Your Head Will Collapse if There Is Nothing In It

What a great lyric!

1) Facades are propped up. They have stuff behind them.

2) Facades are literally propped up. The stuff behind them is not that well connected, or else the front would not be a facade.

3) At what point does the propping become a good thing? When are lies the type of bullshit that placebo-affects things to get better? Are lies what prop up facades? If so, how?

4) Of course, facades are not just propositions. They are not just lies themselves. They are the fronts of houses; they are all appearances all together. Kant did not think we could get around appearances. He thought that appearances were all we had to work with.

5) We discussed mentality versus spirituality on this blog. Spirituality tends to take on the characteristic and systematic realization of truth. Spirituality also represents when we do not see mental reactions (read: thoughts) as chemical reactions.

5a) There is something of a misnomer in characterizing the chemical reactions as purely physical. It seems to be a wild idea to think that a unicorn is real insofar as it is chemical reactions; that all thoughts can be simplified to the chemicals in the brain. This is my view, and so I cannot really denounce it to the best of my ability; but I certainly understand the problem.

5b) On the other hand, there is obviously a cruel misconception in the idea(l) of the soul.

6) All the while, we live in a world of appearances. We have strategic idioms in our language (I have the urge to say lexicon) to help us out. You might know these:

i) "That's just the tip of the iceberg."
ii) "Looks can be deceiving."
iii) "Never judge a book by its cover."
iv) "Be ready for anything."

7) But you say, "These all point to the larger truth. When we put away appearances, that's when we get to truth." You say, "The tip of the iceberg means that we can know the ice under it, and we can know everything about it." "Looks aren't all there is to know about an object." "Books are to be read thoroughly and not glanced over." "I am ready for anything."

8) You never do. You never know everything. "We're hardly certain about anything!" Goes the philosophy joke. You swear that you know about the soul. You swear that you know about love. You swear you know about the choices you make and the people you surround yourself with.

9) This world is different from Kant's 1700's; and I think it is different for the better (Although anyone could see the contrary argument: sorry about that Holocaust, gang.)

Kant's argument wasn't for pure skepticism, where one is doubtful of everything. Kant argued that some things are both subjective (true to one person) and objective (true for everyone); and that sometimes these are simultaneous. Kant sought to answer for the knowledge that we had accrued at that point. The question was not how we can have knowledge (which seemed to mark the Moderns more than the subsequent German Idealists); but rather how we do have true knowledge, and how that absolutely true knowledge is better than other kinds of knowledge (like the belief that you were hallucinating or something.)

10) Your head will collapse if there is nothing in it. After establishing the necessity of believing in phenomena (which are appearances; and appearances are everything quantifiable or potentially quantifiable; sometimes the word empirical substitutes pretty good for this); we are sort of left to consider how we can bridge to that spiritual side, the side of things-in-themselves.

Telling people that we can trust appearances; like out loud, in conversation, has been sort of an eye opener for me. They say, "Who was the genius who came up with that one?" and I say, "Immanuel Kant," and then they shut up because they know that Kant is important without really knowing why. You get the problem, right? 16-year-old girls and Frat bros live in the world of appearances. Not us, you say, it's never us.

I too, feel this way. I have to make a big point here that Kant was writing in Prussian, and that appearances does not translate fully. But looking at Facebook, and all of these pictures of ourselves that we have propped up; and considering all that I know; and the decided pessimism that I now have; it's entirely frustrating.