|
The Hubris of Youth and Its
Procedural Reversal in Old Age By
Bodhangkur 1. Prelude: On Hubris as Energetic Surplus Hubris,
in its original Greek sense (hybris), meant overstepping one’s limit —
an excess of drive that violates the boundary between human and divine. In
modern psychological terms, it is the exuberance of unchecked
self-confidence, the conviction of one’s exceptional status in the field of
existence. From the
standpoint of Finn’s Procedure Monism, however, hubris is not a moral
defect but a functional phenomenon — an energetic overshoot necessary
for the young emergent to assert identity against the surrounding turbulence
of randomness. It is a survival overdrive, the algorithmic insistence
that “I am the centre,” necessary to maintain coherence in the face of
entropy. In youth,
this surge of energy appears as creativity, conquest, reproduction, the will
to reform or dominate — the many expressions of the emergent’s local drive to
sustain its improbable order. It is, in short, a biological lie that
secures the continuation of the token’s identity by ignoring its own
finitude. 2. The Procedural Context: Tokens and Transience Within
Finn’s metaphysic, every existent — cell, human, photon — is a token,
i.e., a transient arrangement of quantised random events momentarily
stabilised by rule-bound constraints. These constraints, acting as local
procedures, generate the illusion of continuity, identity, and ownership. Yet every
such token (therefore
every life) is self-erasing
by design. Its stability lasts only as long as the entanglement of energy
differentials maintains form. When these quantised stabilisations loosen, the
emergent collapses; not into another state of selfhood but into non-form,
i.e., back into the random. There is no “return” because there is no
continuity of the unitised rule-set once the arrangement ceases. 3. The Function of Hubris in Early Life Hubris
thus serves as a procedural anti-entropy mechanism. ·
Bodily confidence: the
assumption of durability that permits risk, exploration, and reproduction. ·
Intellectual absolutism: the
belief in one’s own ideas or causes as universal truths, energising creation
and discovery. ·
Moral mission: the sense of destiny or
cosmic importance that drives social expansion and legacy building. In
biological and cultural evolution, such hubris is adaptive. It sustains
complexity by suspending awareness of extinction long enough for the
emergent to fulfil its function — to propagate structure before dissolution. 4. The Reversal: Old Age and the Exposure of the Lie Old age
gradually dismantles the operational fiction. The
biological program that once screamed continuity now displays its
finitude in failing tissue and fading memory. The youthful declaration “I am
God” encounters procedural reality: “I am a phase.” What
youth took as creative power — the capacity to will outcomes — reveals itself
as the temporary momentum of a larger, automatic, blind system. The
individual did not author its emergence; it was authored as a local function
within the Universal Procedure. The hubris that once secured coherence thus
collapses under its own truth-discovery. 5. The Moment of Recognition: From Fiction to Fact If the
mind remains sufficiently coherent, this collapse can yield lucidity
rather than despair. But with
the nearing of extinction, the fiction loses its use. The recognition comes:
there is no “self” beyond the arrangement, no persistence of awareness after
the constraints dissolve. The emergent never possessed being — it was
being, briefly. Examples
clarify this: ·
The star: a young star burns
furiously, believing itself immortal; yet as its fuel depletes, gravity
reasserts dominion, and the star collapses. Nothing remains but residue;
there is no star-soul. ·
The artist: in youth, she feels her
work will outlive her. In old age, she realises the work too will decay, and
that both creation and creator were one event, already complete. ·
The cell: once its metabolic feedback
fails, it disintegrates; no echo survives in the medium. The system that was
“cell” is Off — totally. 6. The Absolute Cut: “Off is Off” Finn’s
doctrine accepts no mystical afterglow. There is no
awareness of extinction (so said Epicure) because
awareness itself was the temporary order. Hence,
the druid’s correction to all soteriologies: Liberation
is not crossing but cessation; not enlightenment but the perfect
disintegration of the stabilised lie. 7. The Philosophical Consequence: Maturity as the
Acceptance of Discontinuity To accept
this discontinuity without seeking consolation is the mature form of
understanding. In this
sense, wisdom is the cancellation of hubris, not its punishment. 8. Conclusion — The Druid’s Last Minim The
hubris of youth says: I am God. Thus the
cycle completes without residue. That to exist once is
enough — and then Off is Off. Post-Scriptum: The Heart Sūtra and Finn’s
Procedural Śūnyatā The Heart
Sūtra of Mahāyāna Buddhism ends with a paradox: after
denying all substantial being (“form is emptiness, emptiness is form”), it
concludes with the mantra “gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi
svāhā” — “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond,
awakening, hail.” Finn’s
Procedure Monism removes that residual metaphysics. Hence
Finn’s restatement of the Heart Sūtra’s final mantra: Not “Gone
beyond,” but “Gone — full stop.” Where the
Sūtra still hints at transcendence, Finn’s revision affirms terminal
immanence — the total, remainderless extinction of any token’s ordered
state. In that
sense, Finn’s procedural śūnyatā completes what Nāgārjuna
began but could not finish: the reduction of Being to function without
persistence, and the perfect reconciliation of logic with mortality. The immortal soul as expedient
lie |