Page 102 - The Myth and the Moment

Evening

hedonism or sensationalism is, of course, itself, a sort of mythology.
Both types of myth, with and without moments, serve to buffer man
against his mortal terror.”
“So that’s how you see me: a born-again cynic, out to get what I
can before the lights go out.”
“Sorry, Ham, but you haven’t shown me any other side—until this
current act of generosity, if such it be. But let me finish. Only in our
era, the final days of Western Civilization, has a philosophy been
formulated which resolves the tension between myth and moment.
And that is logical positivism, with its linguistic analysis and strict
empiricism. You may think it’s old hat, wiped out by the Nazis and
post-modernism, but it’s really the high point of clear thinking in
European history. In recent years the myth-makers have reasserted
their authority in universities and the popular mind, so you don’t hear
much about it. Nevertheless, I have, so to speak, kept the faith. I
understand mythology within the context of the moment.”
“You claiming you can live without any irrational beliefs?”
“Yes. By avoiding both sorts of horror vacui: the insatiable search for
pleasure and the unmollifiable fear of death. Nature provides us with
both the information and the values necessary to live well; all we have
to do is accept our place within the natural world, within the
spacetime continuum. That’s a radical view, but nothing more than
enlightened pragmatism, really. Belief itself is a phenomenon, a
repository of working hypotheses supported by statistically-
significant empirically-verifiable assertions about the way things are—
moment to moment. Unlike quantum mechanics, reality on the
grosser levels will not provide many surprises, and that is the field of
most human actions; of course, justification cannot be found for the
anomalous situations that must occur sporadically, but those are
specifically the living proof, so to speak, that the generally-applicable
judgements can’t be based on absolutes or mythologies.”
“I don’t know if I can dig all that at once, Nate. But if, as you
claim, you are living by some principles more advanced than the rest
of us can formulate, what has it gotten you? No platform to preach
from, barely a pot to piss in. Some two-bit hustler like Phil Kolpak
just about puts you away in the nut-house. Cabbies on the Strip won’t
give you a second look. If you believe so strongly in all this
philosophy jive, why ain’t you out there pushing it?”

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