I will compile my earlier writings, which were previously posted on this blog, here. I will go over them and let my newest spellchecker do its work, and edit it if necessary. I do this for the interested, but mainly for myself, as part of my search for a cohesive story.
Day 626. I enjoy capturing details of ordinary things, focusing on only a few parts at a time. It reminds me of real life, where our eyes have everything in focus all the time. Where our minds also see a picture, like in a cinema, clear in focus, far away, and large. But when you go out of focus, get closer, and only see the little details, you might be surprised.
In the summer, I enjoy taking close-up pictures of insects. When I walk in the garden, I see no insects, maybe a fly or a bee, but not much more, so where to go? Usually, I sit in the grass near some bushes and wait. I lean a little bit closer to the ground, maybe, and then you slowly start to see a whole new world. First, you see nothing, but take some time, study the surroundings, and you see things you would usually never see. This is analogous to real life: you have an idea; an opinion is welling up, you see it in front of you, and an emotion takes over, whispers to you the thoughts that come first. But what if you sit down in the grass there by the bushes? You let your mind settle down, and slowly you wait till the details come to mind. Maybe you discover the small creatures crawling in your thoughts that were unknown to you, guiding your thoughts that you had when you were standing just there before. Life and living keep so much more hidden for you if you don’t take the time to question yourself.
Day 878, What is it that defines us?
Or, what is “us”? Are we not all formed by our surroundings? Is it not our parents, school, city, and country that form us? Don’t we speak the language of our neighbors and follow their customs?
Or would you be the same person if you were born in a different time and place? Is there a soul that contains our personality?
I ask these questions because I often hear people claim that their way of doing things is the best, and sometimes even that it is the only way. How can you claim that your way is the right way if it is spoon-fed to you? Can they not imagine that the other side has contradicting ideas because they are raised in a world where their ideas were spoon-fed to them and thus prevalent?
My conclusion for now is that it is challenging for human beings to live in constant doubt about their own identity, where we constantly ask ourselves if our opinions are given to us or are somehow original.
The world is ruled by people who claim that they know, but we all know that they don’t. Is humankind still in its adolescent face?
Day 880, Taking away the mystery of understanding.
David Hume wrote in his famous book, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” that the things we think about are composed of the things we have seen earlier. Like the golden mountain we can imagine, it’s made of the gold and the mountain we have seen before. The book delves much deeper than this and is widely recognized as an important work in the field of philosophy. I don’t do it justice by highlighting this particular idea and taking it out of its context, but still, I do.
Have you ever thought about where your thoughts come from? Do they just appear? Does something in you make those thoughts out of nothing? Where were your thoughts that you have now when you were 5 years old? Do we collect the parts of our thoughts over time? Are we just combining bits and pieces, things we gathered, into our thoughts?
I think it isn’t easy to be an original thinker. No matter what we do, we must apply the things we have learned to form our own thoughts, and only the exceptional person can combine the knowledge they have acquired into something truly original. It is not for nothing that thinkers like Plato or Aristoteles are still studied. They had drawn such profound conclusions from their experiences that hardly anybody since has come close to them.
If I look around in the bookstore or at social media, it seems that everybody has an opinion and often puts it on the same level as someone who has made it their life’s work to form sound opinions, someone who has seen all the dead alleys and left them behind. Climate change is a prime example where many people seem to have a clear understanding, whereas even experts struggle to comprehend it and find a solution. As if they, the opinionated modern man, know the answer without the experience necessary.
We cannot imagine a golden mountain without having seen a mountain and gold beforehand. The opinionated modern man can dismiss climate change without ever studying biogeochemical cycles, ecological and agroecological systems, and human-environment interactions. Do those people question their dentist or car mechanic with the same certainty?
It’s humility we need, I don’t know anything about climate change, so I trust the people who do, just like I listen to my doctor or trust Hume more than myself if he talks about our mind.
“What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.”
David Hume
Nochrisis 