Today I accomplished a philosophical
pilgrimage by paying a visit to the lecture hall at the University of Freiburg,
Germany where Martin Heidegger used to lecture on philosophy. I
arrived there just before a lecture on philosophy to be given
to some students at 11:00am. As the
professor came in, I suddenly realized that there were only
four or five students in that great hall. It
was a hall filled mainly with ghosts. After
that I walked in the streets of Freiburg in a daze. I had to register that the heart and core
of Western philosophy was near death.
Western philosophy is near death
because of a loss of interested, engaged and aspiring students. The philosophical lecture halls at the Freiburg University feel more like a museum than
a renewal of philosophical inquiry and original thinking. I knew it was bad; I knew the level of
thinking in Europe and America was going down; but I did not
know that philosophy is already virtually dead. When
post-modernists like Richard Rorty kick
the entire history of Western philosophy from Kant to Heidegger,
they are kicking the corpse of a giant as would a clutch
of dwarves who would not survive a real fight with the living
body of German metaphysics. In fact, when the head dwarf, Jacques
Derrida, died a couple of weeks ago, even the trivial after-thought
we call Post-Modernism also
began to die as well.
What does humanity lose with
the death of philosophy? Nothing less than the collective forebrain. Western civilization continues its self-lobotomy. The
instruments of the lobotomy are the television and the internet. Emotionally
appealing propaganda and the disintegration of knowledge
into mere information bespeaks a “Brave New World Order” where
the soul of human intelligence leaves the Earth ruled by
perverse lunatics who rule by lies, propaganda and threats
of terror. Real
thinking happens now only in what Hakim Bey calls Temporary
Autonomous Zones operating outside the oppressive
dead meat structures of officially O.K. normalcy.
Without a renewal of the ways
of original thinking from the time of the pre-Socratic Greeks
right through to the European philosophers, the entirety
of Western culture is degenerating into a deranged pornographic
insane asylum regulated by sadistic technocrats and corrupt
corporations.
A Western Greco-European world
where Heraclitus and Heidegger
are both forgotten is a world of spiritual and intellectual
darkness worse than the Christian scholasticism. There
is only a dwindling trickle of souls alive on the planet
who deeply read and think. No more great dialogues and debates. We are entering an era when the great
philosophical questions are no longer stimulating young,
awakening intellects. The “they-self” is
taking over the world mindlessly while the “authentic
and resolute self” leaves the world like a sadhu wandering
up into the remote Himalayas, forgotten, detached and contemplative
as virtually already dead.
The Spirit of Philosophy is
departing from humanity, leaving the masses to their crazed
and neurotic distractions, conflicts and turmoil. As Nietzsche put
it, “the wasteland grows”. Or
as Heidegger put
it, “not only is man not thinking, but thinking is
withdrawing from man.”
As genuine philosophical inquiry
or search for truth dies out, the thoughtful individual will
find himself or herself increasingly
isolated and undesirable in a world of empty souls and intellectual
zombies as the society at large enters into increasing failure,
corruption, distraction and chaos. Spiritual
and mental self-improvement will be increasingly self-neglected
and forgotten with nothing left of the New Age but struggling
health-food stores trying to fight off the corrupt governmental
oppression stemming from the sick pharmaceutical companies
and their human health destroying lobbies.
On a busy street near the Freiburg University, there is an old stone arch
over the street. On
that arch in big block letters, there is now a sign that
says “MacDonald’s”. American cheap consumerism has invaded
and destroyed Freiburg. It is fortunate that America put an end to Hitler, but it
is not so fortunate that America is putting an end to civilization. What
is emerging from the globally dominating America is a global lobotomy of the
human race. Students
no longer seek an education, but only an
indoctrination in big business. “Getting
a job” is becoming more important than learning to
think and relate intelligently. Mexican street gangs from California and Texas will make up the new raping
and torturing illiterate world army for oil-seizures and
privatization. Any form of real thinking will increasingly
be treated as a crime against the state.
The present death of philosophy
is worse than tragic. It
is catastrophic. Humanity
is becoming increasingly paranoid schizophrenic as the average
state. Consequently, articles such as this one
will become more and more rare even
on the Internet as more and more readers just roam the web
sucking up sheer crap they have created for each other without
thinking through what they are actually doing.