Jargogled Impressions.

What is at the core of our pursuits? Across our personal, professional, artistic, and spiritual realms what are really trying to do? The end is the same for all of us. The paths we take do meander, and in the case of time warping, can take multiple paths. But the eventuality cannot be denied.

The mundanity of it all begs the question – who or what should we aspire to be? Projecting ourselves in the future, we envisage multiple scenarios for us. We try with our might to change the course we see as unfavorable and downward and constantly attempt to rise above our stations in life. This disconnect between our current capabilities and status and future goals and aspirations is a constant presence in our lives. So much so that this infatuation with future is sometimes referred to as an exercise in knowing ourselves.

But is that so? Are we taking a lifetime to know ourselves only to realize that if we could do it again, we will repeat the same procedure over again? What is in our control after all? As mere mortals we are doomed to succumb to the callings of death.

Spinoza believed that we had no inherent purpose as human beings and as such our endeavors have always been to synthetically create purpose for us. God, according to Spinoza is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”. It’s the ultimate truth for if all our ideas and thinking comes from a source, this source also planted the idea of God in our consciousness. Now the definition of this God has evolved and morphed over the millennia and what we consider God today isn’t God after all but a figment of our imagination.

We exist, and aim to exist, even in the most disadvantaged of situations. Our drive to survive is an inbuilt mechanism as animals to propagate. This propagation is now thought of as a tendency of the genes inside of us. So, we are driven, at a molecular level, to survive. This survival manifests itself in the race we immerse ourselves in, the moment we make ourselves stand on our feet. This survival means survival at the cost of someone else’s succumbing. Or at least it used to be, in a physical sense, much before we tamed the world around us.

The world around us did not stand back and bowed down like the domestic animals. The world evolved and responded in order to sustain the balance that existed before man figured out how to beat the core elements of nature. Now nature is fighting back.

Fighting then, is at the core of our existence. There’s no entity that does not fight for survival. From humans, animals, insects, trees, plants, mountains, glaciers, oceans, atmosphere, etc., every being around us maintains an unending cycle of struggle and reflexive combative behavior in order to continue with its existence. Sometimes the fight isn’t enough, and they get subsumed by an indifferent world. At other times, strokes of luck and misfortune makes up for the tenacity of organisms.

Action comes directly from fighting. To fight is to act and not rely on external agents to do the fighting for you. Our actions, or our Karma is the synthesis of our existence and it defines our existence and is the cause of our existence. Karma drives causality, ethicization, and rebirth. Karma is the thought or the intent of action. It is the action itself. Karma is the sum of our pursuits.

Karma is then the outcome we are aiming for. Good or bad, the chase itself is woven in the fabric of our reality. Our karma isn’t transferable and is tied to our identity, whatever that is. Karma is indestructible. It carries from one birth to another, per Vedic religions. By action is all things obtained. By inaction, nothing whatsoever is enjoyed ~ Mahabharata.

…the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a13)

Aristotle believed that the pursuit of happiness required a pursuit of virtue, itself an act of active agency to bring about positive, ethical, and meaningful change in the world. Moral character and striving to become the best possible versions of ourselves is what defines arete or virtue. This virtuous life cannot be pursued without action. Courage, ethics, truth, nobility, and compassion requires action. Cogito, ergo sum is a misnomer.

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am ~ Descartes.

Doubt arises from action, labor, or work. All are rooted in the core reality of fighting – fighting against other humans through our actions (negotiation, argument, influence), against nature through our work (technology, science), and against our own body through labor (food, health).

Fighting as a philosophy isn’t new. From Kautilya to Bruce Lee, martial arts and wars have long been a common hunting ground for thinkers. Popular culture is replete with invocations of acting, just doing it, failing fast and hard, diving in headfirst, taking agency. Overthinking is the bane of our existence as it takes time and time is what life is made up of. However, accepting that struggle is real and that fighting for our survival or for our relevance or for our happiness is the one true pursuit of life, and of the world around us.

“It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature ~Charles Darwin