Truth, Action, Hamlet, Betty Blue, Descartes

Something I should have sorted out as a child as it has massive implications on how I would spend my life.

Spent yesterday with politicians. Politicians do stuff, or at least plan the process of doing stuff, marshalling people's wishes in the process. I was introduced as being "clever", obviously a false reputation had preceded me. But it got me thinking about truth and action. I am a root a Platonist, even while Buddhism completely rejects Platonic ideas. A Buddhist tree growing in Platonic soils still.

For me if there is a Truth to be discovered then people will discover it eventually in the course of time and there is nothing to do. If people are wrong about Climate Change for example then it will become very apparent and they will eventually change their minds. As the evidence for Climate Change becomes more obvious the number of doubters will naturally diminish, and vice versa if it turns out to be a false alarm or much more complex than we thought then this will gradually win over the proponents. Like a type of Efficiency Theory the population of people that hold an idea will be based on the balance of evidence. The more obvious one sides get the more people will support that side. Money and propaganda can only fool people for so long. Even in a Matrix where a computer has direct access to our senses and evidence we can easily argue that we have been hijacked (arguments missing from the films). The Truth will out. This is 100% the essence of Plato.

Politicians and activists however are not Platonic. They believe that the Truth is not enough and people must be persuaded. Obviously persuasion works on both sides, if people can persuade on one side, they can persuade on the other. This is why I am not a person of action. Wait and see is my motto. "Everything comes to those who wait." Unlike my father I am not politically minded. I am a "realist."

But this sets up a different version of Truth: Constructivist. Politicians must believe that the truth is built by the actions of people. When we win a war we are "making the truth." This is what the Realists find so phoney about war, "the winners write history" they say with derision of the efforts of fighters. But if Truth really is constructed then we do need to take action, because the efforts of the activists are what write the Truths of tomorrow. Science has a problem here also, because it means that the work of experimenters and theoreticians is not what discovers the Truth but what makes it. This is how science fiction writers can come up with inventions centuries before they happen for real. Our imaginations make the technology and discoveries and we go out and make them.

Constructivist vs Realist must be the biggest divide in how we live our lives. The active people building and changing things versus the passive people who watch the seasons change and the world unfold.

Taking a Baysian approach, as I do, the truth is probably in the middle... but is that truth just decided by me, or did I discover it? Not so simple to decide now!

To Hamlet asks:

"Whether ... to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles"

And while he is contemplating suicide, for me it is also the question of "action" in general. Should we "Be or not Be". Sartre would agree thoroughly. "To Be" for Sartre would happen only when we take action, when we make the decision what the Future hold do we make that future and become something ourselves. For Hamlet "To Be" he must take action. And while he suffers the slings and arrows he is not existing. The Existential Hamlet is a Constructivist believing that to Be he must take action. Although Shakespere's Hamlet is an irony, since the action he wishes to take is to kill himself - a punch in the nose for Existentialism and Sartre. If action is how we exist, then what when we kill ourselves?***

But a Realist Hamlet would not link "Being" to "Action." The real Hamlet is a thinking Hamlet, he exists fully in a state of contemplation of the contradictions and schisms in his reality, of the treachery and violations that underpin his new reality. The very action of speaking these lines is all Hamlet needs "To Be." for a Realist the Truth is already written, and Hamlets needs do nothing but let that Truth reveal itself. He just happens to be the first because of the encounter with the Ghost... but then Hamlet might also question the Ghost at the beginning - not the most reliable witness even it is was believed to be his father! What Truth is being revealed? Perhaps he should not be so hasty and let things unfold (but indeed the Ghost turns out the right).

*** I wrote an essay to myself in 1997 themed on SRH (before it has a name). It lies in the problem of thinking what you are thinking. Or the problem of a film portraying its own reality. Suppose we have a film about certain events, that "truthfully" portrays them, perhaps even used "real footage." Common such versions are stories about writers. You can write the story of your own writing of the story "The Orchid Thief" is a great example. I always thought "Betty Blue"was a good example to as I believe Zorg was writing "Betty Blue" itself (he never tells us). But the question in the latter then is: does Betty exist? If its a fictional story then she is made up, but if the story is about him writing it then she gains the same status as the story. She after all gets him to publish the one under his bed (which cannot be Betty Blue by SRH as she is instrumental in bringing it to press). We know the story is real, we are watching it, so it mean's she must be real too. At the time I interpreted her as his Yungian "anima" figure: a literary portrayal of his female creative force. So the story really does dramatise its own creation. But then we have an SRH moment at the end where he is writing, and we can presume he has written up to the end of the book that we are watching. In the action of writing he cannot write the very moment of writing (by SRH), so he is thinking. "Tu ecris? Non, je pense". This is as important a statement in Western literature as "I think therefore I am" to me.

For Descartes he is thinking the very story of himself doing thinking itself, and when he gets to the point of thinking about the very moment of thinking he makes the SRH jump to "being". No longer thinking but "being." His existence suddenly jumps from the page, just as I believe Betty does in Betty Blue. You cannot think about the very moment of thinking, and more than a writer can write the very action of writing, or me type the very action of typing. If we could do these things, then the story would write itself and these words would be writing themselves. No! they are necessarily subordinate to the actual typing that is happening. The marks appearing on my computer screen logically must come first, the key pressed, the electronics the computers all this must be in place before the meanings can be inferred.

So this is all very Realist. Descartes can't construct his thoughts, Zorg cannot turning the act of writing the book into the words being written and Hamlet already "is" in order to deliver his soliloquy, Sartre is wrong since suicide is an act which negates existence making action bigger than both being and non-being, and politicians are wrong since they cannot be the reason why they believe what they believe. I didn't mean to side with Realism here, that is very unsatisfactory: I wanted to respect the dialectic. But a recap of my own thoughts. Some more work to do...