phrase “This simple verb (being) can explain everything about existence since something that “is not” cannot be/exist and if it “isn’t somewhere/somehow” then it can’t be located/addressed.” Not existing would eventually bring us very close to another type of philosophy: nihilism. But nihilism and existentialism are closely related and it’s important to make sure that we go the right direction (existentialism) when presented with particular problems. Here we explore the issue of “not being” but it will be important to remember that this is a difficult issue like the last one, and the point is to introduce rather than to resolve certain problems.
Things either are, or they are not; this is logically and intuitively obvious. But here I want to introduce the possibility that things are not so black and white. Some people will notice my wording and immediately call foul play: “You’re obviously going to introduce grey areas and claim that there’s always something between black and white, but the fact is that something is black, or it’s not, and that’s it, there’s no need to talk about whites and greys.” To those people I want to say this: you’re right, I am going to introduce grey areas, but you’re so obsessed with your either-or notion of black-vs-white that perhaps the entire endeavor of ‘Point of Being’ is dedicated to you. It is impossible to use just one essay or one conversation to prove to you that 1) there’s [almost] always a grey “creative middle” and that 2) you’re underestimating how often the concept of “and” can be implied underneath your “either-or” mentality. Do you get what I mean or should I just move on?
The silliest but classic example would be the case of a bald person. Regardless of how we define “bald” vs “not bald”, we can always add or remove one hair until we disagree about where the border is. The only people who will avoid this problem are the ones who declare and insist that a person with one hair is technically no longer “bald”, but good luck getting through life with such strict definitions. More interesting (and funny) would be the case of Clark Kent and Superman. Is Clark Kent Superman or is he not? If we want to once again be strict and “practical” with our definitions we can simply say “yes, ultimately Clark Kent is always Superman, even when he’s pretending not to be.”
All fine and dandy but then what is the difference? Is it simply two names for the same thing? Apparently language is so powerful that calling one thing by two names can create real conflicts, even with something as simple as numbers (“How many __ are there?”). Conversely, what if I say everything is an atom? Some will argue that this is technically true because everything is made of atoms while others might insist that calling everything “an atom” is impractical and will render “atom” into a meaningless concept. But that’s nihilistic. We don’t want to go that way. And that is precisely why this essay may appear to have claimed nothing even though in reality it is everything that ‘Point of Being’ means. So in order to conclude this ‘meaningless and pointless’ essay about “not being” without being confusing about what it means and what the point is, I just want to say: From now on, always remember this image. Always.
It doesn’t cover much space, but in time it will mean more than you imagine.
