On Death Cab for Cutie's Northern Lights

I found myself clicking on a notification on Twitter today from a performance of the song "Northern lights" by Death Cab for Cutie on James Corden's Late Late Show. Northern Lights is a song from their 9th studio album "Thank You for Today". I remember loving the song a lot when it came out, particularly with the addition of guest vocalist Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches. Her voice fits the synth-pop esque soundscape that this song was conveying so well. Along with the Ben Gibbard style of songwriting ("I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet), I came to appreciate the new sonic energy that Dave Depper and Zac Rae have contributed to the new Death Cab sound. The call and response of Zac Rae's cold and shimmering piano melody contra Dave Depper's persistent and similar (dare I say synchronized?), yet wavy guitar have added an additional synesthetic experience of what I think I would experience watching Northern lights up in the northern parts of the world. And this "co-led" melody that Zac and Dave deliver fits perfectly well on the well-established style of Ben Gibbard's fingerstyle alternate picking technique (like in the song "El Dorado"), Jason Mcgerr's idiosyncratically mesmerizing drumming and Nick Harmer's driving and tenor-voiced bassline glistening with a beautiful chorus effect. 

I didn't really notice this impact much on the studio version, unfortunately. I thought it was the magical wizardry of producer Rich Costey, who I thought made a similar glossy 80s like contribution to the previous studio effort, "Kintsugi", that made the songs sound like this (like in "Everything's a ceiling"). Now that I'm re-listening to the studio version, I really get to hear and understand more how the band had thought of the development of the songs at a more personal level. Not only are Zac and Dave adding their own spin, they are also in dialogue with Death Cab for Cutie's entire discography. In this live version of Northern lights, I can appreciate the icy desolate landscape that Zac Rae's background drony synth pick that I can only describe as "transcendental" or "out of this world" before I'm reluctant to admit that his backdrop brings about the "northern lights" that this song draws from. It fades away in the chorus but comes back in the second verse, and now I'm inclined to admit that the desolate feelings emphasized in the lyrics of the verses leading up to the profound yet terse chorus: 

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Not only is this chorus emblematic to the staple we know with Death cab (distance, longing, etc.), it also speaks of the sort of "Cosmic loneliness" that the philosopher Emil Cioran had described as distinct from personal loneliness. And all this without any visuals! Only the music, thought in motion, and the lyrics that clues us into the world that are these "northern lights"! 

When Ben Gibbard sings:
"I'll never be that close again, to your lips and perfect skin
as the tide receded into the unknown"

This transitions to cosmic loneliness, only to be broken by a bridge–a recapitulation of the first line that set this landscape up and gave it meaning: "I remember your silhouette, on Dyes inlet". That builds up with a small bass solo run by Nick Harmer, speaking tones from the sonic landscape– to sing the reluctant refrain once more:

"Northern lights,

filled our skies.

Empty nights, 

synchronized"

Call me crazy but I can't help but feel that it's sung differently–not in the lyrics, but in the meaning! I can feel my own input, a visualization I can only describe as my spirit moving with the music, soaring through the skies, through the Northern lights! It's in my participation with and interpretation of the music– my involvement and engagement– that I get to immerse myself in the cathartic but also transcendental experience of "Northern Lights". 

And even with the lack of Rich Costey and Lauren Mayberry in this live performance, I can't help but fill in the rest with my own imagination. The song has already left me some room to dwell in the moment of unity the song's chorus keeps making me sing. And every time I do this act again–listening to the song, I am begun anew with significance, maybe pertaining to my personal life at in one moment or simply engaged in listening in another. As I dwell, I disclose more concealed truths not just to the song but to me and my being-in-the-world– now fused with the world of Northern Lights. But isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, I'm pretty sure I've already passed that trying to uncover more than the usual review that sticks to how well something corresponds to indie pop songwriting. 

Rough sketches: Problems of the Medicalization of Psychology

I started my first job (ever) as a medical scribe last month. Two days ago, I finished training and am awaiting my very own "solo" scribe shift, where I go rounds with a doctor in the ER and write his chart for him. These shifts were 8 hours long from 2 pm- 11 pm, 2-3 times a week. My experience there was very novel and fascinating. This was a world that I had always thought about living in theoretically. It was quite a different experience seeing it with my own eyes. And so the shifts were immersive for me, despite it appearing run of the mill for everyone else. I brought along some baggage with me for my mind during idle times. These were the questions that I've thought about regarding the Philosophy of medicine. I thought that the ER was the event for wrestling with the problems of the philosophy of medicine the most. To see things firsthand in real life gave a unique perspective.

Among the various thoughts that arose in me as I shuffled through from room to room with a clipboard in my hand, the problem I dwelt on the most was my encounter with the psych patients, if we were to give them enough decency to call them that. And it's particularly problematic because it appears that the medical field hasn't gotten over Descartes. I dwelt and I dwelt on this. I thought to myself, maybe I'm not even over Descartes, as I used to be his most ardent supporter in high-school. The past cringy twitter bio "Cogito ergo sum", still paralyzes me when it comes up to this day. I've since become an anti-Cartesian and then realized most of modern philosophy indeed has become so as well. And yet there's this Cartesian foundation inherent in the medical field. The fact that people who come with issues of the brain are divided into Psychiatry and Neurology patients, the classic Cartesian dualism applied in real time.

But enough with this fanaticism with Descartes. The problem of psychiatry, philosophically, isn't just about this apparent parallel. Medical decision making is a unique skill that takes into account ontology, epistemology and ethics all without realizing it. Many say that Medicine is the most "human science" as it deals with humans face to face. However, it's clear that medicine is neither a science nor a humanity. Medicine is a discipline in itself, one that appears practical but really is a lifestyle of investigation into the core of what it means to be a human. Perhaps I can't speak of psychiatry, but the way that the emergency department handles psych patients, in general, is quite problematic. If every staff member in a hospital acts itself out authentically, the most paradoxical contradiction of inauthenticity is in forced restraint of psych patients who are deemed to pose "a danger to themselves or to others". There's something about that that doesn't appear right, and the mood shifts immediately from calm to anxious. Clearly, it isn't an empathy of the rather anxious patients that poisons our mood. Rather it is in the mere act of carrying it out that we feel uneasy, the most unlike ourselves. And that kind of uneasiness forces us to inauthentically follow protocol, to submit to "the one". In feeling that mood in an altercation that occurred in the hospital, I began to ponder what kind of problems arise from them.

The medicalization of psychology has a history of ethics. Those that we have deemed "twisted" and "abnormal" not from physiology, we have cast and labeled psychotic. Governments all over have decided to "treat" these people through medicalization. It has now become quite standard for people to have "psychiatrists" for a multitude of problems. All from depression to schizophrenia. Government mandate leaves the healthcare sector as the executors of its will. This kind of angle is very unique. For the government's decision to medicalize is unlikely to have come from doctors advocating for Freud. Really, the agenda, wherever it came from or wants to go, has dictated the scope of how medicine treats these people.

This can yield to a litany of skepticism for those interested in seriously considering the metaphysics and epistemology of mental disorder from both sides. Questions flung around varying the "how can we know?" dogma will likely confuse the two fields that have received mental disorder as a problem to be treated. Ontologically we may ask, what is mental disorder? Epistemologically we may ask, how can we know if what we're looking at is mental disorder? Trying to answer a question with an epistmeological foundation will likely yield very unfruitful results vice versa.

Considering the question ontologically while trying to fit it in the medical discipline is to try to fuse the horizon of illness with this new notion of mental illness. It has been categorized in a paper that we can see illness as an "unhomelike being-in-the-world" (Svenaeus, 2014), which when considered can be quite revealing. However, trying to fuse that with metnal illness is quite problematic. If we switch over to epistemology, we would come across the problem of other minds and trying to get at the "other's" perspective. How can we know if a person we suspect as having mental illness is feeling an "unhomelike being-in-the-world"? Psychiatrists and psychologists alike can delve into this problem of quantification and diagnosis to try to bring out evidence for such a thing. But can we agree with this sentiment for those patients that aren't aware of their condition?

Things may be clear with cases like depression but fusing illness with other mental illnesses are going to take more legwork. It is the task of the physician to take the patient qua patient, and try to reveal what is wrong with the patient that causes this "unhomelike" feeling. The question of mental disorder as an illness brings back to the fundamental question about what illness is. Are risk factors of breast cancer really worthy of a diagnosis for a patient to be treated? This crosses boundaries as well from metaphysics to epistemology.

Clinical medicine may not think about this at the moment, but all these problems are dealt with when medicine is being practiced. It is the event itself. I find the problem of the medicalization of psychology very revealing to me because it exposes this unexplored horizon of medicine. Many of the problems have not been worked out, and the philosophy of medicine is a relatively young field. Even more so, my aspiration to be a doctor is unlikely to benefit from armchair theorizing about how medicine should be run. But I still think it's what makes the field of medicine so rich and laden with philosophical problems worthy of investigation. Medicine has a history that as a collective reveal not only the result of political compromises or Cartesian commitments. Rather, medicine engages with the questions of philosophy from the angle of a tradition that itself has its own philosophical problems. And this particular truth, this disclosure of being, that's left behind as it's revealed and at the same time perpetuates and adapts is why the task of thinking is itself to reveal being. It's not only philosophy of medicine, but rather a philosophy as a way of life.

Perpetual Draft: Living Dangerously: Existentialism reconsidered

"What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?" 

- Søren Kierkegaard 

        Kierkegaard, a theologian and voracious writer in his day, is widely considered by most people to be the "father of existentialism". This quote comes from his Magnum Opus "Either/Or". Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author (fictitiously named "A") of the first part, the "either", or the "aesthetic", considers the dubious nature of objectivity and indirectly invites the reader to consider the slipperier and much more unpaved path of subjectivity. This foundational turn in thinking away from the then dominant Hegelian "scientific" approach of the time and towards the priority on the individual's own subjective notions and personal experience is what many consider the "ground" of existentialism. Kierkegaard's later pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus would say "Subjectivity is truth".

        From this viewpoint, many newcomers to existentialism– both amateurs and academics alike– may use this lens when examining the history of 20th-century thought associated with Kierkegaard's objections and stance. This would lead many to group together the writings of Sartre, Camus, Heidegger and like-minded thinkers with Kierkegaard against the "scientifically" oriented philosophers of the time (neo-Kantians, Hegelians, Cartesians). However, the identification of this movement is potentially a serious misinterpretation of these writer's ideas grouped into the genre/mood of "existentialism". If one biases himself with this perspective when looking back, he might turn towards calling existentialism simply a glorified "relativism" where everyone's perspectives are simply a manifestation and anchor of the culture of the time. 

       However, there are positives in looking at the structure of thought related to the fundamental ideas Kierkegaard had preached. Except, he didn't really begin this movement of thought. Arguably, almost two centuries prior, the mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal, a contemporary of René Descartes  (arguably began the whole scientific systematic doubt built into the philosophical attitude of "rationalism"), should be considered the first "philosopher" associated with the ideas of existentialism. 

"Custom is our nature"

        Cries Pascal who also invented the calculator. Opposed to Descartes' quest for a method to certainty about the existence of the outside world (which ultimately led to a proof on the existence of God in the rest of the meditations you probably didn't read), what isn't talked about in seminar is Pascal's analysis of the dangers of systematizing Christianity throughout the world. At this point in the 17th century, the foundations of uprooting the custom of the time through theological beliefs towards a more scientific view begun rolling. And yet, Pascal himself also was a staunch defender and supporter of the newly formed scientific method. This turn towards the reliance on Science for answers to small functional questions and its overeager interpretation towards a "theory of everything", was preached by another thinker ahead of his time: "Friedrich Nietzsche". 

"God is dead. and we have killed him"

        Nietzsche's madman in Zarathustra laments. Nietzsche is also considered to be one of the "existentialists" and arguably came to the same conclusion as Kierkegaard in regards to the "Herd/Crowd" that tempts inauthentic behavior conforming to society. All these parallels despite Kierkegaard being theistic while Nietzsche arguably atheistic in origin. 

        If one has read this far into existentialism, the glaring contradiction in ontological belief should be enough to raise alarm to the chaos of trying to contain these great thinkers into the small close-minded Parisian notion of Existentialism that another philosopher many decades later "Jean-Paul Sartre" had coined in his "Existentialism is a humanism" public address.

"Existence precedes essence"

       Sartre declared as the tag-line for existentialism. It basically asserts the priority of one's own existence and its subjective potential to be anything one wills as the basis for finding "truth" as opposed to "essence" or the objective facts about us. Sartre will go on to assert his famous notion of radical freedom as an extreme culmination of his thesis.

        Sartre's attempts at popularizing existentialism backfired on what his main goal in defining existentialism was. Many thinkers/philosophers at the time rejected the label despite being associated with "existentialist beliefs". Among them, Sartre's friend and contemporary "Albert Camus" of "the Stranger" fame. What Sartre gives us is indeed a very shaky attempt at trying to capture the common qualities of many profound ideas that come to be vaguely associated with the "existentialist movement". In addition, the timing was both a blessing and a curse. With existentialism coming into vogue in the post world war II era, many are biased towards dismissing existentialism simply as a "post-war mood" not to be taken seriously in today's more stable and more technologically advanced society. 

        And all these misunderstandings of existentialism aren't simply unfounded because of a philosopher's nitpicky biases, they're completely understandable considering that the fundamental tenet of existentialism relies on bias itself: "subjectivity". However, existentialism should be reconsidered further in its proper place in the history of thought. What exactly was Sartre responding to, and why was it urgent for him to issue a public address on what Existentialism is then later deny having written it? 

        Underlying all these questions comes one philosopher also inaccurately labeled an existentialist– Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was a philosopher at the time of Sartre. Many of the French existentialists (Sartre, De Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) had read excerpts of his work and were deeply influenced by them. Heidegger's importance in understanding existentialism's pivot towards prioritizing the individual originated from a well considered and thought out reaction against– Edmund Husserl. Although still influenced by the "rationalistic" tradition, Heidegger considered Husserl's novel method of Phenomenology revolutionary.

        Husserl, tried to bridge the idealism of the Hegelians and Neo-Kantians at the time with a "scientific" attitude unlike the kind of systematic doubt and rationalization that originated with Cartesian thought. He came up with phenomenology and its slogan to "return to the things themselves". Heidegger thought this approach to philosophy as revolutionary but found it too idealistic and lacking. Heidegger thought that while "returning to the things themselves" is a revolutionary concept, ultimately phenomenology should really be focused on the everydayness of the human being and its relationship with the world (as opposed to the analysis of a mind as disembodied and distinct from the world). 

        While existentialism has a shakiness in its definition, it still remains a useful term to signify embracing the history of thought that pointed towards those doubtful of the foundations of the rationalistic tradition. Seeking answers to what it means to be from many gods, to one God, to modernizing technology and back to many gods. Heidegger thinks that this all is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means "to be". A society relates to itself and tries to perpetuate this relation from taking a stance on what it means to be. When a human being embodies the dogmas of society, one ultimately takes a stance on what it means to be, all loaded with inherited goals, fears, attitudes, etc. Existentialism, like many movements or schools, reveals and also necessarily conceals.

        Nietzsche famously said to "live dangerously" and I think that should really be the slogan of Existentialism if it were to persist and be true to what unites these thinkers. Existentialism isn't an ethics* nor is it grounded in it (it really isn't a humanism). Rather, it is a way to follow Socrates' advice to "know thyself" and one's condition, the fact that is common to all human beings– our existence. Existentialism first grounds oneself in the everyday– to not cast away emotions, goals, etc. but rather to be aware of them in addition to whatever one decides to pursue in life. From there we take a stance on what it means to be. There are many dangers about this kind of living. For one it is ultimately the human being that must take this stance and must not rely on others, an ideology, etc. So in a sense, anyone who proclaims himself as an existentialist that follows existentialist principles makes him really a pseudo-existentialist (I'm looking at you rick and morty bandwagoners). Another danger is the fear of the potential consequences of thinking existentially. One may come across the anxiety-inducing "existential crisis" or follow the train of thought towards "nihilism". Being afraid to deal with this face to face tempts inauthenticity and conformity on taking a stance one doesn't actually want to take.

And so ideally, you would not commit yourself to existentialism. If we take existentialism as a mood, the existentialist attunes himself to the mood of society, wherever he may be. Really, that's what a philosopher is; what a philosopher should be. There's a lot of heavy baggage with movements like existentialism, rationalism, thomism, etc. Sometimes they're baggage that we can't justify carrying for where we're headed, wherever we go as individual philosophers. But we at least should take the ideas in mind. Movements are so named historically not because we are "done with them" or "solved them", rather they mark an important point in the western canon. A voice that revealed a part of our being that we inherit. And as we march forward in time, we must embrace that history, even if the truest revelation of our being in the present means to stand firm and resist it. "Live dangerously".

* although it can be an application of it– check out Simone De Beauvoir's "Ethics of Ambiguity" for an idea of how an existentialist ethics may look like.

Things cut from the article:

A fundamental attitude that questions the prevailing thought while at the same time, loading the word with the idea of "existence", etymologically originated in the greek word ek-sistence meaning "to stand out". For what it means "to be", what it means to exist, is what defines existentialism and not merely a "post-war mood" where "subjectivity" reigns supreme. Surprisingly, this misunderstanding– the reign of opinion stemming from subjectivity, is the kind of prevailing mood of today with the whole "fake news" ad hominems thrown from both sides. Facts are thrown out as a source of knowledge, and opinions that are perceived as powerful– often the ones loaded with provoking strong feelings– prevail. Labeling existentialism as this kind of thinking does the true meaning behind existentialism injustice. 

Reflections on Attunement

We aren't wading in life's kiddie pool when we're born. We're thrown into it with a blinding light in our eyes. We cry, we hear our crying and respond to it by crying some more. There's so much information coming in, it's overwhelming. We decide to make choices on what to prioritize. We begin attuning to the sound of our mother, the only familiar frequency we've ever known. There's a varying frequency of sounds initially unintelligible but we get so used to the reaches of the range of the human voice that we point this out when we hear things over other noises.

Attunement is a wonderful amalgamation of the concepts of attention and presence.

As temporal beings, our engagement with the world has been highly refined, even the scientist herd would agree. Our own quirks can be observed by understanding what stands out to us when we are engaged with the world while present. Maybe a painting at a friend's house lights up to you. It may be an objectively crappy rendition of starry, starry night but it reminds you of art class at the local mall with your older sister where you tried painting your tigger backpack on a sheet of construction paper while your sister had tried to recreate starry, starry night for the purpose of learning Van Gogh's techniques.

A musician is highly attuned to the intricacies of his instrument. Perhaps so much so that other non-musicians couldn't quite point it out. Not only is this shown in his commitment and care for his craft but also in the way he expresses it. And we as casual listeners have the ability to attune to that after being exposed to so much music growing up. We have to experience the world and recognize its continual unity through time as our marked relationship with being.

Things out there in the world mean something to us, somehow. We care about it over other worries in the world. We take this care with us as we traverse through time, albeit stubbornly. But why care about anything? Frankly, that question is misleading for we already express our care in the question, which shows concern of what we're already doing.

Perhaps we're attuned to care, that's a plausible reason. But attunement cannot become a theory of everything, for it will simply amount to nothing if so. Rather, attunement is built into our care as being-in-the-world that can be seen through our continuous engagement with something we care about. Things about this care are revealed to us unlike any other. Features, details and even just hunches about our intended care that was not apparent to us before. I use "we" a lot to point out to a common ground of experience but really, that ground is just ground; your experience is just as unique as mine.

Not to sound existentialist or anything...

Nevertheless, like a radio tuned to a station, our attunement is selective but not like that of the psychologist's notion of attention. For even if we found out which specific areas of the brain light up when we pay attention to a chair, the qualia of our experience remains at large, and all the built-in contexts behind this chair. We are built into attunement is what I'm trying to say. We can read the mood of the room at a party or feel our own emotions while being at said party. Perhaps being "in-tune" with one's emotion may take the spotlight for an example of attunement but being "in-tune" with your significant other holds just as much ground.

Understanding your significant other "better than they can" is a well-repeated adage and has some truth to it. However the comparative is obviously relative. "Better than they can understand themselves" can amount to understanding someone better in terms of how they are revealed to them. The rug under the carpet feeling gets released when one realizes the other person is "not who they thought they were" because of this fixation with attunement as it is only one kind of attunement.

Attuning to something discloses a kind of being of a person but also necessarily covers it up. Maybe it will cover up other aspects that become mere background noise in terms of priority or simply cover up the potential for understanding someone in terms of the goal they set out for in the first place.
This skill itself is a particular attunement. And so my awe with attunement perhaps isn't that it is a particular unique notion not recognized by previous philosophers before Heidegger. Rather, it is my amazement at how people have taken many lengths to deny it.

Attunement isn't the groundbreaking concept to tell you the underlying message about what it means to be a human being, rather it is the ground from which you can explore your presence and engagement with the world. It is the fundamental mood, an attitude you've felt like you've always known and take pride in knowing. The world that you disclose and cover-up, that you bring to stand out and leave behind the curtain. This is simply a structural demonstration, one can only find out if this is truth by engaging with this everydayness and give time to notice that there are many things in the everyday that become a world to be disclosed, integrated and most importantly lived-in.

Pros and Cons of being Heideggerian

1. Having a more enriched notion of Being (pro)
2. Know the difference between "being" and "beings" (pro)
3. Saying you’re Heideggarian is uncool (con)
4. Having to use a new form of vocabulary/language to speak about things which regular language tends to misrepresent (con)
5. Having to defend the relevance of Heideggerian thought despite Heidegger being a Nazi (con)
6. Having a good argument against Descartes (pro)
7. Being able to say the metaphysics project failed and know what you’re talking about (pro)– get effectively get that two-way nod with those Wittgensteinians.
8. Have a stronger notion of theology than most religious people if desired (pro)
9. Heideggerians may not know formal logic/ the continental problem (con)
10. Have a better grasp of the history of philosophy than most Analytic philosophers (pro)
11. Knowing pre-Greek terms that you can show off to Greek students (pro)
12. Automatically become an etymologist (pro)
13. Your dogma is to doubt the dogma (pro)
14. Being dogmatic is hard when other philosophers don’t grasp Heidegger well (con, arguably pro because humbling)
15. Not having a philosophy for ethics, having to outsource, and not really find anything (con)
16. Having to explain to people you’re not an existentialist (con)
17. Have most of your ideas be associated with existentialism (con)
18. Most of the time the only thing people know about Heidegger are Authenticity/inauthenticity and know the word Dasein but not what it becomes to mean over time (con)
19. Be confused when people say Heidegger doesn’t make any sense (con)
20. Have your philosophy accept science (pro)
21. Having to work on philosophy without using the word consciousness (con)
22. Having to read Merleau-Ponty if wanting to extend ideas about being to perception and corporeality (con)
23. Having to study Husserl in order to truly grasp Heidegger (con)
24. Other Heideggarians shit on you if you don’t know German (con)
25. Typing Greek is as difficult as it sounds (con)
26. Be able to interact your philosophy with many different departments from different countries (other than USA) (pro)
27. Potentially fall into postmodernism (con)

Phenomenology of death: intending loved ones

While the existentialists made radical strides on the topic of death as a personal possession of every human’s, the phenomenology of death need not only dwell on one’s own end. Most of the time, one stumbles on dwelling the topic of “death” in general after hearing about the death of a loved one or variable levels of acquaintance with someone who had passed. While philosophy from the Greeks to the existentialists prepare for death, what remains hushed is those who used to possess the verb to be. The phenomenological method that Husserl revolutionized allowed for a more ‘scientific’ understanding of the categories of our intention- the ‘logic’ of our consciousness. One may confuse this logic with the logic of Descartes, Kant, Hegel. But phenomenology is supposed to return us to the things themselves. When we engage in perceiving the object, consciousness intends the object, tries to grasp it. But in our natural attitude, in the hum bum of everydayness, our perception maintains the wholeness of an object despite only seeing one of them. The part is intended, the unity is what consciousness is intending.

But what of intending the departed? Whatever euphemism we use, language can only try to describe the phenomena, the kind one would know when one actually engages in phenomenology. And so this investigation will attempt to do just that. But this will not solely follow the Husserlian telos, other variations of the modern dogma will manifest themselves in thought as it helps the process. For philosophers, even if their backgrounds were in mathematics, theology, anthropology, etc. all studies are just studies of humans situated and narrowed into a subject of interest about the human. And so we must inquire whether or not intending the dead is akin to intending an ideal structure such as mathematics. For what characterizes human beings is that they are always unfulfilled, always a potentiality until death. Heidegger calls this notion being-towards-death. To begin to try answering this, one must ask what does one think of when one intends the phenomenon of a loved one and is that different from intending the dead in general? Phenomenology is always a first person investigation, and so others dwelling on this should think of this themselves. For when I intend the dead in general, all I’m dealing with the facticity that they used to be, always thought of in one tense– the past. And so I find it strange when other people say something along the lines of “she would have wanted it like this” or “she doesn’t like it to be this way”, turning whoever into a mouthpiece for one’s own interpretation. And these people aren’t mystical prophets or completely self centered manipulator, at least that’s not how I intend them ;). Jokes aside, any tense a person uses referring to the departed other than past is inaccurate but not entirely false. Language is just a tool for us to aim our intentions at what we’re intending.

With a specific person in mind, when we intend them, our act of intention puts them in our consciousness. Is the act of intention a fulfilled intention? For our interests, the logic behind consciousness, where supposed transcended ideas arise from, is that where our intended loved one resides? Mathematics is a fulfilled intention as it does not require us to rediscover 1+1=2 over and over again. But death doesn’t appear to us as a fulfilled idea, at least not intuitively. In our everydayness, thinking about a dead loved one is normally associated with emotions, which trigger memories that grasp the past intentions. And the constant grasping by consciousness for a person who at the time before her death was being with possibilities, provided us with an insight into the structure of our intentions. Most people are on the fence on whether death is a certainty. But phenomenology takes the things themselves, and the very notion of death gained from seeing the corpse itself or reading about it in the obituaries affects the structure of the life world of the phenomenologist. Regardless of the source, the notion of death of an other remains a factually true statement but also an ontologically debatable discourse. For to describe death itself, one may turn to the Kantian cop out and claim one cannot know the thing in itself but that only promotes skepticism.

Death is first person for me but always third person for any one else. And so Phenomenology’s first person technique grasps for the kind of being that used to be continuous beings that are always a “yet to be” but always is. And so even the most sophisticated and considered of phenomenological analysis has to deal with this intending in time. “Being is time” Heidegger ironically answers about the relationship of being and time in his large magnum opus.

One thing that can’t be denied as mentioned previously is the fact that one cannot help think of one’s own death when dealing with the thought of a dead person. Death is a looming certainty in our being. And so arguably in trying to grasp or intend the death o ta loved one, the ego is also trying to grasp the fulfilled intention of one’s own death. For all of this activity of intending is going on within consciousness. Noth the consciousness of the subject and the pure consciousness for which all consciousness operates under.

The notion of death when dealt with and put in the forefront of one’s life world, can lead towards either authenticity or inauthenticity. Authenticity occurs only when one is dealing with one’s own death. Projecting it unto another and denying one’s own certain, impending death leads to inauthentic behavior, one may tend to go with the “crowd”, “herd”, “they”, “one”, etc.

Underlying all this activity in the forefront is the background being-in-the-world, our everydayness still dominates even if one falls into lapses of coping with the idea of death. And so when speaking/intending of a loved one , it appears that the phenomena will try to grasp the person who has deparrted and realize that he/she is actually intending one’s own death. Either way, the investigation remains a looming uncertainty, like an unsolved mathematical problem. And from one’s own attitude towards death (inauthentic or authentic behavior) leads to the fundamental underlying ethics that stems into our everyday ethics. So this kind of pre-ethics, appears to be fundamentally irrational for grasping something that is unfulfilled does not leave comfort into certainty. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why ethics ends up with relativism. Because each person’s death is their own. no one can take hold of it. But death isn’t unique in that sense, each person’s own unique experience with death itself is unique. But also everyone’s own experience with the phenomena. There’s no way one can experience the same as another, only a notion that some things remain certain while other aspects of a thing remains a practical endeavor.

This analysis is leaning towards the Sartrean notion of nothingness, and will likely end up in that train of thought as the notion of the nothing, when truly considered is a complex endeavor and may arguably the same as mathematics.

Nonetheless, thinking of a dead person, especially one that I know makes me think about myself because that death is his/her’s. My death is mine. We may be caught in existential crises and melodramatics death as if it were unnatural but death is really an integral part of a person’s life. The choice to anguish over our death is authentic behavior but not practical. Because alongside our being-toward-death are the goals we set to ourselves as we engage within the world, necessarily as part of the world. To disclose being through activities such as ontological phenomenology, history and even science. The problem of death is the problem of life so long as we make a part of us a problem.

Being as horizon in relation to thought, nihilism and atemporality

We inherit the thought we choose to adopt. We are the vessels of the structure of this thought; thought that drives our regular engagement with the world is necessarily self-sufficient. Yet this thought entertains a multitude of possibilities.

This thought hides in the laying out of hypotheticals, oscillating through the basic three tenses. It is fundamentally our thinking that affects this tension of time. The subjunctive, pluperfect, conditional are call called “moods” of time. They open up the possibilities of different worlds. We attune to these worlds through our practical engagement with the world. This everydayness is in fact a thought. Our being, though not actively “thinking” is in fact a thought. It is through this unrestricted engagement that being manifests pure thought.

Being is immeasurable, for when one tries to, being is necessarily hidden/concealed. This is what I believe/think Heidegger means when he calls for the destruction of Western philosophical tradition, those slaves of reason. For this kind of philosophy corrupts being. It is through our own tendency to want to improve the already established thought that we hide the truth that lies in being. For being is a horizon that this philosophy looks at through a telescope, fixated only on the vanishing point instead of this unrestricted, infinite, endless horizon of being.

And we grow up to inherit this thought and express the being of this collective telescope, the lens of which clearly enhances the tunnel vision from which we suffer. It is paradoxical that philosophy (through Heidegger) realized its own necessary self-destruction but only through it, can we free thought to freely speak being.

“Language is the house of the truth of being” - Martin Heidegger

Freedom in the sense of freedom of discourse and not the radical freedom that existentialism cried for. Rather, it is the being, situated in the world that is all being thinks. For even attempts to go beyond the world necessarily discloses a world. 

And because we inherit thought we choose to adopt, we structure ourselves in one world. And it is through this misunderstanding that we eventually find in trying to unite ourselves into the “one”, “they”, “herd” or “crowd” that we forget that we’ve lost ourselves in our little telescope. Yet with infinite possibilities of other worlds we may disclose, being may lose itself to the nihilistic attitude. We don't realize we have imported skepticism from the myopic "one" world into being the beings that we are, in the horizon of being-there.

For beings experience the world necessarily (as being-in-the-world) but being doesn't. Being is the hidden door not through which experience passes through. The significance of being is simply its separation from beings.

We see being everyday, through our everydayness, because of our everydayness. For thought is being's spirit, language its furniture, rooted in being-in-the-world.

The nihilistic attitude's attempted coup stems from this misinterpretation from the "one". The nihilist doesn't realize that before coming to this conclusion, Dasein/being-in-the-world/human-being fundamentally cares. For if Dasein does not care, how would it come to contemplate its world? And because of nihilism's identity as the skeptic who gave up, it is evidence of the skeptic's circular thinking.

Nihilism is this anxiety turned apathy from going around in circles. This is the condition "myopia"/"myopic thinking" suffers from. Not only has it realized its great distance but zero displacement, it stubbornly marches on, expecting something to be the same and being upset about its restricted certainty. And this kind of judgment is simply the means of escape from this myopia from disclosing it.

This does not mean that Dasein should not be anxious. It is only in understanding this anxiety from this engagement with the world that we can examine as an existential analytic that we can recover our engagement with being. For the hidden history of the west, the history of being before plato established "being as entity" as dogma, is evidence of human engagement with its roots.

Being as "phronesis" (coming to be then coming not to be), as "power"; even the overrated western being as "entity" as well as "creation" in the christian interpretation is the original philosophy, the roots of the question of who we are. In this modern age, the millenial will come to realize that information isn't simply a value of knowledge about being, but by its too quick availability, brings about an awareness that the kind of being "the one" is heading towards is atemporality.

But "being is time", said Heidegger. However, the "one" will not heed Heidegger's warning regarding technology. As we attempt to become atemporality through becoming this thought, we will find that the project of being as entity- essentially all disciplines ending with "ology", worshiping only one sense of the "logos", we only continue to suffer from this mute logos, unable to utter thought as discourse (legein, greek, another sense of the word logos).

Artificial intelligence, the brainchild of "being as entity" party will only reach the limit of the resolution its telescope can resolve. The "limit" akin to the mathematical "limit" is the horizon's vanishing point discovered and developed to be an artificial being. And out of frustration, "being as entity" will walk towards the horizon, hoping to find its end, unaware that they are missing the point. And it will continue to walk on "in circles" or towards the vanishing point and see the same thing, and will feel secure with the collective myopia. They will stumble together, trip together, and push the boulder like sisyphus up a hill together or even turn to nihilism-- unfounded and unfortunate.

For in all these attempts, being is concealed, continuously buried through every wrong step we take.