The Abyss: The Last Liberation
70. Panegyric to Nietzsche.
If when a person died, they re-experienced their life an infinite number of times for eternity, what would a person strive to do in the original life?
The answer tells the real morality of the person.
Nietzsche coined this idea eternal recurrence.
71. Panegyric to Heraclitus.
What if a life lasted only for as long as the person can concentrate on the present moment?
If distraction caused immediate extinction, every member of the human race would become a realist just to survive.
Timothy calls this constant becoming in honor of Heraclitus.
72. Contrarian Dilemma.
What if morality required contrarian acts?
If a person needed to do evil in order to be good, would a person still strive to be good?
If not, then what is the real value of morality?
The same premise stands for truth and beauty.
If a person needed to look ugly in order to be beautiful, would a person still strive to be beautiful?
If not, then what is the real value of aesthetics?
Timothy conceived this contrarian dilemma. It reveals whether a person abides by absolutism or perspectivism.
An idealist will slavishly adhere to their absolutist morality even if it necessitates an extreme contradiction, e.g, to murder innocent people in the name of a purportedly peaceful religion. For a crystalline illustration of this in the Christian Bible: Yahweh insists that Abraham commit child sacrifice on his son Isaac, to which Abraham faithfully agrees. While ultimately an angel intervenes to save the child, Abraham did not have the courage to condemn god as evil on the spot and apostatize. This tale reveals the nihilism innate to idealism.
In contrast, a realist will identify the blatant contradiction at face value and decline the evil according to their perspectivist judgement.
73. Illusion of Civilization.
If a person could cause amnesia for anything in anyone at any time, what would the person do to people in their life?
This further tells the real morality of a person.
If they would dupe unsuspecting people, i.e., act uncivilized, what does that say about the illusion of civilization?
Civility exists only insofar as the illusion of justice exists too.
74. Socrates on the Last Liberation.
Socrates declares: nobody can prove that they exist. They can pound a fist on a table, or say a greeting, or shit in a toilet, or feel waves of electricity pass across their neurology. But what causes the fist to pound? A neural connection between the brain and fist. But what causes the neural connection to pass the data to do so in the first place? From whence does the chain of causality originate?
The Fool shouts: a consciousness!
Socrates: where is a consciousness located exactly?
The Fool wagers again: the brain!
Socrates: so if a surgeon opens a brain, he will uncover a consciousness embedded inside it like a pearl in a clamshell?
The Fool becomes flustered: no, I suppose not. But maybe he will find it on the astral plane, the world behind this world, and if not in the astral, then the world behind that one!
Socrates: so if an astral traveler scours their own astral body, they will find a consciousness inlaid there like a butterfly caught in a net?
The Fool resigns: no, I guess not… I give up. Tell me then, relentless gadfly, where does the soul exist?
Socrates: what if a consciousness is nothing more than the deception of a self-aware reality? What if the soul does not exist in any real way, but rather makes up the last illusion that a fool must abandon to enter the Abyss? What if apostasy from the religion of consciousness comprises the last liberation.
The Fool wails desperately: oh no, Socrates, please do not expound such heresy. The other fools will call you mad, and exile you into the wilderness. Where would you live?
Socrates: where else does The Devil live, if not the Abyss?