Introduction (2): Why Solipsistic Penumbra?

Why is My Weblog Called "Solipsistic Penumbra"? And Who Am I?!

I would like to explain a few points about my choice of title for this weblog. Why "Solipsistic Penumbra"? By using the word "solipsistic", am I naively asserting that all that exists IS my mind or even "me"? Am I boldly confessing to being a narcissist, a self-absorbed egocentric person? And what is with "penumbra"?

 My Solipsistic Understanding of Solipsism

In his exceptionally enlightening essay "On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense", Nietzsche asserts that we cannot have any access to the essence of anything - whatever that "essence" is, mind, because we have absolutely no access to it mentally - but we have only a limited anthropomorphized understanding of the world. We perceive everything in this world through the lens of our mind and senses which, despite being very complex and fascinating, have to be limited after all. We must admit that if we had another sort of brain, other strategies for analyzing the input data, or other types of senses, we might have perceived the world very differently. It is exciting to think that one day human beings will probably find ways to expand or alter the capacities of their minds and senses. But meanwhile, we have to make the best of all that our human body allows us to achieve. Of course this does not mean that the trajectory of our mental faculties has to be right on the track it has historically followed throughout human history. We might even try and explore new modes of conceiving and analyzing data, such as the rhizomatic model proposed by Deleuze and Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus, which includes the putting aside of the old congealed hierarchical, dualistic, and chronological model of thinking in favor of a horizontal map-like model in which surface and depth, root and tree, are intermixed into a ramifying labyrinthine plane with countless interconnected crossroads and networks. For example, instead of trying to figure out whether your life is the sum of all the choices you have made through your own free will or the result of the convergence of many external forces outside your control, you can see your life as a vast expansion of endless interconnected networks of coincidences, choices, genes, histories, experiences, etc.

With all that said, I am a human being with all the capacities and limitations of a human mind formed under the specific conditions of the unique and complex mesh-work of countless historical, biological, psychological, political, geographical, economical, coincidental, and intentional forces I call my life. I will not be able to produce anything beyond what my specific and unique mental faculties and my human body allow me to produce. Therefore all you will read here will be a solipsistic view of the vast universe reduced into weblog posts by a 28-year-old female human born and living in a city called Tabriz located in Northwestern Iran who is studying English Literature (MA) at Tabriz university and is planning to pour forth various selective combinations of her memories, experiences, sensations, emotions, desires, hopes, fears, meditations, ruminations, thoughts, studies, etc. in the form of a complex sign system called English language.

The Penumbra of a Solipsistic Mind

I am going to refer once again to Nietzsche's essay mentioned above in which this genius of a philosopher tries to explain how human beings turn their anthropomorphized conception of the world into metaphors of various signs, including oral or written language, to make sense of the things they have perceived. Thus, of all the vast unknown universe which cannot be conceived, and of all the known knowledge which my mind cannot grasp, of all that eternal interminable blaze, only an infinitesimal amount of light is absorbed and processed by me. These dark meaningful meaningless signs you see on the pages of this weblog are the penumbra of the shadows cast by my mind which take the form of English words and sentences.

Eventually, it will be you, reader, who will decipher these signs in your unique and fantastic mind, forming new shiny concepts of your own. The shades of my mind will enter and reside in your solipsistic mental world in new unique shapes. And I am infinitely grateful for the opportunity, made possible through the development of human mind, language, technology and education, to be able to be part of this fascinating process.