6. matter happens
Often, when using proverbial language, stating the obvious is required, just as a reminder. All persistence is relative to the frame of time that is being used. Even in the frame of geological time it is clear that no matter is ‘really’ stable, it does not ‘exist’ like we imagine our imaginary things to exist. Matter happens, not only momentary in the quantum field but also over measurable TimeSpace.
Variants of this proverb relate to MoneySpace ( ”matter matters”) or, indirectly, to the Neo-Cathedral Law of Conservation of Information (“IT matters“).
7. nothing exists
variant “no thing exists”
The Cathedral’s radical denial of both ‘existence’ and ’things’ does not boil down to it’s nihilistic aggregate as some are led to belief on hearing this proverb. Nihilism as a philosophical or ideological choice points towards the opposite proposition, that of ‘nothing’ or ‘nihil’ or ‘zero’ or even Nirwana as a desirable state. The Cathedral-Mother in her 14th Lecture mocks the nihilistic attitude with her exclamation ‘get yer arse out of yer grauzone will you’, referring to the 1980 New Wave song ‘Eisbär’ by the German band Grauzone
Things or existence are not the case. Events and becomings and temporary aggregates are. But the linguistic and inescapably human need to metonymize and reify everything (sic) clouds our thinking and often lead us to disastrous conclusions. It’s a bad habit, but we can’t do without it (cfr. the German neo-idealistic philosopher Vaihinger rightfully claimed that “the attempt to do without fictions would be ruinous” to almost every human endeavor), but we do need to be aware of it while ‘elaborating our fictions’ (dv in an article on the nature of Anke Veld, blogpost june 23th 2018) lest we get caught in our own Post-Truth fabrications (has the notion ‘Post-Truth’ already been popularized by this article’s timestampTime? it has? Ok, just checking).
8. you are nature
While the NKdeE absolutely abhors any kind of ideology, it is very much concerned with the mental health of it’s users/participants. The proverbs, much like Blake’s Proverbs from Hell, can all be read as sound advice to counter sickening tendencies in the individual’s thinking or to intice the reader to change their behaviour so as to get healthier to then better pursue whatever their goals may be.
Much pain and frustration can be avoided by changing the behavioural tendency to consider ‘nature’ as some lost ideal that should be restored to its pre-human condition. If nature wanted to be pre-human it wouldn’t have allowed our existence, no? In fact we are integral ‘part’ of nature, our computers, concrete buildings, plastic pollution are completely ‘natural’, they are not ‘against nature’. If all these human ‘accomplishments’ are against anything it’s against us, humans, making our survival more improbable every year, month, day, second…Perhaps they are even nature’s way of getting rid of us, because we’ve served our purpose, namely that of allowing Capital, a pure force of Nature if ever there was one, to take over ’things’ in a far more persistent manner.
Realizing the fact that we have been fooling ourselves is, as in all problems of addiction, the first necessary step in trying to heal our damaging behavior and regaining our mental health. We need to be able to say to ourselves in all earnestness, yes, me [your name], i am and have been for quite a while now, fatally addicted to consumerism…
