Fingering Spinoza’s Conatus

 Fingering Spinoza’s Conatus

Read this piece as originally published at Authenticity Magazine

 

In researching the topic of purity, on message wikis and memos on metaphysics—from Athens to Hippo to Spinoza—I found hundreds of answers, ranging from the, “Word of God,”to a, “mother’s smile,”from, “diamonds,” to ,”the depths of a black hole” to, ”conatus, the innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself.”

 

My favorite was, “an infant’s hand wrapped around a father’s finger,” probably because of it’s metaphorical depth.

 

But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

 

In metaphor, of course, there is nuance: subjectivity: a lack of purity.

 

Then, there’s oxygen.

Then there’s gravity.

Then there’s new-fallen,

Pure-driven snow.

Then there’s pure evil—

 

But what is the pure state of oxygen?

What about ozone?

            And those holes and layers

And tri-valence?

But what of Newton’s gravity?

What about the moon’s?

            And other moons’ moons

            And asteroids?

But what about the core of a snowflake?

What about accumulations?

            And mud-slushy drifts?

            And semi-ice?

But what about Judas’s ring?

What about Hitler’s?

            And limbo and lust?

 

At the individual level, such definitions are clear cut. We have our conceptions and our ideals. We have our own senses: our own aesthetics. We can build walls and moats around our own absolutes. We can demand conformity, but if unanimity is achieved, it’s nothing more than a statistical anomaly. Expand the solution set, broaden horizons and deepen universes and shout louder from higher mountains, and we find dissension.

 

The more we understand particular things, the more do we understand God

 

My research turned up an unexpected complication: despite The Oxford’s definition, there was a broad swath of definitional difference that we can’t discount in these times, when perception seeps into reality—when facts are squishy: when adverbs modify adjectives—intensifiers—that modify nouns: when we slice into truth behind the semipermeable, translucent veil of nuance.  

 

We are three levels away from the thing, itself. We hide behind—proclaim our innocence among— the branches of the diagram.

 

No wonder, then, it’s so easy to demand purity of others even as we are wed to our own conceptions—from definition to application—of purity. How we navigate the distance from “here comes the bride” on a chaperone’s arm to the bully pulpit indicates our own—individual—failure in purity.  

 

And, so, purity has become something that lives outside of ourselves—beyond those walls and moats and in the haughty expectations we have of the dark forest: of an otherness that haunts us. Purity is something others should exhibit even as we hide behind our own curated imperfections.

 

Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

 

“We all fall short, but when you do, it’s egregious and  unforgivable.”

Anything can, accidentally, be the cause of pleasure, pain, or desire.

Where is the room for compromise? Where is the room for the imperfect space in which reside the good heathens? Is that really hell, despite Dante’s poetic assertions?

 

Because everything is a compromise, nothing is. Because every position is pure—individually—every other position just can’t be.

 

And in this dark forest of subjectivity, we are hamstrung. We can justify anything: we can hold others accountable for failures by our own standards. We can send drones, operated by reformed hackers, to eek out the justice that we fall short of demanding.

 

We can demand the sanctity of life—

The type of life we value.

We can demand equality of opportunity—

When it’s not inconvenient.

We can demand our freedoms—      

            Sans responsibility.

We can demand grammatology—

            While denying it.

We can demand the Marines—

            And celebrate Seal Sixes.

 

Draped in our flags and in the zeal of metaphor, we recall eleventh grade in all its self-molested insecurities: when Walt Whitman proclaimed our bodies electric. We mistook our metamorphoses through adolescence for impurity; we mistook poetry for prose: the Whitman of 1863 for the Whitman of his deathbed.

 

Our flags are multivariate. Our metaphors are as deep as our support for the ASPCA. We want every stray to be spayed, every still-born kitten to be an anomaly wrought in the hope that such sadness could be prevented.

 

What’s the difference, again?, between “anesthetized” and “anesthesia?”

What’s the difference, again, between the confederacy and the union?

 

Degree? Flags? Metaphors? Adverbs?

 

Actually, it’s the challenges: the questions.

 

Do you support life?

Do you support equality?

Do you support freedom?

Do you support grammatology?

            Huh?

Do you support the Marines?

 

I didn’t support the impeachment. I don’t agree with the question. It’s impure. I don’t agree with the grammar of it. I don’t agree with the definition of it. So, here we are, together and split down the sides.

 

The rules of grammar are not up for discussion, right?

And, why send in the marines when a drone will do, right?

And, the rules of grammar, and the rules of engagement,

 

And the rules of metaphor-  

            The application of totem:

            Tautologies un-applied.

 

And the rules of purity, bound in the rules of mistakenness, mistaken by the intransigence of true justice, fall apart in the bounded misapprehension of their own definitional failings. We are no more pure in our abortions as we are in our alms-paying. We are no more pure in our sacrifice to history as we are in our psalms-playing. We are no more content in our fairness-at-base than we are in alms-taxpaying.

 

It follows that everyone endeavors, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates...

 

So, ultimately, we seek out fathers’ fingers to wrap tiny hands around, not because it’s anything pure, but because it’s familiar: because it’s secure: because it makes us feel incrementally better.  We each have our own idea of what purity is and what best represents it. We can grasp those things and hold on tight, but the harder we hold onto those things the harder it is for us to release them.  Our muscles cramp with memory. Fatigue gives way to habit long after our own hands overtake once-larger ones. Eventually, those hands—all of them—crumble to ashes and dust.

 

Oxygen combusts.

Gravity free-fails.

Snowdrifts melt.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

 

When we resort to absolutes, when we demand others’ purities, when we hold onto intransigent perfection, we do no more than float, ablaze, in piles of sludge. Worse yet, we incarcerate others in the same prison of false objectivity: non-recombinant cells aswirl in a feckless cosmos.

 

I believe that fewer abortions are better than more.

            I believe that a woman has sovereignty over her body.

I believe that fewer guns are better than more.

            I believe in a well regulated Militia and the right to bear arms.

I believe that fewer restrictions on speech are better than more.

            I believe that words as blunt-force weapons can be deadly.

I believe that we are all made equal and loved by a just God

            I believe we all have different talents assigned by a just God.

I believe that we are given false choices that demand purity.

            I believe we misapprehend the totems of purity.

 

I believe thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing.

I believe extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing.

 

I did not support the impeachment:

            I fully supported the impeachment.

                        17 and 45–not 42, really,

                        If I’m being honest.

 

So, here we are, alienated even from the father whose finger our hands now envelop. And here we are, crying out for others’ purities, celebrating—parties of one—hollow victories, in the chambers that echo with our own demands: our own pure demand—monologues, essaying begetting verse, unto the ether.

 

So, here we are, ultimately challenged with the next step which simply must be away from the event horizon and back toward impurity. If we don’t need fathers, we need other others to endure our musings: to listen when we speak our personal perfection into social, pure imperfection. Not because we shouldn’t seek pure perfection, but because we know it can’t be achieved, we must peel back our egos—research-reified as they may be— and slide along asymptotes, crawl into the space between metaphor and meaning:

 

Between poetry and prosody:

From mothers’ smiles to diamonds

To Gods’ words,

To a place where metaphors soak us in

And deny purity’s authoritarian

Grip upon us.

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