As I am

As I Am

Samuel Bird

I loaded my fishing pole into the trunk of my car after no luck and headed down the country road. The cloudy January sky met the dark winter landscape peppered with snow not yet melted. The road winded through the countryside and increasingly fewer houses until the structures of humanity were traded for the designs of God. Mounds became hills that in turn became small cliffs, and finally, a mountain. I pulled over into the mud, hoping I would not get stuck. I stepped out and looked at the mountain above me, stressing my neck. It wasn’t the distance to the top, but how brutally aggressive the terrain to get there that scared me. I knew the terrain was perfect for mountain lions, so I checked the rounds in my pistol and went along my way. The first step was to cross a bog, I went to the west side to go around it but found that the only time it thinned down to just a few feet, was at the bottom of a deep ravine. I slid my way down the snowmelt mud and hopped across. I saw in the mud a branch that wasn’t a branch. I dug it out to find a large dear antler. Now needing to climb up the other side of the ravine, I held the middle of the antler and pointed the spikes down. I then used it to climb up the mountain. 

At first, there was little snow, but as I made my way up the mountain, the scraggly juniper trees faded to steep slopes of snow I was hoping would not avalanche underneath my feet. Throughout the arduous journey, the concepts from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” bounced around my skull. There was so much to process from it and much more that it prompted me to think about. I didn’t just consider what he said but built off the thoughts that he inspired. There was one thing in particular that he touched on, that was at the heart of why I chose Esse Maxim. From his constructivism, we find that we construct our experience rather than purely synthesize from our environment. A great example is his thoughts on time. He explains it to be a paradox that is not empirical outside of our perception and experience. Time was then rather just a construction of what is rather than a part of what was. Still, Kant seemed to have some naivety in his support of the sciences as a medium for knowing the world as it was. I began to focus on my steps as they started to slide down the mountain. I caught my footing and realized that I needed to both address the most pervasive parts of reality via reason as I was also mindful that I was in it. 

I came to the first cliff before me. I drew my sidearm from my side in case I found a violent feline foe. Looking into the cave, I found it empty. I watched the treeline that was now starting to grow sparse. Mountain lions love to hide in the trees and I heard many stories as a cowboy of them pouncing on full-grown men on horseback. I looked down into the valley opposite where I came. It was untouched by human hand and full of a few bucks and a herd of does that would be hard to catch with the untrained eye. I was panting and short of breath. My body was trained for longevity and as such, it seemed to tire quickly, but that was a preservation of energy for the hike ahead. I wrapped my fingers around the red volcanic rock and dug the toe of my boot into a small step. I raised myself up the cliff before coming to flat land. I crossed it with a sense of cruelly ironic ease before coming to another cliff. I climbed that one and then crossed another plateau. I came to what seemed to be the last cliff, but false summits from incomplete perspectives made it difficult to be sure. I looked to either side of the cliff and found it to be only a few feet wide, with no way to cross on the sides, and the structure steep. I began my ascent as I realized it would be wise to at least tell people where I was so they could find my body. Every muscle in my body engaged with the climb until I came to the top and was balancing. I looked to either side and to each was a fall fifty feet below that would then have me tumble down a steep grade. I gripped the rock as I balanced there in awe and with the enlivening drive to survive within me. I furious gust of wind reminded me this was no place to enjoy the view too long as I hoisted the rest of my body up and over the top. I then looked up to the snow-capped peak. It was a steep and deep snow climb away, but one that I was energized to realize its obtainable proximity. I breathed a deep breath to feed all my burning muscles as I raged on. 

The force exerted from my body and the sense of defeat over the peak before me put me in a particular state of mind. It was one of overcoming and triumph. I thought about how perhaps an airplane ride of the same view would possibly espouse feelings of tranquility and reverence. These were two of limitless ways to see this landscape, but there seemed to be no tool to identify what the correct one was. I breathed more heavily as this ancient sense of honor and victory came to my mind as it drove me ever onwards and upwards. I pushed and pushed as my mind practiced discipline over the faculties of the body to the ends of my mind. As Kant suggested, time became relative to my perception of it as it sped past me and I approached the summit. Twenty feet before the top, I sunk into a deep snow bank up to my belt. I looked up and tried to breathe fast enough for the wants of my body. I looked up as that twenty feet might as well have been a mile. My body was beginning to rebel against my will and plead for a break followed by descent. I knew what I desired, however. I looked up at it and I realized just how cold it was. I was alone and there was no one to come for me if I should die at the peak. The terrain grew taller in my mind and seemed to be shadowed by a force that naysayed my objectives. I sat there in climactic defeat as I realized how heavy my whole frame felt, and how powerless I felt to move it. Was this defeat before the peak? No! I shouted to myself as my will disregarded the friction reality placed before it. 

I used the antler to dig myself free and moved past the thought of climbing to pure action. I pushed and pushed past the comfort of my body until I began to see the horizon on the far side. My wet leather boots stepped over the wind-swept top as my hands shot up in victory. A shout protruded from me violently as I spun to see this land I just conquered. I looked to the North, South, East, and West. In each direction, the land met the sky in a thick grey cloud that added a dramatic element to the scene. I looked out to the West to see the same valley I spent most of my time growing. It was so small from here, despite being my whole world for some time. I looked to the North where my home was and then to the South where I was currently working and hoping to soon move. I had a model in mind for what this valley looked like, but from this point, it was clear that this model was not a fact. It was rather a framework for what I needed to know to do what I desired to do. This complex landscape with all its dimensions was seen as just a few paths that took me to the people and places that gave me what I valued. It was clear that I didn’t see this place as it was, but as I am. 

I thought back to this point of view I would imagine from. I have since given it the moniker “God’s-Eye-View.” It is this conceptual method for stepping outside of myself and trying to view the entirety of something from a view that I simply could not see on my own. I thought back to when I was a construction worker and I had to make sure my eyes were lined up with the positioning of the tape measure or else I would askew what I wanted to see. This implied there was a correct place to see something from. I then considered all the people who looked for a place in heaven or on earth that would be thus. Einstein then seemed to end such a discussion by suggesting that each viewpoint changed the thing viewed. This added the relativity of spatial location to perception. So then where must an entity be viewed? It depends on what you are trying to see from it. This made it a conditional fact with the input of the search to the output of the result. Thinking back to the tape measure, I realized there was only one point in mind because there was only one result in mind. What if we were open to see reality outside of what we wanted to see from it? What if I was one of the rare humans who wanted to remove all biases and motivations from my search and wanted to simply see what was? This would remove any feedback loop of searching for something, my mind then going to work to find it, and then assuming it was true all along. 

I went back to the God’s eye view. I shut off my brain from constructing my experience as best I could and began to look at the world before me. It was a series of elements that were located from forces in such a way I saw mountains, trees, and boulders, but the atomic units were yet distinct. Even if I could use all my senses and have limitless time to observe this mountainous terrain, I would still only know the surface, and not the depth. If I then dug into it, I would then be changing what was there to observe. I thought back to an effort I had as a young child. I placed two mirrors facing each other and then tried different methods to see what was to be seen between them. No matter what I did, I was still in the way of seeing. I could never observe a pure vacuum void of material as I would then be that material. I could never know what it was like to see someone other than myself totally alone because then I would be there. On top of the world, it came to me. When we go to observe the world, we must remember we do it as ourselves. There is no stepping outside of ourselves to see this God’s-Eye-View. While I made sense of the self in terms of the world it resided in, I would also make sense of the world as the thing I was perceiving it as. At least the flesh that comprises my eye and neurons is made of flecks of the universe. How then would it be able to identify the entirety of something it is only in part? At best, the logically necessary delay from the causal process that was my senses, I would always be perceiving the past and only in a few of the dimensions that are purported to exist. 

It then became clear to me the foolishness of taking perception outside of a perceiver. These rocks and mountains could not falsely construct reality in their minds, but they also couldn’t perceive it. These eyes that gave me this vision, they lied to me. Is all the human endeavor and the search for wisdom then vain? When lied to, perhaps the question is then what motivated the deceit. These eyes see the beauty in the sunset. These ears heard the beauty of frequency as music. This skin felt pure pressure from others as the touch of a beloved. This lie was only a lie in terms of what was of the world. In terms of the world within me, these are the greatest of truths. This seeming curse of never knowing the world as it is might as well be the miracle of seeing it as I am. My whole breathing is breathed into my perception. Even the most empirical of sciences I pursue, the questions that formed the hypothesis that then search for the lack of falsity in theory, those questions come from me. In this way, I build the truth that I then must live up to in its objectivity. If then I choose from where I look to see this value below, how must I choose this position that would determine all else? Esse Maxim