The Absurdity of Ontology
Why the Central Question of Philosophy is Unanswerable
Philosophy is based upon the notion that man can answer fundamantal questions about his ontologic status. But man the vessel cannot conceive of that which fills him.
All problems in philosophy emerge from the questions of ontology (from the Greek - study of Being) - Who are we? From Whom or What do we come from? What is our relationship to Creation (God)?
These questions are considered with all due seriousness in the halls of academia, while the world that supports such speculative endeavor remains rife with injustice, and violence. The study of philosophy is grounded in the implicit notion that its pursuit can lead to remedy for these social ills. But where is the evidence that this benefit has actually been conferred? In short reply, over two thousand years of philosophic speculation about the nature of human existence has not resolved in any tangible benefit to humanity. The pursuits of philosophy, owing their heritage or ontologic status (note the referential irony) to Aristotle's Metaphysics, are a patent fraud in that they resolve no issues, do not improve the human condition, and lead one no closer to experience of transcendence. At best then, philosophy's answers to the ontological quesions are " It would be nice if ...", and "Maybe it's like ...", filling in those ellipses with any one of a number of cliches.
Here is a better working definition of ontology:
In the beginning there was something and that something created more somethings that begat more somethings that lead to many more somethings, which led to digital phones, chimpanzees, Britney Spears, toilet paper and ice creams.
Ontology or the search for ultimate being is as pointless as a grain of sand on the beach trying to determine which other larger grain was its parent. Was there once a larger clump of sand from which the son or daughter grain emerged? Possibly, just as it is certain that all grains of sand were once part of some larger primordial rock. Was that rock, the parent of a grain of sand on the beach? Was that rock the God creator of the grain of sand on the beach. Who then was parent to the rock? And what about the ocean and its role in slowly and inexorably grinding down the rock to create the son and daughter grains of sand? Could it not be conceived of as co-parent? Our problem in ontology is twofold: finding a correct causal sequence to assign to any phenomena, and running the risk of pathetic fallacy - assigning some deific power to what may have been a blind process or lifeless object.
The mystical poet William Blake described the problem of ontology succinctly as follows: "Just as a cup cannot conceive of its capacity so man cannot conceive of God". The Hindus mockingly described the futility of ontology with their "Turtles all the way down" description of creation. And in his arrogance of believing that he has somehow tamed the natural world, Man has lost sight that his era of "domination" represents barely a flicker of an eyelash in time removed from the primordial swamp of existence that characterized the vast majority of geologic history on planet Earth.
If there is to be a true philosophy, it has to emerge out of an understanding of and cooperation with our natural ecology instead of the reliance upon our so-called rationality. But humans no longer seek the wisdom of the natural world, they instead seek to legislate against its wisdom. To what else can one ascribe the insanity of laws prohibiting the use of natural plants and fungi while mandating injections of vaccines for sexually-transmitted diseaes into the bodies of pubescent girls?
A best analysis of the ontology issue might be this-the human animal without the requisite humility and gratitude that being a master of the boundless riches of the natural world calls for, not only is ill equipped to understand the nature of his relationship to the processes or entities that created him; he is not worthy of such explanation. Not content to be merely a vessel containing the volume of divinity, he sinks even lower to the level of cheesecloth: holding onto a few minute particles of goodness, mostly trapping the useless dregs, ignorant of the infinite and eternal beauty that has poured through his sieve.
