SCENT OF THE DAY: Mystical Lotus: Purple Kynam, by Ensar Oud
I get a much different hue and saturation as well as density from the Oud used in mystical lotus jiaohzi and the one used in ML purple kynam. I find the hue in the former to be blue and of a light hue as well as incensey. I feel that this is the truest sort of oud to use to capture the spirit of mystical lotus. The purple kynam on the other hand is a purple-brown hue that’s dark and the body is very woody and resinous. This does captures the spirit of mystical lotus that I know. However, the majestic koi pond it brings me too is either dirty (and indicative of some loss of stewardship) or is in some extra galactic planet where the water is much more viscous thicker than we know it to be here. They do boil down to something quite similar. Jiaozhi stays more gassy, though—diesel even, which works to enhance the bright bite of the civet, which in the Purple Kynam version is swallowed in dark resin. The difference between these two Mystical Lotus releases is, in effect, like the difference between Qidori Chypre Sultan and Maroke no ko Chypre Sultan. Purple Kynam is like the Maroke version: much darker and ominous and noire like.
*Let's workshop this essay about how performing a Moorean shift on an argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility yields a potential proof for human immortality.
An Argument for Human Immortality
Introduction
In this essay I will present an argument for human immortality. Although I find that it has roots in Plato (such as in the argument in Phaedrus 245c), this argument results from performing a Moorean shift on one of my many arguments against the possibility of human moral responsibility. The general idea, in effect, is that the most feasible way to reject my line of reasoning against human moral responsibility seems to commit the rejector to a worthwhile conclusion, a somewhat happy surprise: humans, or at least something about them (presumably the soul), must be immortal. In other words, what I see as the only viable avenue for rejecting my argument would seem to open up an interesting proof for human immortality. That is the idea anyway.
Background
I have long held that no one is morally responsible for any of their thoughts or behaviors, feelings or ways. No one, so it has been my view, is ever genuinely deserving of reward or punishment for anything about them, even the most intimate aspects of their private worlds. Praise and blame, that is to say, are never ultimately warranted for any one of us. There might be pragmatic reasons for us to give out trophies or to impose jail sentences, of course—the main one being to incentivize people, groom them, to function in certain ways, cultivate them to be the right kind of citizens and family members or whatever. But even for one’s most voluntary actions, decided upon with sober reflection and under no coercion or duress, never is a human owed, as a matter of justice independent of these consequentialist grounds, approbation or reprobation.
1. If humans are capable of being morally responsible, then they can serve as a buckstopping causal source.
2. Humans cannot serve as a buckstopping causal source.
Therefore, humans are not capable of being morally responsible.
The argument form, modus tollens, itself makes the argument valid. It is impossible, that is to say, for the conclusion to be false on the assumption that the premises are true. That means that if the premises are true, no human can ever be morally responsible for any candidate thing that one might be said to be morally responsible for: a thought (thinking about strangling the toddler with the exercise band), an action (strangling the toddler with the exercise band), a feeling (feeling sexually aroused after strangling the toddler with the exercise band), a style of being (being the type of gal who, instead of crumbling on the floor into a puddle—a metaphorical puddle, not the other one—of remorse, squirts all over the strangled toddler several times with the aid of a Hitachi wand), or so on.
The question is whether the premises are indeed true. I have published several papers in defense of these two premises. But here are at least some cursory rationales.
Let us start with premise 2. Why can a human never be the buckstopping source of anything they do or think or so on?
First, let us get precise on what a buckstopping source is. A buckstopping source of x is an absolute origin of and explanation for x. It is a wellspring but not in the loose sense of the wellspring we might visit in a state park. That sort of wellspring, a spot where water first gushes out of the ground in a steady flow, is a middleman as opposed to a true terminal start. Just because we terrestrial creatures read rupture out of the ground as a starting point (a sort of adult version of peekaboo amazement that many of us never have gotten over), that does not mean that it really is the starting point: the water we see popping into the light of day is, so long as we broaden our view to include the subterranean, downstream from a complex system that could extend miles away and thousands of years in the past. A true buckstopping source is like a first domino in a chain rather than an intermediary domino. But even that metaphor falls short. Dominoes, after all, are not themselves causal agents, self-movers. They are of course causally efficacious, denting space-time in their own little way. But no domino propels itself to tip forward and start a chain reaction of tipping.
Second, let us get clear on why no human can be, so it seems, a buckstopping source. Being a buckstopping source, an absolute beginning of a causal chain, requires being a source that is not created or caused by anything beyond. For to be created or caused by anything beyond would mean that buck does not stop at the purported place but rather, if at all, somewhere beyond. Look at it this way. Something, and thereby the candidate source, can be other-caused (created by some other), uncaused (created by nothing), or self-caused (created by itself)—there are no other options. The first option is out for the reason just said: that source that is caused by some other cannot be the ultimate source. Can the candidate source be uncaused? No. Nothing comes from nothing. Some things, of course, come from nothing as construed according to our human-all-too-human ways of speaking, as in when we say “You popped out of nowhere!” But in reality, even if we do not know all the variables that went into the occurrence of something, there is always a sufficient explanation for why whatever occurs does occur. That leaves only the last option: that the source is self-caused. That would seem out too. If it requires something existing before coming into existence and then causing itself to exist, then that would be a bald contradiction. Many would just read self-causation as a version of pulling yourself up into the air by your mere bootstraps and thereby impossible. In this case, premise 2 would be true since there is no way for something to be a buckstopping source, in which case no human can be a buckstopping source.
In my work, influenced by the arguments for the necessity of some bedrock foundation to reality (a foundation traditionally called “God”), I have allowed for a less repugnant sense of self-causation: existing by one’s very own nature. This sense of self-causation amounts to the same thing theologians like Aquinas have in mind when they say that God is uncaused or uncreated. They do not call God self-caused for precisely the worry about contradiction I mentioned. Why do I differ? Well, I think it is fundamental that everything has a sufficient explanation—without exception. Second, I think that the definition these classic theologians give for the absolute foundation, that which has existence baked into its essence or that which has a nature that involves existence, is more appropriately described—and I follow Descartes and Spinoza on this—as self-caused. If R’s essence involves existence, such that it exists by definition, its existence is sourced in itself not nothing. God is the very opposite of nothing. So to say that its being uncreated, uncaused, means that it exists by its very nature, sounds very close to saying that its nature is nothing (in which case we would have a Derridean deconstruction that would make Zen dialetheia types cream their jeans, but not me). It just sounds better to me, more appropriate to the title, that God provides the very resources for his own existence (rather than that nothing provides the resources for his existence). God, so the idea goes, does not just so happen to be instantiated but rather all by himself guarantees that he is instantiated.
Terminology aside, we all agree that for one to exist by one’s very own essence is to exist always already—indeed, to exist not just for all time but eternally, atemporally. For that existence, in effect, is true by definition. There is no room to wonder about whether the thing in question, which I call “self-caused,” might or might not exist any more than there is room to wonder whether the next triangle I see will have three angles.
The relevance of all this discussion of terminology, at least some of it, should be clear. For me to be a buckstopping causal source, I would have to be self-caused. If the notion of self-causation is even viable at all, then we only have one candidate for what it means for me to be self-caused: I exist by my very nature. But to exist by one’s nature is to be eternal, always already there by definition. The problem is that I am a human. I was born to parents at a certain date. Only God, as the classical theologian says, has existence baked into his essence. Every other creature, including every human, is created by something other. No human has an essence that involves existence.
Let us turn now to premise one, the conditional premise. Why is being a buckstopping causal source a necessary condition for being morally responsible? Why, in other words, must humans serve as an absolute causal origin if they are capable of being morally responsible?
Imagine I—peeping-fucking-Tom me—jerk off at the window while I watch the mother’s puddle build around the toddlers she dispatched with the exercise band, praying for her to manage by some miracle a fifth blast of gush. Whether we construe my action (call it “o”) more generally (masturbating while peeping) or slice up the temporal flow more granularly (my first hawk-tua onto my hand for lube), at least some factor that went into my action must have been ultimately up to me. What is that factor? Philosophers will say some difference-making factor for me doing o, and usually that will be a mental factor (a decision, the decision to act on my sexual desire), must have been ultimately up to me. But for the sake of the argument, it can be any factor. I allow that it can be the most trivial factor imaginable, a factor that most philosophers would find totally relevant in the just desert literature. At least some factor that went into o happening had to bottom out in me for me, as opposed to someone else, to be genuinely owed praise or blame—blame in the case since the distance and quantity of my own payload shot, a ping on the aluminum siding that draws the mother’s postpartum eye of evil, is an aesthetic matter orthogonal to the ethical evaluation. It makes no sense to say that I can be morally responsible (again, in the strict sense) for action o even if absolutely nothing that went into bringing o about ultimately bottoms out in me. But that is what the denial of premise one entails.
Now I would be remiss if I did not mention that some philosophers deny that my being a buckstopping source of o, or even for the smallest factor that went into o, is necessary for me being morally responsible for o. Some philosophers—they are called “compatibilists”—hold, for instance, that I can be morally responsible for my reaction even if determinism is true—even if, that is to say, my actions were entirely a function of the remote past before my birth. My sneaking through her bushes, my deciding not to intervene even when there were still two children left to be saved, my dropping trow, my refusal for some reason not to bust in and fist rape her with that same righteous fury that has Iranians do the same to women who refuse to wear a hijab, and so on—even if all of it was guaranteed by the causal state of the universe before the formation of the earth, I can still be morally responsible.
If that sounds ridiculous, that is because it is. If my action is guaranteed by what I ultimately have no control—no say—over occurring (which is the case if determinism is true), then I ultimately have no control—no say—over whether I perform my action. And if I ultimately have no control—no say—over whether I perform my action, then surely I am not truly morally responsible for my action.
The compatibilist has something to say in response to this, of course. No one ever gets the final word, especially in an academic world—perhaps coming to an end after the double whammy of cancel culture and AI’s ascension—where one must pump out publications like an overworked hen to achieve tenure. Even if, so the compatibilist will say, it is guaranteed from the remote past that I do not lift the pen at time T1, it might still be that I ultimately have control—a say—over whether I lift the pen at T1. How so? (1) Even if my not lifting the pen at T1 has been guaranteed by the remote past over which I have no control, I still ultimately have control—a say—over whether I lift the pen at T1—so long as I would have lifted the pen had I tried. (2) Even if my not lifting the pen at T1 has been guaranteed by the remote past over which I have no control, I still ultimately have control over whether I lift the pen at T1—so long as by not lifting the pen I am doing what I want to do and no one is coercing me (say, through hypnosis) not to lift the pen.
I feel this reasoning only highlights the absurdity of compatibilism all the more. If determinism is true and S’s not lifting the pen is guaranteed by the remote past (such that it has been guaranteed that S does not try to do otherwise than what he does), then S ultimately does not have actual control over whether he lifts the pen (however much counterfactual control he may have). Second, if everything that happens is guaranteed by the remote past prior to the birth of S, then not only S’s action but also the desire to do the action itself is guaranteed by the remote past prior to the birth of S. In this case, even though S is doing what he desires, the action resulting from this compelled desire is still ultimately out of his control. The coercion by the remote past, moreover, is more inescapable than any hypnosis or gunpoint threats! Actions resulting from being controlled by an alien force (as in hypnotism by a divine hypnotist) are actions ultimately beyond S’s control. But actions guaranteed by the past are relevantly similar to, and at least as compelled as, actions resulting from being controlled by an alien force.
In the end, as premise 1 says, I must be the buckstopping source of at least some infinitesimally insignificant factor that went into o if I am morally responsible for o. Otherwise o’s occurrence would be a function of causal factors ultimately beyond my agency and surely I cannot be genuinely deserving of praise or blame for what is a function of causal factors entirely beyond my agency. The problem is that creatures like us are unable to meet even this standard. For, as premise 2 says, no human can be a buckstopping causal source. No human can be a buckstopping causal source because no human is self-caused. That is why I hold that moral responsibility is impossible for humans.
Why would moral responsibility require me being the ultimate source of my own existence rather than just me being the ultimate source of whatever relevant factor is in question? That question I often hear. So I might as well dispatch it like a toddler right now. That question makes a division, a distinction, where there is none, at least none that is relevant. To be the ultimate source of a particular occurrence I would have to be the ultimate source of me. For otherwise that which would be the ultimate source would not be me. But I am the one we are wondering whether is morally responsible. Surely some ultimate source for o, a source nonidentical to me, cannot serve as the truth-maker for me being held morally responsible for o. The spirit of the worry is that ultimate origination need not require aseity (being self-derived). But look at it this way. I cannot ultimately originate a choice without ultimately originating myself. For if I do not, I am merely a middleman—one of those peekaboo wellsprings of our childish thinking.
Argument for the Immortality of the Soul
One philosopher’s modus ponens is another philosopher’s modus tollens, and vice versa. That is a saying that philosophers like Hilary Putnam and Fred Dretske have made popular. It serves as a way to capture the essence of a style of argumentative reversal that, made famous by G. E. Moore, is known as the “Moorean shift.” To do a Moorean shift on an argument like the modus tollens one I presented above, you would swap out the nonconditional statement for one that affirms the antecedent of the conditional premise. One cannot, without dishonoring Moore’s title as the philosopher of common sense, just swap in whatever one feels like. One is allowed to make the swap only if the original nonconditional premise is less intuitive, less commonsensical, than the one put in its place.
It would seem that, so at least many would hold, that we can do a Moorean shift on my original modus tollens argument for the impossibility of human moral responsibility. Knowing what I know about Moore (in particular, knowing the standards he used when he employed the Moorean shift in order to evade the skeptical conclusion “I don’t know that I have hands” entailed from the fact that “for all I know, for all I can tell from the first-person point of view in which I am trapped, I might just be a bodiless brain in a vat stimulated in such a way as to have the delusion of an ordinary life), it seems Moore himself would approve of exactly the Moorean shift I have in mind.
Consider the following two propositions: (1) Humans cannot serve as a buckstopping causal source; (2) Humans are capable of being morally responsible. Since these two statements are incompatible with one another given premise one of the original argument, we are allowed to pick whichever one is more intuitive (since, according to Moore’s way of thinking, what is more intuitive has a greater claim to truth). So which one is more intuitive, commonsensical? Is it more obvious that humans can never, under no circumstances, be the absolute origins of what they do or think? Or is it more obvious that sometimes, at least under some circumstances, humans can be morally responsible?
Moore would say that the answer as to which is more intuitive is rather obvious. Number 2 is more intuitive. In a world where the hoi polloi blames people for crimes committed centuries prior by people who merely look like the people in question, I imagine many would agree with Moore. It is sort of the point that no real rationale needs to be given. That is the whole shtick with being the philosopher of commonsense. But there are, of course, things to be said. To be morally responsible is to be deserving of praise and blame for what we do. We praise and blame all the time. The propensity to praise and blame is, indeed, so deeply ingrained that involuntary feelings of deep displeasure and deep joy (cold pricklies and warm fuzzies) wash over us for having performed certain actions. Moreover, the rejection of the idea that S can be morally responsible for o amounts to a rejection of the basis for social order and purposeful living. Think of the changes to our self-image and social practices that might be entailed by our recognizing that no one is morally responsible for anything they do: no more prizes or prisons or so on—in effect, no more of the strongest motivations (reward and punishment) for vain creatures like us.
Look at the new argument that results, therefore. Its form has changed from modus tollens to modus ponens. But it is just as valid as the original since modus ponens is a valid argument form, an argument for whose every substitution instance is an argument where it is impossible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true.
1. If humans are capable of being morally responsible, then they can serve as a buckstopping causal source.
2. Humans are capable of being morally responsible
Therefore, humans can serve as a buckstopping causal source.
Between this section and the last I have already covered the rationales for each premise. The rationales are very moving—indeed, I believe premise one is indubitable. Aside from just the fact that I am a self-moving agent in some sense (bam, I just get up and go whenever I want to in many cases), there seems to be solid reason to think that I can serve as the buckstopping causal source of at least some smallest factor that went into my hawk-tua. To put it more generally and in the context of all the qualifications, there is solid reason to think that there are occasions when humans are the absolute wellsprings of at least some sliver that went into what they do or think: those occasions when they are doing actions or having thoughts for which they are genuinely deserving—as a matter of justice, just deserts—of praise or blame.
It should be clear, in light of the discussion in the previous section, what relevance this has to human immortality or to what we might call, following longstanding tradition, the immortality of the human soul. To be an absolute wellspring is to be unbegotten, unmade, by anything else. Since being uncaused in the unqualified sense is out (nothing, after all, comes from nothing), to be an absolute wellspring can mean only to be self-caused (causa sui). And to be self-caused, if we are to avoid the blatantly absurd understanding of self-causation (existing prior to your existence in order to bring yourself into existence), means to be explanatorily on even footing with itself in the sense of existing by the necessity of its own nature. It means, that is to say, to have a nature that involves existence. To have a nature that involves existence is to have a nature that cannot truly be conceived except as instantiated. But to have a nature that cannot truly be conceived except as instantiated is to be always already there, eternal. Being eternal, as I mentioned above, is more than just being sempiternal (surviving indefinitely into the future and having been always in the past). Being eternal means existing not just for all time but beyond time. If you are eternal, which (by the above reasoning) any human who is morally responsible is, then that implies—over-implies—that you are immortal.
Criticisms
There are several issues with the above line of reasoning.
First, I do not agree that we are entitled to make the Moorean shift. “Humans are capable of being morally responsible”—I do not find this statement more intuitive than “Humans cannot serve as a buckstopping causal source.” So by Moore’s own standards, where we would be entitled to make the shift only if the former is more intuitive than the latter, it would be perfectly rational for me not to go through with the shift.
Sure, most people on the street would not even understand the latter statement but would feel no confusion (the key word, of course, is “feel”) when it comes to the former. But that does not have relevance to the Moorean shift. If Moore by some fat chance thought it did, then he is even easier for a rationalist such as myself to disregard. The question should be which statement is more intuitive once I grasp the meaning of them. For if it were not that, then all bets are off. And so when I polled people on the street I would rig the game in my favor (a) by wording the latter statement in a way that did not make reference to 1920s US military accountability language and (b) by wording the former statement in Sanskrit or some other language people are not bound to know: “Manuṣyāḥ naitika-uttaradāyitvaṁ voḍhuṁ samarthāḥ santi.”
And sure, I might feel myself as the source of my action—as in when I willingly hand my phone over to a friend (where by friend I mean an employee at BJ’s who refuses to text me back) so she can see a picture of what I placed in the hot dog bun. But I never feel myself as the ultimate source. So citing the fact that we are self-movers who do just get up and go, and feel ourselves from the first-person point of view making ourselves just get up and go, is insufficient to make the case. It is insufficient even without me resorting to the Sam Harris bulwark of highlighting that ideas and decisions all seem—seem, yes, even from the first-person point of view—to come unbidden, flowing in from who knows where.
Likewise, we do praise and blame. I do not deny that it is a practice perhaps as old as humanity. Prehistoric human groups so depended on group cooperation (for hunting among countless other things) that blaming and praising were crucial: blame deterring cowardice and freeloading whereas praise encouraging bravery and sharing. But not only is praising and blaming perfectly compatible as a logical matter with people not really deserving praise and blame, the propensity to praise and blame (as is clear at least in the examples I just gave) was presumably ingrained in us for merely pragmatic reasons of incentivizing and disincentivizing. Only later in human history did praising and blaming become more than just a strategy grooming ourselves and others to make a society best suited to survive if not flourish. Praising and blaming became, as Nietzsche liked to argue, construed as being owed to people independent of pragmatic considerations—this construal, of course, just itself a more headcase form of manipulation, something perhaps to stoke the grooming engine into a fury (just as covering women in hijabs and the like could be seen as humanity’s way to stoke the procreative engine).
Relatedly, there need not be big changes even if no one is morally responsible for what they do. Praise and blame can continue to go on as before but it would merely be for pragmatic ends—more in line with our hunter-gatherer roots: rehabilitation, education, deterrence, quarantine. I could praise my child for doing well on his homework not because he really deserves it but rather to inspire him to continue such behavior—as arguably is the aboriginal root of the practice to begin with.
Most importantly, I know what it means to be the ultimate beginning, the buckstopping causal source. It means to be self-caused. That notion is puzzling in itself, if not downright absurd. And insofar as it is not absurd it entails that I am, like God, eternal—at least in some relevant way. But even if true, that seems—to me at least—wildly unintuitive.
Second, you as a whole are not self-caused. You as a whole were born on a certain date from parents. So the best hope for your immortality is that some part of you is self-caused and eternal. We can call that part, following tradition, “the soul.” Not you as a whole but rather your soul, according to the above Moorean reasoning (seen now in this qualified light), would be a necessary feature of reality. Indeed, your soul would not just be any old necessary feature. Some necessary features of reality are other-caused but still are necessary in virtue of being entirely a function of that which is ultimately unconditionally necessary. But the part of you in question, the soul, is unconditionally necessary because that part exists by its very essence. Since the soul is a true agent (a self-mover, an initiator of action), and since that which truly starts motion or begins a causal chain must not itself be caused by some other (lest it not be a beginning but rather an intermediary), the soul must be not just an indestructible fixture of reality but the deepest—most bedrock—indestructible fixture of reality. The problem with this is that the true S in question—as some self-caused thing (the soul)—would no longer be human. But that violates the assumption of the argument. There are other issues as well, which I bring up in the final section.
Third, there are reasons to think that the Moorean argument in question—even if sound—does not give us the sort of individual personal immortality we might think it would. On the anti-solipsistic view that there is more than one S, more than one soul in question, there would have to be more than one self-caused being if the argument for our personal immortality goes through. Even if we do not assume God exists (which would presumably rule out each of our souls as self-caused since they would be creations of God rather than creations of themselves), it still seems that each of our souls cannot be self-caused. Each of our many souls, existing for eternity, would have in common that they are. They all, that is to say, would participate in Being itself, the very isness of all that is and could ever be. There would be, then, an asymmetrical dependence relationship: all these candidate souls depend on Being itself (ipsum esse subsistens) whereas Being itself does not depend on any of these souls (at least not on any more than one if we take an in rebus view of this ultimate principle). No dependent being, however, can be self-caused (that is, have an essence that involves existence). If there cannot be many self-caused things, then at best that means that the self-caused portions in each human (the souls, so to say, in Gandhi and in Lindsay Clancy and in Hitler) are all identical. Indeed, if this so-called global or universal soul is not identical to Being itself, we would face the problem that it is a dependent entity—necessary perhaps, but still dependent and therefore not self-caused. In the context of moral responsibility, the context that frames this whole discussion, that identity of souls in some world soul sounds odd. For the very same ground that deserves reprobation in the case of Hitler (but not Lindsay, of course, since she is a queen who stood up to the patriarchy) is the very same ground that deserves approbation in the case of Gandhi.
Conclusion
Here I have gone over a way to take my central argument against the possibility of human moral responsibility and aikido it into an argument for some form of human immortality. Many might feel moved by the Moorean twist of my original argument more than by my original argument. And if they are, and if they are right to be, then they have what would seem an additional positive result: a proof that humans in some sense are immortal.
Indeed, even if all my criticisms of that Moorean aikido succeed, some element of immortality could still bleed through. There might be some part of us that is self-caused. That part of us, for reasons that I mentioned, would have to be at the ultimate bedrock of reality (at the level of Being itself). For if it were not, then it would depend on something else and thereby not be self-caused. That part of us, which might be no more personal to us than the very isness of everything that is, is eternal. Yes, I did say that I find it radically unintuitive for me, Dr. Istvan, to be a self-caused eternal creature like God. I stand by that. On the other hand, however, I do find it intuitive—perhaps even radically intuitive—that I am made of stuff that was always already here. This need not be limited to matter. I am a being and all beings share being, share that we are. The isness of whatever is—that is with me, that is me in some sense.
I have elsewhere defended the view, moreover, that there exists a self-necessitated being that serves as the ultimate wellspring of itself and all other things. Since all other beings are, so I argue, stylings or manners of being of this being, there is a sense in which all other beings (including us) are this being. Qua this being rather than qua us as downstream ways or modes of this being, each of us is not only eternal but the buckstopping source of whatever we do or think. It is that eternal part of us that genuinely deserves praise or blame (if anything can deserve it).
None of this might be too uplifting. This provides neither the personal immortality many of us want nor the possibility to be morally responsible agents that many of us expect. It boils down, after all, to saying that only insofar as we are this impersonal ultimate arche of reality (God, we might say) are we a permanent fixture and morally responsible for what we do, which is just a long-winded way of saying God is a permanent fixture and he is morally responsible. For me to say “you are eternal because the isness of which you are is eternal” sounds, in other words, like a mere semantic comfort. For it is like saying “a particular wave lives on at least in the sense that the water does.” I have to keep it real, though. I am out for the truth. I am not about smuggling in the unwarranted conclusion of a happy little bourgeois afterlife just because that makes us feel good.
That all said, at least on the immortality front there might be a consolation prize. For if this ultimate arche of everything that is and could be really exists (as, again, I have defended elsewhere), then we in our most granular detail are written into that wellspring for all eternity as a potential shape that could have come about. Since this ultimate arche suffices all by itself for whatever occurs, everything that occurs—and the exact way in which it occurs—must be inscribed virtually as a potential of that ultimate bedrock reality.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
