The Poet, The Prophet, and The Philosopher

The Poet, The Prophet, and The Philosopher

Samuel Bird

The evening sunlight streamed across the horizon and through the cracked window of my childhood home. I sat there in pure boredom as I watched the flecks of dust in our filthy home flow through the beam of light. With the current of air came choreography to the dust. I watched it as it turned and twisted in a dance that started as something to watch in an environment void of sensual experience. As I watched it, I began to be more present with it and find it marvelous in its simplicity. The flow of the dust brought a sense of a pattern to my mind. I had seen this pattern before. In the snow flurries in the early part of the winter, the fluffy flakes would wind in spirals and wings with the recommendation of the wind. Thinking about this snowfall, I recalled a memorable location where those flakes settled. Years prior in earliest memory, my father was stealing lumber from public land. He cut down the tree and were getting ready to load it in the camper shell of the truck. I sat there looking at the tender snowflakes winding through the air and finally resting on its needles and boughs. We pulled the tree into the truck and covered it in a blanket so the Forest Service agency wouldn’t spot it and I was tasked with sitting on the blanket to hold it down. I remember marveling at the tree. Back to where I was, I thought of trees and their shape. Their outline reminded me of an aluminum cutter shaped like a pine tree that was designed for sugar cookies. This led me to think about cookies. This reminded me of how hungry I was and back to where I was in all its boredom. There was the dust again. Its fibrous and granular nature reminded me of sand. This in turn reminded me of the great sand dunes near where I was raised which then prompted a visual of a sunny day spent there. This time unprompted, I came back to where I was. I realized this pattern of thought how one thought prompted and inferred the next. 

This awareness of my thinking then brought a curiosity. How could I control this string of thoughts to build like I did my treehouse until basic components culminated into a greater whole? This whole then, was it something that I should go searching for, or let the thoughts take me where they would? If I did the first, it would perhaps lead me to patterns of thought that were incorrect. If I did the second, perhaps I would end in conclusions that were so violently opposed to my being. The focus on the macro view of the endeavor of thinking then prompted questions about the more atomic nature. Between this flow of thought to thought was the individual thought. Each seemed to be derived from my sense experience and yet was built on a structure of perception that only existed in my mind. So then, where did the contents for these strings of thoughts come from? It seemed to make the most sense that it was in a twofold conjunction between the content of these memories and the context my mind brought into it. Now that I had some clarity over the noun nature of these thoughts, I thought to the other half of the predicate to question the verb that was acting upon these thoughts. What was this cause that took me from one thought to the next? What was cause then? If I could assume the cause, was it necessary or contingent that one thought lead to the next? I thought about the example at hand and recalled that each thought inferred a relationship based on shared qualities, but it could perhaps have been another thought that was brought to my mind. It was then not something that must happen, but something that coincidentally happened. Could thoughts act on each other in such a way that one cause necessitated the corresponding effect? 

I thought of my basic understanding of the mathematics of simple addition. If I had two things and three things separately, then in combination I had five. However, the sum of each existed all along. Could one thought then follow as surely as this quantitative example qualitatively? My mind began to think in pre-linguistic and simple terms how one thought would lead to each other. I could think of one causation in my mind, but then I would need to have the cause to have it. I was sad when I was ridiculed, but it wasn’t a fact that I always was ridaculed. It then became clear that thoughts could be necessary between each other, if I would only assume the cause and causation. I dug deeper and deeper in my mind to find the bedrock of conception, but each spadeful came up as full as the last. I spent the rest of my life digging and found a depth that moved me from curiosity to fatigue, to horror, and finally to a sense of loss. I began to consider what I then must do. I could have all the conceptual stuff I desired such as a belief in basic facts, a consistent framework by which to act, and an idea that my life was of merit and meaning, but I once again would have to assume something. I wanted my surety, but it became clear that between the universe and I, this was not something we were going to resolve. 

I sought and sought until the depth of digging doubt began to be clearly limitless. Having this view of thinking, I devised a system in my mind where I would be able to have the causation that undergirded each effect that made up the world. This system would allow me to have all the needed values of a human mind such as meaning meaning and morality. I would just need to assume one fact, and then start building from that fact. There would still be an assumption, but it would be much more basic and solid. Every thought and belief would then be added to my conceptual framework in as much as it aligned with this initial value. I looked at my life and realized that outside of dry truth values, this could be the real and powerful solution to the ailments and pains that I experience. In addition, it could be the means of bringing about much good, as much as it decided what was good. I would be able to have this framework dreamed of old, but more consistent and less arbitrary. I would just need to have the faith to assume one fact to then build the rest of my being. I lived Esse Maxim. It made a life that was rich and meaningful. On lighter levels, I can easily hate myself and my life, but because of the extreme depths of the foundation my Esse Maxim was dug in, I had strength against the elements. I have since lived a life brimming with pain and tears, but one that was rich with pain from love and tears for gratitude. Outside of having grounds to begin after a postmodern age to live a full life, I was able to be at peace with my own existence and be grateful it was so. All I needed was this underlying assumption and bridge between myself and the world that was Esse Maxim and applying it via living deliberately. 

The mind loves to divide up sequences of random phenomena into categories and then use those categories to abstract together additional insights. In doing so with the subject of learning, I have sliced the gaining of knowledge into two baskets. The first is information and its associated justification as it comes from social institutions and the larger society. This would be what academics teach, what ideas or even possible ideas are purported at large, or even what language we have access to. People in this type of learning often see themselves at the top of a social hierarchy as they have amassed much of what society has and in turn, look down and the next category. As the last category is the facts that reside within social cognition, the next category is then the opposite. Outside of what minds in general within a given society possess, it would also possibly be the insights that are not within minds at all. The greatest of thinkers such as Jesus, Kant, and Socrates have a unique and profound ability to step outside of the sociality at hand and into the ineffable. They then had to think in a way that preceded language to then move and function in this world before words. While there are many wonderful and humble people who do this and I love to speak to them, they then took it one step further and figured out a means to take these ideas before language and outside of society into society, and in a way they could understand it with what they had. This newness of thought then caused a great discomfort in the naivety and dogmatism of a particularly stagnant society and two of our examples listed were killed for this endeavor. 

I grew up in reality and not in society. I had to fight elements to survive and see how matter and energy reacted to my movements. This gave me so many simple lessons on what was and how I affected it. Combined with the powerful construction of Esse Maxim, it was clear that something was being built. I knew many farmers and homeless people who had a similar experience, but they failed to bring these impactful insights into society at large. Through labor and fortune that is worth its own story, I came down from the mountain like prophets of old, to join the people. I was barely literate and didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, but I had it to say. I then began to realize that the difficulty and the resistance from people is why most fail to bring these insights into the world. However, I had my reasons, which was a subjective and persistent love for all people. I drove on in my efforts. 

Having ventured from the camp of humanity and built Esse Maxim, I now needed to prove it via critique and find a medium to express it. Philosophy, my dear love, became the means for both, though other methodologies added their insights. I began to sit down with people and converse with them. From every walk of life, I could get a variance in how far they strayed from social cognition. I would dig into their needs, thoughts, and hopes. It was clear that these softer human needs sought filling in a world that was cold to our cries. In love, I found great consolation in sharing Esse Maxim in part. I began to add to these dialogues, a reading. I began with simple texts and moved my way up the ladder of complexity as my dialogue grew. Starting classes from the same academic institutes I wanted to aid with insights from the mountains, I found the language I needed. In conversations between classes, I found my critiques of Esse Maxim. I began to read Wittgenstein, Neitchze, and Kierkegaard. I found they seemed to be preparing the way before me. I started to present on Esse Maxim in its breadth. I was humbled and horrified by how well it held up to the tearing down efforts of a society designed to do so. No matter what was said, it kept holding up. It stood above me in my weakness as a pinnacle of mind and world meeting in greatness. I began a foray into formal logic and particularly enjoyed statement and predicate logic. My reading made room for Kant, Sartes, Plato, Aristotle, a host of others, and of course, some more Nietzsche. As I grew into this idea that was much better than its thinker, I began to realize how powerful it was. I began to drive more carefully and take care of my health. I couldn’t die with this idea not expressed. After all this complexity and plans for greater post-graduate work, I go back to my thinking. 

As many articles I have written have shown, I love to share what I think are defensible as a vital part of the good life. However, these are all possible contents for your Esse Maxim that I am suggesting. This is when I am purely philosophizing. Esse Maxim proceeds all this as the framework your philosophy goes into. All with a purpose. I think Esse Maxim has the merit it does for its own sake and functions from facts as simple as world and mind meeting. However, I think the world I was born into is in particular need. While my personal philosophies I share and the case I make for them influencing your Esse Maxim is important to me, Esse Maxim is what is important to me. There is a good I can’t substantiate that a hopeful and visionary part of my mind sees. It feels a yearning to bring about this state of affairs in the world. I could legislate, dictate, or communicate this, however Esse Maxim seems to be the best means and a wonderful end. I have wishes for your life. Because of their general nature based on necessary facts of consciousness, they are ones you would likely also desire. I then implore you from one who climbed that mountain away from language and fought to bring the idea down, this idea was worth it. You will still have to watch as your mind flows from one thought to the next, but now you will have a basis for doing so. 

Beauty is how I express what I seek to share. This requires me to find rhythm and beauty in my writing. For this reason, I am finding myself stretching to be a poet. A poet is how I get to you to connect with the message and allow the beauty to carry emergent properties that literality would not permit. From this need to come down from the mountain with insights from the depth of reality, I feel an kiness to the prophets of old. I am hurt by the rejection of others, but I share my message despite persecution. Finally, the love of wisdom, the science of concepts, and the relationship between self and world are my mediums for bringing this about. For this reason, I have had to be a philosopher. Each of these distinctions will always seem loftier than my perception of self and possible self. However, I have learned not to heed thoughts that dismiss me from doing something at all, to live deliberately. 

•