Excerpt

Introduction

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end
by starving the best part of the mind.
—J. B. Yeates

What kind of person writes the book on mental anarchy attempting to unravel philosophy? Probably not the person you are imagining. My life so far has been ordinary by most standards. I am a husband, father of three, and an engineer who works on safety and electrical issues for a large Midwestern manufacturer. The main quirk in my lifestyle is that I study an unusual selection of books on existentialism, behaviorism, cognativism, and psychoanalysis.

The odd combination, electrical engineer with a strong interest in psychology and philosophy, inevitably leads me to notice differences between minds, philosophies, and silicon-based logic. If you were to step into my shoes, with my perspective, you would immediately be stricken by the disparity. During the day I review electrical designs based on modern digital electronic circuits, which force values to cold sterile repeatable absolutes—yes or no, true or false, 1 or 0. And then at home during the evenings, I study human thought processes, which are roughly chemically-analog based, emotionally laden, and highly unpredictable. Despite these fundamental differences, strangely both minds and microprocessors somehow manage to perform many similar tasks, including adding numbers, manipulating objects, and remembering things.

But if they function so much the same in certain ways, why is it that I never see the equivalent of common mental mishaps occurring on computers and other electronic devices? For example, I have yet to witness a calculator’s judgment impaired by anger, nor have I ever heard of a distressed Dell laptop verbally assaulting an Apple iBook. I am quite certain that VCRs do not fall in love with DVD players. Really the question I am getting at is, how do all of the anxious and aroused states in humans so drastically alter their ability to think rationally, but yet these same states never hold sway over microprocessors? What makes us humans and not robots?

If you are still as biased as I was in noticing these kinds of mental flaws, you might hope to find logically based explanations to account for the lapses in human reasoning. But once you carefully compare functions between a near-perfect binary machine and emotional organic being, you may throw in the towel. Becoming frustrated because of numerous issues discussed throughout this book, I eventually abandoned the sensible approach to understanding thinking and started from scratch.

With little else to go on I turned to the philosophers, scanning for those with less than purely reasoned outlooks. But which of the philosophers would dare to start with the premise that human behavior did not have to make any sense? Ironically, late in the process of writing this book I found one of the earliest from ancient Greece, Pyrrho of Elis (circa 360–270 b.c.). Very little is known of this man, but it was rumored that he grew so skeptical of knowledge, others had to follow him about. His disbelief in everything, including the things he saw, inclined him to walk into dangers. Pyrrho and his fellow skeptics “were constantly engaged in overthrowing the dogmas of all schools, but annunciated none themselves…laid down nothing definitely, not even the laying down of nothing” (Diog. Laert. 9.62, 9.74).

Certainly Pyrrho’s outlook sounds quite silly to most, but whether you agree with it or not, he raised the key issue of this book: What do we know for sure? Unfortunately for the philosophical world, the way he formulated his problem scared most of the sensible people away; he started with the assumption that the solution was impossible by definition, giving little incentive for those that followed. The rival camps of Pyrrho’s approximate era, namely Plato and Aristotle, offered more appealing rational approaches. Those two Greeks were under some sort of illusion that the world could be described in a more neat, orderly, and consistent system. And this is, after all, what we usually desire. Because Pyrrho’s uncertainty creates stress and anguish, I believe it explains why you’ll not find much positive recognition of him and the skeptics beyond ancient Greece nor for the ensuing 2,200 years.

But after the two millennia drought, you should note the existentialist philosophers beginning in the nineteenth century. Three of them in particular carry a similar basic theme: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Starting with the first, I read book after book by the Russian and found him fully competent at tearing apart moral structure and exposing inconsistency in reason. He liberated me from pretense with frank portrayals of parenticide, gambling, and prostitution. He delivered insight while examining the awful realities of human nature. His perspective from a brutal nineteenth century Russia was never meant to reassure (again this is obvious to anyone who’s ever read his detailed accounts of thievery, loan sharking, disease, and so forth). Nonetheless his novels allowed me to overcome the fear of my own vile thoughts and see clearly what compromises I made to create a world consistent with my superficial perceptions. Additionally, he fostered severe and unhealthy skepticism for the people in my life; in particular I noticed everyone seemed to be hiding some awful plot or opinion inside, while meekly acting like all was normal on the outside.

Just because Dostoyevsky successfully identified the problem did not justify his excessive pessimism. Why would a man with so much insight dwell in such misery? Although I admire his integrity in understanding the flaws of human character, I have never felt compelled to follow in his destructive lifestyle. (It is interesting to note he too was an engineer with a passion for psychology and philosophy.)

I also turned to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Once again I discovered the bottom of my soul and how wrong I can be about everything. Declaring God dead as well as his utter contempt for the philosophy of his day, Nietzsche called on me to rise above the herd instinct of the ordinary men, and lead them—he gave me the ‘overman’ or ‘superman’ (Nietzsche [1892] 1978, 3, 4). He was at least trying to leave something positive and concrete, but from my perspective, he too failed as a guide. Intermixed with the ‘overman’ was his brand of extreme pessimism and general sense of disgust with Christian feebleness. He provided me little incentive to adopt this outlook. Knowing he went insane and inspired many a Nazi does not speak well of his positions either. Nonetheless he did attack the inconsistencies most other philosophers ignore, penetrated the masquerade of rational philosophy, and exposed what lies behind the curtain of philosophical mythology.

Frustrated throughout the inquiry, I kept returning to Freud. There was no boundary he could not cross for the purpose of knowledge and empiricism, confronting the anxieties of our mixed-up world. Although he lacked the viciousness of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, he still managed to tear down moral confines, openly discussing molestation, abuse, and fears of castration. Unfortunately when Freud tried to reassemble the mind according to his new understanding, he was often simply wrong—and incomplete. Freud provided a path for me to follow but then he too failed to deliver. (I do not wish to sound arrogant and judge him harshly [or the others for that matter] when in fact he demonstrated profound insight and genius. Freudian perspectives on dreams, anxiety, and psychoanalysis were revolutionary; it is just that we have other options and should strive to do so much more.)

And then in the middle of the philosophical mess from an unlikely source, I took notice of the term “doublethink,” found in the book 1984 by George Orwell. If you like a riddle to challenge yourself with, you should hold tight to Orwell until you resolve his. In the beginning most will still value finding a consistent philosophical path, but the blatancy of the lie that is doublethink haunts you. The very notion clearly admits to lying, telling you it is going to lie, and indeed it does lie—a lie you will come to depend upon if you succeed in your journey. Here it is captured in Orwell’s own eloquent words:

...use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of the objective reality and all the while to take into account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth (Orwell [1949] 1983, 176–177).

Life always creates more riddles than answers, and upon this particular mystery, you may ponder for decades before finding the answers. The solution, it turns out, is a whole other perspective on life. Orwell created his paradox solely on the ordinary blind faith approach to logic; he led his readers to the brink, yet did not take them to the other side. Orwell wanted others to tremble, never knowing what was lurking behind the facade of common sense.

In Orwell’s gloomy doublethinking society, deception provides the basis for the totalitarian government. Officially sponsored doublethink smothers logic, structure, and order—leading to hopeless despair. Big Brother watches over as the government twists the mind around. The propaganda machine mangles as well as manipulates every thought, eventually abolishing all truth including the fundamentals of reasoning. This deliberate misuse of logic often turns on itself. To make matters worse no sensible answers are ever found. In the end, Orwell showed no useful purpose, nor any salvation for doublethinking, only describing the angst it caused.

In contrast to this bleak and overwhelmingly negative impression, you will need to consider another perspective: doublethink—the philosophy of the not-so-Orwellian variety, embracing confusion and disarray. (Note: Doublethink will have multiple meanings in this book. Sometimes it will describe a philosophy, sometimes it will mean confusion, and sometimes it will imply criticism of the inconsistencies found in other philosophies. Usually it will combine connotations of all three.) On the following pages are documented ironclad evidence of pervasive mixed-up thinking. Once established, confusion provides a starting point, in doublethink the only possible one; any other beginning proves twice as absurd.

But using confusion as a platform will not quickly endear this philosophy to even slightly rational beings, since mental anguish follows those who say, “I am both right and wrong in this matter. I shall move ahead with my decision to love and hate, despite the fact that I am completely misled and headed for destruction by my poor decisions. However, others shall recognize me as the only one who understood, while succeeding with luck on my side.”

Life contradicts itself, and even if the overwhelming proof demonstrated throughout this book supports the acceptance of bewilderment, only a few will openly declare: “I am beautiful, ugly, smart, stupid, evil, as well as good. Furthermore the path to happiness relies upon lying, stealing, giving, sharing, hating, or loving; which also establishes the route to misery filled with despair.”

Learning to accept absurdity requires great courage, but you cannot truly live life without going nose to nose with being so wrong. Every aspect of thought baffles and mixes itself up. Doublethink the philosophy takes the obvious logical steps no other sensible or educated person has ever taken. It answers questions most normal people never even ask. (Granted the results at times leave one totally unsatisfied.) Doublethink is the only solution that resolves issues consistently from the easiest up to the most complex: “Stealing is cruel, kind, and not a moral question. Love is beautiful, desirable, sick, and humiliating. God is dead, alive, evil, good, incoherent, ugly, terrible, tender, kind, and compassionate.”

Doublethink challenges every conviction, as well as feeling. What the reader once found comfortably acceptable becomes a flat-out abomination. It explores where nothing has ever been seen before, finding new ideas, picking up the overlooked and ignored, then giving new meaning, eventually challenging everything that exists.

Doublethink promotes underhanded goals—even the devil shows more consistency. Doublethink turns on itself, allowing lies with distortions; indeed, it thrives upon them. Right blurs into wrong, while values bend to accommodate, and clear ideas grow fuzzy. Sharp distinctions slowly round, making such morphing appear desirable.

Rationalization takes on a whole other meaning, while morals are set free to seek out good or evil. All types of control collapse, leaving no beliefs in a solid form. Doublethink accounts to no principles, not even its own. Confining the nonsensical beast presents an impossible task. You can’t pick it up or hold it down; instead it cracks your core human values, turning your mind inside out.

Doublethink, the philosophy, invites disgust and terror. At first tugging the heart in all directions, it unravels the fabric of ethical systems, shuffling the deck, mixing ideas with thoughts; and then while forcing a painful look inside the mind, it whips emotions around, causing horrible anguish. Its inconsistencies are nearly impossible to accept as it wriggles like a worm through garbage, searching for a speck of food. It smashes the mind apart exposing the spiritual foundation, brashly never giving support nor rationalization. It lacks reason, exuding only ambition; anything short of upsetting anarchy simply indicates a lack of understanding; it disturbs by necessity.