Someone once told me that life's a game. He said that we make our own rules, and we're allowed pursue meaning wherever we care to look. I thought to myself, 'how can something be meaningful if you can find it anywhere'? The question didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, actually, I was a bit intrigued by the prospect.
I was at work at the time, I thought maybe I could find meaning outside, because it didn't seem like it'd be where I was working. I thought about what it would be like to take off my apron and just go outside... but what then? The adventure was staring at me right in the face, all I had to do was walk out that door and yet... I couldn't do it. I knew deep down nothing was waiting for me out there. Nobody would share my dream with me, the streets would be empty. I knew then that freedom, the concept of it... it's a ghost town.
I wish more than I ever wished for anything that I could make my dreams real, so that I could share them with others. I did this all the time as a kid... a playground could be a pirate-ship, it was as easy as blurting it out, others would join in and change the scenery into anything they wanted. A war would break out between the buccaneers, a story would unfold, it was invigorating, there was meaning to be found and explored, it was everywhere.
But then we subscribed to another idea as we got older... an idea that the world's not fair, that you'd have to compete under a very specific set of rules if you wanted to make it ahead in this world. When we subscribed to this idea, we destroyed our sense of wonder, we let go our search for meaning. Truth is... it didn't go anywhere, it's right there, it's been there this whole time, we're free to go back to it whenever we want to.
However, it doesn't seem as appealing by yourself. I wish I had someone to play pirates with... now all I can do is sit on the side and sigh as I'm unable to let go of the harsh realities of the world we live in. How can I sit here and play by myself when so many others are barely managing in this cruel little world we live in? The slow death, they call it... so long as you allow yourself a little bit of time each day to appreciate something, anything, you're considered healthy. Whatever gets you through it... whatever allows you to maximize some company's profits...
I wanted to cry earlier today. Couldn't do it. I was so happy earlier, I had a funny encounter with a pretty girl at the store, we shared a smile, and I carried on with my day... but then I realized how fleeting the experience was, how rare it was, how I couldn't hope to re-create it with any sort of genuineness. I was given my allotted time to appreciate something, and it passed... how can we hope to fill this emptiness with so little time?
Again I had to retreat inside myself. My dreams and hopes and ambitions are all still alive and well inside me... I try to share them when I can, but sometimes I miss my marks, and months pass by where nothing but small-talk is achieved.
Sometimes I wonder if childhood was a dream we woke up from, or if we simply went to sleep since...
Monday, June 4, 2012
Friday, June 1, 2012
Human capacity
If I could define my entire philosophy in a nice and compact sentence, it'd probably be something like "Meaning transcends experience". Which is why I usually don't try to define my entire philosophy in nice little compact sentences.
The idea... as simply as I can put it... is that our worldview, no matter what it is at any given time, is always extremely naive and limited. Not through any fault of our own, it's just that the complexity and diversity of rational thought as far as comprehending the entirety of the universe is just so mind-boggingly impossible that our 'wiggle room' so to speak is unfathomable as well. If there's ever been a consistent experience in my life, it's that as soon as I think I have something figured out, that I found out that there's so much more depth than I was previously aware of.
The phenomenon I speak of when I say something like "meaning transcends experience" though is... say there's a topic you're interested in. It could be anything, but just for the sake of an example, lets say.. .trigonometry. Not a complex subject, really, not everyone's a math whiz, but I assure you for those that aren't familiar with this level of math, that it's truly not that difficult of a concept. The majority of trigonometry is basically the 'art' of determining distances and angles of two or more points. This is actually an insanely innate trait of humanity. We have a pretty damn good understanding of how far away something is because of our depth perception, even if an object is really far away. If you consider the angle between the object and our two eyes, sometimes that angle is less than a single degree, and yet we can portray with a great deal of accuracy how far away that object is.
The complexity of trigonometry, like in most of math, is learning how to abstract the principles and knowing how to manipulate the formulas to figure out more complex and abstract equations. However, the more you play with it, the more intuitive even that becomes, it's like you're extending your base human instinct to essentially transcend the real world into an abstract one. Simply by exploring a system, you become familiar with it, and you start to understand the deeper implications. So while on the surface, trigonometry might seem like a bunch of formulas and equations, there's a deeper connection being subconsciously made that once it 'clicks', so to speak, you have a deeper understanding than just the formulas you learned, you can actually apply your knowledge to things you had no direct instruction on being able to solve, because you now have a 'deeper understanding' of the subject matter.
This is true for everything. Fashion, music, games, movies, you name it. Most things, if not all things, have some sort of level of underlying association with them, so a mastery of, say, architecture, could easily transcend itself and lend itself to your ability to understand music theory. Just recently, learning more about drawing and shading techniques, I've come to have a much greater appreciation for lighting effects in movies, and how they effect the emotional qualities of a given scene. Completely unrelated at first, but there's this underlying abstract architecture that connects everything, some sort of unseen quality of the universe.
The lesson to be learned here is that if something seems meaningless from the start, it probably means you haven't appreciated the deeper underlying picture yet. Simply through the act of exploring something and connecting the dots, the bigger picture becomes that much clearer, and something... meaningful starts to happen.
The logical conclusion to this line of thinking is, well, what exactly is the nature of the universe? Everything else is kind of meaningless in comparison, if you think about how small Earth is compared to the size of the observable Universe, which might be part of multiple Universes and... yeah, we're not even close to comprehending the entirety of it. And yet, no matter what we do, we're experiencing pieces of the Universe in small little bits, unwittingly getting a better idea of the bigger picture as we go along, it's all part of it, we're all part of it, it's essentially the same framework, we, and all the experiences we have, are all essentially part of the same thing. Cool, huh?
This way of thinking has actually lead me to pantheism, which it turns out is a pretty vague worldview, but it's interesting to think about from time to time. It gives everything meaning in a really weird round-about way, and gives me a little bit of perspective, y'know?
The idea... as simply as I can put it... is that our worldview, no matter what it is at any given time, is always extremely naive and limited. Not through any fault of our own, it's just that the complexity and diversity of rational thought as far as comprehending the entirety of the universe is just so mind-boggingly impossible that our 'wiggle room' so to speak is unfathomable as well. If there's ever been a consistent experience in my life, it's that as soon as I think I have something figured out, that I found out that there's so much more depth than I was previously aware of.
The phenomenon I speak of when I say something like "meaning transcends experience" though is... say there's a topic you're interested in. It could be anything, but just for the sake of an example, lets say.. .trigonometry. Not a complex subject, really, not everyone's a math whiz, but I assure you for those that aren't familiar with this level of math, that it's truly not that difficult of a concept. The majority of trigonometry is basically the 'art' of determining distances and angles of two or more points. This is actually an insanely innate trait of humanity. We have a pretty damn good understanding of how far away something is because of our depth perception, even if an object is really far away. If you consider the angle between the object and our two eyes, sometimes that angle is less than a single degree, and yet we can portray with a great deal of accuracy how far away that object is.
The complexity of trigonometry, like in most of math, is learning how to abstract the principles and knowing how to manipulate the formulas to figure out more complex and abstract equations. However, the more you play with it, the more intuitive even that becomes, it's like you're extending your base human instinct to essentially transcend the real world into an abstract one. Simply by exploring a system, you become familiar with it, and you start to understand the deeper implications. So while on the surface, trigonometry might seem like a bunch of formulas and equations, there's a deeper connection being subconsciously made that once it 'clicks', so to speak, you have a deeper understanding than just the formulas you learned, you can actually apply your knowledge to things you had no direct instruction on being able to solve, because you now have a 'deeper understanding' of the subject matter.
This is true for everything. Fashion, music, games, movies, you name it. Most things, if not all things, have some sort of level of underlying association with them, so a mastery of, say, architecture, could easily transcend itself and lend itself to your ability to understand music theory. Just recently, learning more about drawing and shading techniques, I've come to have a much greater appreciation for lighting effects in movies, and how they effect the emotional qualities of a given scene. Completely unrelated at first, but there's this underlying abstract architecture that connects everything, some sort of unseen quality of the universe.
The lesson to be learned here is that if something seems meaningless from the start, it probably means you haven't appreciated the deeper underlying picture yet. Simply through the act of exploring something and connecting the dots, the bigger picture becomes that much clearer, and something... meaningful starts to happen.
The logical conclusion to this line of thinking is, well, what exactly is the nature of the universe? Everything else is kind of meaningless in comparison, if you think about how small Earth is compared to the size of the observable Universe, which might be part of multiple Universes and... yeah, we're not even close to comprehending the entirety of it. And yet, no matter what we do, we're experiencing pieces of the Universe in small little bits, unwittingly getting a better idea of the bigger picture as we go along, it's all part of it, we're all part of it, it's essentially the same framework, we, and all the experiences we have, are all essentially part of the same thing. Cool, huh?
This way of thinking has actually lead me to pantheism, which it turns out is a pretty vague worldview, but it's interesting to think about from time to time. It gives everything meaning in a really weird round-about way, and gives me a little bit of perspective, y'know?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)