Collective physiological contexts are viable because progressively more complex forms of physiological dichotomies arise and mutually define themselves; physiological opposition and interdependence in this sense becomes the foundation of the culturally rational. But states of structural stability will always require further episodes of invigoration necessitated by the deeper essence of human physiological and physiologically sensorial experience. That is, the structures of meaning or congruence created through physiological opposition, while creating physiologically rational contexts people come to depend on, are contexts that will also themselves need to be physiologically exercised and invigorated—such is the deeper reality of human corporeal, physio-sensory experience.

 

In the case of strictly adversarial contexts of physiological impetus between opposing parts, conflict in itself becomes all-important as the deeper pillar and foundation of anthropological stability; permanent strife is not constantly possible, of course, but the real engagement living individuals are dependent on (as in fact their life force and vitality) must inexorably renew conflict as a physiologically existential meaning of life. Indeed, such a physiological significance of intense impression for the experiential self—and in the individual’s eventual dependence on it—becomes at least structurally, already a form of meaning:

 

Physiological opposition and dichotomies create contexts of physiological interdependence between entities that are (even for animals) a form of meaningfully defined and ordered, collective physiological opportunity to life, that, over time, becomes a sustainability of physiological substance of experience for multiple, mutually dependent, living entities.

 

Crucially however, order and nascent meaning that arise from physiological opposition are originally auxiliary to simply physiological possibility itself; order as meaning in this sense, however, is lived by singular, physiologically corporeal individuals as only ultimately a form of invigorated comfort through permanent cycles of varying, sensory impression.   

 

For human beings development of meaning as of physiological dichotomies—in conjunction with more and more sedentary circumstances—leads to the creation of a strictly sensorial realm of existence that is physiologically real, though not necessarily objectively real. But such a physiologically sensorial realm of at least a physiological reality must also sustain itself of invigorated cycles of activity, elation and rest.

 

The exercising of such a physiologically sensorial realm of physiological though not objective reality, is by means of moral dilemma itself; and the game of being a culturally rational, culturally specific, singularly corporeal individual, is the greatest, most permanent pursuit the anthropological individual takes part in necessarily through the better part of her natural life: the invigorated stability of more sedentary anthropological contexts in fact depends on it.

 

But the possibility of moral dilemma for anthropological individuals and the groups they are dependent on, ends up requiring physiological opposition not only between individuals, but also in regards to opprobrium-configured, physiologically relevant, conceptual entities human groups impose totemcially, first on the objective circumstances that surround them and that comprise their natural, physical and spatial worlds. Such anthropological atrezzo constitute in fact logical dead ends that are useful specifically in that no logical contradiction is effectively possible, allowing human groups to posit whatever causality—eventually concepts and systems of belief—they choose, and as part of an original social congruence individuals have no option but to opprobically relate to as singularly corporeal individuals who eventually can no longer always be entirely sure they indeed actually belong to the group, or not.

 

The individual’s circumstance of opprobically relating to conceptual posits that are socially congruent and so socially enforced, becomes a physiological relevance of those concepts for the individual in regards to which she is anthropologically coerced to define herself; such a definition in this sense of the singular, physio-corporeal self produces the other side of anthropological individuality, that is the also socially congruent, social or cultural self.

 

Certain nuances of the concept of nihilism, therefore, are problematic for the contemporary, rational and positivist observer, given that it is really physiological and physiologically sensory experience that is the core of our cultural being and which it is channeled, over time, into higher-tiered structures of social and opprobrium-configured congruence derived of 1) physio-corporeal opposition between singularly physical entities, and 2) conceptual posits that acquire opprobrium-configured, physiological relevance for the individual. But the moral connotations of the notion of nihilistic behavior would seem to obstruct the understanding of the nature of the individual’s living, corporeal sensuality ( almost a form of hedonism) as the real brick and mortar of what later becomes socially congruent rationality itself; a rationality that is effectively independent in a certain sense from our physiological entity, given that social congruence becomes something like a product of physiological substance of experience in collective circumstances, but does not exist anthropologically in its own right (except, of course, as a methodology of the practice of science.)

 

To further complicate this situation and the state of separation ultimately between our physiologically sensorial, body life, and the socially congruent order we live in—through which we in fact understand ourselves—the socially congruent, cultural self is also forever still a physiologically corporeal self that exist in the permanent need also of physiological and physiologically sensorial engagement— in spite of and very much against the stable, anthropological complacency social congruence eventually affords us.

 

It is perhaps from the standpoint of such a complacency that purely invigorated, physiological engagement appears to us as nihilistic, and so subject to the inquisitional scrutiny of the opprobrium-configured, socio-genetic force of our own and individual will to belong to the group; and of course conceptually do we also duly construe the rational arguments necessary to understand and safeguard us from the ultimate consequences of physiological anomie (as generally all religions have historically done). In this way, it is easier—and more collectively efficient—if individuals have available to them the conceptual logics human groups have always used, in one form or another, to in some way transcribe the physiological predicament their collective experience and survival is based on.

 

In fact, cultural individuality could be understood as exactly that which arises in such logical contexts afforded to singularly physical individuals, but underpinned by the opprobrium force of specific, living human groups; and in just such circumstances of especially sedentary human groups, individuals are indeed obliged to assume a quite specific paradigm of the physiologically homogenized, cultural self.

 

The indeed physical origin of morality in this sense, is thus also similarly the possibility of socially congruent rationality upon which the history and evolution of different human groups has edified, over the centuries and millennium, the necessary conceptual instruments to in fact synthesize and know their physiologically corporeal and sensory selves—according to whatever particular, functional logic that becomes a specific control mechanism against the physiological towards what we understand simply as a specific cultural identity.

 

But even though morality is identity in regards to the physiological substance of individual, physio-sensory experience, logical thought borne originally also of moral possibility, similarly serves individuals towards a physiological control of a greater integration of both sides of anthropological individuality, rather than just repression by one side over the other—and it is Ulysses who could be considered (at least in the western tradition) as truly one of the first heroes in this sense. For when he did not renounce the sensorial delight of the song of the sirens, but also assured his physical survival by plugging the ears of his crew, he dealt with the physiological predicament of human groups another way and perhaps in reverse, in the individual’s sensorial embrace of reality while the group steels itself against it; but either way, it is the group that must prevail in what is clearly the unresolvable paradox of the group’s own sensorial reality, perceived nevertheless by singularly physical individuals.

 

Knowing our physio-corporeal, sensory selves?

The inchoative nature of anthropological stability, as a state of sustained tension in favor of collective, physiological possibility and substance of experience–but that only really supports itself in the structural order of the conjugation of its own collective, rational congruence–renders any complete and definitive knowing ourselves impossible and a structural contradiction of terms: for it is the rational opacity of the collectively corporeal and sensory that which requires of our rational selves—the very reason, in fact, of our need to be rational. Human beings are rational because the evolutionary survival of human groups depended on above all the group’s permanence over time, and through the lives of the individuals that composed it; it is actually the group’s physiological, physiologically sensory appropriation of individuality the individual understands as her own rational self. How then could she thoroughly know herself and still be rational in her physio-corporeal subjection to the group (that is in fact the foundation of her own rational awareness, in her not knowing and a culturally imposed distance from, her only physiologically corporeal, sensory substance of experience?)

 

Knowing ourselves, then, on the structural plane of group permanence and stability through time, but from the standpoint of the physiological substance of our bodily experience, becomes a living and renewed exercise of anthropological individuality, for a physiologically rational, corporeal entity that only through collective congruence itself can ever aspire to logically synthesize her own substance of bodily being in sensory perception. But the simulacrum that is the cultural self (in regards to singularly corporeal experience that is however, deferred by the structural urgency of the collective group) is only the functional homogenization—through biological opprobrium—of a physiological reality and substance of experience, but is not itself ever definitively physical, nor finally ever unequivocally delimited; it is rather only opprobically impinged upon perception that is capable of judging—hence interpreting—not only what is good or bad (big or small, etc.), but also what really is, or not; for is not only morality that is founded in the opprobrium-configured reality of our physiologically corporeal, sub-cultural (so, sub-rational) body life, but so is the foundation of meaning itself.

 

Existential non-definition and ambiguity in this sense is living opportunity for the physiologically corporeal, but-also-culturally-rational individual, who, because she is a cultural (so rational) self, can in fact seek to know her deeper, physiologically corporeal reality through the very rational protocol of mind that is her own cultural definition. That is, cultural rationality that inexorably still must anchor itself in physiologically corporeal and sensory experience of bodily perception, resorts to that very physiological substance of experience now available to it, to effectively expand, in a certain sense, its own physiological possibility of experience in a realm now culturally available of the physiologically conceptual. A realm that, in the very impetus of the individual’s own culturally specific, physiologically rational imposition, will inexorably be refined, built upon and enlarged: for the deeper physiological substance of our being means we cannot help it but to invariably push forward in our physiological imposition, through whatever recourse the living, cultural present we happen to be born into offers us.

 

Perhaps it is in regards to this circumstance of our physiological nature in expanse (that is itself only really in a form of imposition as expanse), that another kind of nihilism arises more dangerous than the original nihilism mentioned herein. This second type of nihilism more than just a physiological nihilism, is physiologically rational nihilism, that is a physiological substance of experience that, however, takes place in a strictly sensorial realm of also the rationally conceptual, where the individual benefits, of course, form a much broader margin of physiological freedom and fantasy—given that objectively real, physical consequences are not, at least initially, to be expected nor feared.

 

But the reality of only physiologically sensorial and conceptual experience is still to some degree a physiologically relevant (‘opprobrium-configured’) reality the cultural self is not completely immune or oblivious to; moral transgression in the realm of only the physiologically sensorial and conceptual, is a form of sometimes very intense stimulation the cultural self in fact uses to re-affirm itself—that is a recourse structurally anthropological contexts also rely on as an individually experienced mortification through only sensorial perception (in the form of cultural representation or the actual witnessing of morally relevant phenomena), but that is effectively a collective mortification of a specific, anthropological individuality in itself.

 

But in our physio-corporeal and sensory invigoration lies the real possibility of anthropological, human group stability for especially sedentary human experience; that is a rationality perennially reaffirmed through the physiologically sensorial need to consolidate itself, once again, in its own living, social congruence—as part of the long and universal saga of our own history as a species and the thwarting of the threat of demise of the group through its own physiological anomie.

 

Finally, nihilism could be considered positive as human physiological impetus that requires only of rational pretext to collectively sustain itself, through time; but it is surely negative when a posterior, culturally evolved plane of the physiologically rational and semiotic, continues, however, to relate physiologically to in its own only conceptual, intellectual nature; and especially when science, in the form of technology, crosses form the physio-sensory realm of the culturally conceptual, and semeiotic, into the realm of physical reality ultimately obliviousness, however, to its own physiological substance of entity: anthropological stability maintained its very equilibrium in historically not allowing this to happen so abruptly, if at all, throughout most of the millennium of human history and its social evolution. Scientific man as of quite some time ago, however, can no longer afford to relate only physiologically—or even perhaps anthropologically at all—to our own technical power of imposition over life on earth.