So said William Blake - and he did; he created an idiosyncratic and incomprehensible system of assumptions, archetypes, and analogies; as expounded in the very long and obscure "prophetic" books.
William Blake - 1757-1827 - lived at the very beginning of the first Romantic era; so he was among the first to experience and express the inner need to escape from the toils of the already-existing systems of knowledge.
And surely he was right? Surely there is no tyranny more complete than that of a system of thinking, a religion, an ideology?
But it is apparent that creating one's own system is not an answer - not even to oneself.
The creating of a new system is, indeed, a creative activity; but once the system has-been made... Well, then it really is just another system.
What happened with Blake has happened innumerable times since. Nowadays, almost everybody experiences the oppression of the system; yet among those who desire and are determined to escape it, and make their won system - the process ends in... just-another system.
It happens even to creative geniuses such as Joseph Smith, HP Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner... They start out with exciting and apparently liberating spiritual experiences and insights; but end-up with ludicrously-complicated and vast systems. Systems that their followers are supposed to learn and obey; in a way that never applied to the originators of those systems, while they were originating them.
In sum; those who themselves successfully follow Blake's advice and create a system to avoid enslavement by another-man's system; have merely created another system. And the new system them process to enslave first of all its originator; so we see the creative genius struggling to impose his system on himself! And then... anyone else who chooses to follow the founder.
So that the creative genius becomes merely a leader - a bureaucrat of the new system; and his followers merely functionaries of the new system; and/or corrupt and/ or careerist manipulators, who try to use the system for their own this-worldly benefit.
The same trajectory applies to movements of renewal and awakening within the stale and empty forms of established religions.
At first the founder of the movement is creative, and the process of making a system is exciting, enlivening...
But to the extent that this is successful, the system crystallizes; and presses upon any individual; crushing, and incrementally killing, the soul.
It seems that we follow the same loop over and again. We recurrently hope, and may believe, that Goodness can be captured in a system: Goodness can be made-into a system.
And either that the latest system has finally succeeded in capturing Goodness; or else that some old system has never yet been properly tried, but would capture Goodness is properly implemented.
People are temporarily energized and motivated; by trying to develop and impose their system - believing that This Time they have got-it-right...
That this time, this system really will made this world a better place, if only people would do it.
But it never happens; and it never can happen - because systems are the problem.
And yet (as Blake saw, so long ago), we must have a system; we can't avoid them. There is no alternative in this life and world as it actually is - which is why creative pioneers always end-up with just another system.
The situation is that what we most-want and most-need - is not possible in this mortal life and on earth.
Is life, therefore, forever and inevitably a tragic paradox?
Or; is what we want and need possible to all of us who understand the problem - but someplace else: maybe after death, and in Heaven?
This seems to be a problem well-worth solving; seeking the answer to which is an activity well-worth our best and most serious effort.
I consider this to be a matter of primary importance.
ReplyDeleteThat systems are the problem is something I realized quite acutely during the birdemic days, when virtually all systems, be they secular or so-called religious, seamlessly aligned to the dictates of the overarching System.
Put another way, it struck me that there is something spiritually harmful inherent in all systems, regardless of its professed motivations. I was constantly reminded of how anti-system or, at the very least, system-indifferent Jesus's teachings are. That aspect of his anti-system spiritual inclinations and tendencies are often conveniently downplayed or overlooked.
It seems that our situation entails being "trapped" in a system (or systems) in mortal life, yet at the same time not permitting ourselves to become "of the system," as it were, regardless of whatever system that happens to be (I include all religious systems here). And of course repenting when we inevitably falter in this task.
Heaven, it seems to me, requires no real system, only love, which is the most system-less "force" I can imagine.
@Frank - Yes, that's it. And the reason why Jesus's uncompromisingly anti-system teaching is always and necessarily misrepresented and distorted is that in This world there must be system in order that we survive and function.
ReplyDeleteBecause Jesus was teaching a next-worldly salvation; any attempt to make it a this-worldly religion (making this world a better place) really cannot help but misrepresent.
There is another question relating to How Much system. Over my adult life system has penetrated into more aspects of life, and all have been (at least in theory and as an ideal) more systematized (more bureaucratic, more procedural).
And this happened whether or not functionality was helped - or destroyed. And this has continued with the "AI" project - when functionality is simply assumed, and the system itself becomes dedicated to "proving" its own ever-increasing functionality.
(i.e. the criteria of system functionality are selected such that the system's own measured success is always increasing - at least so long as that is what is wanted to be shown).
This is maybe what Steiner was getting at with "Ahrimanic" evil - that the powers of evil have taken something that is inevitable and unavoidable in this mortal life To Some Extent, and then created expectations such that the system is always being amplified. And whatever anti-human and dysfunctional aspects are (systemically) ignored by the system.
One might note this is also the subject of PKD’s ‘Exegesis’. PKD constructs one system after another to explain his experiences and keeps finding them unsatisfactory. If he’d ever “won” at any point, building himself an explanation whose hollow points he wasn’t honest enough to subsequently find, then he would probably have lost.
ReplyDelete@Serhei - Very true.
ReplyDeleteTo my mind; PKD's situation was made worse by his yearning for perfection/ salvation in *this* world - and urgently! - so that he was recurrently seeking, detecting, or expecting a "second coming", a saviour of this world/ starting-now.