Slumrat Rising

Vol. 5 Chap. 79 What's It all For?

“Glad to see you are staying hydrated.” The Prophet observed, carefully skipping back.

Truth shook the last few droplets off and tucked himself back in. “Are you mad? What does “Hydrated” mean?”

“Drinking enough.”

“Ah, I am that.”

“Philosophy is all piss?”

“No, pissing is necessary. Useful. Pleasurable, so long as you don’t have the stone.” Truth’s voice was severe. “Philosophy is pissing on our boots. Not only have we ruined a good thing, we made a smelly mess of ourselves in the process.”

The Prophet nodded slowly. “I have certainly seen people mess themselves up playing about with questions about life, the universe and everything. Don’t you think there is value in the exercise itself, though?”

“No.”

London was never a quiet place, regardless of day or night. People, almost all men, staggered past. Some carrying a torch, others hiring a boy to walk in front of them with the torch. A rare few hiring a carriage to deliver them safely to their destination. It was, however, mostly a city traveling on foot. Rich or poor, you were living in the city. You ate out, visited friends, worked, watched plays, went to church, all on foot. London was a writhing mass of interwoven lives, growing along the Thames. The Prophet could feel the wind rising here. It had been rising for a while, but right here, at this moment, in this place, the world would change. This was where the ideas that would shape the future would be born.

“Nah. It’s all a fraud.”

“How so?”

“People have been banging on about how everyone is equal since forever, right? Epicureans did, Stoics did, the students of Plato and Aristotle. We are all one people, equally loved by God.”

“Well. That is, at best, a broad simplification. I think almost any of them would say that some are born to higher stations than others, and with greater gifts.”

“No, it’s all the same bunk. Look, the Stoics, right? Huge influence, reaches everywhere.”

“Alright?”

“And they come out and say that slavery is very bad. Mustn't do it. Except, you see, that slavery and freedom are really about state of mind. If one has disciplined their passions, they are free, and if they have not, they are slaves to them. So really, in a master-slave relationship, who is free and who is in bondage?”

“Ah, tricky one.” The Prophet nodded, smelling a rat.

“NO, you dolt, it isn’t! The one that’s being beaten and starved until they work is the slave! The one who will be crucified if he rebels is the slave! However philosophicallysound the reasoning, one person is holding the whip and the other is getting whipped.”

“The Stoics would, of course, point to pain being irrelevant as it is neither a virtue or vice.”

“How fucking convenient for the slave owning Greeks and Romans then!”

“Ah.”

“And then you have the Bible. And the Bible of the Jews.”

“Exodus 21?”

“Love the bit about using someone’s wife to blackmail them into permanent bondage. Very loving, very equitable, very wise. But let’s not let Peter slip past. Slaves should be loyal and obedient to their masters regardless of the master’s character, eh? Lovely stuff. Truly the words of the Prince of Peace right there.”

“Alright, so some philosophy in the past-”

“Tell me a single school of philosophy, a single religious faith, that rose to dominance and didn’t excuse the ruling powers.”

“Well, Christianity for one-”

“Was the state religion of the Roman Empire, and we’ve been converting at spearpoint ever since. Which makes me wonder what the religion looked like before the Romans adopted it. Makes you wonder how else it might have gone. Makes you wonder how things went from “Fed to the lions” to the Papal State. Seems like a lot is missing there, deliberately. The Mohammedians spread their faith on the edge of their sabers too. Taking slaves as they went. There wasn’t much daylight between the Temple and the Kings of Israel either. In every case, slavery was justified. A ‘regrettable necessity.’”

The Prophet scrambled for a counterexample and was drawing a blank. So they changed tack. “Doesn’t invalidate philosophy as a whole field. Which I notice you are blending with theology one-for one.”

“Yes it bloody does! And why not? All these bastards start their books with the nature of God, so how is that different from theology? And what does ‘philosophy’ mean? The clue is in the name.”

“A love of wisdom?”

“And yet, all these fornicating philosophers seem to manage is to agree with what the rich and powerful do anyway. Oh, they condemn wealth, cruelty, and injustice. But when push comes to shove? The successful ones always find an out. Some way to justify what is already being done. At the very least, a way to close their eyes.”

“Like slavery.”

“Had dinner with Locke today. Stirring stuff! Limited government. The preservation of life, health, liberty and property. Including defining a ‘just’ way to own slaves. I’m sure this is unrelated, but Locke helped draft the Constitution of the Carolinas, guaranteeing that no one should interfere with the right of a freeman to own a slave. And he worked for the Royal Africa Company. Would you care to guess what business they are in?”

“Ivory?” The Prophet said, knowing damn well that wasn’t it.

“Wrong!”

“Yeah.”

“Pepys had a slave, handsome young negro. Loved showing him off. Apparently Pepys didn’t care for his attitude though, because he wound up selling him to a plantation in Barbados. Can’t imagine the boy lived another year.”

“Sad story. Common one these days, too.”

“Aye. More ships going from the slave forts to the colonies every day, praising God’s mercy every wet mile of the way. So what’s the wisdom we are supposed to find here? Smart people agree with the money? Truth is found in the broadside of a Ship of the Line?”

“Plato would have disagreed. Loudly.”

“They all would have. So what? The only one of ‘em worth a fart was Diogenes.” Truth snorted. “He lived what he preached, and died naked in a field.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Aha! So philosophy can be worthwhile!”

“How many books by Diogenes have you read?”

“He wrote ten, I believe, as well as some tragedies.” The Prophet shook their head. “None survive, which is a tragedy in its own right.”

“It is. We have to rely on second-hand wisdom. For some reason, his work wasn’t worth saving, beyond a few colorful anecdotes. Yet Stoicism, which he was an inspiration for, thrives to this day. Can’t imagine why the aggressively poor person who publicly mocked the great and good might be deliberately forgotten. It’s just one of those ancient mysteries.”

“What about Natural Philosophy? I see you are a sailor-”

“Also bunk.”

“Your boat floats. It is plainly not bunk.”

“It does float. My cutlass is made with good steel. My compass points true, and I can read the stars in the sky better than most. Doesn’t matter. All bunk. Because when you press these natural philosophers even a little, they are straight back to Plato and the GODDAMNED Theory of Forms! They make a few stops along the way, generally by Paraclesius, Galens, Aristotle or the thrice damned Hermes Tristmagistus, but the final stop is always Plato. The world isn’t really real, and should be, at most, treated as a reference.”

“Again, a broad oversimplification. And why the sudden Hermes Tristmagistus hate? What did they ever do to you?”

“You mean the Ibis in drag? It’s less him and more the mystical trash he represents. Phony little… Look, ever read Aristotle?”

“Every book he ever wrote.” The Prophet nodded, trying not to seethe.

“That survived anyway.”

There was a short pause.

“Yes. That survived. Aahahahaha.”

“Point is, you read his Meteorologica?”

“Naturally. These days it’s probably considered his most important work.”

“It’s nonsense. Exhalations and condensations of the elements giving rise to everything in the world? It’s gibberish. The man was so besotted with his theory, he refused to go outside and check if the facts agreed with him. The theory was logically perfect and therefore more ‘true’ than the actual, observable, world.”

Truth pointedly stared at a turd floating down the gutter. “This is a man who was married and still didn’t know how many teeth women have, on account of never checking. So you have to ask yourself, if this dumbfuck couldn’t get outside long enough to see his theory didn’t match reality, just how useful or true are his Ethics?”

“Hmm. And it points to the blindspot over women, of course.” The Prophet nodded slightly.

“What?”

“What?”

“What blindspot about women? He was wrong about women-”

“Oh, I mean generally. If we are lumping every sort of philosophy together, they, collectively, even including the women philosophers, are pretty blind on women.”

Truth scratched his head. “I don’t follow.”

“How many of these philosophers would have supported a woman owning property? Or being actively involved in politics? Allowing women to teach religious truths to men? Or actually studying women’s medical conditions as opposed to thinking of them as men with some parts inside out?”

“Not many, I would think. The Beguins would for some of that. Some of them. But so what?”

The Prophet sighed a little. Might need a few more lifetimes for those dots to connect. They took a final stab at it. “You don’t see a connection between disregarding women, literally half of humanity, and condemning a comparatively much smaller percentage of humanity to involuntary labor? No connection whatsoever?”

Truth cocked his head to one side and blinked. “If you are insinuating that, say, that woman over there is somehow enslaved, you are mad.” He pointed to a woman walking home with her sons, carrying buckets of eels.

“Going to just… let that one alone for now. Why are you so hot on slavery? As you say, most of the philosophical set don’t mind it too much.”

Truth chuckled darkly. “Because if they’ll do it to them, they’ll do it to you. That’s as close to a divine law as I have yet discovered. Nobody’s special. Nobody. We cut off one king’s head- so much for the divine right of kings. We’ll have the Lord Protector, who is definitely not a King, and eleven years of chaos instead. We change our mind and what’s this? Another king turns up by invitation. The son of the one who’s head we cut off. Amazingly enough. Twenty eight years later, we chuck the new king’s son out on his ear and install a Dutchman instead. They cut off our heads? Chuck us out of a job? We’ll do it right back!”

“So if they enslave Africans, they will enslave you?”

“Why not? Not like I don’t have kin still living under the Turks. Go to the villages in Attica and count the kids. If you have the guts. There is always an excuse, always a justification. What the excuse is changes. “I want you to grow my wheat for me, and I won’t pay you,” that never changes.”

The Prophet had to admit that squared with what they had seen over the centuries. “It could, though. Isn’t that the promise of the afterlife?”

“I can’t hold a promise. I can hold bread, though. I can hold coin.”

There was a dreadful silence. Truth sighed. “Of course I’m a Christian. Of course I’m a member of the Church of England. But that’s just it- Christian. The Church of England. Hobbes and Locke, Newton and Hooke and Parascelcius and bloody Aristotle who we have all been blindly following for two thousand years without checking our damn selves and trusting the evidence of our eyes! And at the root of all this shitting about is that old monster Plato. Not Socrates, who we only know through Plato, but Plato himself! The Philosopher King of “If the theory is right, it’s real, and reality is wrong.” Most of these philosopher’s ‘wisdom’ is self-serving at best, and usually morally depraved. Newton’s coming the closest to something real with his orbits, but his stuff on alchemy is just…”

“Quite decent from what I have heard.” The Prophet smiled under their hood.

“Is it? Tell you what, let me give you some mercury, some sulfur and some dirt. You make a human being. I won’t even ask you to stick a soul in it. A corpse will do.”

“But even Plato said that reason is only one path to the truth, and not necessarily the best one. That there are higher truths that must be understood by divine revelation, as they transcend rationality and language. Is it wrong of Hermeticists like Newton to pursue that line of thinking? Pursue that wisdom?”

“Oh? OH! Well that solves everything! Heavens, why didn’t I think of that very obvious cop-out? Obviously only the very smart, very enlightened people can understand the things that transcend understanding. The rest of us are just too stupid to understand and no use word good.” He wagged his finger at the robed prophet.

“Let me ask you this- can trees be enlightened? How about a chicken? Do they benefit from divine revelation?”

“I… don’t believe so. Humans are special, you see. Made in God’s image.”

“Made in God’s image. All us featherless bipeds. But you tell me. If our reason can’t reach the truth, and we can’t catch the truth in our words nor our hands, if, in fact, our wisdom is not enough to reach the truth, what exactly is the point of philosophy? Either we can reason it all out, or we can’t. And if we can’t, we are no better off than the rocks and trees, on account of them not having wisdom or language either.”

“The chase is the thing! The pursuit of wisdom, finding ways to climb higher and higher towards the Godhead! It’s about asking the questions and arguing, not about finding the one right answer.” The Prophet waved at the sky.

“But it’s not a game with no consequences, is it? Because Archemedies was making war machines before he died, and our ships are built to his rule. Our notions of just war comes from Greek and Roman philosophers, filtered through church thinkers for sixteen hundred years. The very laws that rule these streets, the right of king and parliament to rule, are all justified by these Philosopher’s games. It all matters.”

Truth looked up into the sky. “We just want to be safe. To be loved. To understand our lives. To be connected to what we know in our hearts exists in the heavens. And each of these damned philosophers just rush out and say whatever nonsense will get rich patrons to cover their meals. And now there’s piss all over our boots. Fuck wisdom. After the philosophers got to us, we’re dumber than ever.”

The Prophet shook their head. “We have learned how to think. We might not have learned the one right answer, but we have gotten better and better at asking the questions. We aren’t groping blindly in the dark anymore. Diogenes’ lantern is lit.”

Truth laughed bitterly. “And have you found an honest man yet?”

Something glimmered in the depths of the Prophet’s hood. “An honest man? That’s a mistranslation at best.”

“Eh?”

“Diogenes was looking for a man. Which might be more usefully translated as ‘a real human being,’ given the context. And you know what? I think I just might have.”