Enemies

I like my enemies, but I do not love them. I like them as enemies. If I loved them, quite literally loved them, I would lose the animal pleasures of enemyship, which, in my organic condition, are pleasures too vital to forgo. I am not opposed to the universal lover, or to that ideal, but I am in no rush to attain that status. 

Who are some of my enemies? Peter Wessel Zapffe and John Zerzan, to name two philosophers with surnames starting with “Z” (just for fun). The anti-natalist Zapffe and the anarcho-primitivist Zerzan represent two enemy camps. I can sublimate my loathing for Zapffe and Zerzan by subsuming the two of them, and their little philosophies, into a zenithist cosmodicy (that is, in an optimized world, even the Jeremiahs and diseased howlers play positive parts). I know that, insofar as I am able to subsume the effluent of my enemies, I am able to like them. 

Without that cosmodicy, without that sublimation, it is all irreconcilable loathing. Yet even in this bilious mood, this ferment of an indigestible chunk of enemy, there is a pleasurable heat, a kamikaze joy, a purpose-driven life. It feels good to hate, on occasion. Eros is sensual, but Eris is more so; I promise you. The twitch of the lip. The drumbeat pulse. Why do you think war is so popular? People need enemies as they need lovers. The functions are almost identical, though inverted. Oxytocin has two faces, like the god Janus, looking in opposite directions. 

Depression and Cosmodicy

Each emotion has its own moral perspective, and gerund that I am, emoting means winning, then failing, at cosmodicizing (i.e. “justifying the overall positive moral value of the cosmos). Depression, though not exactly an emotion, but a state of an emotional life, binds one to a moral perspective yoked to a craving for cosmodicy, while in the same sigh, negating the plausibility of any cosmodicy.

Anti-natalism, pessimism, and other such theories on the axiological dark side, become almost truistic from this perspective. As Tina Sonego said, quoted in The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, “Depression is a search for invalidation” (p. 241). That search often looks as such: What is good? Not earth, for its horrors. Not life, for its horrors. Not anything, as each thing is tied to the metaphysical ground of all these horrors, or each thing is a necessary, actual, and witless booster in the “interdependent origination” of all these horrors. 

Paradoxically inspired by my depressive stretches, I’ve disdained consciousness through the humor, sour humor, of Beircean definitions; my favorite of mine: “Consciousness, n. That part of the human automaton evolved to hold in flatulence. Absent in sleep.” Escitalopram (20mg) has unburdened me of the worst of my low tides. Before that, I had little easing. I had unreliable mantras; their gist was “This depression, this negation of all, will someday pass.” That was my naked cogito ergo sum of hope, the one tooth-skin-thin indubitable hope. 

Watch Your Step

Will the second step be up or down? That is the question I’ve asked myself in preparation for this second post. That question can be answered only by stepping, but premeditation always plays its part, usually an oversized one. The second step establishes the first line, the first trajectory, a pattern, a habit. Now already I’m one-third through this second step, where premeditation becomes a conversation with itself for you. 

But I don’t have to stay on this second step; I can jump anywhere from here. I can be whimsical here, according to my rules. So, I’ll jump to my watch. It is a Bering Solar with a flexible black metal strap, dark face, gold case, gold crown, and gold hands. This watch is a gift from my Grandma and Grandpa (van Belle), celebrating the publication of my book Zenithism. The colors match the book: black and golden-bronze, even fawn. I was never a “watch person,” until this watch. My grandparents picked the perfect celebratory gift: time. 

To tie up this trefoil knot, I thought I ought to talk about my third step. My third step will be focused, unlike those foggy cobblestones making up that second step we took together. The throat needs at least two clearings in these plague years. A thick after-silence will compel me to make some point or other, especially since my step went neither up nor down, but forward only (through time). 

Inaugural Bloggural

I call this very first blog post, “Inaugural Bloggural,” without any sense of what I might want to do with such a title, except start out on a light note. This new blog, Hephaisteion, I’m describing as “Some wind-whipped airborne seeds from my dandelion life.” In other words, a blog about whatever strikes me. In fewer words, a blog about whatever. 

Certainly my fixations and habits will soon show, and may even require a repurposing of this blog (perhaps into a blog about building fortifications out of flowers); but until anything more definite arises, I welcome you to this light breeze of a blog—a monthly breeze: only three paragraphs per post (an easy-breezy three). Three paragraphs per one month, posted every fourth Friday, is my speed, blogwise.

So, thank you for taking a little bit of time with my little bit of blog. If you need something to do on the fourth Friday of the month, but nothing really seems worth doing, and you feel restless, wind-tossed even, might as well stop by Hephaisteion, that oddly named blog by that guy with the mini schnauzer named Nietzsche, and get a fresh update on another person, like you, lost in the breeze.