Metaphysical

masturbation. Rather more specifically: the self-pleasure of investigating and attempting to define the things beyond the physical world. A book sits atop a stack of other books on my desk. It is a specific book: Marxism and the Call of the Future by Bob Avakian and Bill Martin. It can be described: conversations on ethics, history, and politics. It has weight. It has length and breadth. It is a slightly burnt orange cover with a red dot in the center, covered by a painting: suprematist composition #56 by Kazimir Malevich. It is 314 pages. It is a series of planned conversations between the two authors. It was printed by the Open Court Publishing Company of Chicago and La Salle, Illinois. It’s about the new bend to Neo-Marxist critical theory based mostly on Mao. The Library of Congress categorizes it as being about: socialism, socialist ethics, revolutions, and history. But the question is: what does it mean?

The blessing and the curse of metaphysical inquiry is that it is individual as well as universal. Contained within the physical realm are laws by which all “things” must abide: the law of falling bodies, inertia, the law of conservation of mass, the law of conversation of energy, and a whole host of others. Outside the physical realm, things are both individual and universal. It becomes each individual’s personal journey to attempt to define the meaning of his or her own existence. This is a slightly different take on “What is the meaning of life?” because it takes the focus off of meaning and places on the attempt to define—effectively making it active, where it had been passive before.

It seems almost inconsequential, doesn’t it? What is the difference after all between asking somebody what the meaning of life is, and attempting to define the meaning of life? Did you see it? Did you catch the subtle shift? When that particular question (“What is the meaning of life?”) is asked, the questioner is immediately asking their interlocutor for and outsiders perspective on the definition of “what it means to be me.” Let’s say Bill and Dave are chatting away, sitting at a high-top, somewhere off of 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, and Dave says to Bill, “What’s the meaning of life?” While what Bill says will no doubt be of some interest, may even involve caring or loving, and might be extremely witty, it will not the meaning of life. It is the meaning of HIS life.

That is where metaphysics turns the screw and gets unique, because while it is an individual’s meaning of his life, it is a universal question, and that’s where the ATTEMPT to define really comes into play. While some of what Bill says might be amalgamated into the collective knowledge about existence that Dave has, it is the asking of the question that is even more important, because it is his action in attempt to understand the universal question. One of the things that Avakian and Martin observe is that one of the most misunderstood aspect of Neo-Marxist theory is the revolution is not the answer, it is the question, and answers are to be found in the aftermath. Things suck. How about a revolution? Now, what did we learn from our revolution. The revolution, as an active entity, is the quest to find meaning (asking the question) without being passively told what meaning might be (listening to the answer).

By no means does this privilege one to the other. Oftentimes the answer is incredibly helpful for the understanding of existence, and anytime answers are excavated from somebody else’s experience, there is much value. However, one cannot find answers, one cannot get answers, one cannot inch closer to understanding without the inquiry.

If I ask more questions I will be doing nothing more than sifting through more rocks in search of the elusive fossil. The more I sift, the more I will find.

Sift on unceasingly.