Puzzled (Canto 5)

collaged by and of perypatetik authors¹

12. The nivola (omniscient narrator)

We are offering a framework for perceiving our lives and understanding the underlying dynamics to improve our spiritual, mental and physical condition. A major impediment to this was once religion and is now science as it is interpreted in English-speaking countries.

Religion hindered improvements in our physical well-being by explaining everything as a result of god’s will. This included horrors such as droughts and hunger, diseases such as the plague, tuberculosis, smallpox… that wiped out the lives of millions prematurely. Science’s greatest achievements were the actual or near eradication of these misfortunes. Today, the natural sciences have moved into other domains such as the pursuit of immortality, but the belief inculcated by the natural sciences is that problems can be solved (nearly) universally, as was once done with hunger and various diseases.

The understanding of science in English-speaking countries is closely tied to natural science approaches. By contrast, in European countries such as Germany and Russia, the term science was applied equally in the sense of experiment-supported findings for the natural sciences and explanation-grounded exegesis of historical, social, literary, philosophical… phenomena. In English-speaking countries and in translation from foreign languages to English, we encounter heavy reluctance to use the word “science” for the study of law, history, society, literature and philosophy because of the term’s strong association with the natural sciences in English. Preferred are near-synonyms like study, scholarship or academia. In no field is the influence of the natural sciences on the “soft” sciences as obvious as in American philosophy, dominated by the analytic school and its orientation on logic, math, evolution and the natural science prevailing it its day.

One of the most concerning trends is the lack of agency. People do not perceive themselves as in control. Forces, governments, corporations, the elite or some other bogyman prevents them from acting independently. They are determined by another. Hegel calls this death because there is no self-generation or self-production, only sameness (Gleichheit). If we extrapolate these remarks to any hypothesis supported by mathematics, that hypothesis may be proven true, but it will be dead a priori by its methodology.

Only philosophy not grounded in math can contribute to the empowerment of individuals with agency. Philosophy embedded in literary fiction – a nivola as Miguel de Unamuno called such philosophical literature – will package the theoretical discoveries of philosophy in the stories of lives so the willing public can at least gain access to a worldview in contrast to the prevailing one.

The truth is at least dialectic in every individual. A person is born with one hundred percent of their genes from their mother and father. The child is (generally) raised by that mother and/or father. A child tends to align themselves with either the mother or father; this may change over the course of childhood. Social influence, which plays a limited role (at most), will be ignored for the moment. On reaching the age of majority, the former child will have largely adopted views aligned with the father or mother. Very often, the father and mother will compliment each other and they represent poles in the dialectic, but whether or not this is the case, the grown-up youth will have a singular view.

Singular here means intransigent in certainty. Confronted with counterarguments or selective analogies that refute the singular position, they will dismiss them out of hand. They must preserve the coherence (Putnam, Goodman, Rorty). So they rule out plurality. In Hegel’s conception of the mind, we find the plurality meant here. It is a mixture of the substance with what the substance is not. This plurality is the singular contrasted to alternatives, perhaps even modified by them. When an individual holds a pluralist view, it does not mean they are actively conscious of their position and possible counterpositions. It just means that the view or position has already passed through a quasi-test process. The view or position has been analyzed against its alternatives.

A mind engaging objects (views, positions as well as literal objects) pluralistically entails (access) consciousness that holds a tripartite relation to the world: (i) affirming the object; (ii) negating the object, and; (iii) agnosticism toward the object. The Hegelian mind acknowledges the truth, the most robust truth, of the object as what the object is in itself. But nothing can be said of this truth except that it would exist in the absence of a mind. Going even further, Hume, Kant and, much later, Putnam denied that we can know the object in itself. According to them, we can only know things through the filter of our mind (Hume: impressions; Kant: appearances given by the faculty of sensibility to the intuition). Hegel follows Kant in calling the unknowable the thing-in-itself or being-in-itself and the knowable “being-for-another.” About the “being-in-itself”, almost nothing can be said. The “being-for-another” can then be subdivided into what we have called the singular and plurality. The object (as thought or substance) is either a product of no dialectic process and thus singular or it has gone through the dialectic process and is plural. When something is affirmed or negated, it is either a singular or plural object. Should an individual abstain from passing judgement on an object or ignore it, they exhibit agnosticism: the object exists in itself, but the mind says nothing about it. As Hegel notes, the truth of such objects is the least valuable.

Of the singular and plural object, the truth content of singularity is suspect. Without passing through a dialectic process, such truth borders on ideology. However, such truths are encouraged because conditioning can be used to shape how most people think over time. This approach to mind-shaping has been boosted by omnipresent corporate media via virtually infinite channels. Our grown-up youth is encouraged to hold any opinion, without opposition, because the corporate media will be able to condition their opinion if, arising out of the parental fold, it is at odds with the institutionally accepted object (view). If the developing child constantly encountered opposition, i.e., a dialectic or plurality, their training during upbringing would encourage the weighing of different substances or views. By discouraging criticism or objections, a culture lays the groundwork for controlling minds via classical conditioning.

13. The beginning of the end (Yuri)

After a class toward the end of last semester, another professor asked Yuri how he was doing. After a pause, slowly, he grumbled without smiling, “Pretty good for a Monday.” The other replied, “Well, that’s good,” before pausing in the hope something witty or at least semi-related to the moment would occur. Yuri nodded, then deadpanned, “Imagine how it’ll be on Friday.” The elderly professor guffawed and moved on down the hall. Yuri didn’t crack a smile. He had been serious. It was wearing on him. Even the best part – the students – were becoming tiresome. He knew it wasn’t their fault. Without even taking a step back, instinctively, he still sensed that the idiosyncratic method of teaching a subject – philosophy – hopelessly far removed from almost everything they encountered in life and yet so critical to their future – at least abstractly – was still popular and working as well as one could hope. It was just that personally, something inside him and related only to him, told him his time was up.

(…the interim end until next August and return to transadaptation…)



Footnotes

1. Framework narrative composed by Angelika Friedrich and Henry Whittlesey; interwoven narrative written by Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Adriana Uribe, Veronika Groke, Lauren Voaden, Armine Asryan, Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu, Svetlana Molchanova, Jonay Quintero Hernández, Alejandra Baccino Uberti



Transadaptation Volume 7 – Via Ellipsis – Continuation of Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted

January: An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)

February: Blow-up – Veronika Groke (Austria)

March: Futuros Murguistas – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)

April: The Nomenclature Man – Paulius Limantas (Lithuania)

May: Amanecerá y veremos – Adriana Uribe (Colombia)

June: Finding Light in Yerevan – Armine Asryan (Armenia)

July: The Last Judgement – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)

August: Puzzled – a collaged nivola by and of perypatetik authors (International)

September: Second Steps – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)

October: New Normality – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)

November: Beyond Comprehension – Rahaf Konbaz (Syria)

December: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Worm? (Parts I and II) – Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)



Background – Context

Transadaptation Volume 6: Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2025)

Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)

Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)

Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)

Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)

Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)

Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)

L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)

From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)



Emblems and stories on the international community

Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world



Credits

Background photo: Munich, Germany – The street refracted – Jahanzeb Ahsan (Unsplash)

Inserted photos (top left clockwise): 1. Austria – The village – Sven D (Unsplash); 2. Goris, Armenia – Hung out to dry – KrimKate (Shutterstock)-2; 3. Montevideo, Uruguay – Ramirez Beach – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 4. New York City, USA – Chinatown – Viktorija Demjanenko (Unsplash); 5. Karoo, South Africa – Roadside padstal – mehdi (Shutterstock); 6. New York City, USA – This is your god – Ludivine Indigo (Unsplash); 7. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From the car – Keleny (Shutterstock); 8. Tenerife, Spain – Embedded in the mountains – Dynamoland (Shutterstock); 9. Saratov, Russia – Chernyshevsky Square – Fire-fly (Shutterstock); 10. Bogota, Columbia – Criss-crossing – Delaney Turner (Unsplash)