The first idea

I'm turning into a philosopher of unhappiness – it captures my imagination. Not the gothic, adolescent kind of unhappiness. I mean the difficult, nuanced kind about the huge task of unfolding potential, and potentials unrealised - partly because of our own limitations, and partly because each individual is the product of the whole of human progress. Meanwhile we live with making choices and their sacrifices, and inarticulate longings that echo down the ages.

What is 'potential'?

Bits and pieces of it surface in every blog, I didn't know it but all roads led to it.

The acorn always grows into an oak, but human beings - as the most sophisticated of all machines - can become anything. In nature I've noticed sophistication is measured not in strength but flexibility and versatility.

In terms of natural equipment that's the only advantage we've got – but what an advantage.

We are a blank slate, a book where everything is contained. Particular environments pull particular parts and combinations into existence. It's almost impossible to find universal values (the more multicultural my experience of the world, the more different I find cultures, and not all of them equal). But all the other possibilities are still there at the same time, shimmering like unread words in the book, like invisible ink undecoded.

Limitations of the age

We all suffer from our point in history, maybe it's one of the most insidious sufferings. Imagine if you had been born before writing was invented – you would have been and thought and done a fraction of what you could have today. Similarly a human from 3010 may look at us like worms struggling in the mud, seeing only a tiny sliver of sky.

Maybe we will have by then tools to dissect human behaviour or the brain, and human nature won't be a mystery or an art anymore.

The final thing about potential is it's inextricably linked to freedom. We have made major mistakes by not looking at freedom this way, because then we only consider 'freedom from' something, not what the 'freedom to' do something means.

Freedom to unfold potential – but who has studied what that involves? Just because you're free to compose music doesn't mean you know how. Freedom has two sides to it, one of which opens the door to fear, panic and cruelty.

Understanding the vastness of potential leads to the search for 'freedom to' – and the end of the myth that we know who we are just because the chains are removed. Maybe then we will understand those many, many who are still potentials unrealised because of the walls in their minds.

Between this world and the next

The lifelong business of self creation involves two things: looking for new possibilities and bringing them into reality.

We are driven to create something new, and uniquely ours – this is evolution by design. We are innately creative.

In imagination we can consciously find new versions of ourselves. But there's a much greater, deeper pool of possibilities contained in the unconscious. To be the most that we can be, we search in these pools of potential and realise them through action. We move constantly between that murky world and the cold light of reality.

Self creation is difficult because it is balancing between two worlds: the imminent and the transcendent. It's all too easy to get lost in one or the other, and madness is the result.

Dreams

Artists for example live most of the time in potential, with neglected material lives. They explore the realms of possibility until they are lost. Madness in artists is no longer even a surprise.

There's an ingrained romantic myth that living in dreams is somehow more noble than being a materialist. The most famous Chinese novel, "Dream of the Red Chamber," is about the struggle between Taoism and Buddhism (on the side of transcendence), and Confucianism (realism). Like many dreamers the hero gives up the world to become a monk in the end.

But potential is only ever an empty promise until it is realised. It is a ‘nothing’ because nothing exists except in reality. It is a dead end.

Plato dealt in ideal forms – some greater truth out there we can neither see nor touch. Aristotle in contrast collected evidence of what he saw in the real world – and gave birth to science which changed our world beyond our wildest dreams.

There is a complex interplay between imagination and reality – they change each other.

Reality

The other example is interesting. Relentlessly materialistic people who spend their lives pursuing wealth and success are just as likely to be unhappy when they get there. This is a different kind of madness – that of never exploring alternatives.

Buddhists say this is the fault of endless desire, even when we get everything, we want more. Therefore they say desire is bad. But I think this is missing the point. Endless desire comes from our endless potential – which is simply a part of human nature.

Desire is the driving force of life and meeting its challenges with grace is the stuff of adulthood.

It's like a tug of war. We can get lost in either world, but for the pull of the other one pulling you back. It's strange how opposites melt into each other. Try to escape from reality through art or religion and you get lost in endless, empty potential. But try to cling to reality and you find it is itself a manifestation of endless potential.

The only real solution is to face endlessness directly.

This requires coming to terms with freedom and choice (more later), which is the only remedy to being lost.

Notes from the abyss

Why do I associate existentialism with the abyss? Here's something of an explanation. It was a philosophy developed at the turn of the century, in reaction to the breakdown of religion as the thing that gave human life meaning. Having no meaning is like staring off the edge of a cliff, into a neverending darkness. The chaos of freedom breeds madness. Why did people always need the external authority of god and religion? Because it allows us not to look at the madness, and live like it doesn't exist. But existentialism is based on that abyss, on facing up to its entirety. The victory lies in overcoming the hopelessness of our lonely race, and to create something from the absurd. Instead of finding meaning in a meaningless universe, we create it when nature never meant it to exist.

And on this issue of 'becoming' - particuarly appeals to me. It's not simply making yourself who you want to be, but it says, there's no one way you are supposed to be. No one way you'll always be. It frees me from destiny.

Quotes and more from the abyss

Well I started this blog partly to indulge my obsessions with certain dusty, dead, dark and nihilistic, turn of the century philosophers. Actually I never had the guts to do the useless philosophy degree that I desperately wanted (instead I did engineering), so really, maybe, I actually know fuck all about existentialism. But I have read about it, went to some evening courses, and the guy I was obsessed with at 18 for the next 4 years was one. So that's the sum total of my great knowledge on this subject.

But I figure actually, the less the better. What I know I strongly identify with, and what I don't know I'll recreate to be my own brand of philosophy, which, after all, is the point of life.

So I have, over the years, come across a few quotes that hit me in the guts and took my breath away. Perfect prose and love are the only two things that can do that to me. So I'll be sharing some of this with you, but treating you to it little by little, in a controlled release.

This is the one for today:

"There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He." Neitzche