Your "soul" is limiting you

Madman and Ultra-artist Antonin Artaud writes about Van Gogh: "For a long time pure linear painting drove me mad until I met Van Gogh, who painted neither lines nor shapes, but inert things in nature as if they were having convulsions. [...] No one has ever written or painted, sculpted, modelled, built, invented, except to get out of hell. And to get out of hell, I prefer the landscapes of this quiet convulsive man to the swarming compositions of Breughel the Elder or Hieronymus Bosch, (...)" - I mean look at the painting below. It's insulting to even "think" it through. After Artaud's quote, it can only be experienced as a "convulsion" outside the realm of mind, with visions of a man painting with the sweat he pours while "escaping hell":

Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (Lullaby), Arles, February 1888

Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (Lullaby), Arles, February 1888

Ok. Now I'm going to hurt myself, destroy my mind and get you thinking for the rest of the day. I Really like philosopher Henri Bergson. But after reading Dennett I was convinced Bergson was wrong. Bergson is a big proponent of an "Elan Vital" - an inexplicable "vital force" driving life. Truth is, this is a great illustration of what Dennett and philosophers call a "skyhook". A hook hanging from the sky! i.e. A wacky superfluous explanation when there's nothing better around a.k.a. God, the force etc. Things you can't see under a microscope. Destroying this idea hurts. I read Artaud, I look at Van Gogh's Augustine and I want to believe in an unseen force. I can see Van Gogh painted with his soul. What else could it be? Yet.

I am soul-less. Yes. There is no such thing as an Elan Vital. In the driving seat of the universe, there is no magical mumbo jumbo into which we can only peak thanks to a 6 page unresolved math equation. No such thing. And you know it. Now. It might make you sad. Just like me thinking these shamans singing to the spirit of the jungle are .. just singing. But scroll up. Look back at Augustine. Her colors are still there. Her eyes, her hands, this green. And see: Can you not still experience it with as much intensity, even without any skyhooks? If yes, then you've tasted freedom :) And finally, maybe got your head around this quote I've been struggling with for months: "Losing all hope was freedom" Tyler Durden.

Durden meets Dennett meets Bergson meets Van Gogh !! Party in the sky Impossible soul-less people :D