Submitted by Melodic_Antelope6490 t3_zoh3g8 in philosophy
EffectiveWar t1_j0ontl8 wrote
I feel like I just enjoyed a five page poem but even so, i'm still a pessimist in regards to this lonely existential plight people seem to think we have. We are no different to any of the other creatures in my view, its just our ability to reason and manipulate the world has been abstracted out to the extreme until we think ourselves seperate but we really aren't. We have no more idea about what is going on than birds and the trees do, not really. It might be worth revisting when we can shape time and space and create worlds though.
RedditExecutiveAdmin t1_j0q02p2 wrote
> We have no more idea about what is going on than birds and the trees do, not really
>just our ability to reason
I think you're right to a large extent, but you're severely downplaying us. I feel like this kind of thought is sort of a prisoner putting on their own shackles--you defeat yourself. It's kinda like that old saying "whether you think you can or can't, you're right". Whether you think we have a lonely existential plight, no different than dirt; or are pioneers of creativity and conscious thought, at the apex of creation, you're right. It's really a matter of words to some extent, but words are our tools, and sometimes also our greatest weapons.
There are magnitudes of difference between us and birds (especially trees). It'd be like saying: in a room with one adult and many children, the adult isn't any different and has no idea what's going on more than the children. It is a huge oversimplification. Why revisit later? Visit now. We already can shape time and space--and we already are creating our very first world right here. Will it also be our last? I hope not. I'd encourage you to use your powers to change perceptions in a positive, optimistic way
edit;
think of the quote at the end of the article: ". . . a world still whispering the rumours of that worn out idea put by Dante “the love that moves the sun and other stars"
It reminds me of one by Loren Eiseley on John Donne: >The body is the true cosmic prison, yet it contains, in the creative individual, a magnificent if sometimes helpless giant. John Donne, speaking for that giant in each of us, said: "Our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are borne Gyants.... My thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their Creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my Creatures, my thoughts, is with the Sunne and beyond the Sunne, overtakes the Sunne, and overgoes the Sunne in one pace, one steppe, everywhere."
>This thought, expressed so movingly by Donne, represents the final triumph of Claude Bernard's interior microcosm in its war with the macrocosm. Inside has conquered outside. The giant confined in the body's prison roams at will among the stars. More rarely and more beautifully, perhaps, the profound mind in the close prison projects infinite love in a finite room. This is a crossing beside which light-years are meaningless. It is the solitary key to the prison that is man."
cy13erpunk t1_j0qgiq6 wrote
i would highly recommend listening to some alan watts on YT or wherevs ; his speech/lecture on 'the joker' is one that comes to mind here
=] GL
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