"yesterday is gone and tomorrow doesn't exist," so I love you today for no reason at all.
We're slaves to our ideas, even my idea that we are slaves to our ideas. Why is freedom such a big deal?
The boat that always sails in calm waters doesn't get to learn about storms, and can't help other ships when storms come. The boat that always looks for storms doesn't always find them, but is able to help others find them. The boat that sails and welcomes both calm waters and storms helps both itself as well as all the other ships in the sea.
I feel like my youth was the first boat, calm waters, never questioning beliefs, enjoying myself, free from suffering (a farce), sheltered that didn't expose me to this "real world" that we "live in". Over the past few years I've looked for storms and I've helped other people find them. I've learned a lot about us, some reasons as to why we think, why we do the things we do, what motivates us, what makes us free, what controls us. The answer always comes full circle: us.
We have everything we want and everything we don't want, we are who we were, who we want to become, and who we hate. We live in all the beautiful and ugly places in the world, we're alone when we're with people, we're happy that we're sad, we like things to be easy by making them difficult. We don't understand understanding, but we know how to understand it. We fear fear and we also fear not being afraid. We know we know something even if that something is nothing. We blame others for our feelings, we are self-important. We have beautiful bodies, minds, hearts, beings, but we are ashamed of them. We have fun, we are happy, and we love. We don't know why and for some of us we don't need to know. But we have to know that we don't need to. We believe in belief, in truth, even if the truth is that there is no truth, it still in fact is true and therefore does not negate the presence of itself. We have light and dark, day and night, right and wrong, god and the devil, dualities that exist at the same time in the same space, all of which we create from the collections of ideas. We can't separate ourself from our idea, so we make them smaller, classify them, give them names, give them words. Write them down, remember them, use them, forget them. Sometimes we come back, sometimes we're so close; they're always there. We know everything by knowing nothing, we're sure of uncertainties, we are all artists, and we're serious when we want to be. We're everything we want and don't want, and we realize this everyday. We're all enlightened, perfect, evil, good. We're whatever we want to be and we are whether or not we want to be it.
I'm not trying to say anything, but words come to mean something (but not by themselves). The thirst to understand, the need. What did he say? What does he mean? Keeps our minds at bay. How do you control thought? Give people something to think about. And that is what I'm doing. Why continue to read? Reading, knowledge, collections. Something when written down does not depend on time, but still on space.
We don’t read blank pages. Why not? We never give them the chance. They’re empty, meaningless, but they don’t have to be. This need to need, to have, a want, a possibility, tricks our brains into thinking it’s real. And then we’re stuck, forever, because we never stop to read the blank pages, to see what they say, and to learn from them. Isn't nothing our only motivation?
I was listening to a history of science lecture and still can't spell etymology. Science comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. Science today refers more to the belief of empiricism, that all knowledge comes from experience (so there's nothing we come up with from scratch, everything is linked and pushed and pulled by other things, the same thing). Philosophy comes from the greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), meaning the love of wisdom. The term scientist wasn't coined until 1833, and we've been floating around thinking for a lot longer than that. Science invokes reputability, the natural world, how things really are. Philosophy on the other hand is bullshit, and bullshit is hilarious (just ask George Carlin). What interested me was finding out that before "scientist" men of science were called just that (going back to science meaning knowledge): natural philosophers. Natural philosophers studied and still study the natural world. The world, if you will. But we have split up the world into many parts, many professions, jobs needed to keep a capitalistic system afloat. Philosophy is one of those disciplines, science is another. I never used to put them together, what was I thinking?
I'm taken aback by a comment by egyptology teacher told us when we were studying egyptian grammar. We had come across a verb a few days earlier that meant "to think." This day we came across another word, different, that simply meant "to think." And she said. "All lasting languages have synonyms, more than one way to say something." And that struck me, which is why I can write a different email every week and say the same thing over and over again. Different words have different meanings, even if those meanings are the same. Our brains trick themselves, it's all so hilarious!
For the past few days it's been bothering me how we can blame other people for our emotions. Is it easier to push them aside for another day, never knowing, understanding ourselves. Aren’t we taught to classify, to think the way the public thinks. How can happiness be so antagonizing? How can it make others so damn mad? Jealousy? We are responsible for all of our problems. The only person that makes us feel anything is ourselves but why is it difficult to realize that? Internalize good externalize bad. We can’t separate ourself from our idea. Individuals are collections, reality is fear. Do we not provide for inconvenience?
Convenience, what a term. Easaliy-the right to not think. I like it. We're going somewhere with this one. Except, if someone betrays our idea we find a way to make them wrong. Let's talk about questioning our beliefs, better yet questioning our values, our reasons for living (assuming that there are some).
I'm in Italy. I'm not in the united states. These are both two ideas that don't have to be true. So I'm not in Italy and I'm not in the united states. Or I am in Italy and in the united states. Or there is no Italy, there is no united states, so I'm everywhere. I'm on earth, so I'm nowhere in space. A pale blue dot, a speck of sand: nothing. I don't want to say that I am right, but I do want to say that I don't have to be in Italy because Italy is an idea, an idea that needs to be accepted (even if it's forced to be accepted). If I want to be in Italy I can be there, it's an idea, but if I don't want to be in Italy then I'm not in Italy, which is also an idea.
It's funny how counter arguments to everything we’ve ever thought use the exact same logic that we use to make sure that they are still true. The smiles escape me.
I need to be wrong; I need to question my beliefs. Won't we please help each other?
-Anthony
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You are creating a duality by making the claim that we are slaves to our own ideas. What is bull shit? Why is philosophy become synonymous with it for you? Bull shit, to me is meant as a lie, a diversion from what is actual. Can we ever grasp at the actual?
ReplyDeleteReasons for living... Do we need a reason to live? Are not the conveniences of every day life that our collective history has provided us enough?(being sarcastic) Yesterday as I was eating I was shocked at the amount of time and effort that went into the food I was so eagerly consuming. The people who grew my tomatoes, that made the cheese, that picked the spinach, that drove it thousands of miles, the photosynthesis in the plants, the child with cancer on her face from the oil sludge dumped in her village, the oil that powers the trucks, the CEO of a company getting a portion of the money I paid, the time I spent to get the money, the technology used, and on and on to infinity. Reason for living, a reason for being disconnected.
Think of the idea of an immigrant. Ones parents sacrifice thier entire 'life' in order to provide for a better life for thier children. They leave the familiar for the unknown, maybe entrusting their children to a relative, maybe even a stranger. This is a 'natural' phenomenon? To want your own to be 'successful,' almost positing the material ideal onto the children, motivated by love?
Often I view my immigrant experience as a turning back on who I am, or was. A decision made, period, no questions. A world collapsed, disappeared. You see, Italy is different from the US. The differences are true as far as they make an impact on you. Familiarity. I can picture certain places, things I did, memories muddled through language and expectations, doing everything for a better life... But never asking what I wanted that life to be, so here I am.
Your observation that we blame other people for our feelings, or maybe even praise them is a keen insight. Yet other peoples attitudes do affect us, is it because we allow it? Is it possible to still be fully immersed into the world without being affected by it, or is one only delusional?
To love for no reason at all... Can you see a stranger in the same light? You are starting to sound like Jesus. Maybe that bull shit they taught us stuck? The pope is the anti-christ. A lady at my work and I were talking, and another came up to us with a peace sign on her shirt. She asked "you know what that is?" "Yea, a peace sign." "No, look at it again, what do you see." "A peace sign?" "No its a cross, upside down cross." "Ok." "It is the sign of the devil, Jesus upside down. That is how they get to us." "Huh. But..?" and I walked away.
Sometimes I feel like niether of us is saying anything. Only a bunch of words that try to get at something but that something we do not even know.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy is bull shit... I just feel like in order to become keen and prolific writers we both need a more disciplined approach to doing it. You might want to scream control, control, slave to an idea, but this is quite necessary. A philosophy may be bull shit, but philosophy itself cannot be, at least to me, I honestly feel annoyed every time I read that. Maybe I have to laugh at it in order to get a better grasp, but don't call it bull shit, though you can do whatever you want.
Read a blank page. That is pretty poetic of you. But what do blank pages say? Possibility? Emptiness? Nothingness? A blank page says whatever you write on it. Again, that blank page, that material in front of you went through an incredible journey to get there in front of you. Maybe we must revert back to seeing the world thorugh the animist's eyes.
You know what really bothers me, cause and effect. My entire perception of the universe is constantly shaped by this idea. There is a cause which has a result, an effect. First thing that bothers me is that we cannot know a cause, but only effects becuase I can keep asking the question but what caused that, so what I once thought of as an cause was actually an effect. And if I keep playing the little word game, the opposite can also be true, what I once thought of as a effect actually caused something else.
Maybe I am ascribing the idea of cause and effect to strictly, and it appears there are no concrete causes and effects. Maybe what bothers me is my own usage of the idea of cause and effect as concrete and unchanging.
I just want to come up with another way of looking at the universe without using cause and effect. The linearity and even cirularity of time must be taken away from the idea of cause and effect. Wait, what does cause and effect even explain or describe? Is there a different way we can look at time? How would this affect my perception and valuation of the universe?
Yup, not saying anything at all...