What Returns from the Abyss?

It has been said, "if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." If you scream into the abyss, can anything other than an echo come back? "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster." In a similar sense, as I struggle to be understood, am I losing the ability to understand others?

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

The quote from Friedrich Nietzsche has endured through generations as a warning worded well. The quote has been worked over and dissected countless times, and I assume my thoughts on the matter are not novel, but simply something I have not read or connected the dots to.

“Nietzsche suggests that prolonged exposure to darkness, negativity, or difficult truths can profoundly impact and potentially corrupt the observer, according to some interpretations.”

Difficult truths would be the part I find most personally relevant. Have I been staring in the philosophical and metaphysical too long? Metaphysics being the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality; I have spent much of the last year working over the basic questions of being and reality. Am I, as the observer, becoming corrupted, in a sense? Corrupted has a negative connotation and I would categorize what is happening in my mind as something more neutral. My confidence in nearly all thoughts and ideas are eroding daily, while I try desperately to rebuild them, like a race to build a sand castle, knowing the tide will wash it away, but also knowing I am going to keep trying to build it between waves.

I recently read René Descartes' "Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy," in which, he questions all of his reality. Trying to throw out all assumptions and beliefs, start at nothing, and build solid structure of belief and thought on a foundation he has confidence in. The basic starting block he lands at is "Cogito, ergo sum," or "I think, therefore I am." A quote known by most, even if they do not know where it comes from. The phrase always felt like an assertion when I heard it. A declaration of someone arguing their existence. Reading his work, that is not quite an accurate framing of what he was saying. He had questioned the reality of everything down to a level of existential crisis, and then realized, that he is thinking, so he must exist. He credits that this does not establish what exactly "he" is, but gives the starting point of something he can know.

"But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses?"

While he works around these thoughts, he openly questions and examines parts of reality around him. This primes your mind, through example, to question things that occur to you in a similar manner. Personally, I have always had a tendency to question everything, so the base mechanics were already well in place in my mind.

From Meditation One:

"I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive; and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once."

• If we know that it is possible for our sense to deceive us, how can one be certain the sense is valid and not a deception, as either have been proven to be possible?

• After he states his initial thought, he considers the thought of dismissing the information available via senses as being like the insane, placing the behavior on their side of the aisle.

"...This would all be well and good, were I not a man who is accustomed to sleeping at night, and to experiencing in my dreams the very same things, or now and then even less plausible ones, as these insane people do when they are awake."

• Reflection on how real dreams can seem, and questioning if it is distinctly different than insanity.

"I extend this hand consciously and deliberately, and I feel it. Such things would not be so distinct for someone who is asleep. As if I did not recall having been deceived on other occasions even by similar thoughts in my dreams! As I consider these matters more carefully, I see so plainly that there are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being asleep."

Once you call into question our only means by which we experience life and observe the universe, the rest becomes shaky as well. What does it mean to witness something with one's own eyes if we are also aware that we have found proof that we have seen things that are not there? What good is your memory of the experience once you receive proof that you have remembered things incorrectly on many occasions?

"... nevertheless highly probably, so that it is much more consonant with reason to believe them than to deny them."

There is enough reason to defend what is sensed as accurate, or at least accurate in the sense of utility. We have no justification to discard all of our senses merely because it is possible they can be deceived. However, we should be shaken in our sense of certainty. No matter how sure you are of something, you have proof you can be mistaken, and it is less rare than we would prefer.

If you scream into the abyss, can anything other than an echo come back?

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster."

If you stare into the abyss, whatever your current abyss may be, it stares back into you. The observer becoming changed by the observation. The comment has dark connotation, and that is most appropriate. Let us deviate for a moment to an abyss that looks like atrocities. Upon examining how horrid humans can be, one's faith in humanity becomes uncertain. When you sit down and stare into that abyss in an attempt to understand it, the knowledge comes with irrevocable change and it reaches back into you. Even if not corrupted in action, one can become corrupted in thought.

Genocides, massacres, torture, wars; none of these are uncommon in history. They are prevalent throughout all cultures and everywhere on the Earth that humans have set foot. You set out to understand how something like that could ever happen, but before coming close to understanding how it could happen, you become painfully aware that it will never stop happening. Realizing something that should not be possible is basically guaranteed is going to leave a stain inside of you. While you may never act in any of these heinous ways, you also can never purify your mind of them. A new low by which your brain measures the range of possibilities when interacting with and predicting the behavior of others.

The spectrum of good and evil is pulled. Behavior that may have previously been abhorrent in your eyes becomes almost neutral. Say, for example, that you see someone punch an old woman in the face, but then they walk away, not continuing the assault. After recently reading about the Mai Lai Massacre, this may not be enough to feel it warrants your intervention. The violent shift in perspective could have the effect of making this incident seem rather tame. Perhaps merely rude. In effect, staring into the abyss has at that point corrupted your thoughts.

The individual is not likely to be at risk of becoming an instigator or proponent of genocide, massacres, torture, or wars. At least, not in an obvious sense. When the individual has the opportunity and ability to fight the monsters, how do they fight them? With mercy they never showed their victims? They likely would not feel that they deserve it. You may feel they deserve to have their behavior and sins reflected back onto them. This would feel like justice. The reality would be that the one who set out to understand the abyss and fight it is now not very distinguishable from it. But it is retribution! Perhaps, perhaps not. But it does not change the reality of what is happening. Now, behavior that was inconceivable by an individual is rationalized, and they continuing the abyss. Thought precedes actions, and the corrupted thought has now become corrupted actions. History will reflect on your actions as parallel to the atrocities that set you in motion more than they will see you as antithetical to them.

“In the name of ridding the world of evil, the Inquisition perpetrated one of the greatest evils in history.” Henry Kamen, referring to the Spanish Inquisition

Now, this does not imply that these things should not be studied and understood. "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster." The point is that if you go into it, you go into it with the knowledge and understanding necessary to avoid stumbling.

"To study and explain a behavior is not to justify it as morally defensible." - Unknown

Nietzsche's words serve as a warning, not a prophecy. Like one telling another, "If you intend to go into that cave, I suggest you bring light, food, and water if you plan on coming back out of it."

The monsters I am fighting are not the ones that Nietzsche was referring to, but the point remains relevant. I have framed the abyss in my reflection as uncertainty and metaphysical questioning. As I search for understanding am I, in fact, being corrupted by my search?

In reading renowned philosophers who questioned everything, I have sharpened my own ability to question everything. In a search for understanding of the fundamental blocks of being I have found that all good philosophers lay out the path on which they arrived at their conclusions, and that path is built upon questioning assumptions we take for granted in life. However, I am not finding myself getting closer to answers, but questioning the conclusions of those I am reading. Turning their own logic upon them and spiraling deeper into existential disillusionment.

If I do not guard myself I risk the tendrils of the abyss reaching back into me and landing in epistemic nihilism, convinced that nothing can be truly known or justified.

Even guarding against this and preparing for it, does that insulate me from being stained? I do not believe it does. I feel the metamorphosis set in motion by peering too long into the void is already proving to have corrupted me.

As I struggle to be understood, am I losing the ability to understand others?

Every day I gather new anecdotes in this realm. I try to lay out my communication as clearly and plainly as possible only to be misunderstood. I try to adhere to objective facts, observations, and clear logic, but it is almost like I am speaking a foreign language. At times, it makes me question my own sanity. I think I would have resigned my efforts and considered myself hopelessly insane, but for the occasional input of another person saying, "You are being very clear. This is weird."

The result of this all is that I have gradually become increasingly confused. I must be making an error. I must be missing some crucial piece of the puzzle and it is causing me to believe I am logical when I am not. In order to rectify this, I must further study behavior and sociology so that I may pinpoint where I keep tripping.

At this point in my quest, I feel I have distanced myself from my goals rather than drawn near them. I observe that many people are not operating strictly on logic, but on feelings, often not validated by evidence or outright refuted by it. On paralogisms, beliefs and reasoning that they feel to be logical but never examine. Refining my speech with a goal of being more clear and logical in order to be understood is failing because it is a language not often spoken. I edit and curate my messages to leave no room for misunderstanding, but on the other end someone is thinking, "But what did he REALLY mean?" I pursued precision in hopes of being understood because I assumed that was the game we were all playing. I am learning that the unclear social dance that exists

inexplicably in humans is what is really steering the ships. Focusing on logic has caused me to shed much of the relatable behavior within me as it did not stand to reason. If an idea under examination is found to be errant then discarding it is nearly involuntary once the flaw is seen. Now, I look behind myself and see that I may have dropped the only pieces that we shared.

"I learned not to believe anything too firmly of which I had been persuaded only by example and custom; and thus I little by little freed myself from many errors that can darken our natural light and render us less able to listen to reason."

Beyond this, my mind at the same time has become ever more focused on the metaphysical and constant recursive self analyzing. For obvious reasons these only widen the divide. In what should be a normal and mundane conversation, my mind can get wound up into a philosophical fervor over the words someone chose to use and what it could imply rather than being able to stand back and see it as the off handed comment it was. Person - "This coffee is better." Me - "Compared to what? Better is a comparative. What attribute is being measured? Better taste, better consistency, a better smell? All still require a point of reference." Person - "... I guess I just meant I enjoy it more than other coffee I have had recently?" Me - "I may be overthinking it." Person - "You definitely are." My mind can get hung up in other ways. Say "better" is used and I know what it is being compared to, but I become fixated on the subjective value placed on each. Is it actually better? I have a habit of blurting out questions, not looking for an answer. Sometimes it results in crashing another person's train of thought. I ask, why is it better. They pause, as if for the first time considering what they have said, and realize they don't know if it is actually better or if the two are even comparable. Language is ever evolving and trying to pin it down can be an impossible task. Someone said they would "get it," but "get" implies they will take action to go obtain the thing, instead it seems they are passively awaiting its assumed arrival. Is there some action I am failing to recognize? Or. Is it far more likely that they are not terribly concerned with the precision of their language, and I fail to notice, caught up in my internal search to understand. Failing to see the forest for the trees, and then perhaps deviating to an internal monologue about how many trees it takes to make a forest. What is the criteria? Perhaps it is more accurate to say that their difference is not a matter of imprecision. Perhaps I am placing more subjective value on the strict meanings and uses of words as a result of rigid thinking. Grasping for clarity, I hold the words down and force them under a microscope, saying "What do you mean?" When perhaps it would be more useful to engage in a natural ebb and flow of conversation. I am coming to the realization and making an effort to restrain my comments and thoughts. Interjecting only if I need the answer to truly understand what is going on. I am finding that if I stay silent and let things proceed, I tend to get enough extra context to figure out what they meant, or at least convince myself I have. It may be reasonable to ask why I do not radically change my processes given how I have painted my tendencies in a rather negative way up until this point. While I can recognize the issues this is causing, I never felt like I was very understood or understood others very well to begin with. In a way, it feels like a lateral move. There are moments where the pursuit has contributed on either side of the scale of understanding. The main reason I am resistant to change my methods is that I have become loyal to it. In my mind, this accuracy feels real and valuable. It is a logical path I can see and understand. New found comprehension and philosophical ponderings nourish my mind and soul. I want to pursue it, even if it costs me some ability to socially adapt. I know from experience that few others like talking about such things, so enhancing my ability to socialize is not more likely to feed me what I value than directly pursuing it alone.

I saw a problem, in my case failing to be understood. I focused on the void, staring into it, trying to understand. I have learned that observation had a corrupting effect. What use is logic if no one understands you? What use is speaking clearly if you are speaking a different language than those around you? In this moment, it feels as if I set out into the void to learn how to be understood, but in effect only increased the likelihood I will never be understood, nor truly understand others. However, I will be doing what I feel I am called to do.

A Man Said to the Universe By Stephen Crane

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”