by Eden Vespertine
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
Heraclitus, a Greek monist of the sixth century B.C., referred to as "the Obscure" because his views are quite difficult to understand, and also because what has come down to us about him is a series of cryptic aphorisms and fragments, is certainly one of the best-known thinkers in philosophy. His uniqueness compared to other monists such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, his misanthropic tendencies toward the so-called "sleepers," and many aspects of Heraclitus make him a rather fascinating figure and certainly worthy of in-depth study. Let us therefore begin by explaining some of the concepts underlying Heraclitus' philosophy.
Everything is in constant and eternal becoming: Nothing is still. Everything becomes and nothing is. Staticity is only apparent. Heraclitus sees the world as a flux, a continuous becoming; nothing is since nothing remains the same thing for more than a tiny instant in the ceaseless course of time. On this issue, Heraclitus is the opposite of Parmenides, who instead saw reality as an eternal being, where everything is still and does not change. For this reason, Heraclitus takes fire as his arche. However, unlike the other monists, he does not regard fire as the origin of everything and on which everything is based, but as a symbol of this constant becoming. Fire, in fact, never stands still, always has a new form, and changes everything it touches. Panta rhei, Heraclitus would have said, everything flows.
Harmony is found in opposites and conflict: Heraclitus regards opposites as deeply united, and that harmony and justice are given by the conflict of these. Without opposition, nothing can exist, or if it did exist it would cause discord. Youth and old age, for example, are different moments of the same stream that is life. Life and death are both part of the flow of becoming and existence. Without conflict, there would be no justice.
Logos as the foundation of reality: Heraclitus does not see logos (reason, speech) only as the correct way of thinking and drawing conclusions about the world, but as reality itself. The awake, according to Heraclitus, uses logos to understand logos. Reason dictates how everything is; logos is the only law that the universe follows.
I find myself in agreement with all of Heraclitus' judgments except two: the universality of logos and logos underlying everything. What constitutes an individual's reason is relative to the social environment in which that individual grew up; therefore, reason cannot be universal. Another reason why logos cannot be universal is because we are not rational beings. We are governed by forces and instincts that are irrational in that they cannot be explained by reason, such as Nietzsche's will to power, Schopenhauer's will to live, or Freud's death drive. Expand, survive, destroy. Trying to define man as a rational creature only leads to the denial of these transcendental instincts.
Heraclitean philosophy, however, cannot be called unique. Notably, while Heraclitus lived in Greece, a semi-legendary figure preached similar teachings in China. This is none other than Laozi, the founding philosopher of Daoist doctrine. Analyzing Heraclitus and Laozi, we can find multiple common concepts, such as the logos and the Dao, being awake and the De, the union of opposites, flow, and becoming. However, Laozi does not see the Dao as logos, but rather as the way; in this case, the Dao could be compared to both the flow and the Heraclitean logos, in that it is both the becoming and the cause of it and the law that it follows. Laozi, unlike Heraclitus, does not see reality as profoundly rational; he does not even imply otherwise, he leaves it open to interpretation. In my opinion, reality should be interpreted as irrational in that reason is a human construct, which therefore we cannot impose on something outside of the human experience.
My thought on all this is this: we can understand what becoming is dictated by, and we can understand how reality is a flow, instead of a still being if we understand what power is. Power is the quality of a subject to influence an object. Power can be applied to physics, sociology, politics, psychology, linguistics, and metaphysics. Everything is caused by power, external as well as internal to us. Our actions are responses to power in the form of power. Since everything is constantly becoming, power is the cause and the product of everything. Power, let it be clear, should not be understood as a strictly physical force, but rather as a metaphysical force, that is, one with a variety of forms.
This irrational and non-being-but-becoming view of reality leads to a relative view of reality. Reality cannot be absolute, since everything is different for each of us. So, building on this assumption, we can bring up another Greek philosopher, far less well-known and studied than Heraclitus, who nevertheless deserves to be considered much more than he is nowadays. One of the leading Sophists, a group of philosophers discredited by Socrates, his disciples, and most of the philosophers who came after him because they preached what they preached for money, and not for the sake of wisdom. The sophists, however, though objectionable from a professional point of view, put forward a worldview worthy of study and thorough learning. The philosopher I am talking about, referred to as "the Nihilist", is Gorgias. Gorgias' view of the world was as follows:
Nothing exists;
even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.
Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.
This is simply a section from his lost work "On Nature or Non-Existence", which serves as both an ironic refutation of Parmenides' view of being and a serious reductio ad absurdum. If being existed, we could not think about being; even if I imagined a winged horse, the winged horse would still not exist, therefore what is thought does not exist and what exists cannot be thought. This reasoning, however, is fallacious. Nonbeing can always be thought of as being. An important lesson we can take from Gorgias, however, is the last part: nothing can be understood. Another important concept in his thought is that language is not a way to describe reality, but a way to persuade. Language is persuasion. Therefore, since reality is relative and language is persuasion, dialectic turns out to be impossible and purely rhetorical; the conclusions of dialectic say nothing about objective reality and are dictated not by the validity of the theses of the two sides but by the persuasive capacity of the latter. An individual's persuasive ability is a form of power, and the conclusion of the dialectic represents the result of a clash between different persuasive powers; whoever has a power advantage wins, or at least in part. The dialectic is like a scale, where the two weights to be compared are the persuasive power of the two sides, and where the greater the "weight" or power advantage of one the sharper the win will be.
We can also incorporate the post-structuralist analysis of language into the same argument: it is impossible to communicate anything accurately because language is not used as a tool to understand the world, but is itself the subjective understanding of it. In addition, the meaning of words is not universal or essentialist. The word "tree" does not represent an essence, or the perfect tree, as there is no way to understand what a tree is if we do not know what its main characteristics are, which in turn need details that also need to be understood using other words, and so on. Language is an infinite loop. Things are defined by their contraposition to their opposites, and more in general objects are considered as such because they are different from everything else, rather than being similar to a singular ideal. For this reason, individual meanings are not fixed, but variable and arbitrary, as is the way words are used: grammar. Language, grammar, and meaning are arbitrary concepts, highly variable, and dictated by power advantages. Let's take two people: one defines a tree as a trunk with branches and leaves, and the other as a tall trunk with branches. Both definitions are meant to mean the same thing, but when applied to reality the two people call a tree different objects; the first says that a tree is not necessarily tall and that it must have leaves, while the second says that a tree can also have no leaves and that if it is low then it is no longer a tree but another object. Neither definition, by itself, is more valid than the other. What makes one more valid than the other is a power advantage. In this case, the two antagonistic parties have equal power, and neither has an advantage over the other. But if, for example, we imagine eight other people, we can imagine a different situation. Let's say seven people use the first person's definition while the other three use the second person's definition. In this case, the first definition has a power advantage over the second, as it is the most widely used. This means that over time it is likely to become the dominant definition for all ten people. How it holds in such small groups of individuals holds for whole societies of far greater numbers; this is why grammar, the meaning of words, and the words themselves change so constantly. We might even say that language is a flux.
But why does power exist? Why does it function in this way? If flux is the only constant thing in the world, what can it be? In my opinion, the force behind flux, the arche, is entropy. Entropy is commonly understood as a gradual decline into chaos, but that is not an accurate definition. Entropy is the force (it is not, however, a physical force F) behind everything that happens in the world. It is the quality of an object of not being able to maintain constant energy over time, causing the diffusion of this energy for it to reach a state of equilibrium between the two objects (the object and its surroundings); entropy is the reason why the creation of a perpetual motion machine, as this would need 100% energy containment, is bound to remain in the realm of the mind. The closer we are to perfect equilibrium, the higher the entropy. At the cosmic level, entropy is constantly increasing as everything tries to come to an equilibrium. When entropy is at its maximum we will reach the Heat Death; in this state, each atom is in thermodynamic equilibrium with all the others; therefore, there can be no exchange of heat between atoms, nor, consequently, work (W). The universe will be identical and uniform; no complex object made up of several atoms joined together will be able to exist; life, as well as death, will no longer exist; opposites will be balanced, to the point that the opposites themselves will cease to have meaning; time will stop, as nothing will change anymore. For this reason, I regard entropy as the arche, in that everything is dictated by this ceaseless becoming toward the eternal future harmony of contraries, and at the same time, it stands above everything. The universe is dictated by power, and power is dictated by entropy. This eternal force is itself constantly changing while being eternal. Entropy is and becomes at the same time; we can therefore say that our universe is based on a contradiction. This already proves that reality is fundamentally irrational and that logos is a human construction with which we try to describe the world, failing, since there will always be limits and what we explain is not understood.
Our brains are constantly trying to find patterns in everything we see; this has been useful in spotting hidden or camouflaged predators. However, this ability can sometimes prove to be a flaw rather than an advantage. Because we tend to look for recurring patterns, we often delude ourselves into thinking we spot one where there is none: this has a name, "apophenia." Apophenia is for example when we believe we see a face in an inanimate object, or a recurring pattern with lottery numbers, roulette, or card games. If we apply apophenia to the world more generally, we can understand something: order and chaos are human constructs, in that the former is when a recurring pattern is present, while the latter is the absence of it; however, recurring patterns do not exist outside our perception of the world. Since antiquity, humans have created myths to describe the sharp disconnection between primordial chaos and the cosmos, also called cosmogony — from kósmos 'world' and -gonía 'generation.' For the ancient Mesopotamians, Marduk, a civilizing god, versus Tiāmat, mother of the cosmos and goddess symbolizing primordial chaos; the cosmos was created as chaos and then conquered and civilized. We can see an opposite kind of cosmogony with the Gnostics: the One, the supreme benign deity, emanates lesser divine entities, called aeons, and the Demiurge, malevolent aeon, who created the material world, inferior to the spiritual world of the One. Associating these ancient religious and esoteric thoughts with scientific cosmogonic discoveries, we can place the Mesopotamian conquest of chaos and the Gnostic creation of the material world at the Big Bang. We do not know for sure what was there before the Big Bang, nor whether there was anything — but as I mentioned earlier, non-being can be considered as being. So, for now, we can only speculate. However, we can understand something from these considerations: to put entropy at the center of the cosmos is to base the cosmos on an agent of chaos; chaos is what allows us to see through the illusion of order and disorder: chaos is what allows us to perceive the world as it really is.
In any case, we might also ask the question of why the universe exists in the first place. Why does anything exist? Even void, after all, is something — the absence of something. This question, as I explained earlier, is impossible to answer because the universe is not rational and therefore cannot be based on a rational concept. This means that we can answer this question ourselves, and whatever answer we give is equally valid; there are several possible answers, from Brassier's transcendental nihilism to Camus' absurdism, from Kierkegaard's theistic existentialism or Nietzsche's atheistic existentialism to mythology and religion; one can have a mixture of several answers, such as, to use an already used example, Kierkegaard's existentialist Christianity; ultimately, the possible answers are infinite. I tend to agree with Camus' analysis of the nature of the universe, but not with his conclusion; I take the Nietzschean view of the universe and life and combine it with mythological and esoteric thoughts to speculate on the irrational nature of the cosmos, to affirm the power the individual has over his life and his surroundings. The cosmos is absurd, and meaningless because the conception of meaning is rational while the universe is irrational; it is a blank canvas ready to be painted by those intrepid enough to do so.
Everything is balanced; harmony is to be found in conflict. The deepest harmony present in the universe is the opposition between entropy, the decaying force, and the will to power, anti-entropy, the triumphant force. That which does not overcome itself decays. Entropy and the will to power might seem to be antagonistic forces at a first and cursory glance, but if you analyze them thoroughly you can see that they are two forces that feed off each other and remain stable by interacting with each other. The will to power can be defined as brute since to celebrate it is to define man as an irrational entity and the universe as absurd; however, this is not only brute force, but is also the constant spiritual, knowledge, and skill overcoming of oneself: the affirmation of oneself and realization of one's true potential.
It is here that we come to another point of reflection: in an absurd and meaningless world, we have two paths: to take a nihilistic position of life and deny the will to power, or to strive for maximum self-affirmation. The second path is in turn divided into two paths: we can remain with an atheistic worldview, or we can speculate on the nature of the universe through mythology and theology; we must be careful to choose the second option since this speculation must still result in empowerment for the individual. This is best done with polytheistic or pantheistic religions, and with those that do not deny the material world — such as the Gnostics, an aspect of their belief most worthy of criticism, since it results in the denial of forces that influence the course of one's life in a way to be big to be rejected. A polytheistic religion allows one to lean more on one deity than another: this offers greater freedom and also an affirmation of oneself, acting without thinking that one has to satisfy the will of a higher entity; the same thing a pantheistic faith does, where one can regard oneself as God and part of God. One can also have a synthesis of the two, or a total focus on one's figure, as we can see in Satanism, be it atheistic or theistic. My thinking is a synthesis of Mesopotamian and other polytheistic religions, pantheism, and theistic Satanism — although not understood as simple reversed Christianity. As a Mesopotamian deity, I mainly lean towards Ishtar, goddess of love, war, fertility, political power, sex, and beauty; moreover, she is an androgynous figure, referred to as a woman because of her values related to eroticism and fertility, but representing a balance between typically masculine and feminine characteristics. It is this mixture of seemingly contradictory values that has fascinated me from the first moment I discovered her. I associate Ishtar with the will to power and the twentieth-century futurist movement, which excluding the vulgar and collectivist fascist tendencies lends itself very well to representing the former. I am also inclined towards Tiamat, who, being the goddess of primordial chaos, I associate with entropy, the only force that contains and balances the will to power; this goes deeper than it may seem, Tiamat being goddess of the sea and me being terrified of the waters.
May Ishtar guard me in the glorious war of life; Ishtar be my guardian deity and Tiamat be my fate.
Victory and defeat should be understood as mystical expressions of fate, the sheer force of will, and the manifestation of power: one should love both victory and defeat.