I am sat in front of my computer now, re-reading a book that I read not too long ago. The book is by Jean Baudrillard and a certain foot note drew me to the computer. It’s reference was towards the world as an Archimedean perspective of describing the world. The reference that caught my eye: ” …in Hannah Arendt’s words, with the intervention of an Archimedean point outside the world(on the Gailileo and the discovery of mathematical calculation) by which the natural world is definitively alienated” (Baudrilard, J. 2009 Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?, p.10). It is discovery of the philosopher that attracted my attention; Hannah Arendt. The realm to which Baurdillard is talking, is known to me and is accepted as a fact that is evident in a wider culture – Clive James refers to this as the science of language – but it is Arendt, an illusive thinker that has drawn me to write this.
After a breif ‘google’ of Hannah Arendt, much of my information coming from Stanford’s Encyclopedia, joins a list of thinkers, that for me, as begun to drive the 20th century and my place within it. She studied with Martin Heidegger, whilst studying under Edmond Husserl. A thought pattern of existential philosophy is panning its way into view. My comment is this; am I a true existentialist? do I follow these lines of thought? We make ourselves what we are, but in a century (previous) that has been defined by technology-based conflict, we are no doubt on the defensive to our actions being the definitive source of our meaning for being on earth. The European philosophers that I have mentioned above, and to include Albert Camus in this mix, action is the basis for an absurd meaning. My action creating meaning. I would like to stop here and question something of the phrase that I have just stated…..
Jean Baurdillard has in the reference that I used above stated that we are beginning to use the science of language to define what actions are and consequentially who we are. This follows that we are this defined by the language that we place upon actions; so we’re not arranged by action but the interpretation of said action before the action has taken place. Baudrillard continues to argue the physical has disappeared before it has ever appeared because of the significance we place upon the impact they will have. The footing come prior to the action. This would make sense that we are already interpreting events that are yet to happen, in causing a extinction of substantialism. What is most important is the commentary; what will he say?
What Baudrillard isn’t saying, is the world is dying, reality in a solidified manner remains, while our focus of the world is upon the virtual realm, where nothing can dye. My attention while I am writing you this, is firmly towards the computer screen, I even have a second one plugged in. My concentration has left my books, my desk, the fan that is jeering in the background (only now do I pay attention to it) and is listening to the music that I have playing, waiting for the alert that comes when my friend sends a message. I am looking for symbols that have no more substance than a thought in my brain – in fact if we understand thoughts as chemical reactions, firing in one’s head, it has even less substance.
Fundamentally Baudrillard is right. Even writing this blog, disregarding the fact it is online, I am using a code, a set of symbols that I have internalized as the means of communicating to another, but what relevance does it have to anything. I like Clive Jame’s use of the phrase ‘the science of language’ because it simultaneously describes itself and contradicts itself. It is science is as far as well all understand that a tree is a tree and it is factually understood. The name by which we call things helps us to categories and maintain a degree of reflection on the world, however these ‘names’ are chosen without a regard for much thought. Why are there different languages, if it is a science? The process of eating has only one considered method, why interpretation of the nihilistic consciousness considered to have this same science? What makes a tree, something that grows outside, with brown colours growing up the middle, with a hard quite bumpy texture to it and from this texture, much softer saplings of green shot from it. Why isn’t it something that I am sitting in front off, while writing this blog.
In this rather extended thought – of 3 pages of reading this evening – the action is pointless and the meaning is even more pointless. In conclusion the world is absurd. Today, action created comes through a nihilism of substance within a nihilism; in order words we are focused on the virtual, where no action is all the action you need to experience the world. To finish off I will quote Clive James again: “we can be world citizens without leaving home. If that seems too static we can travel without leaving home” (Clive James, 2007 Cultural Amnesia).
