The Seventh Circle: Violence (Cantos XXIV-XXVII)

As on them more direct mine eye descends,
Each wondrously seem'd to be revers'd
At the neck-bone, so that the countenance
Was from the reins averted: and because
None might before him look, they were compell'd
To advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps
Hath been by force of palsy clean transpos'd,
But I ne'er saw it nor believe it so.

Canto XXIV

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

Nietzsche, The Gay Science

For the better part of 2011, I lived out of a very small 1995 Honda Accord while working at a restaurant. After living in those circumstances for a while, I had planned and saved enough to move to Taiwan and get a job teaching English. I went and lived there for the better part of 2012, only to return again. Part of what follows was written in the first months of living abroad, while I was staying in a tiny apartment on the 21st floor, and at a time when the stress of the previous year was still settling itself out.

I once knew a ground, and having found it, that ground has never quite left me. But it is far below me now. I am stuck writing and thinking of philosophy in the subjunctive. If I am now to write this book, it shall be written from afar, looking back and below.

This quiet is killing me in the worst way. The silent darkness maws at me, terrifying in its utter lack of constraint. One should never fear one's own emptiness. For months I have not gone to bed in silence. No wonder I lashed out in agony upon discovering I would have to tonight. I can't keep going like this. Something's gotta give.

I am without any security. The ground has been swept away, and no longer can I find my footing. The wall threatens to open, just as did, mere months ago, the driver's side door holding my head and its dreams hostage. Those too-close windows accompanied my every night's rest for half a year. Cover flapping against the car in the evening winds, the glass of the windows too thin, too close, my bundled blankets a false comfort, the seat reclined just enough to trick my body into relaxing.

But all that time, and even still now, my being is set in constant tension, never with a moment to fully relax and release all the stressors antagonizing it. The ground is not ground. There are 21 stories between me and it. The wall is no limit marker, but a thin shroud between me and the night. The window. Nothing will intrude to it, but it beckons me toward, outward and down, down.

I will hate to read this in the years to come. It will just reinforce a hardening thought - that I am pitiful, always writing and thinking along the same damn lines. But that's just the moment speaking. Depression sees everything always the same; mania, by contrast, sees always difference. No reason to end it if things can change - and they do change, they always change. Every reason to live if there is always something new around the corner.

I know the vessel I am well enough to navigate my emotions, to see their trend and to adjust their heading as I drift about in the infinite sea of experience. New course heading. Land sighted to the east, lands as yet uncharted. Steer not back to the vast ocean and its known unknown, but to the new, perhaps that you may learn and grow richer. Leave fear behind. It has nothing to offer where you are going.

Canto XXV

"O ye heavenly powers, grant me madness!... Vouchsafe delirium and convulsions, sudden flashes of light and periods of darkness; frighten me with such shivering and feverishness as no mortal ever experienced before, with clanging noises and haunting spectres; let me growl and whine and creep about like a beast, if only I can come to believe in myself!"
Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day

Whence shall Aeolus and his winds take us?

Can we trust you, dear Poseidon

O lord of the seas?

I have no faith in the winds and tides.

For e'er hath they fared me ill

In my silent hours

I rely alone on lady Mnemesis

Gracious dame of memory

Who paves the grounding for my future

My life e'er reliant

Upon her wisdom and grace

But looking back

While moving forward

Shall e'er make you trip, stumble

And veer far off your path.

There is no attainment

Of the always already lost past.

There is no going back.

But there is a way to harmony

There is a way to health.
There must be.

Canto XXVI

"In determining itself as an entity, Dasein always does so in the light of a possibility which it is itself and which, in its very Being, it somehow understands."
Heidegger, Being and Time

We must always surpass ourselves. We are an existential experiment: the only being whose very being is constituted by that which it is not yet. As such, we are each essentially greater than ourselves, and grounded firmly in that which has yet been realized. Since our very being is inherently divided against itself, we are existentially endowed with an anxiety borne from the powerful tension between that which we are now, and that which we dream to be. But it is just this very tension which makes us capable of transforming the world.

The proper directing of one's emotions to their right object: that, and that alone, is goodness. For goodness is not merely indiscriminate kindness to all things without regard for their place or worthiness. Such apparent kindness is insensitive to its object and unconcerned with its subject. Although it may appear pleasant, such mere pleasantries are actually unkind to all.

It could even at times be in the best to lay fists on another, or to shout and cause harm. For doing so is only to make manifest a latent harm already causing injury to both parties. Is it better to excise a tumor or to allow it to fester and grow? Bring everything to the open and the world will thank you, for in so doing you are promoting the health and wellness of existence herself.

The entirety of the universe is as a single body, and so too capable of both health and sickness. When it is stricken ill, a body turns against itself and brings itself injury. In just the same way as blood circulates in the body, and in so doing processes both nutrients and toxins, so too is there a unifying energy that flows throughout existence, from each to all others, and in so doing processes the experiences of being within itself.

Perhaps emotion is one of the manifestations of this singular universal energy. Perhaps there is a strange and mystical life force that flows through and between all persons, all beasts, and all animated matter. If all movement is feeling, and all motion emotion, then the universe has a pulse, and we can feel it.

Let us believe reality first and foremost, for without it we are made unreal and our very being undone. Honesty in its fullest is the path to achieving this right knowledge. In the pursuit of your quest have faith, for the truth only harms when it comes against evil. But remember: if you think you know, you don't know anything. Remain suspicious of that which conforms with your expectations, for the creative abilities of the human mind are incredibly profound.

Canto XXVII

"Wherever a community exists, and consequently also a morality of custom, the feeling prevails that any punishment for the violation of a custom is inflicted, above all, on the community... above all, it regards the guilt of the individual more particularly as its own guilt..."
Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day

We are all tainted, all humanity.

What one man does,

He does as a representative of man.

The sins of all others

Carry on to the rest.

Ours is the endless task

To right our course

To redeem humanity

To do our species justice

To prove ourselves to the world.

It is a task of size appropriate to our ambition

Appropriate to our capabilities.

For we are not satisfied as mere man or beast.

We must become God

So as to do ourselves justice.

We must become ourselves

Replicate microcosms of all being

Reflecting back unto the world

The glory of illumination.

For it is through the mind of man

That the world comes to know itself.

We are each part of a unified process

By which the world becoming self-aware.
We shall bring the world to its own realization.

For it is only by man

That God is made real.