Cogito Ergo Sum?

I’ve recently decided to start expanding my mind. Not in a chemical sense, but in terms of reading and stuff. I’m still waiting for job and different bits-and-bobs to start, so I have a lot of free time. And since watching the Rugby and football, I’ve wanted some exercise, and as I’m too lazy to get up and go for a run I decided mental exercise would do just fine.

So I bought a music magazine called “The Wire”, which contained a lot of music, styles, ideas, people and genres that I had never even heard of, so I decided to investigate. I asked my girlfriend what things she had for me to read about the various things I’d heard of from the magazine, and I did some reading. And I’ve discovered that I am a big fan of Minimalism, I’m quite interested by the Fluxous movement and its philosophies and proponents – people like John Cage and Steve Reich - and that I hate – or at least strongly dislike – Serialistic music.

John Cage in particular had some very interesting ideas. He believed that the performer and the listener alike should have as much “control” and influence over a piece of music as the writer of the piece – one of the fundamental ideas behind the fluxous movement - and he created some music to demonstrate this. Some pieces he wrote, he didn’t fill-in all the notes, leaving the performer to improvise in this “spaces”, which gave them some control over the music, and it meant that no 2 performances of these pieces was ever the same. He also had a theory about silence, which said that silence doesn’t exist. For example, even in a silent room, you could still hear your own heartbeat or your breathing or the movement of your clothes or body or similar things. He incorporated these theories together and “wrote” the piece 4’33”. This was a piece where a full orchestra was assembled, and they all picked up their instruments and held them as if they were JUST about to start playing – the conductor held a pose as if he were JUST about to start conducting – and then they did nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. He wanted to explore the idea of “silence” and demonstrate that it does not exist. So the although the piece was technically silent, the audience still heard things. Whether that was their own movement or bodies or something similar, or noises inadvertently coming from the orchestra themselves – an accidentally plucked string or the creak of an instrument – he wanted to demonstrated the meaningless of the term “silence”. You could sum-up this whole piece by one of Cage’s quotes from a lecture he gave – “I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it.” I don’t want to assert that it’s music, but it’s certainly something interesting. Even if it may well be a load of guff. Still, he’s dead – so you can’t criticise too much… can you?

Along with that, I’ve decided to start reading “Does God Believe in Atheists?” by John Blanchard again. And it is fascinating. Looking at the development of philosophical ideas on God and existence over the last 3000 years has really stretched me and interested me. I haven’t read all of the developments, infact I’m only just upto the 1800’s, but so far it’s really interesting. I’ve learnt about; Monism – the belief that all reality consists of only one basic essence out of which everything in the cosmos was made; Optimistic Rationalism – the belief that humans can reach perfection through the acquisition of “true knowledge”, that the only way to knowledge was reason, and that evil would one day disappear from the world as people are educated; Atomism – the belief that reality consisted of empty space and an unlimited number of “invisible, eternal and unchangeable building blocks which moved because of their own innate powers”, things which he called Atoms for the first time; Naturalism – the belief that our universe is a “closed system” in which everything has a “natural” explanation; Scepticism – the belief that man is unable to know the real nature of the world or how it came into being and that Dogma was a disease which could only be cured by countering it by suspending judgement on all areas of life, a theory where “not knowing” is exalted, and where open-mindedness is synonymous with intellectual sophistication.

Those are just a few of the things I’ve got my teeth into, and have absolutely loved. There are many dozens more so far, and I’m still getting my head round them in an attempt to see where “modern” atheists get their views from and what has influenced them. I want to be able to know what they believe, why I believe/know it’s wrong and erroneous so that I am able to “argue” the case for God and Christ in the hope that I could point some to the saviour. And yet while I read it, I’m conscious that apologetics is NOT Evangelism, by any means. It can be a useful tool in Evangelism, but it is NOT Evangelism itself. For that we need the gospel, and the gospel can be summed in 4 words: Jesus Christ is Lord. And that is THE absolute truth. How do I know? Because the creator of all truths tells us so.

And then I’ve also been assessing my mood. I’m not going to go into any great depths here, but suffice it to say that I’ve realised my brain needs stimulating, not just entertaining. Due to not having a lot to do these days, I am “free” to watch a lot of 24 – I’ve managed to borrow series 2 and 3 from a friend – and while I love it and enjoy it, it doesn’t challenge me mentally. And I think I need it. Because otherwise I dwell on “me” and my life, and that’s not good for me, because I tend to have a ‘Tourrets’ view of myself.


I’ve also been trying to challenge myself musically. I’ve started trying to figure out some more complex things on the guitar, as well as the Piano. So for example, I’m currently figuring out “Gymnopedie #1” by Erik Satie on the Piano, which is nice.

Along with this, I have got into some new music. Here’s a list of artists I heavily recommend: Amon Tobin, Regina Spektor, The Album Leaf, Brian Houston, Soulwax, Stars, Feist, Department of Eagles, Tunng, Coil, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Mum, Modest Mouse, Om, Steve Reich, Arvo Peart, John Cage, Keith Jarret, Erik Satie, The Swell Season, Scott Matthews… to name but a few.

So that’s the update from Dan. I’ll no doubt be a bit more regular from here on in. I hope. But I want to end with a the story behind the famous quote I have as my title because I found it quite fascinating. It’s from the famous philosopher Rene Descartes, who was keen to hold religion and science together, and to do this he tried to bring certainty into the very abstract world of philosophy by discarding everything that could possibly be doubted, in an attempt to find something that was beyond all doubt. He doubted the use of empirical evidence because, he argued, our senses weren’t always reliable. To back this up he used dreams, which seem exceptionally real while they happen, but aren’t. He reached a point where he wrote “I am constrained to admit that there is nothing in what I formerly believed to be true which I cannot somehow doubt”.

Despite this, he carried on, and one day he took himself away into a room on his own, determined to doubt everything that could be doubted. After hours of this, he came to the conclusion that, whatever doubts he might have, his own mind must exist as a thinking, doubting being. And this was his conclusion: Cogito Ergo Sum – ‘I think, therefore I am”.

However, many years later, a man called David Hume attempted to show that reason was no more than custom and habit. He argued that it was impossible to trust the perceptions of our mind because they were essentially products of our sensations, emotions and ideas. All that we could say about our experiences was that we were having experiences. We couldn’t actually prove, empirically, that the mind or the self existed. Any given substance was ‘nothing but a collection of simple ideas’. And he managed to whittle down the famous phrase ‘I think, therefore I am’ to ‘I think, therefore thinking exists’.

Not a great story, but a true one…

[a lot of information taken from John Blanchard's book - please don't sue me!]

EDIT TO PREVIOUS POST:

Here's some The Swell Season lyrics from a song called Leave:

"I can't wait forever" is all that you said before you stood up.
And you won't disappoint me - I can do that myself
But I'm glad that you've come
Now if you don't mind...

Leave, leave,
And free yourself at the same time
Leave, leave,
I don't understand, you've already gone

And I hope you feel better.
Now that it's out, What took you so long?
And the truth has a habit of falling out of your mouth
But now that it's come
If you don't mind...

Leave, leave,
And please yourself at the same time
Leave, leave,
Let go of my hand
You said what you came to
Now leave, leave
Leave, leave,
Let go of my hand
You said what you came to
Now leave, leave...