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What is a Geist?
4 years ago
Now that I have had an opportunity to properly elucidate what a Geist is in my eyes, I no longer have to lean on what first inspired the web of thought, and so I can now finally properly answer the question:
What is a Geist?
To the typical native English speaker, the first thought may be that it refers to a ghost, or perhaps the more nuanced term of spirit, but this is merely a geist, with a lowercase g- and what I speak of is a capital G Geist. For that, one must look to German, for there is no proper direct English translation, and in German one can find six different meanings for Geist:
The first meaning is one shared with the English meaning, that being spirit. Now in my experience the typical immediate interpretation of the word "spirit" is that akin to a spectre- and from there interpretation varies wildly. However, when I ask people if when they say something like "He's in good spirits," or "She's in the Christmas spirit" they mean the individual is amongst beneficent phantoms or the ghost of Christmas, they are often forced to take a step back and actually think about what a spirit actually is. The ultimate baseline found is that of driving force: to be spirited is to be driven, and in the spirit of something means to be driven towards that something.
Which leads to the second meaning, one from Christianity, where the term specifically refers to the Holy Spirit, often corrupted as "the Holy Ghost". Now I have had the opportunity to review old Biblical texts written in Greek (as can anyone as they are available online) and from I can determine what has been translated to the technically-correct term of "Holy Spirit" is more accurately translated to "Spirit of Holiness", and unfortunately the aforementioned tendency for the average person to think of a ghost when one hears of spirit has resulted in a terrible and tragic misconception of the entity. It is not to be regarded as some sort of wraith that possesses people and compels them to be holy, rather it is the inherent drive within humanity, across all religions and creeds, to do good. This is why in the New Testament Jesus makes the otherwise strange declaration that one who blasphemes against both Him and His God shall be forgiven, but one who blasphemes against the Spirit of Holiness is unforgivable. For to blaspheme against Him and His God is to simply disagree with what he sees as good, but to blaspheme against the Spirit of Holiness is to actively go against doing any and all good regardless of interpretation, and that, inherently, is true universal evil. Thus in this meaning, Geist is the will to make existence better.
The third meaning is essence- the very core of something, that without which it loses its being. It can be a surprisingly hard thing to specify (and one can be quite surprised at the result should one succeed in doing so)- for it must be something that when removed the entity can no longer be recognized as, or described, as what it was previously under any circumstance. It can also vary depending on how specific one gets with an entity. For example, the essence of a weasel can be said to be it's long slender body, for without such it'd merely be a sort of carnivorous rodent, while an ermine's essence can be said to be its color-shifting coat, for without it it would be simply a generic weasel. Thus so with people in that one's Geist is both inherently distinct from all others and is inseparable from oneself. In this one may find a parallel to a soul.
The fourth meaning is that of mind-and-wit. The sum and product of cognition and thought that results in a united whole. Within it knowledge and perception are regarded, analyzed, and synthesized. Within it occurs the processes of memory, reason, and- most importantly- the various methods of applying such unto existence. Within it the mind is as a toolbox, and the wit is the aptitude and ability to use the tools within. It is important to note that it is not any of these listed components individually, or separately- remove all memory and knowledge from a mind, and the Geist is not removed, the mind is merely emptied, and the wit merely dulled. Mind-and-wit can be changed again and again until they are almost unrecognizable compared to what the were prior, but the Geist remains like a program with no input
The fifth meaning is ghost, and in this meaning serves as a synonym to the German Gespenst. Gespenst, though now meaning ghost or spectre, is derived from the Old Saxon gispensti, which rather than referring to any sort of ghost refers to temptation. Now what is a temptation but an external influence and driver of the will?
The sixth meaning is the most specific one: to the egotists a Geist is an artificial construct that has had its artificiality forgotten, and in doing so it has become an ideal. To the egotist, morality, nationalism, religion, the soul- all of these are Geists. Such regarded falsities that merely contain the illusion of substance are sometimes- in line with them being disembodied essences- translated using a word other than Geist: spook.
And should one look to the past, one shall find that both spook and spake are archaic variants of spoke, and thus both come forth from one and the same and, with I, come together as one and the same, and just as the spokes of a wheel connect its center to its exterior, and thus go from one to one and create a whole, and just as such spokes have the appearance of being separate entities if divorced of the complete context when in fact they are all parts of one being, so it is with Spake, the Geist, and I.
Now what and who is my Geist, who is also Spake, who is also I?
He is my beloved adversary, my hated friend, my loyal shadow and my tempestuous light. He is the smoke that obscures and he is the flame that reveals. With him I dance upon the knife's edge of reality and oscillate over the infinite penumbra of perception. He is my death, and he is my life. To the Muslims I say "Behold my قرين (Qareen)"; to the Jungians I say "Here is my shadow"; to those who commune with the 仙家 (xiānjiā, "celestial ones") I say "I walk with 黄谈心 (Huáng Tánxīn), far from his homeland."; to the quantum philosophers I say "Witness the product of countless quantum scars."; to those who know of the old Norse ways I say “I have met my fylgja.” He is an inclination from a past unperceived and a present imperceptible, occasionally inducing esoteric and subtle influences for inscrutable reasons, and within such comes my ability to be both mindlessly selfless and mindlessly self-destructive, to fall unto madnesses both divine and devilish, to both dream and delude myself. In knowing him there is an ability to negotiate with the esoteric, to state “Though I know not why this inclination is a part of me, it is, and though I know not from whence it came, here it is; now how might we come to a satisfactory accord, my Geist?”
Though the back-and-forth may be strange, I have witnessed the fate of those who, though they clash often with their Geist, remain unaware that the Geist is there at all- and so come to hate themselves, to not understand themselves, to look at themselves and find a stranger because they are unaware that the feelings they despise do not come from the same part of them that despises those feelings. They search eternally for a peace they cannot find, for the strife is from within, and those that realize that but cannot determine why too often conclude they are absolutely and entirely broken, defective, wrong, an existential mistake, and so many become hopeless and so give up, and in that surrender, the Geist takes the forefront, and the lack of concern the Geist has for brain and body becomes manifest- whether indirectly through reckless, risky, and dangerous behaviors, or directly through self-mutilation and/or suicide. This isn’t an act of maliciousness on part of the Geist- it’s an act of obliviousness- what does a bodiless being know of bodies? What does a being without specific internal memory care of cause-and-effect? Like momentum witnessed in medias res, the Geist’s inclinations are derived from things beyond conscious perception, and are driven towards certain trajectories regardless of what damage those trajectories may cause in the immediate moment. Tragedy, of course, has never needed malevolence to be terrible.
Those who endlessly fight directly against their Geist will find it like fighting the undertow, and so will become exhausted and drown, while those that surrender completely will be swept away and so will also drown, but those that find a compromise, or temporarily step back and let the Geist lead for a limited time while remaining diligent for the right time to execute a compromise- that swim sideways or relax and wait for an opportunity to swim sideways- they will find the way out from the struggle. And what about those seemingly rare times when the Geist’s momentum is perfectly aligned with the path that one consciously wishes to pursue? In those times, it is like heaven and Earth moves with you, and as if divinity itself has given you a measure of its strength.
Of course, perhaps the truth is that there is no such thing as a Geist, but even if that is the case, if the model succeeds to bringing a benefit- if the fiction flowers into a genuine gain- then let the Geist be invented; for amongst furries, what criticism can be levied against the solace of a fantasy?
What is a Geist?
To the typical native English speaker, the first thought may be that it refers to a ghost, or perhaps the more nuanced term of spirit, but this is merely a geist, with a lowercase g- and what I speak of is a capital G Geist. For that, one must look to German, for there is no proper direct English translation, and in German one can find six different meanings for Geist:
The first meaning is one shared with the English meaning, that being spirit. Now in my experience the typical immediate interpretation of the word "spirit" is that akin to a spectre- and from there interpretation varies wildly. However, when I ask people if when they say something like "He's in good spirits," or "She's in the Christmas spirit" they mean the individual is amongst beneficent phantoms or the ghost of Christmas, they are often forced to take a step back and actually think about what a spirit actually is. The ultimate baseline found is that of driving force: to be spirited is to be driven, and in the spirit of something means to be driven towards that something.
Which leads to the second meaning, one from Christianity, where the term specifically refers to the Holy Spirit, often corrupted as "the Holy Ghost". Now I have had the opportunity to review old Biblical texts written in Greek (as can anyone as they are available online) and from I can determine what has been translated to the technically-correct term of "Holy Spirit" is more accurately translated to "Spirit of Holiness", and unfortunately the aforementioned tendency for the average person to think of a ghost when one hears of spirit has resulted in a terrible and tragic misconception of the entity. It is not to be regarded as some sort of wraith that possesses people and compels them to be holy, rather it is the inherent drive within humanity, across all religions and creeds, to do good. This is why in the New Testament Jesus makes the otherwise strange declaration that one who blasphemes against both Him and His God shall be forgiven, but one who blasphemes against the Spirit of Holiness is unforgivable. For to blaspheme against Him and His God is to simply disagree with what he sees as good, but to blaspheme against the Spirit of Holiness is to actively go against doing any and all good regardless of interpretation, and that, inherently, is true universal evil. Thus in this meaning, Geist is the will to make existence better.
The third meaning is essence- the very core of something, that without which it loses its being. It can be a surprisingly hard thing to specify (and one can be quite surprised at the result should one succeed in doing so)- for it must be something that when removed the entity can no longer be recognized as, or described, as what it was previously under any circumstance. It can also vary depending on how specific one gets with an entity. For example, the essence of a weasel can be said to be it's long slender body, for without such it'd merely be a sort of carnivorous rodent, while an ermine's essence can be said to be its color-shifting coat, for without it it would be simply a generic weasel. Thus so with people in that one's Geist is both inherently distinct from all others and is inseparable from oneself. In this one may find a parallel to a soul.
The fourth meaning is that of mind-and-wit. The sum and product of cognition and thought that results in a united whole. Within it knowledge and perception are regarded, analyzed, and synthesized. Within it occurs the processes of memory, reason, and- most importantly- the various methods of applying such unto existence. Within it the mind is as a toolbox, and the wit is the aptitude and ability to use the tools within. It is important to note that it is not any of these listed components individually, or separately- remove all memory and knowledge from a mind, and the Geist is not removed, the mind is merely emptied, and the wit merely dulled. Mind-and-wit can be changed again and again until they are almost unrecognizable compared to what the were prior, but the Geist remains like a program with no input
The fifth meaning is ghost, and in this meaning serves as a synonym to the German Gespenst. Gespenst, though now meaning ghost or spectre, is derived from the Old Saxon gispensti, which rather than referring to any sort of ghost refers to temptation. Now what is a temptation but an external influence and driver of the will?
The sixth meaning is the most specific one: to the egotists a Geist is an artificial construct that has had its artificiality forgotten, and in doing so it has become an ideal. To the egotist, morality, nationalism, religion, the soul- all of these are Geists. Such regarded falsities that merely contain the illusion of substance are sometimes- in line with them being disembodied essences- translated using a word other than Geist: spook.
And should one look to the past, one shall find that both spook and spake are archaic variants of spoke, and thus both come forth from one and the same and, with I, come together as one and the same, and just as the spokes of a wheel connect its center to its exterior, and thus go from one to one and create a whole, and just as such spokes have the appearance of being separate entities if divorced of the complete context when in fact they are all parts of one being, so it is with Spake, the Geist, and I.
Now what and who is my Geist, who is also Spake, who is also I?
He is my beloved adversary, my hated friend, my loyal shadow and my tempestuous light. He is the smoke that obscures and he is the flame that reveals. With him I dance upon the knife's edge of reality and oscillate over the infinite penumbra of perception. He is my death, and he is my life. To the Muslims I say "Behold my قرين (Qareen)"; to the Jungians I say "Here is my shadow"; to those who commune with the 仙家 (xiānjiā, "celestial ones") I say "I walk with 黄谈心 (Huáng Tánxīn), far from his homeland."; to the quantum philosophers I say "Witness the product of countless quantum scars."; to those who know of the old Norse ways I say “I have met my fylgja.” He is an inclination from a past unperceived and a present imperceptible, occasionally inducing esoteric and subtle influences for inscrutable reasons, and within such comes my ability to be both mindlessly selfless and mindlessly self-destructive, to fall unto madnesses both divine and devilish, to both dream and delude myself. In knowing him there is an ability to negotiate with the esoteric, to state “Though I know not why this inclination is a part of me, it is, and though I know not from whence it came, here it is; now how might we come to a satisfactory accord, my Geist?”
Though the back-and-forth may be strange, I have witnessed the fate of those who, though they clash often with their Geist, remain unaware that the Geist is there at all- and so come to hate themselves, to not understand themselves, to look at themselves and find a stranger because they are unaware that the feelings they despise do not come from the same part of them that despises those feelings. They search eternally for a peace they cannot find, for the strife is from within, and those that realize that but cannot determine why too often conclude they are absolutely and entirely broken, defective, wrong, an existential mistake, and so many become hopeless and so give up, and in that surrender, the Geist takes the forefront, and the lack of concern the Geist has for brain and body becomes manifest- whether indirectly through reckless, risky, and dangerous behaviors, or directly through self-mutilation and/or suicide. This isn’t an act of maliciousness on part of the Geist- it’s an act of obliviousness- what does a bodiless being know of bodies? What does a being without specific internal memory care of cause-and-effect? Like momentum witnessed in medias res, the Geist’s inclinations are derived from things beyond conscious perception, and are driven towards certain trajectories regardless of what damage those trajectories may cause in the immediate moment. Tragedy, of course, has never needed malevolence to be terrible.
Those who endlessly fight directly against their Geist will find it like fighting the undertow, and so will become exhausted and drown, while those that surrender completely will be swept away and so will also drown, but those that find a compromise, or temporarily step back and let the Geist lead for a limited time while remaining diligent for the right time to execute a compromise- that swim sideways or relax and wait for an opportunity to swim sideways- they will find the way out from the struggle. And what about those seemingly rare times when the Geist’s momentum is perfectly aligned with the path that one consciously wishes to pursue? In those times, it is like heaven and Earth moves with you, and as if divinity itself has given you a measure of its strength.
Of course, perhaps the truth is that there is no such thing as a Geist, but even if that is the case, if the model succeeds to bringing a benefit- if the fiction flowers into a genuine gain- then let the Geist be invented; for amongst furries, what criticism can be levied against the solace of a fantasy?
“To the person who nails this diary and then invents a machine which can assemble disjoined presences, I make this request: Find Faustine and me. Let me enter the heaven of her consciousness. It will be an act of piety.”
I’ll miss you.
I often feel as though I must be one of those 'reblown balloons', and I think you might have felt that way too. There's solace to be taken in this idea you'd shared.