Agency

Said Emmanuel Kant "One cannot provide objective reality for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except for the idea of freedom, because this is the condition of the moral law, whose reality is an axiom. The reality of the idea of God can only be proved by means of this idea, and hence only with a practical purpose, i.e., to act as though there is a God, and hence only for this purpose.”
Emanuel Kant

As much as most sane individuals take daily life for granted, the insane, the deeper thinkers, the naturally contemplative, and the philosophical, ask questions of life that most would not think to ask.  Not in certain terms.  When one asks, “Does reality exist?” this is a question that has challenged philosophers since Plato and concerns Kant (above), makes the naturally contemplative rich in thought, of the deep thinkers the idea is profound and perplexing, of the insane it can terrorize the mind for a life time, but to a sane mind simply asking the question my seem absurd.

What about when addressed in another way:  "How did man become to be?"  Or, “How did humanity as we know it today, develop,” or, “What is the reason for the being of humanity?”  These questions, when addressed on a more pragmatic level, will be much more confounding to even the most level headed thinker, and set them off their guard.  These are existential questions along with, “what is the purpose of being?”  “Does consciousness make us more human?”  “How can truth be proven?”  “Can anything be believed as an absolute?”  “Why are humans imperfect if they are to be at all?”  “Do I exist?”  This last question is the hardest and has stumped every philosopher who has attempted to solve it and still convolutes today’s post-structuralist thinkers including Derrida, whose deconstructionism is a breakdown by grant of the arbitrariness of reason, on all binary opposites of truth this this question is no longer trying to be solved... it is made more equivocal as age old truths melt away under deconstruction and nothing can be established in the traditional sense anymore.

Disregarding the fact that deconstruction is its own absolute thus negating the whole principle, Derrida, and many other high-minded philosophers felt pretty sure of themselves when post-structuralism was answered with deconstruction.  This is existentialism and it was as if they were seeking the worst, that they wanted desperately to prove the nihilism of Nietzsche, to arbitrate all truth and meaning leaving the idea of God left to the 19th century and no contemporary thinking person would possibly conceive of the absoluteness of God when Derridaian philosophy was around.

Deconstruction itself is as arbitrary as anything else and is a structure in the post-structuralist sense and is basically worthless outside of a novel theory.  The ideal takes an absolute; a man and a woman in marriage, takes the conventional ideas of man: bread winner, father to the children, handyman, pipe smoker, bank, and pairs it with the mother: cook, cleaner, washer, nurturer, care taker, seamstress, baker, chauffeur, laundress, and cheerleader.  Deconstruction swaps the opposites.  Dad becomes the home maker and the care taker and mother becomes the bread winner and bank and the roles are still established so this proves that the role of the man and the role of the women are only societally induced and informed… says deconstruction.  The conclusion is the absence of meaning.  The meaning of father is stripped bare and the meaning of mother is stripped bare… the existentialists triumph.

But!  The 20th century followers of the thinking of Nietzsche had not done all of their homework on Kant and had not considered an advanced theory that is simply called reconstructivism instead of deconstructionism and makes as much sense if not more.

Kank stated "One cannot provide objective reality for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except for the idea of freedom, because this is the condition of the moral law, whose reality is an axiom.”  It is true, I cannot prove reality beyond myself, but there is one condition of moral law (existing outside the self) that is axiom, or a given truth and this is freedom or agency.  Agency is the one fundamental of human existentialism that can be logically demonstrated to be a part of that existence yet exist beyond the self, thus proving that agency exists beyond mere subjectivity; there is authentic objectivity to it.

Take random stimuli, colors, noises, smells, sensations, impulses.  To them the natural human inclination, ruled by agency, is to attach meaning to any given set of these stimuli thus creating meaning.  Take two people who each hear the random sounds and stimuli from chaos and they both find the same meaning.  Take three, four, ten!  All ten, out of a chaos of sounds or stimuli arrive at the same meanings independently and collectively they agree.  This unity establishes meaning.

We have just reconstructed meaning.  When applied to that which is universal and understood as such by the many, we have established sure truth, and when that truth is judged to be unshakable by all of those who profess it, we understand this as absolute truth.  The more the individuals’ lives' are shaped by unique meanings, individualized truths as well as universalized truths, as each individual forms an identity through such that is authentic, a reality is created in this life different from any other. 

We, differ from beasts, not in the ability together with agency to choose between this or that, but to, in a way much more convincing as positivist science is always more agreeable than a negativist one, build meaning from a life that would otherwise be chaos, create truths agreed on, and formulate unique realities.  In these newly formed absolute states, many may come together to build systems of like learning, to build systems of manufacture, or more importantly, realize the common truth in the deity that is believed in and a system of beliefs that form the ideology of this religion, we call ours the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And it is the source of pure reality.

Special thanks to the research of Rob and Georgia Buchert and their Sound Installation “Agency Randomness Chaos” without, which, this thesis could not have manifest.