Get Email Updates • Email this Topic • Print this Page
That business of motion being an illusion is most interesting, it could be a topic in itself. Why do you say that motion is illusion?
Life primarily is time, which explains movement, but as time is the same for those who live a minute and those who live beyond their minds, life is all. Since we have nothing other to judge reality by, life is everything, and those who trade lives for money, or adventure, or anything other than more life are the greatest of fools. What use has a memory when the mind for memories dies? Why take from another his path to meaning, and his everthing to have only a something for yourself. All things are the thing: Life.
Actually "Life primarily is time", needs a little qualification, reality is motion and its measured quality is time, actually I have forgotten space without which motion would not be possiable. So, it seems life is motion measured through space is time, but what if it was not measured at all, is it not still motion, not still reality, not still life. Actually I think your touching on a standing truth in the above, without a conscious subject there is nothing.
Fido,
Excellent, I would like a little time to digest this, great stuff!! I shall return!
Do you believe all that one might call the 'stream of consciousness' -all you are sensing right now minus your feelings about the feelings is in some way not objectively what is occuring? Our lives minus our considerations, or deliberations, our plans and fears for the future, or or regrets and memories of the past is all stream of consciousness. We learn to see, but can witness to what we are seeing without knowing its significance, or judging its meaning and value.
With time we have change that marks our lives off into segments. Is it the segments we relate first to changes of season and to day and night what give meaning to our lives or is it our lives which give meaning to them; to time? The more conscious we are of the value of time the more likely we are to divide it into smaller and smaller pieces not directly relative to anything in life but to life, lived in minutia rather than in gross. We know by insight, by the logic of emotion that time is life, and life is meaning, so time is meaning too. In the great play of existence does it matter whether one lives a minute or a hundred years? The longer existence plays out the more a minute comes to equal a hundred years. It is the life we have to reckon the time by. If it is filled by life the time has meaning.
I believe you are saying a number of things here, not all of which I think I agree with, but perhaps most. The first paragraph seems to enlighten us to the fact that most of reality we are unaware of. The second premise here seems to state that these things we are unaware of are still objective realities--------yes? That which is not conscious to a subject has no meaning nor any value, this is what consciousness brings to the objective world [read physcial world] So that which is not known to an organism on any level of consciousness in effect does not exist. It is an interesting problem you present, for are not the conditions the organism is subjected to, even if the organism is unaware of them, effective elements in the state of the organism? This I think causes us to wonder just how extensive consciousness is, and/or how extensive the organism is. This is I find a very stimulating post Fido------well done! The second paragraph, you are speaking of the physcial realities of change as in the arch of the sun, the rotation of the earth. You ask does this give meaning to our lives or do our lives give meaning to these physical happenings. The most obvious answer, if we are thinking in terms of cognitve concepts and meaning, would be of course, all meaning is the property of the subject, and it is the subject that gives meaning to the physical world---in a rather egocentric way. The idea of meaning though is intrigueing for what we experience on a lower level, on a biological level, example how we are effected by the physcial world, cannot be simply what we are cognitively aware of. This is delightful Fido!! You state life is meaning, this is a little shakey, how much meaning do you think an earth worm brings to the world, the earth worm is in effect the relations it has with the world and little else, though that might be said of us as well. I think in the discussion it is going to be essential to expand our idea of organism, and/or individual ect.., "It is life we have to reckon time by. The world is filled with life which gives time its meaning." Indeed without the conscious subject there is no time, time is a concept, and only conscious beings can form concepts. A lot of stuff here to ponder and play with, great post Fido!!! Even this post is a little rash on my part, but it should be an interesting discussion.
Fido,
I was looking for something a little more tangible in reply! I am sure you will not harm me, even if you are not one of us:eek:
Fido,
I think when we begin to make judgements on what we experience that we make them subjectively. Now, if we recognize something in the stream of experience we are likely working with socially acquired knowledge, and what we recognize as a tree or a mountain is objectively what all people would consider to be tree or mountain. We do not give to the things we see a personal and subjective value, or meaning, unless we see they are likely to effect our lives, so they are neutral qualitatively. If the question is: Do we see what we see objectively and in agreement with others; I would answer, usually yes."quote
"Life objectively is meaning. My life means nothing to you, and the meaning I give to it seems subjective. I don't view anything about my life as subjective, but as the objective reality, and even while I tend to look at your opinion regarding your life as subjective, I think I cannot do so with reason. Is it reasonable to believe that my objective reality, the truth of all truths, my life, is in my case objective and in your case subjective? We all feel the same about our own lives as the objective reality, and in this we are all correct."quote
"A worm would find more meaning in my death than in my life. What I find objectively of value he does not. Weeding my garden invariably results in him or one of his burrowing buddies becoming divided. C'est le guerre. But, for the worms, like myself, it is life, each ones life- that gives to all thing of life their meaning. Not everything that has identity necessarily has meaning, or a value of note to our lives. It is life which gives meaning to time. We have a sense of time that is biological, and we have a value for time which is social, but it is the relation of time to life- that people seem to sense before they can know- that gives such value to time. And just as with life itself, I judge time objectively, and think you judge it subjectively and in the end see we each judge from the same point in the universe, and so, are both correct in regard to self. If together we should reach for a clock to tell us the time, it is not because we each do not know exactly what the time is (now), but are using the clock as an easy path to agreement with others, which we do because each of us finds meaning and value in agreement in light of our own lives and needs.
I agree for the most part, we have a bit of difference in our favoured terminologies, hopefully that will not create difficulty in the future.
Did you ever hear a robin weep when leaves begin to die, that means he's lost the will to live--------I am so lonesome I could cry! Yeah!!:eek: We understand one another I think.
I grew up on Hank Williams. The silence of a falling star. A poem does not have to rhyme as a song, but a song needs no great complexity to say, and in the case of the above song, to paint a stark picture of loneliness.
Some of what I was trying to say before, is that, in the process of learning all the common words, which are concepts in their own right which refer to the reality around us we are also learning the objective meaning of what we see as experienced by all others. We do not subjectively label what we experience. The labels are there telling us we are seeing nothing new, and nothing unique to us. Only when we begin to judge on the basis of factors common to ourselves and others like us does the experience of experience really become subjective.
I could not agree more. I recall when I was much younger when faced with a lack of enthusiasm from my limited social circle. I thought, there is some kind of unconscious conspiracy that states that reality is rather humdrum, life is a gray monday morning. This is just what you are speaking of here I believe. There is also the idea that context defines, and it certainly applies in what you have pointed out above. Funny though, that perhaps there is always someone that will not be happy with the given meaning, particularly if it is in fact unrewarding, indeed anti-life. Fortunately or unfortunately I think it does, for the most part we claim it for ourselves, we make it our own, is this not the character of a social creature?
