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Measuring Stick
I changed the name of this to update it.
OK, this isn't poetry but just some thoughts on metaphysics and other issues That I have to get out. I was just reading Human, All to Human by Frederick Nietzsche(I have no life..lol) and realized that we really don't know very much about the world we live in or our true relation to it." All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values" Frederick Nietzsche
What do we really know about the world we live in or our true relation to it? I'm not just talking about the world around us that we can touch and feel but the entire cosmos. We all know about how we live on a planet spinning around the Sun with other planets that makes up what we call the Solar System and how our solar system is just one of a million others that make up what we call the Galaxy, but why should we just limit it to that and not expand it out even further? It would make sense to me that maybe we should expand it further. Most likely all the Galaxies that we know of are also spinning around a central core making up a Super Galaxy, and Maybe, all the Super Galaxies are spinning around another central core creating a Super Extreme Galaxy. lol We don't know! Just how big is the Universe? This is all talking about the Macroscopic world, but It works the same in the realm of the microscopic. Scientist are currently working on and spending Billions of dollars to find out just how small the Quantum(Sub-Atomic) world is. What if it is infinitely small just as the Cosmos is infinitely large. It seems to me that we try to define these concepts because we want to feel secure in the knowledge that the world we live in is one that follows a set of laws that can be defined and codified, which essentially does away with any sort of faith. Our need to quantify and qualify what we don't understand says much more about us as individuals than it does the universe. If you ask a child how he is doing on a day in which he is playing on the beach he most likely will tell you that the world is a great place in which to live and everything is beautiful. If you ask and old man who is suffering from physical ailments the same question on the same day he will most likely tell you that life and the world is troublesome. Why? The reason for the differences is that when we talk about the world around us, what we are really talking about is how we FEEL about the world around us. Man truly is the measure of all things(at least from our perspective). There is no doubt that if you were to remove your central nervous system that the rest of existence would still be there. How it exists on its own without our perception of it is another matter. We each truly live in our own world in many respects.If there is a point to this, it's that I don't know and you don't either. We believe in concepts because they seem to work for us and fit into the paradigm we choose to follow until it doesn't work for us anymore in which case we change and find another that does. I am a Christian and believe that the person Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be, which is the son of God and the way to know the heart of God. I am also a Christian relativist,which means that I don't believe I get any special treatment in this world for "being" a Christian. This is what I feel to be true. In the end I think toleration across the board is the best idea since ultimately we only have our beliefs.
The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras is known for making the statement," Man is the measure of all things." Many have wondered over the centuries and even up to this day just exactly what he meant by this statement. How could this possibly be true? If this statement were true it would mean that each of us see and perceive the world in a different way. It would mean that each of us have a different set of emotions and responses to situations we run into on a day to day basis and throughout our lives. It essentially would mean that each of us live in a different world and draw different meanings from life. To me, this is exactly what he meant and the only honest philosophical system. Modern neuroscience can show that each of us are completely different. The connections between just two brain cells by dendrites(fibers that connect) can vary from 10 connections per cell in one person to 100,000 between those same two cells in another person. You have 100 Billion Brain cells! This is a tiny example of just how different we really are as individuals. We each perceive things in a different way. Lets take the concept of time for an example. Time is a human concept. It was developed by us to quantify life into increments. These increments originally were probably seasonal in an earlier time and based on the necessity to have crops in out of the field before they spoil. This is time of necessity. During the industrial revolution these time increments sped up,so to speak, and people no longer lived by their own biology. The individual started to be required to conform to time increments outside their biology. Is it any wonder that we live in a world where 9 out of 10 people are using substances to keep up with the pace of their lives. Talk about social Darwinism! We are adapting to a false concept, not thriving based on biological time. This concept of time only exists because we don't stop to question it. The concept of time is based on perception and experience in life. When we are in first grade it seems to take forever and we have lots of new learning experiences. As we get older(40's and 50's) we notice that time seems to speed up. Why? This is because the perception of time is based on percentage. The time between a persons first year of life and their second year is 50% of their life while the time between the 50th and 51st year is 1/50th of your perceptive life. So you see, time exists as a concept but can't be a force in the universe. You are the measure of all things, so what do you think?
So, now on to Hermeneutics! What's that? It's a word that means simply to interpret, or "What does it mean". An example of the science of Hermeneutics is this: If we are having a conversation about something and the word 'Refrigerator' comes up, it will not mean the same thing to each of us but will impact all of us in somewhat of a different way depending on our experience in life and our biological make-up. To the person who was brought up in an affluent house the word Refrigerator might evoke images,memories, and feelings of a box full of goodies and the place where mom satisfied our need for food. To the person who was raised in a financially poorer home it is a place of emptiness and to the person who lived during the time refrigerators were invented and brought into households, it represents something to make life much easier. I bring this up just to point out that after any discussion, although with some common understanding, each person will walk away with somewhat of a different meaning from the talk. A professor was giving a talk at a university on philosophy and made the statement to the class that we can build a philosophical system if we can all just agree on a few basic terms as a starting point for the discussion. He pointed out that we could probably most all agree that the color of the paint on the wall of this particular room was white, or at least some form of white and this proves that there is a basic understanding that we all have and can build from. One of the sincere students who was there and had just taken a course on optics pointed out to the professor that the reason we call the color 'white' is because the pigment in the paint is absorbing all the light spectrum except the color white and this pigment is deflecting White back out to us-thus, the color that we just agreed is white is actually everything but white. We might all agree on the color but we would all be wrong. To this the professor said, "it might be best if you just stay quiet". lol So, when it comes down to what meanings or values we assign to certain things, it is based on individual perception which is wholly owned by the person. This now comes to the word (Mind) and what it means. In our modern world the mind is considered essentially the brain or thinking part of our being, but it hasn't always been this way. Epicurus and other philosophers of his time had a much different take on what the word (mind) meant. From their perspective The Brain was and organ and so was the heart and not until the two functioned together was it called the 'Mind'. So after looking into it I now believe that when most people talk about the Mind, what they are really talking about is this abstraction. The brain thinks...the heart decides, and together they're what we call the Mind. This may be starting to sound a little Relativistic to some, but my reason for writing it is to show that each person has reasons for the decisions they make and what they believe in, although 'others' may not understand the reasoning. This is why you are the measure of all things.
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