I just jumped into this so there isn’t much of an introduction. A paragraph long reply spawned an adventure into the inner reaches of my mind. To be fair I haven't posted here in years. It's past the due date but at least I am handing it in. A crude introduction to my philosophy and way of thinking that I believe leads to a stronger and happier identity.
I think that in order to really come to terms with the divide between subjective and objective, spirituality and science, one must understand how where they fit into our perception of the world.
We, human beings, understand the world though association. Everything around us is understood by it’s place in relation to the rest of the universe. It’s relativity. Objective items in our universal map are acquired though experience. Subjective objects on our maps are acquired though an intuitive process. Our understanding of reality can be seen as multi-dimensional spider web of everything in relevance to something else. The less links an object has to the rest of our universal map the less we understand it.
Allow me to draw you another image so we can be on the same page.
A man gets on a ship and starts sailing towards the horizon. He sails for many days and the ship’s food supplies are running out yet there seems to be no end to the body of water before him. He decided to return to port and tells the story of his experience. “We sailed and sailed”, he told his mates, “yet there was no end to the ocean before us, it’s as if it went on (and he labels the concept, lets pretend it was for the first time in history,) forever!” Of course it didn’t go on forever but never the less this was a very accurate description of his experience.
Since then other men have used the concept of “forever” to describe their experiences. For example a circle goes on forever according to one man. However it only goes on forever if you apply a very specific set of parameters. As long as you follow those the experience is true. Time seems to go on forever to another man. He hasn’t seen it start nor end and if assumes both of these to be absolute then his experience is true. We are probably noticing by now that there really hasn’t been a true experience of forever. No one has ever sailed the sea forever, walked in circular line forever or lived forever. We can imagine it though and the concept is good enough to explain the experiences at hand.
The subjective concept of forever is incomplete but it works well enough to describe the experience as they are. We apply infinity (forever) to science and physics. The more we utilize the concept of something infinite to describe experiences the more real it becomes to us; yet no one has ever actually experience infinity in the absolute sense.
This is where something very wonderful happens in the human brain. We start to associate this subjective concept with other concepts with the assumption that just because if it applies to some experiences in life, it may apply to all. And so, ideas like omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (absolute power), heaven (infinite happiness) and immortality (infinite life) are born. No one actually understands or comprehends such concepts but that’s okay – this is true of many things. Sometimes this process works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Further we can combine such concepts to create even more complex subjective concepts. The pursuit of understanding Time, for example, is full of such concepts. We have the concept of an absolute end and beginning. We have the concept of a straight linear flow of time. We have the concept of past and future. None of these have ever been experienced! Yet we often discuss them as if they are as real as the chair we sit in. We combine them to create even more complex subjective concepts.
I once put forward in this forum that free will doesn’t exist and someone replied with a wonderful parallel ideal. They said that if you start to look for life by dissecting living things into parts to find their life stuff you’ll eventually be left with a bunch of inanimate parts. You can never find life but yet we cannot doubt that we are alive. “Alive” being the description for our experience not an absolute concept floating somewhere in the universe.
Knowing and understanding this wonderful ability of the human mind is rather important to inner peace. We ask allot of question and have allot of discussion on this forum that become rather moot if we only stand back and note how we never truly understood our question.
There were many debates on the co-existence of free will and God in the same universe. Yet looking at all the pieces presented for both concepts it’s very clear that we don’t actually know what we are asking about. It’s all hypothetical at best.
Imagine this scenario.
A man builds a machine. He knows how it works and what it is capable off. He also built it’s environment. Now he set the machine loose in the environment and he can predict it’s actions based on his knowledge.
We take a look at this scenario and draw parallels to us and our concept of a God.
What if the ultimate man (God) built a machine (humans). The ultimate man has infinite knowledge and knows what everything is capable off. He also built everything. He sets us loose in the world that he built and based on his infinite knowledge can predict our actions.
The parallels are certainly there but only to a degree. Our mind is trying to relate the subjective concepts we don’t quite understand to objective concepts we experience. We can see how this is a great tool for learning and understanding the world around us but sometimes it backfires. For starters we are not robots...
This is where I come to my conclusion on how human being cause themselves much grief in pursuit for knowledge and understanding. What causes strife is competition between subjective and objective realities. The center of a healthy person’s universal map has a majority of objective concepts. Real experience connected together to give him an understanding of the world around him. Gaps in his understanding are filled with subjective concepts that allow him to function far outside his normal parameters of experience and objective understanding. This is what we might call “having faith”.
A person can become too skeptical and ignore the subjective objects in his universal map leaving him with a very strong base of reasoning but a rather limited ability to explore outside his limited human experience.
Another person might put too much faith in his subjective concepts and begin to create whole other universal maps in order to comprehend his subjective experience.
This reminds me of pre-Copernican astrologists who believe that the circle was the most pure form and since God who is perfect created the heavens he must have made all planets and stars move in perfect circles. Well their system almost worked. They added more and more circles to their star charts so that planets moved in circles upon circles until they got so good that they could predict the placing of a planet in the sky to within a minute in a year. Yet it wasn’t perfect. That minute bothered them and they tried to add more and more perfect circles to the orbits of planets. Then one day came Copernicus and suggested replacing all those scribbles, wonderful as they were, with just one ellipse – which is of course, as we know now, is the path every planet in our solar system takes.
A person can hold on to his subjective ideas so tightly that objective experience start being used to fill in the gaps between objective concepts. A person can build an entire subjective universal map. How close can we get to simulating the workings of our objective reality with subjective knowledge? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so far down the rabbit hole. Perhaps it’s not even possible. However it’s something to consider because there are people who die trying.
I believe that happiness comes from balance. Believing in what we experience first and foremost and having faith that we will not stumble despite the darkness all around us. The greatest thing a human being should believe in is themselves. Your life and your experiences are the greatest barometer to truth. We have been gifted with intuition. We have been gifted with the ability to know. We have been gifted with the power to act. In the end all life is action. When we reach out with our hands and touch the world around us it gives us feedback. It’s our job to interpret that feedback and place it accordingly in our world map. If it’s rejected by hostile subjective concepts or the fact that it isn’t supported enough by other objective experiences then we will live in dissonance with the world around us. I just can’t see that being a happy state.
I remember the movie Matrix spawned much discussion on the reality of our universe. I just though, if we are in a dream, is that dream any less real than reality? It wasn’t an answer, it was a demonstration that we didn’t understand the question. Basing one’s decision in life on answers to questions you don’t understand usually leads to strife.
Balance is key. Many people try to strengthen their view of the world by going to extremes of science, spirituality, faith or nihilism. We keep pushing the boundaries of our beliefs in hopes of finding true strength and courage to live life. "If we only have more faith or greater understanding", we tell ourselves. True courage comes to those who dare to experience the world as it is, raw, in this moment. True strength comes to those who have faith in themselves to understand and live in that raw moment despite their limits.
It is here, in the moment we live in and in ourselves, that we will find happiness, progress, adventure, peace, love and everything else we look for. Philosophy can only take us so far.
My muse is drained. More to come
