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This foreword details a seven-year challenge to complete this project.
Several complete rewrites later, I finally realized the work I originally sought to compose could never be written using words – if indeed it could be created in any medium at all. So, to whatever extent this work might interest the reader, it is unlikely to do so via any set ideas, but perhaps via what it indirectly demonstrates the human mind can never achieve.
The subtitle Tales Of Reality is more descriptive than the title declaring The End Of Philosophy. The idea of philosophy having an end is of course just a play on words, suggesting that human ideas have inherent limits, but that philosophy is nonetheless far from the pointless navel-gazing exercise often imagined.
At one point, the subtitle nearly became Rambling Tales Of Reality; the motivation being an awareness – confirmed by others – that the text rarely sticks closely to any particular subject. But this is a somewhat incorrect perception since one main theme is that seemingly different subjects are never wholly disconnected. The word rambling was in any case ditched once I realized its role would be apologetic. In truth, the work sets out to join as many dots as possible, and its sometimes-rambling feel results only from immersion in that task.
In describing the connectedness of reality, I have flirted with holism, but the holism concept is already marred by misleading cultural associations in relation to what might be considered pure holism. A philosophical impossibility of discussing such wholly indivisible holism lies in it logically having no parts or features to form the substance of any would-be discussion. Pure Holism is in effect the book that neither I nor anyone else could ever write, given the divisive nature of language. However, the inherently elusive aspect of such holism is perhaps hinted at in the long-standing but notably short saying that He who knows does not say. And of course, that idea could jokingly or otherwise be expanded to infer that the more one says, the less one knows – an idea reflected in another saying: Empty vessels make the most noise.
Here we are thrust upon questions regarding what truly constitutes knowledge. In a world where our burgeoning masses of objective facts are given supreme importance, and new information assaults us daily, we subliminally accept all such cultural noise – arguably the opposite of spiritual silence – as a feature of knowledge. But to what extent has that noise deafened us to forms of knowledge not tied to facts, data, and abstract thought processes? And can such a question be properly answered amidst the modern cognitive din that inhibits even asking it?
Our model of informational and factual knowledge is rarely examined to see if it genuinely merits its cultural pride of place; its supposed benefits are generally just seen as a given. It can nonetheless be checked for philosophical weaknesses, paradoxes, and omissions – whilst its comprehensive failure to resolve age-old philosophical conundrums strongly suggests its scope is at best limited. This forms one theme of this work, together with a general contention that matters in these areas are not at all as typically imagined.
Tales Of Reality reflects the idea that we can never have more than imperfect, albeit often useful beliefs regarding our condition, whilst all our related conceptualizations must remain mere models of an ultimately unfathomable reality. If any such thing as absolute or incontrovertible knowledge is possible, it is not considered amenable to the abstraction within human thought and cognition. At least, such is one key tale of reality amongst countless others.
From this perspective, no ideas are presented as wholly correct or false. Nothing in human ideas is seen as being of unquestionable value or as wholly meaningless. Moreover, everything experienced, however seemingly crazy, is seen as essentially real by simply being experienced. And such experience is also considered real in manners mere facts never could be – experience, unlike facts, being of a primary nature that requires no abstract interpretation.
Meanwhile, objective thinking is presented as an essentially utilitarian mental strategy – devoid of intrinsic value, albeit central to the dubious planetary explosion of homo sapiens. Even the apparently exact certitude of mathematics is revealed as circular thinking of no inherent worth.
The backdrop to all this is that the human mind’s framing of its experience and intentions within abstract thoughts and ideas is regarded as an embryonic evolutionary development in rather urgent need of maturation. Framing absolutely all the mind’s tales of reality as truly nothing more than mere tales is seen as integral to such maturation. So, while I wish the reader an interesting read, he is warned against taking any such tales too seriously – whether they be mine, the conventional ones challenged herein, or any others.
Regardless of their source, the tales of reality that ring most true to each one of us are those upon which our most enduring delusions rest.
Narrative strategy
Contrary to any suggestion of the book-cover image, no individuals or their works are directly referenced. Instead, the narrative is deliberately generic; it aims to transcend the endless cultural colorations associated with not only specific people, but also with recognized nations, religions and ideologies of all kinds.
For whoever might argue the dangers of all the generalizing that results, a counter argument is made that language actually depends on generalizations; to specify anything at all is in fact to use a term for something that upon closer examination is invariably far more complex and varied than any term could ever capture. The underlying inability to resolve anything at all to would-be indivisible component phenomena reveals generalizing to be an intrinsic linguistic attribute. This can be demonstrated on the physical dimension by simply considering that the documented identities of each one of us – however detailed they may be – are monstrous generalizations for the collection of atoms and whatever else we imagine compose us as flesh and blood. Meanwhile in the world of physics, even the atom itself – so easily referenced by its short word – increasingly looks like a complex and somewhat mysterious entity.
Examining this whole issue in more depth throughout the text substantiates the notion that we in fact have little more than mere tales of reality about anything.
Punctuation notes
Breaking with convention, italics are used in all instances where words or phrases warrant any form of stress or special attention. Often the idea is simply to highlight the conventional but suspect use of terminology, or to reflect some irony or dubiety regarding a concept and its naming.
The idea of rhetorical questions requiring no interrogation marks is not acknowledged; the reader’s response to some questions may be anticipated but is never assumed.
No punctuation rules are considered sacrosanct; clarity rather than consistency is the goal.
Trigger warning
The three INTERLUDES use expletives and other forms of supposedly bad language. These three sections can be ignored in terms of following the main narrative.