How To Find Your Own Truth
On Seeking Original Thought: Part 1
PRE-DEPARTURE
I know you. I am like you. My heart also trembles at the thousand and one whispers that toss you at sleepless nights. A thousand and one desperate voices that whisper shameful reflections, criticisms and self-criticisms, unsolved concerns, strongly held beliefs and the threatening of those beliefs, strongly held values and the threatening of those values. You toss and turn. Your world is always under attack…
We demand justice. We demand peace. We demand honesty. We demand goodness—Those are the songs your restless whispers sing. And not just your whispers but the whispers of the West, and reaching deep down to common humanity, the whispers of the World. All have trouble sleeping with these whispers in their ears, whispers that demand resolution. A universe of suffering and injustice, and you need to solve it.
But the ideal society always seems just out of reach, floating above like the face of the moon. You reach your hand up and someone slaps it away. Who is it? It’s Them. The ever-present enemy. The other side. They see you reaching and They think you have ill will. But They lie on Their backs like you do, keeping Their distance from you, and reach up to the same moon. Everyone reaches to the same goal through different means, means you find insulting.
I know you. I am like you. You desire America to be free. No one disputes that. You always want either freedom of voice or freedom from fear. All agree on what seven letter word to use—freedom—but none can agree where to place it. You hold the same flag and argue different meanings. Who is right and who is wrong?
And who is They? The ever-present enemy. The other side. And most often, it’s you. You are They. You slap your own hand when you reach for the sky, and you are lost.
Inside we struggle like outside. Inside we slap our own hands from reaching to the sky. Desires for self-discipline are dismantled by desires for freedom-to-explore. Desires for love are dismantled by desires for self-love and self-sufficiency. We are always split and torn in all directions.
(Scan these words and see what word floats above them all. Desires. Ever the source of woe.)
Why do you contradict yourself? Why do you contain legion? Are you broken? Can this really be the essence of humanness? All these thousand and one contradictory desires?
Sayeth Nietzsche:
My brother, if you are fortunate you have only one virtue and no more: then you will pass over the bridge more easily.
To exist as a thing, and not a multitude. To declare peace amongst your million selves; or at least for one to conquer and properly rule them all. This is balance and freedom and peace.
Meditate. Ingest acid-25. Lie on the couch and tell Good Doctor familial insecurities. Do these help you come to your Self? I hope so. If they do, you are lucky. Even if you are strong of mind and will, you are lucky. To even have the wherewithal to reach your hand up out of the rushing stream and blindly grasp for branches: you need the luck of galaxies.
What can you say about yourself? How do you think? What do you believe? Why do you believe it?
If you believe in the importance of individuality, did you think of that yourself, or did you get that from Thoreau? (And where did he get that from?)
If you believe in honor, truth, and acceptance of fate, did you think of that yourself, or did you get that from Marcus Aurelius? (And where did he get that from?)
If you believe in love, forgiveness, and humility, did you think of that yourself, or did you get that from Christ? (And where did He get that from?)
These are time-tested virtues and philosophies, to be sure. And to spend whole generations, or even a whole life, on deducing these values yourself from experience would be a waste. Do not reinvent the wheel…unless you find that your car is sinking in the bog of existence, and what you need is not four wheels but a hull to float on.
And what of your caged heart? And your quick judgement? And your defensiveness? And your cynicism? And your (God forgive me) toxic masculinity? Where did you learn these traits from? Who made you learn them?
For we are all filled with a thousand and one thoughts and ideas and personalities and beliefs and biases and opinions. And not all of them are on the same team. Not all of them want the best for us. And even some want to see us buried tomorrow.
No wonder we are tossing at night. No wonder we slap away our own sky-reaching hand, and no wonder we slap away our neighbor’s. We don’t know what we want because a thousand and one whispers are crying at us for a thousand and one things. This is happening inside of you at every single moment, and this is happening outside of you, amongst your friends, and amongst your countrymen. A thousand and one desires and beliefs tearing apart the One.
Where do these thousand and one desires and beliefs come from? From outside of you. They pull you in a thousand and one different directions because there are a thousand and one ways to walk through life, and truly most of them are good and proper. But any more than one direction can steer you off course and into the jungle full of snakes.
Again, sayeth Nietzsche:
My brother, if you are fortunate you have only one virtue and no more: then you will pass over the bridge more easily.
What strife these thousand and one virtues cause us, and what anxiety and hesitation.
These thousand and one virtues that tear us in a thousand and one directions come from the words and ideas of those we (often foolishly) tend to admire: intellectuals, politicians, philosophers of old and new, our role models, and our religions: all the people, figures, and authorities who are supposed to have already analyzed life for themselves, dissected it, studied it, and delivered it to us in digestible packets of unbiased reality. Yet authority doesn’t mean knowledge, and knowledge doesn’t mean wisdom, and wisdom doesn’t mean accurate wisdom, and accurate wisdom doesn’t mean applicable wisdom. They all spit out the same old stew, but their venom gives it a new attractive flavor. You taste it, you like it, but when it reaches your gut it makes you ill.
These thousand and one virtues that tear us in a thousand and one directions also come from the words and ideas of people and sources that we wouldn’t expect, but so permeate our everyday lives with their subtle influences that we can’t help but be affected: obvious sources such as family (with their subtle judgements, suggestions, aphorisms, and the way they raised you), or the friends around you (with their subtle judgements, and their social pressures, and their constant sway over you)…then the less obvious sources, sources only superficially innocuous: fiction, TV shows, movies, music, podcasts, the Internet.
(The subtleties of high school, teenage socialization, and flirting existed in my reality as how I perceived it on TV shows that dramatized the high school experience. I believed these dramatizations were how high schoolers really behaved and were expected to behave, and that I was expected even to harness their corporate sitcom words and become a caricature of myself. How had that affected my teenage social skills?)
All of these thousand and one sources teach us to think a certain way, to set our aspirations at a certain height and to achieve them, to follow certain moral codes, to act a certain way, and to believe certain “truths,” and all the while we act as if they are the axioms of life itself and were written in stone (though not all stone is eternal).
Close your eyes for a moment and think of all the “obvious” truths and axioms of life that you expect yourself and all other human beings to abide by, as if it was in fact written on your DNA. Consider if you’ve ever once doubted these truths, or if you’ve ever questioned your faith in them. Yes, I even mean truths of goodness, kindness, peace…to abstain from murder, theft, deception…Have you even taken one millisecond to rethink these axioms? Are you too afraid to? (Don’t be afraid. You will soon learn, and so will I, that most of these basic truths do in fact hold water — thank God).
What amounts is that your beliefs and opinions exist as the average of all external influences that you absorb across your lifetime. And if during our younger years our critical thinking machine is just a loosely swaying sugar cube, then you are 40% a child, and 40% a newly legal adult, unless you are the type to constantly rethink your opinions and biases, and, like most people, you probably aren’t.
You are not you, but the Gestalt of the thousand and one whispers that your nubile ears received.
No wonder we toss at night.
But there is a cure. A hypothetical one. Though I know and I hope it’s been tested by greater folk before me, for I know I’m not so special as to part the Red Sea and find no footprints already there.
This is your path to freedom: if you have the time, and the patience, and the courage, you must forget everything you know. You must go out into the desert and sit there in the silence and desolation.
Destroy your convictions. Terminate your beliefs. Abhor your own opinions.
You are now a shell—nay, you are a field full of dead crops, and as the crops decay and the rains come, your soil will replenish. In one handful, I can see your dark richness and your rich smell of potentiality. Let the mulch of your dead ideas enrich you. Let the earthworms come and churn you. Now you are fertile.
Then, when you’ve plowed yourself and prepared yourself, open yourself up to the world, and let the seeds of the life and the existence of the world spread across your soil, and see what exuberant gardens grow. Without doubt there will be plants of poison, flowers that open gloriously but release the miasmic undertones of death, vines that try to strangle you, bogs and quicksand, and snakes and mosquitos and everything awful. But. They will be surrounded tenfold by the most beautiful flowers your eyes have perceived, nutritious fruits always within reach, and a towering tree you can climb and see the universe from.
And where the crop you had to destroy was only loaned to you, this whole garden will be yours. And once your garden comes alive, feel free to spend your time clearing away the poison ivy that grows a little too close to the footpath. Cherish the roses, and prune back the thorns, but don’t get rid of them completely. The thorns will keep your eyes sharp. For once your garden’s gates open back up to others, foreign seeds and foreign insects will ever make their way in and attempt to destroy all life—so be vigilant. But love all life, no matter its intentions.
Practically speaking—
To go into the desert is to cut off all external stimuli that has been pre-filtered through the mind of another person. You can be anywhere to do this. You don’t have to flee to the Icelandic wasteland.
Turn off the news. Stay off social media. Do not listen to podcasts. Do not read. Do not watch film or TV. When someone presents to you an argument or an opinion, put it in your pocket. Take it out now and then and taste it, but don’t eat it until you’re sure it’s not toxic. Be wary of all ideas.
To let your crops die is to begin from scratch, with a fertile mind. Forget what you know. Forget even your morals. Will you go out now and murder and steal? Then you were never good to begin with, only cowardly. Destroy your convictions. Terminate your beliefs. Abhor your own opinions. Purge yourself of yourself, and then open your eyes…
To open yourself up to the world is then to watch reality. To let the seeds of the life and the existence of the world spread across your soil is to let life affect you. Witness beauty and disgust day and night. Now, if you need to, uproot yourself and travel. See what people are like. See what people really believe. Don’t believe in the world that comes to you pre-filtered through the mouths of news anchors and podcasters and papers. Drink up the world at the source, and taste its richness—it may be toxic water, or it may be clean, but it will be real. If you can’t travel, talk to your neighbors, your friends, your family—strangers. If you hate them or disrespect them, listen to them. If you share your opinions with them already, spend time away from them. Collect as diverse a set of thoughts and opinions as possible, and expand your collection. Understand as much as you possibly can about the personal lives and struggles and pains and joys of as many people across the globe as you can. Then stand above it all with this knowledge, look down, and make your opinion (though by then you may realize the obsolescence of opinion). Become a person of the world. Embrace the frightening. Embrace the evil. Expand your portfolio of experience both light and dark, and see what you finally understand.
Gather from direct experience the original thought and original philosophy of life — but it must be a broad exploration to reduce life to its truest denominator: the human condition. With no external pre-filtered influences, and pure experience, you can allow your new original thought to arise — then you return to the earth and let others walk your garden. Your newly established pure-thought must constantly be allowed to reform with new experiences, and even with the input of others. But exercise care and caution.
And BEWARE! This is a dangerous journey. You will experience a world full of hatred, injustice, and bitterness, and you could well develop a philosophy that mirrors this. (That’s why you must undergo a comprehensive exploration.) People are fundamentally good. They care firstly for their families, and secondly for their friends and neighbors. They work hard and are proud of what they have created. They love. But they also hurt, because although people are fundamentally good, life is fundamentally suffering, and some receive more suffering than others, and it isn’t fair, and there is no escape from this.
People are good. Life is beautiful and tragic.
You will learn this, and so will I, once I depart, isolate, forget, and relearn.
Thus spoke poor McCandless:
I now walk into the wild.
Thus now sayeth I, Livingston. Who would I be if I didn’t practice what I preached?
On May 2, 2021, I begin a vagabonding journey (I am vaccinated, you who are frightened). I will be gone for at least one year, if not more. For at least one year I will not read books, listen to podcasts, scroll social media, or watch movies, and perhaps may abstain even from music. (Specifically, I will not seek out these external influences; neither will I run away from them if they suddenly surround me. I will simply hear them, like songbirds, and enjoy their sound, as it is all pure experience at a certain point.) I will only write, think, and experience. Pure input and output. I will make friends of strangers and make a stranger of myself. I will carefully deconstruct my philosophies, then while I wander deserted I will carefully reconstruct my philosophies as one solid firm philosophy that I can call my Self. Maybe then I will have one virtue, and one that is like a mountain.
All this shall be reported.
To begin, on May 2, I will go to Iceland, where for one or two months I will camp among the starkness of that beautiful island. I will experience boredom, and I will experience resolution of boredom through play with nature and play with thought.
After Iceland, I don’t know where I’ll go. I will walk blindly with my hands out and go slow, smiling all the way.
I could easily quote Thoreau regarding wishing to live deliberately. But I don’t know if life demands deliberateness. I’ve only heard this from Thoreau. I want to learn this for myself. I want to kill Thoreau, kill Aurelius, kill Watts, kill religion, kill society, kill Self.
I want to be phoenix and become reborn.
