All Along the Watchtowers. Date Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 04:19 PM PST Topic Experiences Isn't it funny how you always know that you are right? There is very little doubt, you have reasoned it through and all of the steps make sense, each action has an equal and opposite reaction, every cause has an effect and every effect has its corresponding cause. The thing is that you weren't right. It all made sense and you weren't wrong, you just weren't right either. The odd thing about right and wrong is that they can go either way at any time and it doesn't matter how secure you were in that knowledge, it just no longer applies. Every time one makes a decision it works fine until you start to think about it. Questioning your motives, what you hoped would change for you and for everyone else doesn't help. It is always your intent which is pure, anybody who disagrees is entitled to their point of view, but they don't really understand, do they? Ok, enough of the introductory punchy sentences, here is some flesh for dem dry bones: There is a logical fallacy 'P but I do not believe P' which seems to me, in my infinite wisdom, to be amongst the most important points in understanding people. Obviously, every decision made is based upon what you think and believe at the time, to do otherwise would be sheer folly. It would be saying P but I do not believe P. The problem is that one's mind, if it is to be open, must always be in flux, and if it is to always be within a state of change then there can be no consistency, which opposes the instinctive understanding of the self as an enduring body. How does one choose which ideas to absorb and accept and which to reject? This choice requires a pre-defined basis which must have come from somewhere or one must be childlike and accepting of everything, which is an unworkable lifestyle. The chooser would be open to all influence, malign and benign, safe and dangerous or whatever else was wished upon them. There seems to be a dichotomy. This article won't even attempt to solve the problems involved, I can't do it for you or I would be the influencer and it would no longer be your decision, which is the whole point, really, isn't it? What I am doing is expressing the confusion that this problem generates within me. I try to be open to all new ideas. I speak dogmatically, but think openly and am constantly questioning myself, usually thinking that I must have been wrong. I have studied philosophy, both academically and otherwise for many years and it is essential to excercise a rigour of thought while still allowing flexibility as I am sure that most of you will already know. I have finally reached a stumbling block; if I am to set a rigid, defining cutoff then I will be closed to a potentially useful, or potentially right idea. One is always taught to search for an absolute, but all absolutes are ethereal. At what point do you close off an idea? There are so many uncertainties in this world (and most of the certainties are based on the uncertainties) that there is no way to know which to accept. Does one go with the most convincing? the one with the most circumstantial evidence? the one which contains the most of what one already believes? All seem to boil down to a question though: Why? The damn why, which is to be the bane of all thinking people's existence. Why do two opposite fields repel? Well why does that happen? Well, what causes that? Cause and effect are the twin bases for most of modern science, but the cause is getting hazy, and the effects harder to find. How about a less definite study, say morality. It may not even exist, but it is so ingrained that one can do little about it. Right and wrong are here to stay. The hell of the final hurdle seems further with each passing moment, not closer. When God died he left a gaping void (literal as well as metaphorical meaning intended) into which pours the intellectual curiosity of the masses. Some can focus, and some cannot. It is those who cannot who live with the confusion. If one wants to know everything then one must learn everything, from top to bottom. I think you see the problem. Where is the top? how deep is the bottom? and, shitting hell, what if we find it? Back to P and I don't believe P. Because of the inversion rules it is entailed that 'not P and I believe P' is also a fallacy. My problem is that it is no longer possible to tell whether P or not P. Every thing I do is judged wrong by another, when I open my imagination to their point of view I see that too. To be the perfect moralist, scientist, philosopher, or any other of the contemplative arts one must sacrifice rigour of thought, which does not allow for conceptual perfection because of the mutability of thought. This leaves me with the possibility that there is no absolute, no definite, nothing recognisable to a person brought up within Christian, western, Americo-European society. Everything I have been told was wrong or uncertain, and I'm not even sure about that. As the great man said, 'There is too much confusion, I can't get no relief.' This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=799