Semes

One of the first things that pops to the eye is the realization that, should we accept such definitions, there must be a synod which encompasses all of reality — that is, a state of being in which all things real exist as a single entity. This is not a new notion by a stretch; it may indeed be one of the oldest ones ever, and philosophically at least and through its many incarnations it receives the name of absolute. But if in the early times humans tended to associate it with gods and deities, personal figures of authority sharing their same traits and features (human character, volition, a mind), it usually was the case that these ended up being put in complete separation of the worlds they summoned, and divided categories were established to house both: the creator and his creation, irreconcilably different from one another. It wasn’t until the formalization of thought, brought upon in the western hemisphere by the Greeks, that even older notions of an immanent rather than transcendental source were once again considered — only this time under the guide of the new organizational principle of the times: reason. The first such philosophers, the preSocratics, viewed the matter of the ground of being (“arche”) as one of fundamental importance, and each offered his own unique view of what might account for it: water, air, and fire were all contenders, but it was Anaximander who thought these were all particular forms of something deeper; whatever it is that spawns them, it must either have all their properties at once, or none of them. Since, he thought, most of their properties were opposed to each other (water is wet while earth is dry, fire burns while water doesn’t), both possibilities really amounted to the same: if you add all their properties they’d just cancel each other out, so either way you’ll end up with a bunch of something that was devoid of any characteristic traits. This featureless entity he called apeiron and hypothesized it to be the source of all other elements in their many forms and incarnations.

Later came a group of scholars which would go by the name of Eleatic School, and whose biggest exponent was a man called Parmenides. He took the idea of an arché to its logical conclusion and stated: the ultimate nature of reality is that all is one and exists permanently and incorruptibly in perfect unison. All motion and variety we perceive — all the natural world indeed — is but an illusion of this uncompromising reality brought upon by the senses, and the only way to scape it is via the intellect, which should arrive at this inescapable conclusion by purely logical means. Parmenides’ thought took the principle of immanence and made it the centerpiece of his philosophy: not only had everything a common origin, but was one and the same thing under different guises! Every dissonance perceived was merely the product of our imperfect senses trying to scout the world around us.

The first to utter such ideas on this half of the world, he wouldn’t be the last. As a matter of fact, ideas similar in spirit to his own would come to us by the work of such luminaries as Pythagoras, Plato and the Neoplatonists (particularly Plotino), Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna, and several scholastic intellectuals up until the end of the middle-ages, when men would once again be used as a measure of all things and method trumpeted dogma. However, under a different treatment, the same theme could still be found reproduced in the works of modern philosophers, the most remarkable example of which was a Portuguese national by the name of Baruch Spinoza.

Spinoza upended centuries of scholastic tradition by characterizing God not as a benevolent, almighty shepherd, but as the material cause of the world, itself a fragment of his being (or as he said, “deus sive natura”, god or nature, for their equivalence). Naturally, this hugely upset the religious establishment, after all how could God, the perfect being by excellence, be in anyway related to the frailty of his creation? He would later be excommunicated from church, a fate rather tame compared to the ordeals fellow proponents of the same ideas were put through (Galileo had to relinquish his works, and Giordano Bruno was executed in the stake). Yet, it laid the foundation for further investigations from people such as Leibniz, Hegel and the German idealists, and some analytical philosophers that would follow (like Whitehead and mathematical Platonists such as Cantor and Gödel).

This all brings us back to our point: what should an absolute look like? Naturally, different views on the subject abound, but I would like to offer my personal one, in line with the framework we’re developing. To me:

The Absolute is the prima synod (“first synod”), the one which binds together all of that which we call reality. Further even: it is the source of every being’s reality,which itself is merely a flake of his own. It is pure reality, devoid of any feature whatsoever and detached from any constraints other than those of its own nature.We shall call this first and ultimate being “Semes”.

I know it seems like we’re departing a bit from the rational in our treatment of the subject matter, but this is not by any means meant as a religious construction. The existence of the Semes is merely a corollary of the established principles, and indeed has no practical effect whatsoever on our world rather than enabling its existence and the interaction of its constituents — things any other semon is also capable of doing, if to a lesser extent. It has no will, no consciousness, and no supernatural aspect attached to it; quite the opposite, it’s the quintessence of nature itself, and any property it does have only manifests itself as a higher-order being, no longer constrained by the plentifulness of ultimate reality (just a disclaimer to avoid any misunderstandings: lower and higher-order refer to the branching of the worldtree, regardless of the orientation we choose to depict it; if the branches are fusing together, you’re moving downwards, if they’re branching further you’re moving upwards. Either way the order is relative to the thing upon consideration).

It is, indeed, why it bothers partitioning itself in the first place: as a semon, it doesn’t get to experience anything as even the usual subject-object duality is absent. But in the course of its partitioning — an event that is both continually and never occurring, for semonic unity is always preserved -, it gets to play “smaller parts” and effectively explore its own innards, in their uncountable fashions. Just like Parmenides defended, all change is illusory, mere reshufflings of the same deck, but it serves its purpose to allow the autopoietic contemplation of Semes in all its glory without breaking any of the ground rules in the process.

Rules we must define now that we have all the elements put in place.