The Nudity of Absence (To the Idol Worshippers)

By Adam Lovasz

Colorful in every sense of the word, The Nudity of Absence is, above all else, a work of speculative ontology. Drawing on scientific discoveries and metaphysical truths, the essays contained in this book attempt to delineate the contours of the current vacuity, emptiness and senseless negativity of the world we presently live in, while resisting the all too common imperative in most of philosophy that would force us to limit negation. Negativity is, by its very nature, limitless. The ambition of the author at this juncture, is to progressively debunk, so to speak, positive thinking through the exposition of an empirically-grounded negative ontology, a theory of being that contains nothing, for it limits itself to description of things as they are, of the very emptiness of all that is. The essays contained in this book, drawing on a variety of thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, David Hume, Timothy Morton, Meister Eckhart, as well as Buddhist scripture, are attempts to open the mind to the nihilistic possibilities underlying the world we live in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Lovasz
• Release date: Apr 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310160806

Book preview

You are like pigeons pecking the ground, you winged rats! You too were born with wings, just like the angels. However, you are fallen and instead of soaring in the heavens, you are condemned to run around on Earth. O, if only a God would have wiped you out in the fiery frenzy of a divine genocide! However, even the absence of your destruction is proof of the depth of God’s hatred in relation to the idol worshippers: while the Blessed Ones can taste the sweetness of non-existence in this life, you miserable criminals suffer for decades, or, if we may believe the Buddhists, through long, painful epochs of reincarnation. Existence itself is an idol, the greatest among all idols. The hardest escape is the escape from the sly charms of existence. Only the most powerful idol destroyer, the Enlightened One, who is called tathagata by some, Saviour by others, is capable of bringing this monstrous colossus to the ground.

On what basis, apart from Revelation, do we seek to base our opposition to idol worship and, equally, our defense of idol destruction? Idol destruction is necessary and, furthermore, desirable. Graffiti is one phenomenon that proves definitively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that human nature is fundamentally opposed to idol worship. Deep down, we are spiritual beings. Spirit as such seeks ascent, to transcend material reality, including symbolic realities that separate us from genuine communion with that which is above us. Graffiti may be found almost every large urban metropolis. O, you foolish, blind worshippers of buildings! When you condemn the graffiti-artists, you stand in direct opposition to human nature as it is coded inside of us. Human nature as such rejects all the idols, the tired and alienated symbols that are imposed upon it by the postmodern metropolis.

Let us reflect on what life is like in a city. Directing our thinking upon the pulsating communicative signals, the dead symbols that torment the urban mind, a mind that is at once homeless and bereft of genuine meaning, we cannot err in saying that urban life is an eternal going in and, at the same time, a going out. Inside and outside, on occasion fragmented, at other times, reassembled in a new unity. It is not unconscious, but neither is it entirely conciousness. Rather, walking on the road to a new tomorrow, the ever-present yet never entirely present electronic Utopia of a bright future, we are beckoned to enter, penetrate into the light. But what is this light that is drawing us into itself? A lie! A lie, the brightness of which betrays the hollow darkness lying in wait for us underneath the multicoloured facade. Walking on the streets of a metropolis is a simultaneous slowing down and speeding up. Its not there, meaning has eluded us! Its amazing how slowly things progress, even in the apparently fast-tracked landscape of Progress. Going out of the center, we reach the periphery of this immense circle. The circle is the ultimate form of tyranny. Lights blast our senses, dazzling us into dreaming the big and fast dreams of this self-conciously constructed Utopia. Incredible pressure arises in our heads, especially when we have the honour and privilege of seeing the denizens of large cities. With their colorful robes, raunchy, unaesthetic vulgarity, the scene unfolding in front of us is reminiscent of an aphorism of Nicolas Gomez Davila. „Don Colacho" writes,

„It is not just that human trash accumulates in cities—it is that cities turn what accumulates in them into trash." (Davila 2001: 476)

What more proof do we need of your miserable wretchedness, ye idol worshipping devils, than the spectacle you present to our eyes?! This spectacle, the spectacle of the city’s self-reflectivity, cannot be anything apart from sickening to the person blessed with anything remotely resembling good taste. Cities are scenes of accumulation, whether it be the accumulation of money, power or scandals. But most of all, the city as such is the site of waste-accumulation. Only be separating our awareness from our surroundings can we even begin to maintain our sanity. Otherwise the enormous pyramids of waste would not only clog the eyes, ears and nose, not to mention the tongue, condemned to tasting the garbage served up under the label of „food", but also dry up our mental faculties. The brain as such is an organ that bathes in its own waters, very much like the reclining, relaxed, carefree God of Epicurus. How can anyone hope to maintain their sanity while their brain does not recline in the manner of Epicurus’ God? The speed of the metropolis is singularly unsuited to mental sanity. Sanity demands relaxation in the gentle waters of meditation and contemplation. Where are the idols when our brain sits, bathing in its liquid? In that bath, there is no unconscious and no concious, simply relaxation and unbinding. Instead of slowing us down, the city speeds us up, sapping our pure living energy. Why does the walker feel sapped, completely dry after an afternoon walking the streets of a large urban conglomeration? The secret of the city’s dryness, if we may call it that, has nothing to do with air-pollution or any other material aspect of existence. Dryness, dryness of spirit is what created the postmodern world in the first place. The city of today is where spirit comes to die. It cannot be anything other than deadly to the spirit. How on earth could millions of people live together without draging eachother down into the depths of immorality and vice? Davila is entirely correct when he writes that the city turns urban humans into trash. You worshippers of homo sapiens, the idol called humanity, how can you be so blind?! Human beings as such are nothing more than pieces of cosmic garbage, fragmented remnants of something much better and more translucent than anything to be found today on Earth. If only we could blast off into another realm, where we would not have to confront the likes of you, the idol worshippers! But no, the Divine has ordained another task for us. Prior to our own unbinding and eternal reclining, we must confront the likes of you, and destroy the arguments of those seeking to plunge all of us into the abyss of sin.

2. YELLOW LIGHTS

The metropolis comes up, fast, like a pressure in the head. Its yellow lights, trying to imitate the gold of the alchemists, glare into our eyes like a galactic migraine. Here, nothing is as it seems. Woe to the urbanite who is seeking after genuine substance! Substance as such, not to mention essence (or quintessence), are absent. In fact, the city is nothing more than a colossal pyramid constructed out of idols. Everywhere we seek the truth; all we find are idols demanding worship and commitment. In the city, for a seeker-of-truth, to open the eyes is already a commitment to sin, to commit sin endlessly. However much the idol worshippers claim that the city of today is an endless outflow of creation, all we see is endless destruction, the destruction of meaning, the rape of Salvation and the slandering of creation. If that which sinners build is creation, then we would rather be destroyers than builders, saboteurs rather than parents, giving birth to garbage such as that which infests every urban wasteland. Here, one can neither add nor subtract, for the city is a load of paradoxes, a pulsating star that endlessly violates the senses. If only we could flee to the periphery, to the fringes of it, into an empty form! On certain days, when disgust overtakes us, we can only feel sympathy with the protagonist of Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel, Against the Grain. Des Essentes becomes fed up with the masses and becomes a seeker of solitude. This is the moment when a human becomes more-than-human:

„Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity." (Huysmans 1884: Chapter 1.)

Who was this dreamer, the dreamer who conjures up such alluring visions of never-ending solitude? The mark of superiority in a person is the burning desire for eternal seclusion. Seclusion is bliss under postmodern circumstances. It is becoming all but impossible to find fellow human beings among the masses of stupid apes that fills up the city and its recesses. The dreamer is none other than Huysmans himself. However, any one of us who is disgusted with the likes of idol worship may be this dreamer. Any one of us may pick up the mask of Des Essentes, the solitary protagonist of Huysmans’ novel, and become a decadent misanthropist. Misanthropy is one of the most significant challenges to human-worship. To be a humanist is blindness at best, disgraceful mendacity at worst. Effortless is the reclining of the brain; he who reclines is merely doing what God does. Why would God be interested in the affairs of such a primitive and ugly creature as the average human being? In the city of the damned, pieces of energy, uncorrupted remnants of what used to be rejuvenating, are consumed by pigs unworthy of the comfortable life they are artificially kept in. Most human beings are no better than swine. In fact, they are a great deal less worthy of affection than their four-legged brethren, as a pig is capable of showing gratitude, whereas most humans believe themselves to be inherently worthy of gentle and humane treatment. Human stupidity truly is a deluge, one against which we may only protect ourselves if we know in advance of the tsunami’s arrival. You, the humanists, foolish lovers of humanity, stand no chance of resisting this deluge. The only defense that stands a chance of resisting what Huysmans calls the deluge of human stupidity is an adequate stance in relation to human beings. The only adequate stance is the standpoint of misanthropy. Only one who hates humanity can resist the temptation to unite with this vermin, to attach his fate to the fate of Another. We really are curious as to whose fate God is attached to!

3. THE EYE OF THE DIVINE SEES NOTHING

In the city, one cannot avoid being disoriented. It is filled to the brim with demons, jinn, wishing to infiltrate the mind and corrupt it with their lies and falsity. But what happens if we transport ourselves to the periphery? Woe to those, who believe in escapism without escaping from  the world completely! If we have learnt anything at all from Epicurus, it is that God lies in a dimension infinitely separated from human affairs. The reason for this is all too simple to comprehend: humanity is filthy, dirty, and the stench of this filth is something any noble creature could not stand for any longer than is necessary. After showing us the Way, the reason for God’s being in-the-world melted into thin air. There is no need for a noble being to reside in a world that is essentially ignoble. The buildings pull us inside themselves, while our bad conscience drags us out. Inside a building, in the arms of a prostitute, the notion ergo sum melts in the blood, sweat and tears of sexuality. From her head to her feet, the prostitute is the living embodiment of the fact that sin cannot die. Darkness must exist in order for us to remain aware of what light is. Without prostitutes, women singled out and labelled as prostitutes, we would be very hard pressed indeed to identify the difference between so-called „respectable women and „women of the night. Without darkness, one would reach the conclusion that all is darkness, that all women as such, are manifestations of the same primordial darkness. But then again, are we not all embodiments of darkness, the abysmal Ungrund of Jacob Boehme?

„We give you to understand this of the divine essence; without nature God is a mystery, understand in the nothing, for without nature is the nothing, which is an eye of eternity, an abyssal eye, that stands or sees in the nothing, for it is the abyss; and this same eye is a will, understand a longing after manifestation, to find the nothing; but now there is nothing before the will, where it might find something, where it might have a place to rest, therefore it enters into itself, and finds itself through nature." (Boehme 1912 [1621]: III.2.)

The above passage deserves a more detailed explication than we would otherwise be inclined to make. Nevertheless, in order to avoid familiar misunderstandings, we must proceed with an explanation of Boehme’s words. In Christian teaching, the individual soul is an emanation of the divine Ground of God. Without creation, that is, „nature, God is unfathomable, simply incomprehensible. God cannot be formulated, cannot be put into words. God eludes any explication. According to Boehme, God is a mystery, a problem-without-solution. While we may penetrate every other aspect of the world, God is that mystery which is impenetrable. Even our imagination cannot begin to comprehend the Divine as it actually is. The eye of the divine is an eye that sees „in the nothing, for it is the abyss itself. Out of this abyss we ourselves were born, and, if Scripture may be believed, this is our final destination, the dark abyss of Our Lord. This abysmal eye is eternally resting in itself, therefore it must penetrate into itself without end. However, this abyss is something profoundly different from the painful abyss of sin. Sin does not bring one closer to the Divine, but instead, separates. Sin separates us from Blessedness, from unity. Sin is a process that delivers us back into the clutches of desire, whereas the only true desire worthy of the noble person is the desire to nothingness. One who desires nothing becomes like the abyssal eye that desires to „find the nothing". One who finds the nothing, finds the only thing worthy of being found. Look and read these words, you idol worshippers! After plunging into the visages opened up by the sight of this eye, can we see anything worthy of adoration?! Speak and show us if you can, anything which is worthy of being worshipped! Boehme teaches us that all manifestation is merely a game played by emptiness going out of itself, merely to curl back into itself. Reading Boehme’s lines, we may find words that soothe the anxious soul craving for a return to meaning, the meanings made irrelevant by the knowledge of the futility of existence. Let there be no mistake: existence is not futile, in and of itself. No, for the goal of our existence, our reason-for-being, is precisely to gain knowledge of the innate worthlessness of manifestation. How could the world have a purpose, if its reason for existence is merely the self-amusement of some far-away intelligence? Instead of unnerving us, this realisation can become a source of liberation for the soul. For if all manifestation, all creation really is a game constructed by and for the entertainment of a far-distant entity, then how could we believe in any aspect of it?! Idol worship, under such circumstances, is all but untenable if we accept Boehme’s line of thought, and there is very little reason for not accepting it as a valid representation of the world as it is.

4. DARKNESS IS DESIRABLE

If sin cannot die, we cannot die either. Darkness is, to a certain extent, desirable. After all, the darkness may be interpreted as the prerequisite for the right discrimination between what is true and what is false. After all, does not light shine in darkness?

„And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (John 1:5)

The light shines in darkness, for it is a true light. Tell me, you lovers of electricity, you idol worshippers of the Internet, what would happen were genuine darkness to envelop the Earth?! What would happen to your beloved networks and „connectivity were electricity itself to be extinguished?! Would the false light of universal networking remain were nuclear warheads to tear apart the complex energy-distribution systems and infrastructure that keeps „networked civilization going? We have our doubts as to whether the informational society would be able to survive any global power-outage lasting more than a month. Belief, on the other hand, the desire to be united with God in an abysmal embrace, shall always be with us, nuclear war notwithstanding. Even illuminated by nuclear blasts and enveloped by the crashing of this world, those who believe shall always carry their homeland within themselves. The one who has the strength to spit in the world’s face and believe, to believe in spite of the tragic futility of belief, is the only person who deserves to survive. And anybody who believes shall verily survive all that existence throws at us. In the darkness, you can neither add nor subtract. Light cannot be created from nothing, however neither can light be multiplied, for multiplication is the source of evil and darkness. Notions swirl around and around, until we know not who we are or what we are looking for. Life is just life. However true life cannot be found among the thighs of a woman, or in the lethargy of melancholy. No, life is inside of us. Life is that little piece of energy that crops up in the throat as a dense mass of hatred, ready to spew itself into this foreboding, sick world. To be sick in postmodernity is a sign of liveliness. To continually overflow, to vomit on all who have the audacity to come up in front of us: yes, this feeling is a sign that we are alive, that we have the desire to see the light in the darkness! It matters not to us, whether you, the idol worshippers see the light we see, for you are truly stupid dark insects. All you people see are pixellated images. Of course, the idol worshipper does not and cannot see the nothingness of the Lord, for you are merely the lense of a camera, whereas God is the photographer. Only in rare instances do you see the Truth, and then only if the Truth decides to make a selfie. But even then, you have no idea about the mesmerizing things you „see". A blind, stupid machine, that is what you are.

5. THE DEATH OF SCIENCE AND THE SUICIDE OF PROGRESS

Going out of ourselves is at once a blessing and a curse. While we cannot escape from futility, we can at least try and avoid becoming completely disoriented. There is nothing to know, apart from the paradoxes unceasingly being thrown upon us by the flow of events. You, the fetishist, are scum, a rotten creature that thinks it knows everything. Some of the most arrogant among you are known as „scientists". When one hears scientists speak, a sceptical smile creeps onto one’s face. While some believe that there are no empty spaces, and others claim the opposite, change is silently working its way towards a final destination, which is the finality of interminable emptiness. The Ungrund of Boehme has nothing to do with „existence and „non-existence. When certain thinkers use phrases such as emptiness or darkness, these words must be understood in a sense that is different from their everyday uses. Most contemporary scientists use their own jargon, and believe those who use „unscientific language" to be somehow further away from true knowledge than they are. What arrogant clowns! Without a sense of wonder, without the sentiment of wonder, nobody should be allowed to become a scientist, at least in a society that is committed to any kind of normality. Of course, nothing is as distant from normality as postmodern society. The seeker who knows that space contains nothing, no longer wonders about the endless outflowing and inflowing of creation. Every outflowing is, at the same time, an inflowing of emptiness. Continual outflowing is necessary for Divine emptiness to take its rightful place at the helm of the soul. Without the cathartic experience of being occupied by nothingness, without the feeling of being violated by a divine probe, one cannot begin to explore. Exploration is the process of disenchantment. True science is the tool of disenchantment. A true scientist is therefore someone who has a sense of wonder, and seeks to achieve a self-overcoming of that wonder. There are far too many scientists who fundamentally lack the internal dialectical contradiction between the desire for enchantment, and the nihilistic desire for disenchantment, whereas this contradiction is the very basis of science. Too many scientists, especially scientists of today, are beholden to this or that idol, be it the idol of Scientific Progress, this or that political ideology, or simply the fetish of riches that may be obtained through scientific research. Research should, ideally, never be more than the search for disenchantment. Anybody who expects more than disenchantment from research should stop what they are doing immediately and reconsider their career-choice. Go out from the scientific community, you who believe in the shadows, and make a home for yourself on its fringes! The periphery is where the refuse and the garbage should congregate. Instead, the very centres of urban and intellectual life are overflowing with the stench of rubbish, rotting theories, zombified hypotheses. Sooner or