The Blackberry Walk

Been busy doing coursework and getting covid - time for another post on metaphysics. The rock falls and hits the floor. You needn't have a Newtonian conception of gravity, or any other physicist's model of how rocks move, to recognise that simple truth. But for a dropped rock to stop in mid air - or better yet fly into the sky: that would be quite the spectacle. For that brief moment, the rock is, in our modern parlance, "disobeying the laws of physics" - it has started a rebellion against nature itself in a brief action of defiance. And I don't say that to be poetic or flippant, because the rocks would be committing a grave sin. The word sin is a term from archery, originally meaning to miss the target; and in that sense the rock is 'missing the mark', or failing to follow the rules set out for it. Set out for all things, there are distinct rules they must follow; that doesn't mean there's no element of free will or choice, just that, much like individuals living under the law of the land, they must follow the rules. At the quantum level, a small interference could affect how the rock falls, but so long as the rock follows the rules, it's still a "good rock"; similar to when a person follows moral rules, they're called a good person. The difference between a rock and a man - beyond the myriad of obvious ones - is that a rock has to be a good rock, and is unable to disobey the rules; whereas man can be bad, can sin, and can disobey the rules. Mankind can disobey the rules because he has knowledge of both good and evil, unlike the rock who only knows good: this is man's original sin. Given that we know both good and evil, it would be all well and good if they were strictly separated in our minds. Alas, this is not the case, with the difference between good action and bad action being quite a fuzzy Venn diagram (although we have a pretty good innate idea if we're doing something wrong). However, man knew good action, even if it's hard to discern good action from bad action today - there is a "correct" set of laws or guidance, a key, which can unlock the heavy chains of sin which have weighed mankind down since time immemorial. Many dislike the key, however, leading to two kinds of alternatives: key cutters, and lock pickers. Let's start with the key cutters. Key cutters recognise the key and, whether aware or not, make an oversimplified copy of it. Immanuel Kant, or most of secular Enlightenment philosophy on the whole, is a good example of this. Kant's categorical imperative is merely a single aspect of the original key oversimplified to the point of absurdity (philosophers do love monomaniacal reductionism). Unlike theological philosophy which aims to explicate and examine the many intricate notches of the original key, secular philosophy obsesses over cutting an imprecise duplicate, designing keys impressive for mortals to have designed, but are merely shadows of the original. Next are the lock pickers. Instead of cutting keys similar to the original, the lock pickers attempt a different way to free man of his chains. Many ideologies, such as fascism or communism, or philosophies, like Sartre's existentialism or Nietzsche's ubermensch, have been tried and attempted in their various forms. Although they each have certain similarities to the original key - and why wouldn't a thief, given the option, study the key of the lock he were to pick - lock picker moralities aren't simply imprecise copies of the original key. A key cutter's morality hits most of the locks' pins albeit in a far weaker way, struggling to set them; the lock picker's, however, hooks certain pins very strongly - often so strongly to the point of breakage - whilst catastrophically missing the mark elsewhere. For instance, communism strongly sets the pins of charity and the equality of man, yet fails to set others like humility, encouraging an envy-driven violent insurgency against the bourgeoisie. No matter how great the lock picking kit nor how dexterous the wielder, the lock picker will always fail to free himself from sin. In short, there are many key cutters and lock pickers populating the market place attempting to sell their work; however their services will always fall short of the original key. It's unlikely - in fact entirely unlikely - that in our lifetimes any of us will free ourselves from the heavy wrought-iron chains which weight us down. The locks are too numerous, and the key too profound and complex. What's more with each lock released, we awaken ever-more acutely to the weight of the others, making the journey feel seemingly futile. But it's the journey to becoming a better person, a stronger person, through following the laws of nature.