On Aqueousness (the hydrodynamics of the soul)
I was doing what I usually do, sitting around thinking in some public place (the best places for solitary activities), and realized a short coming of philosophy; philosophers. How can one hope to describe and understand humanity, when one is far from typical? By pondering "what is humanity" we automatically announce we have no clue what humanity actually is. Can a genius understand an idiot, or visa versa? As an idiot I cannot see the high falutin' thoughts of the thinker, and as a thinker and I cannot ponder how the idiot does not see. What do the blind see? Now I'm not posting our hypothetical philosopher into either pile, the jury is still out on that verdict.
This lead to a further thought, what can any of us ever say about humanity? We don't even experience our own selves being human. How can I say anything about you, and everyone else, when I can't really say much about myself. 99% of my existence is hidden from me.
We are water. Constantly changing and flowing, but somehow still stable things. We are in flux, yet are the same. Like a river, we have an identity (lets call it our banks), but our contents are constantly flowing past. "You can never step into the same river twice", to possibly quote Heraclitus. We ARE this flow. Like a water we follow the simplest path, down hill. The path of least resistance. For rivers this is gravity, for us it is being. We react to the terrain, but always to go down hill. Flow is being.
Some famous psychologist defines flow as those moments that your are lost in just being. You are your action, pure being without the taint of thought. Sadly Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has made the same mistake that philosophers have made throughout the ages, the mistake of thinking that we are primarily rational animals, privy to our existence. We exist in flow, we are our experience, and rarely ever step back (which too is only part of being) to see which way the river of being is flowing. Introspection is rare, and often illusionary.
Much of our awareness of ourself is past-tense. We smooth over flow to give ourselves a sense of autonomy (that dread term "agency" again). We try to structure the eternal self into some sort of effigy that we can point at and say "that is me". But our own unanalyzed existence is that of pure being. Introspection, for the most part, is turbulence.
Why do this? Because we are scared of the fact that we don't exist. Which is absurd, we do exist (water), but not in the sense we want to picture ourselves existing (some holy soul, or kernel of being). We try to fight the stream, and find only insubstantial fluid, and deceptively light resistance (momentum). The "we" we put above the stream is only more stream.
Am I going to accept this metaphor to the point of being vogue and denying free will? No. We are the totality of our own being, thus we can effect our own course. Down is a predilection, or habit, in us, unlike a stream. The easy path is not the only path, it is only the normal path. Nor am I going to do the other philosophically popular thing, and deny the self. The self is the totality (holistically) of being, the image of self contains the image of itself, ad infinitum, through this you emerge.
This lead to a further thought, what can any of us ever say about humanity? We don't even experience our own selves being human. How can I say anything about you, and everyone else, when I can't really say much about myself. 99% of my existence is hidden from me.
We are water. Constantly changing and flowing, but somehow still stable things. We are in flux, yet are the same. Like a river, we have an identity (lets call it our banks), but our contents are constantly flowing past. "You can never step into the same river twice", to possibly quote Heraclitus. We ARE this flow. Like a water we follow the simplest path, down hill. The path of least resistance. For rivers this is gravity, for us it is being. We react to the terrain, but always to go down hill. Flow is being.
Some famous psychologist defines flow as those moments that your are lost in just being. You are your action, pure being without the taint of thought. Sadly Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has made the same mistake that philosophers have made throughout the ages, the mistake of thinking that we are primarily rational animals, privy to our existence. We exist in flow, we are our experience, and rarely ever step back (which too is only part of being) to see which way the river of being is flowing. Introspection is rare, and often illusionary.
Much of our awareness of ourself is past-tense. We smooth over flow to give ourselves a sense of autonomy (that dread term "agency" again). We try to structure the eternal self into some sort of effigy that we can point at and say "that is me". But our own unanalyzed existence is that of pure being. Introspection, for the most part, is turbulence.
Why do this? Because we are scared of the fact that we don't exist. Which is absurd, we do exist (water), but not in the sense we want to picture ourselves existing (some holy soul, or kernel of being). We try to fight the stream, and find only insubstantial fluid, and deceptively light resistance (momentum). The "we" we put above the stream is only more stream.
Am I going to accept this metaphor to the point of being vogue and denying free will? No. We are the totality of our own being, thus we can effect our own course. Down is a predilection, or habit, in us, unlike a stream. The easy path is not the only path, it is only the normal path. Nor am I going to do the other philosophically popular thing, and deny the self. The self is the totality (holistically) of being, the image of self contains the image of itself, ad infinitum, through this you emerge.
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