Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Mystery Clear & Beautiful


Parmenides was a revolution. He wrote a poem* about what makes a good poem, a theory that came with a rule for testing its truth. It was safe science, science safe for both individual and society.

Theories that don't come with their own rule for testing we have plenty of examples of. We have the religious fundamentalists who say they love us, and we should submit like children unthinkingly to their rules, and any uncomfortable results of the rules' application we have to submit to as part of the mystery and beauty of the love expressed in the relation of ruler and ruled. We have economists who say they love us too, and what is good for us is protection against people like religious fundamentalists who want to make too many rules, and in the beauty of the economists' love for us we are to accept unchallenged the painful results of their rule, again as part of the mystery of submission to rules which express the love of our leaders.

We think we are making purely rational decisions, choosing between world views. And we are choosing. But our failure to discuss in detail what in fact happens after following the rules shows that really we are choosing between beauties. We are passing from the theory, to love. We have experience with religious leaders being corrupt, we choose the economists. We have experience with the economists being corrupt, we choose the religious leaders. We finish our reasoning in attachment to one or other idea of being loved and safe.

Now turn to Parmenides' poem which as I said comes with its own rule for testing whether it is right:

Parmenides is taken on a journey to the gates of day and night, and passing through is instructed by a goddess. The truth is, he is told, there is no movement, no division in the world. But he needs to know about the false world in which there appears to be separate things changing, where something is, in one way, then is not, not in that way. Looked at and spoken of correctly the false world reminds us of the true.

The truth is we make poems, we talk, think about the world so as to be happy, which means to stop talking. When you stop talking the world seems to whole and still.

The poem is a product of the world of appearance. But everything in that world is not equally useless. Some ways of doing things there will get you home, some won't. Divinity holds sway there and insures the order of the passage.

Parmenides' poem is useful, is maybe the most influential thing ever made. It tells us that we want to make a relation, a passage between our reasoning about the world, and getting out of the world. Our problem is not just that we don't think, don't test the consequences of our theories. Our problem is that we skip a step and go directly from theory to love. We don't need to be told to make the passage across, we are already doing it. We need to be told to do it right.
* Parmenides Fragments:


Desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned
who knows through all things. On what way was I borne

for it was urged round by the whirling wheels at each
end - gave forth a sound as of a pipe, when the daughters of the

10 from off their faces and left the abode of Night.
Avenging Justice keeps the keys that open them. Her did

15 the maidens entreat with gentle words and skilfully persuade
to unfasten without demur the bolted bars from the gates.
Then, when the doors were thrown back,
they disclosed a widepening, when their brazen
hinges swung backwards in the

20 sockets fastened with rivets and nails. Straight through them,
and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand
in hers, and spake to me these words: -

the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, as the opinions of

shalt thou learn of these things also, since thou must judge
approvedly of the things that seem to men as thou goest
through all things in thy journey."



wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not - that is impossible - nor utter it;





5 upon which mortals knowing naught wander in two minds; for
hesitation guides the wandering thought in their breasts, so that
they are borne along stupefied like men deaf and blind.
Undiscerning crowds, in whose eyes the same thing and not the


Nor let habit force thee to cast a wandering eye upon this
devious track, or to turn thither thy resounding ear or thy

5 tongue; but do thou judge the subtle refutation of their
discourse uttered by me.


One path only is left for us to
what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete,


sooner ? Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at
not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass

15 away, but holds it fast.

20 future ? Or how could it come into being ? If it came into
becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.

beginning and without end; since coming into being

same thing that can be thought and for the sake of which the thought exists ;

35 for you cannot find thought without something that is, to which it is
betrothed. And there is not, and never shall be, any time other, than that which
is present, since fate has chained it so as to be whole and immovable.
Wherefore all these things are but the names which mortals
have given, believing them, to be true –

change of place and alteration of bright colour.
every side, equally poised from the centre in every direction,

in all directions, it is equally confined within limits.

50 Here shall I close my trustworthy speech and thought about the truth.
Henceforward learn the opinions of mortals,
giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words.

55 They have assigned an opposite

60 I tell thee the whole arrangement as it seems to men,
in order that no mortal may surpass thee in knowledge.


which belong to the power of each have been assigned to these


glowing sun’s clear torch, and whence they arose. And thou
shalt learn likewise of the wandering deeds of the round-faced

that surround us, whence they arose, and how Necessity took


and the burning might of the stars


The narrower circles are filled with unmixed fire, and those
surrounding them with night, and in the midst of these rushes
their portion of fire. In the midst of these circles is the divinity that directs
the course of all things; for she rules over all painful birth and all begetting,



First of all the gods she contrived Eros.


Shining by night with borrowed light, wandering round the earth.


Always straining her eyes to the beams of the sun.

On the right boys; on the left girls.


Thus, according to men’s opinions, did things come into
being, and thus they are now. In time (they think) they will
assigned a fixed name.