The Locked Library

Closed! But how can this be? I fall my knees outside the Stalinesque structure that calls itself the Public Library, pounding the callous concrete with my fists. Wherefore, I cry to the unheeding walls, do you deny me the very lifeblood of my intellectual being, the fulfilment of my dreams, the succour of my yearning soul? Is not philosophy for everyone? Why should I, alone, be cast forth from the gates of learning?

I do like to dramatise things, if only in my head.

What really happened? In my new year quest to hunt down the mental stimulation I don’t get at my lovely home among the paddocks, I decided to attend a Philosophy Group meeting in the city, three hours drive away. Only to find that the library in which it was being held was shut. After about twenty minutes they came down and let me in the fire door. But I prefer the fun version. I like to think of the Philosophy Group as January’s jaws of life.

Well, it was interesting (it always is). For a start, nobody argued. I’d visualised a bunch of wild-eyed people flinging Kant and Schopenhauer at one another as they thrashed out the Mind Body Problem…but that’s not how it’s done nowadays. Instead, before anybody ventured a remark, they would say something like ‘I don’t mean to undermine the validity of your perspective,’ or ‘This is not to dispute your point at all, I just wanted to add…’ I thought disputing the point was the point! A bit more table-banging would have been nice, but on the other hand I can see that you have to avoid pompous old guys thumping the heck out of everybody else’s opinions. There always seems to be one in every such gathering. It’s not me, btw – I’m the one saying ‘Well about dualism – I don’t know about Descartes but I was in the garden the other day and…’

And my opinion on the Mind Body Problem? I’m a believer in consciousness as an external force or particle/wave, much like gravity, that infuses everything up to and including rocks. Luckily no one dared to argue with me so I’m still in triumphant possession of this magnificent delusion. I do think philosophy in general suffers from a lack of diversity. I don’t mean brown people (there were two of possibly the most gorgeous Indians I’ve ever seen there) – more importantly, there were no cats, snakes, cows or whales. Which accounts for the distinctly human-centric nature of the conversation, as in ‘only humans can…transcend their instincts/develop a theory of mind/imagine what isn’t there…’ etc. What would a cow contribute if it could?

Speaking of imagining things, I went for a walk with Darcy the Dog today. She got in a panic about a concrete bus shelter that, to her, seemed ominous. She does the same with a mysterious upright metal oblong that sits in the middle of one of my paddocks. Shrinks, barks, won’t go near it. What does she sense? Ghosts? Aliens? Rottweiler pee? Really bad installation art? Does your dog do that?

I got to wondering, can one imagine a thing that has no relation to anything else one knows? For instance, you can imagine an elephant, therefore a polka-dotted elephant, therefore an elephant with wings…but can you imagine a being who lives (but not according to our definition or understanding of life) in an environment that obeys none of the laws of physics, space or time, is composed of a substance unlike any we’ve ever encountered, and whose motivations and imperatives are nothing like those of any entity on earth? It’s pretty much impossible. And yet that’s what we have to imagine when we conceive of what it might be like to be dead… Or God.

It would be a challenge for an SF writer or anyone brave enough to set out to conjure such a being, such a state, such a setting. Maybe poetry could do it. A line or two, anyone?

Evidently this stimulation thing is working. Whether that’s a good thing I leave to my relatives, friends, and of course you, who might have to put up with the (locquacious, meandering) results.

Photo by Fas Khan on Unsplash