My Attempt At Being Smart #1

I decided to write this post for 3 reasons. 1) I haven't done one in quite a while. 2) Some philosophical thingies have been weighing on my mind. 3) I wanted to stop that last stupid post from being the one people see when they look at my blog homepage; I seriously had no idea what i was thinking!

I've been thinking quite a lot about morality recently. I don't really want to analyse it too much but some ideas just came to me that weighed on my mind somewhat and i thought i could write something about them. I don't do philosophy or know many terms or anything so all of what i'm going to say will probably be easily and succinctly explained away with either references or jargon as i'm sure it will be. Some people like doing that and i don't hold it against them (you know who you are;)

My first point was the line of morality. In my personal belief, nothing is fundamentally right or wrong. This is easy to accept. It is all relative. In the universal context, there is nothing that says that an act, i.e. murder, is "wrong". Only in the human context, with the human emotional, social, cultural, natural, historical and ideological condition can acts like murder be considered to be classed into one of the two categories of morality.

I take the example of Minority Report because i watched it last week and it has "future stuff" in it. The whole premise is based around the fact; and i quote, that "There's nothing more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of one human being by another". Of course, this makes the entire plot of the film completely irrelevant which i found out to my dismay after preaching its message avidly for a time. Does anyone really think that a physic shock wave of energy explodes out from someone as they die? In the same vein; does anyone believe that a mother can feel the death of her child a thousand miles away? There is nothing extra-natural about human existence! We are simply individual consciousnesses, desperately trying to do anything to avoid thinking about the fact that we live unbelievably short existences, in addition to convincing ourselves that these short existences must have a meaning. We imprint morality on ourselves so as to bring definition to this world of infintely high-functioning chaos. I kinda feel all depressing talking about this stuff, but it's genuinely what i think and i'm in the mood to talk about it so whatever.

My second point is hopefully less depressing. Understanding the human context is just as important as understanding the universal one, and in my opinion much more difficult. Humanity is driven by definites. What is. What isn't. We shut ourselves away from the indefinites because they "aren't real". Any man or woman who makes a judgement on humanity is doomed to be condemned as a member of humanity. In other words, we cannot impartially evaluate our existence without eliminating our humanity, This leads me on to BSG, which is extremely thought provoking as well as being an awesome TV show (I should be getting paid for this). The Cylons at first appear to provide this impartiality, questioning whether or humanity ever asked itself why it deserved to be saved. However, toward the end they basically become human, coming full circle from single-minded automatons to imperfect human beings. The point is that the humans and the Cylons were one and the same the whole time. Trying to convince ourselves we have no meaning is a waste of time, we just end up at the same null conclusions every time. 

(Sidenote: The problem with philosophy; that it enables someone to continue round and round in circles forever whilst letting them believe they're thinking something new all the time. It will take a paradigm shift to get us out of this infinite loop)

                                                          

When people ask if i believe in a God I say no. This was apparent in Syria when i had a long conversation in the van with the van driver (I know it sounds improbable but I may mention that i was sitting in the front seat next to him and he was a talker, I did not initiate anything) who was devoutly muslim. He went on a pseudo-rant about immorality and lack of faith and stuff; not in a jihadist kill all the Europeans kind of way but in the normal way..,i hope? Anywho, i said that i didn't believe in a God and i said that i believe in Humanity as an abstract. I realise this metaphysical(ises?) the human race and goes contrary to what I said before but it's what i believe; that humanity has the capacity to do everything, go everywhere, see everything. Then he said something profound, that i didn't expect at all. He said that I should think about life, and how the culmination of billions of years of chance heaped upon chance heaped upon more chance had lead to that moment in a minivan in the desert between Bosra and Aleppo and how perfect everything worked from our cells to the stars and how if that wasn't the work of God what was it. I couldn't answer him. In the end I returned to the conclusion that there isn't and there never will be a conclusion, bringing me full circle. Also there is absolutely no difference between enormous coincidence and "fate".

(Sidenote: The man's english wasn't THAT great, so i paraphrased for the purpose of clarity)


That's pretty much it...hope you enjoyed.


(P.S. For those of you versed in BSG folklore, i'm inclined to believe the view that everything has happened before and will happen again; cycles of destruction etc, Also, I really wanted the end to be that the fleet finds Earth, and then nukes come up from the surface and destroys it. Then there's a transition to the oval office and you hear someone say "You did it Mr President; you saved the human race" Then it pans around to reveal that voice was a Cylon's)
(P.P.S I'm posting this late at night/early in the morning so i'm not going to check it for errors. Tough.)