I've always found philosophy interesting.
Everyone has at some point in their lives thought about life, the universe, and all of the mind-bending questions associated. Perhaps we do it to find meaning in our lives, to better understand the world around us. Perhaps we do it because we're bored. Either way, I've had my fair share of philosophical thoughts, and today I thought I'd open them up for discussion. Now, let me give you full disclosure; I hardly even know the definition of philosophical, much less know if the questions I'm going to pose presently even begin to scratch the surface of true philosophy. Still, I believe they're interesting, so let's get to them.
1. Our decisions are an illusion.
Sitting here typing away, I believe that I'm consciously choosing which words to put down on the page. Now, don't get all smart-alecky now and say that it sure doesn't seem like I care what I'm writing. I'm trying, okay? My point is, I believe and you believe and everyone seems to believe that we make our own choices in the world. But consider this.
Every little nerve in our body and electron shooting around inside of us is doing it's job completely unaided by our thoughts. Our body is on auto-drive, doing everything we think we command it to do with little actual input from our mind. When I tell my body to move it's leg, I don't have to consciously move electrons from one nerve to another. The body does this automatically. That's when you realize that everything in our brain is also moving about automatically. The electrons and atoms that give us our thoughts are firing in response to everything that is going on around us, so that essentially our thoughts are controlled by things outside of our grasp. However, if our thoughts are controlled by outside stimuli, then do we really think for ourselves, or is everything we do and think just an automatic, inevitable response to what's going on around us?
On the same sort of track, everything in our universe is controlled by physics. These laws of physics are firm-set and cannot be broken. Therefore if we could track every single particle in the universe instantaneously and figure out incredibly fast all of those particles' next move, then we could essentially predict the future. In conclusion, everything around us is happening solely due to the laws of physics, and because of these inevitable happenings our brains fire off, giving us our thoughts. Therefore, we never actually make conscious decisions, everything instead being dependant upon physics, chemistry, and all the other sciences.
2. Our universe may be simply a speck compared to some other, larger entity.
While I thought of the first idea on my own, this second example has been repeated several times. Remember Horton hears a Who? This idea is basically that same principle all over again.
For those of you who don't know the story, Horton hears a Who is a story about an elephant named Horton who finds a flower. Eventually, he discovers that an entire world filled with tiny people is on this flower, and the people there have no idea that there is anything bigger then it outside it's flowery borders.
Now, while I don't believe that we're all living on top of a flower, I do think that it's a possibility that our universe is not visible to the naked eye of some larger being. Imagine this; on the head of a pin, there are millions upon millions of creatures living, which we would have had no idea even existed were it not for modern science. Now, imagine that on some, giant planet somewhere above our heads, there is a fist-sized rock that happens to be kept at a stable temperature. On that rock, there is a speck of dark matter, held together by the remarkable physics of this distant world. In this speck of dark matter there lies an entire universe. Our universe. And somewhere, floating around in that ball of matter, we find earth and the human race. Impossibly small to anything looking at it in that other world, but still large enough to sustain an entire universe.
Pretty far fetched, I know, and while I am a firm believer in the first theory presented today, I'm rather dubious about this one.
3. Everything we perceive is a figment of our imagination.
Again, this theory was put out long before I came around. You can see why, as the theory is such an intriguing one. Consider this to start off;
you don't actually know if you are where you think you are. Perhaps this is all a dream, and when you die in human land you wake up in some other dimension, yawning and wondering what that crazy dream you had last night was all about.
Imagine that we've invented everything around us. Perhaps we're all locked in tanks somewhere, our brains preserved, and we've created this world for ourselves. More accurately, I've created this world for myself, and you're just a figment of my imagination. Maybe we're all just crazy.
Then again, perhaps we have no imagination, which brings us to our next point...
4. Humans have no imagination.
Try to imagine a brand-new colour. When I try to do this, I come up with a brown-green combination with hints of purple. The problem with that is, all I did was combine three colours that I already know to make a "new" colour. I'm sure that you had similar results.
Unfortunately, it seems that no matter what humans "create," it's simply a combination of things that we already know. We try to write a new language, and the letters are always going to be made up of familiar curves, lines and common shapes. Things that we already know the workings of.
We try to write a story, and we take well-worn plot ideas, or perhaps inspiration from real life, and throw it into a blender to try to create something "new." Nothing is truly original. There's no such thing as imagination.
That's all I've got for you this time around. Good thing, too- these have been depressing to write about! Some of those idea are admittedly rather far fetched, but others I truly believe are accurate. And I don't really want them to be.
I said at the beginning that perhaps we ask these questions to better understand our world, and I think that's still true. On the other hand, these ideas seem to raise more questions then answers, as we can never truly dismiss these theories definitively and they just make everything more confusing. Perhaps we shouldn't ask these questions. Perhaps we should let the world keep chugging along without analysing it. After all, we only get one life to live, and we should live it to the fullest without worrying about our actions being controlled. No matter if these philosophies are accurate or not, it's a good life.
Thanks for reading,
-Mark
PS: 13 pushups. I wasn't trying, honestly. Tomorrow; 30 once more!
No comments:
Post a Comment