艱難を越えて、僕までかすかな声響いて。
醒めた、澄み切った夜空の盈月より、
心の芯までしみこんで、冷えたこの夜を乗り越えられる気でもする。
泪だに零せない鏡のこの池は―砂漠になりける我が顔―
冷淡な氷溶けよ。
もう一つの月が見えるように。
As I walk from campus, I happen upon a usually dark area that seems to be surrounded by a gentle light. Searching for the source of the ethereal, almost tangible, light I see a crescent moon being covered by a veil of clouds high in the sky. Is the moon something I picture because I will it so? Or has the moon been placed there with its veil because it was fate or some higher power that put it there for me to view? Or can I so plainly say that since the Big Bang molecules and collided, elements go through their half-lives simply for me to pass by unaware of the beauty surrounding me?
By no means do I intend to pretend to know the workings of the universe, however ignoring the beauty of my surroundings, the myriad ginkgo leaves that are my fellow human beings seems like an awful waste. Science seems like the more logical interpretation of my surroundings, but do I dare seek a non-existent or less than sufficient answer? Must there be an answer or an explanation to the sand that slips nonchalantly from between my fingers?
Allow me to be condemning of science for a brief moment - trust me, I find science fascinating yet there is something that must be addressed. Once science has achieved its goal of understanding the universe, what will it do to continue on? Or will it disappear akin to a vestigial organ within us? Will the gray static be helped by a constant change...or will it follow the capitalistic tendencies defined prior in destroying competition as emerald canopies burn to static-gray ash?
Furthermore, born of religion and magic, science is simply an evolved form of the former. What motivates the scientific community to prod its masses? What motivates today's religious communities to convert and proselytize those who do not believe in precisely the same way? They, as far as I am concerned, are one and the same. Evolved - survived - from some common ancestor in the human shared consciousness that I am certain exists, be it psychic or of some other form.
Call me crazy. Accuse me of psychopathy...at least I feel the somber calling of the crescent moon through clouds. Glowing vibrantly - reflecting, harmonizing with my soul as I search in the dark for what I have always had. Blame me for your tears, your frustration, your terrifying hatred, yet I hope the frozen and unyielding pond - no, the ocean - of your tears frees the reflection of the moon hidden and ancient deep within your waters one day. One day.
Internal and external contradiction are alike the moon and the reflection of the moon in a pond. Whether you interpret this world as a mere dream, or the next as non-existent and live for the moment, no one can possibly deny that neither (in terms of internal and external contradiction) exist. The moon is your soul, your consciousness. Its reflection is your self as perceived from others surrounding the pond. Whatever disturbs its waters, be it the rain or the people surrounding the pond, are what life throws at you - be it a gentle 漣 on the surface or a boulder heaved into the center destroying the reflection of the moon. However, as the moon orbits loyally around the earth its image may be seen again in the pond even if from a different angle. Although the original moon and its reflection may change, they are in essence - if not exactly a continuity - a descendant of a common ancestor. This seemingly impossible constant change brings forth creation and destruction.
If you do not want to deny what you feel inside, there is nothing forcing you.
If you do not want to deny what is outside of you, there is nothing forcing you.
Except maybe you.
Hello there! Finally got some time to reply to this post! I love the way you manage to be poetic about these things, really envy you actually :P
返信削除So science... I've always seen it as a tool we use to understand physical phenomena, nothing more. Not a reason or a purpose or the ultimate truth, simply the way we found to make predictions about what will happen. We observe the sun comes up every 24 hours, from this we can plan things and think ahead. Science, with the help of mathematics, puts things in this plain of predictability, at least to a certain extent, and this helps us to improve our lives, and reach the realm of technology.
We observe how viruses reproduce and from that we can plan ourselves not to contract diseases. We observe how the atoms behave and we can make use of nuclear energy. We observe the evolution of species and understand more about how our own genes work.
Science also tells us our limits. I don't know if you are familiar with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in Quantum physics for example, which tells us we can never be certain of an electron's position and velocity at the same time (which is very disappointing to me particularly, the idea of uncertainty in science is hard for me to accept but I have to face it that it might be the case that our capacity is limited and period). So science might not understand it all, after all. But even if it did, would life be less beautiful just because we understand it?
In this video, which I know you've watched already but I'll bring it up again for the sake of a deeper discussion, the narrator mentions that knowing that mountains were formed by the movement of plate tectonics does not take away their beauty. I agree with him entirely. It seems to me that there is a common misconception that science takes away the beauty of things. Knowing that the moon is another crumble from the big bang as our Earth is, that it's more visible at night and that it looks beautiful to our eyes because we evolved on this planet having to look at it, does not make it less beautiful to my eyes. This self-awareness of understanding I came about through natural processes does not take away my nature. I'm still a human being, and my genes make it so that I appreciate natural beauty. Knowing how things got there does not make you "unaware of the beauty surrounding you.
And since you mentioned religion, I have to make a little parenthesis here and mention that religion, unlike science, is about certainty. And it will never accept to be otherwise. It's about knowing how things came to be and why they are here. It's institutionalizing the way people are supposed to appreciate natural beauty, which I find to be a violation, but well, anyone can live their lives as they please.
For me, science is about skepticism. I'm aware that there are science fanatics too though, unfortunately. But the way I see it, it's about constantly asking yourself if things are really that way, if there are no holes. Being too certain might bring you to very wrong conclusions.
Sorry for writing so much, I just couldn't stop the thoughts which came to my head while reading your post. I could write more actually hehe... Oh and before I leave, can I ask you to clear up for me what you mean by "born of religion and magic, science is simply an evolved form of the former"? I feel like a good talk can come from that ;)
Thanks for inspiring me, inspirationism ^^
Oh, this discussion reminded me of an old post of mine, God as the missing piece, you can take a look if you are interested ^^
返信削除Hey, Im glad I stopped by. You are a great writer. I enjoy reading your blog a lot.
返信削除I feel that although science can tell us a whole lot about the material, external world it fails in explaining fully the workings of the mind. It can tell us about the real moon in space, about its properties, about its movements, but it cannot predict completely its reflection, what will bend it, how it will look.
Human beings and their minds are complex. Take love for example. Science already has some explanations as to what the feeling of love is. It is a mixture of chemicals that make us feel happy. But when I tell someone in love that their feelings are just a product of the chemicals releasd by the last orgasm they had, they will refuse to stop at that... because "there's gotta be something more". I myself would not like to erode my feelings for another person by pinning them down directly to the physical causes that produce them. Science is concerend with cause and effects, no? But there's gotta be more to life than that....I think there is.
The thing that makes life be more than a series of causes is US. our minds that allow us to experience. Perhaps someone without a mind, or without the capacity to understand that experience, might FEEL the same feelings of love, but him without a mind, would not be able to really see something "more" to them. He would feel the synapses working, the warm joy, the contentment, but these all would be lost without that consciousness that makes us PERCIEVE certain things as special or sublime.
If science is the only point of view we allow ourselves to have, then I feel we are missing out on experiencing life to its fullest. Sure, we can conceplate coldly that mountains are made of plate tectonics, and we can disect the view we have by understanding that the causes that formed them. But when we get that *feeling* that you belong in this earth, that you are one with nature, or a feeling that maybe doesn't even deserve words and explanations - it is US and our consciousness intervening and interacting with those phyisical particles, and then everything changes. Life stops being just a series of causes, and it becomes something else completely, and this is something that we cannot understand.
I am reminded of the observer effect. We are that observer, we are that consciousness that makes life be more than what science can explain. I've rarely met someone who is in love who admits to it being a mere result of physical causes. Deep inside they know very well that it is somethiing GRAND that it is much more than that.
Looking at the external world and the mountains and the moon in orbit, we might not find that "god", that "grandiousity". but it is when we look at ourselves, within, and have these moments when we converse with the "i" and realize we are alive, thats when we can find "god". if we dare to look. because only that "i" is the one that can know, with certainty that is not backed up by facts, that what he or she feels is real. more real than dopamine running through the brain.
Well.
返信削除What you two bring to the table is always something so unfathomable, so beyond what I had expected to hear that I have to read and re-read your posts to make sure I understand where you are coming from. Ah, the wonders of the Internet - and yet another branching from the tree that is human consciousness.
As chapulina had pointed out before in her blog "God as the missing piece", more so, her quote from Socrates in the opening, it is not merely the limits of science...it is all the limits that we have seen from magic and religion being unable to explain our transient world. From my perspective, and again I do not mean to belittle just point out where I am coming from, science and empiricism as a means of "understanding the universe" is merely a subjective interpretation of how things work interactively based on a complex system of theories and hypotheses that may not even be correct but have valuable argumentative weight to them. By definition, very close to what religion is attempting to do.
In other words, from a continual evolutionary perspective humans developed the cognition that their surroundings had MEANING, that is, some ulterior force unseen to the human eye had planted them on this earth as a simple but perhaps flawed explanation to their situation. The discovery of a method to survive led people to worship that discovery or person who had discovered such a miracle. With science, on the other hand or maybe in much the same way, when someone recognizes the inner workings of some sort of phenomena or obtains more solid empirical evidence the scientific community hails them.
In this way, you cannot criticize the methodology of neither science nor our ancient ancestors. I will yield in your view that science in its empiricism explains our surroundings more efficiently, I cannot yield in the realm of what myatama was saying in her response. That is, within their individual paradigms, both science and religion our fulfilling a purpose that is of apparent necessity to the human condition. And what I mean to say with science being a branch off of the same evolutionary tree is precisely this - that both seek to describe our surroundings.
CONTINUED
返信削除Now, picking up and maybe altering to some extent on myatama and chapulina's opinions, is that that same 'institutionalization' that religion provides is extremely close to what I mean to portray with a communal human consciousness.
In the past, whereas people seemed truly devotional to their respective deities and obtained various types of inspiration and added some sort of abstract or arbitrary natural connection with these deities in an attempt to explain their surroundings despite lack of empirical evidence or even the tools to discern empirical evidence - man, that is a mouthful - science, now, has the ability to rationalize the inner workings of the exact things that religion found inspiration from. It is here, I hope this is clear to you guys, where I am critical of science. I no longer have the criticism that you lack or have ever lacked the ability to be sensitive to beauty, it is just the fact that science attacks those who have 'unfounded' or 'evidential lack' in terms of how people may feel inspiration towards any given thing - be it 'real' or 'surreal'. To quote myatama,
"But when we get that *feeling* that you belong in this earth, that you are one with nature, or a feeling that maybe doesn't even deserve words and explanations - it is US and our consciousness intervening and interacting with those phyisical particles, and then everything changes. Life stops being just a series of causes, and it becomes something else completely, and this is something that we cannot understand..."
Here, and I am assuming my interpretation of your words is correct, you are pointing out what some out there in the scientific community have been attacking. And that is the lack of evidence to have any given thought or opinion - or what chapulina has termed as "the missing piece".
Which is where my inspirationist view must rear its ugly head and proselytize - although I do not seek to obtain people who share my opinions, rather seek to hear everyone's precious, individualistic and empirically challenged perspectives. This "missing piece" that exists within every human being is highly individualized and has the right to exist within the world. By no means do I want to attack chapulina's perspective - far from it, especially because she lacks the fanaticism of most - it is just the fact that your fear of religious institutionalism walks hand in hand with scientific empiricism. My views with inspirationism are to take a step away from this institutionalization and respect each and every single individual for their precious contribution that they may possibly give society.
The problem with this, however, is that to be human one must interact with other human beings - otherwise they lack the categorical criteria to be labeled as such. It may be that societal formation requires such institutionalization for humanity to exist interactively. The fact that we three who are using English as a uniform method of communication is yet an offspring of that necessity for institutionalization.
In other words, time for Casey to learn Portuguese or Spanish.
I suppose the new direction of our conversation should be myatama's "cause and effect" conundrum as well as the validity of our perception that something may be special or not, but I have neither the direction nor the energy to respond to this.
返信削除Look forward to further discussion!
Completely agree with inspirationism. You made my point more clear by openly stating how scientific empiricism denigrates any opinion that is not based on factual provable observations.
返信削除the ideal, is as you say, is that we would all learn not only to respect each other's observations about the world out of pure tolerance but to actually be able to be enriched by those views. to open ourselves to different people and individual views and grow together.
it is in this unification of pieces (each piece being held by each individual) that i see potential for the development of the human race.
religion has nothing to do with tolerance. imposition of a view or a "missing piece" as THE piece. i think the missing piece is inside all of us and the more we expose ourselves to other views, the more complete we are to navigate through this life. no?
Maybe a good strategy to argue for the value of opinions that are not empirically proven would be to point out what they bring to mankind. i would say that art, literature, and poetry are some of those things, but not everyone shares a view that these things have actually done anything for humanity other than entertain those with the taste for them. i know chapulina doesn't like art for example. where do we find proof of this need to value philosophical discussions of this sort an input that is based "merely" on individualized subjective inspiration? ....
Perhaps that individualized subjective inspiration is a facet of our souls or our identities?
返信削除This opens a whole new arena for discussion.
I read your blog "God wants us to be Evil" and thought about the idea of what our existence is structured from. Physical, spiritual, communal is my current structure hypothesis. I would be interested to hear more about your guys'.
In other words, what are we?