t: what do you like best about Australia and being abroad? tell me, I need to day dream about far away places.
p: what I like best about Australia isn't anything exotic. it's the people. auzzies as well as internationals. getting past the exterior and pushing the limits of casual conversation. really getting to know people. you can go many places in people.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
I reckon
that things are more complicated than you [can] think. It's hard to accept uncertainty, and in the course of daily life I suppose we have to act certain about some things. But I think we often run into problems thinking things to be so clear-cut. We like to simplify. We have to simplify. It's evolutionarily advantageous for our survival (like a local optimum). It's efficient. Conserves energy. Human understanding has its limits, so we have to bend the world to fit within the boundaries of our understanding. That's the only way it all makes sense. I'm suspicious when things make too much sense. Something's bent.
None of this is remotely practical, but I'm through with practicality. If I were a machine, I'd be doing economics instead of philosophy.
Everything I know or think I know is used to configure a framework for "seeing" the world. If I take the things I know to be less clear-cut, more uncertain, less stable, I get a more "open" view of the world (as contrasted with the popular phrase "narrow-minded"). The world opens up, if you like. It's easier to slide my knowledge around and reconfigure new and more sophisticated frameworks for thinking and perceiving the world. I don't know what truth we can aspire to. We have to realize that we can't help but bend things to make sense. Human understanding covers a fairly wide range (to what do I compare it to?), but a finite range none the less. All we have are interpretations. Interpretations are never "wrong." It's not wrong that we bend things, and I don't see it as a condition to be overcome. That I see it, however, is important.
Things that do make "perfect" sense to us most likely only do so because they are parts of a system, a worldview, that we invented -- that we've bent into shape because we find it meaningful. Myths. Sometimes myths we live by.
So I'm building up a tolerance for uncertainty. You may not be thick if you don't understand the world; you may not be thick if it doesn't make sense. Don't always let yourself bend it, whatever it is you're trying to comprehend. Sometimes allow things to seem unstable.
Your brain may fall out; I don't know. I think it'll be okay if you're open-minded but pay attention to your feelings.
I really like when something prompts a radical alteration in my perspective of things. My experience from then on is deepened and more attuned. Each time I am repeatedly aware of many more uncertainties as well. My worldview has to be ever reconfigured to make meaning of particular uncertainties, and each time inevitably reconfigured in such a way that a different set of uncertainties crop up (sometimes "tainting" ideas and views which used to stand firm and unchallenged).
That's what I reckon.
None of this is remotely practical, but I'm through with practicality. If I were a machine, I'd be doing economics instead of philosophy.
Everything I know or think I know is used to configure a framework for "seeing" the world. If I take the things I know to be less clear-cut, more uncertain, less stable, I get a more "open" view of the world (as contrasted with the popular phrase "narrow-minded"). The world opens up, if you like. It's easier to slide my knowledge around and reconfigure new and more sophisticated frameworks for thinking and perceiving the world. I don't know what truth we can aspire to. We have to realize that we can't help but bend things to make sense. Human understanding covers a fairly wide range (to what do I compare it to?), but a finite range none the less. All we have are interpretations. Interpretations are never "wrong." It's not wrong that we bend things, and I don't see it as a condition to be overcome. That I see it, however, is important.
Things that do make "perfect" sense to us most likely only do so because they are parts of a system, a worldview, that we invented -- that we've bent into shape because we find it meaningful. Myths. Sometimes myths we live by.
So I'm building up a tolerance for uncertainty. You may not be thick if you don't understand the world; you may not be thick if it doesn't make sense. Don't always let yourself bend it, whatever it is you're trying to comprehend. Sometimes allow things to seem unstable.
Your brain may fall out; I don't know. I think it'll be okay if you're open-minded but pay attention to your feelings.
I really like when something prompts a radical alteration in my perspective of things. My experience from then on is deepened and more attuned. Each time I am repeatedly aware of many more uncertainties as well. My worldview has to be ever reconfigured to make meaning of particular uncertainties, and each time inevitably reconfigured in such a way that a different set of uncertainties crop up (sometimes "tainting" ideas and views which used to stand firm and unchallenged).
That's what I reckon.
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