Mind Over Construct

Preface:
I am not writing to pretend I am Morpheus, or that I live in a separate world than the rest of you. I am simply attempting to open your eyes to the possibility of something else, and to allow my own eyes to be opened to it.  Although this will come nowhere near any of the final destinations, it is the first step to unlocking one's mind to what is waiting to exist.

I wrote the following quote to have an interesting away message. It spawned the thought that follows. I don't pretend to believe that my idea is better than any others, especially since I am not the first to think or write about it, but it is an idea, and in that sense, must be shit on until a better one can be created. So, please feel free to shit on it.
Lastly, before I start. I do not edit or even read to make sure things flow after I cut and pace to organize, so just let me know if there's a part that doesn't make sense.

"Imagine, Write, and Do. Practicality is nothing but a complex form of fear."

From the daredevils to the content cubicle workers, we all succumb to this in one way or another. Most of us will continue to do so for the rest of our lives, no matter how far we believe we traveled from the traditional. Those who boast of rebellion and anarchy simply abide by the same system in a different way. As long as one limits their mind to what is currently comprehensible, they will always be just another closed off mind.

To tell you the truth, most of us have no intention of breaking from what we regard as reason. It is normal to live one's life by what we know. It is normal to believe what has happened will determine what will happen. The basic rules that guide our actions are needed for all who cannot comprehend a universe without them, and that is practically everybody. I don't wake up wondering weather or not gravity has held my bed to the ground or not, I simply trust the construct of it. And, to be honest, this is not necessarily a bad thing for the average human.

Following the rules of previous minds gives people a sense of security, stability, and trust. Most minds cannot handle the pressures that a world without trust would bring. They simply implode at even the slightest hint that what is true today will not be true tomorrow. It cannot be handled by our minds, not because we are not capable of such thought, but because we have been trained, down to the very neurons of the cerebral cortex, to put all faith in what other beings believes, that there is no other than what we understand.

On the other hand, the mind is the most powerful machine that exists. And, there have been times when we have proven the capacity to think about something that is outside of a world we can understand. It has been on a very limited basis, but we have done it. In fact, a majority of people have shown this glimmer through a belief in religion. Now, you might say that a belief in religion has no bearing on mental capacity, that the most uneducated people in the world can believe in that. All you are really saying is that education doesn't add more than a tiny smidge to the capacity of our brains, and that every human is potentially capable of breaking out of the constructs which confine us!

The problem with the religion example is that only the small handful of people who created their religions really had any kind of leap to a world beyond what we know and currently understand. The followers of religion, and this is a general statement that does not apply to everyone so please calm your jets, simply allow their minds to attach to another mind's construct. There is no new growth in this kind of situation. BUT, it is certainly a step in the right direction. It proves that we have some capability, even if it is on a very small scale.
SHIT, I had a great way to move ahead the argument and now I have completely forgotten it, I don't even know where I am going with this.... ummm....

OH GOT IT.

Okay, so whether you believe in a religion or not, the fact that a human mind has created the idea of it, means it exists. WHAAAT!? (Props to my main man Rene Descartes for what follows) What constitutes existence? Descartes essentially believed that to exist, the mind has to be able to perceive it. Without the mind, nothing would exist and all would be meaningless; there would be no point to it. Fortunately, we all are blessed with powerful minds, whether we choose to use them or not, and things have meaning. A chair is a chair because we see it, touch it, use it, possibly taste it. If we could not even imagine the the very essence of a chair, it would not exist? DONT BELIEVE ME!?!?!? ahah, i love these little games. Then please, my dear reader, imagine a color you have never seen before.

Victory is sweet, but in the big picture this is a failure. We cannot imagine a color we have never seen because our minds are closed. We cannot move past what is seen onto what is possible. We are trapped in this world until we can truly, full heartedly, believe that our minds can CREATE new constructs, new rules, a new world, simply by thinking it. We can live in parallel, we can fly, we can feel real love.

Maybe I am full of shit. Maybe I will wake up tomorrow like I always do, go to class, walk on the ground, go out to a party and have a good time. Maybe our minds are meant to be this way. Maybe God created this world in which we live, and we will know truth when we die. But, maybe I will wake up tomorrow in a world I control with my mind. Maybe my life will be a lucid dream, and my imagination will no longer be limited to what others have established as normal. Maybe.

Peace and Love,
Scott Stephen Smith

*All of this should be taken as an opinion, and not the end all be all. Questioning one's existence is an activity of the mind, and should not be taken to the extreme of any rooftop. =)

The Human or the Fly?

Have you ever slowed down time? It is an interesting question so let me briefly explain where I am coming from. I believe that time is relative to an individual. It moves differently depending on the life you live. This goes beyond the easy contrast between a banker in New York and a fisherman in Jamaica, and more into the realm of perceptual awareness. Take a fly for example. The dirty little insect is in constant motion for nearly its entire life. The creature also only lives for a matter of days before it dies. To a fly, the two seconds it spends resting atop your basket of french fries is equivalent to a summer under the Tuscan Sun for a human. So, we look down upon the fly and its insignificant, thoughtless life and yet I am willing to bet that no reader of this piece will ever spend a summer in Northern Italy, lounging and soaking in the sun while eating the most delicious food in the world. This is the relative experience of the fly because of its perception of time. The world moves at a different rate to it, and its life resides in a different frame than ours.

On a personal level, I was contemplating this line of thought while trailing behind a group of friends. We were on a stroll through the city on a Fall day when I became most interested in the leaves drifting down to the sidewalk from above. I began slowing my pace, my thoughts, when I lost them. It did not concern me but when I finally caught up to them while they wait, I said nothing. I was still in a train of thought I could not break. Effectively removed from my world, one remarked that I looked as though I was half asleep. When I comprehend this now as I have returned to my desk, I think to myself that I wasn't half asleep but rather halfway to finally waking up.

So, I will ask again. Have you ever slowed down time? Have you ever stepped outside of your frame to watch the world move around you. Slowing down your thoughts, your motions, your life, one can observe in a new perspective and objectively analyze the human race. Try it, the best that you can, and then ask yourself the question. Who lives a more fulfilling life, the human or the fly?

Peace and Love from France,

Scotty

A Philisophical Look at Human Communication

A Philosophical look at Human Communication... Are we really talking to each other?

Before the WHAT, there is a WHY.

There was a time in my life where I took great joy in developing my personal philosophy and/or complete bullshit. I would often write all of these ides, mostly stolen of course, down as if I was trying to convince people that I was all-knowing and of a higher intelligence. Well... clearly that never fucking happened. I realized that I myself really have no idea what I am saying when I begin on a philisophical rant, and that I write in that manner, not to convince others, but to convince myself of a certain point. (Side note... a man in an all pink suit just walked out of the McLean post office)

Anyways, I am not trying to find the meaning to life, because that is just not gonna happen. Rather, I wnat to examine very minute details of the world and disect them, drawing into question the very essence of our existence through that. Doing something so absurd makes it very difficult for one to argue against it =).

Moving on. I recognize that in writing about my personal thoughts as if the world was anxiously awaiting this published peice I am, necessarily, an egotistical prick. I have come to terms with that. I will tone it down, however, and refrain from tagging every single one of my facebook friends in this just to get attention. This is my contribution to the world for 19 years of life (life got screwed on this deal)

Oh, one last thing. God. Okay, I do not discuss my personal views on religion with anyone. Not my mother. Not my father. Not my brother. I do not advocate or look down upon anyone who is devout or atheist. My opinion is that philosophies of life are just that, on life. My life.

Okay, now for the goods!

I am sure you have heard the very popular philosophical argument about our vision. It goes something like: "How do we really know that what I see as blue is what you see is blue?" Since we learn colors by putting what we see with what we say or read, there really is no way to determine if our brains are interpreting the light waves the same way. How interesting.

However, you do not often hear this type of argument when it comes to language. It seems like half of the stand-up comedians have some kind of joke about men and women speaking completely different languages... so what if we do? Is it possible for words convey knowledge? What is true knowledge anyways? What follows is a condensed version of this very elaborate train of thought.

Before I can make any kind of argument, it is important to set a base. This base will be Plato's definition of knowledge. From this, we will be able to judge everything on a level playing field. The great, or possibly not so great depending on who you ask, thinker Plato laid out a three part definition to help all of our feeble minds grasp what knowledge really is. To clarify, he initiated his definition with the assumption that knowledge must be propositional. This means that you must be able to assert it, or say it to somebody. Under this assumption, all knowledge must possess the ability either be read or spoken. Remember this. Now, the three parts to qualifying as propositional knowledge are as follows. One, it must be true. Two, you must believe it's true. Three, it must be justified.

Don't you just love examples!? If you say there are 5 girls in the other room, it cannot be knowledge unless there are really 5 girls in the room. However, if you are simply guessing how many girls are in the room and don't know, that doesn't make you possess any real knowledge. Lastly, even if it is true, and you truly believe you are right, you have to have some justification. You could have just came from that room and counted while you were there, but you cannot simply know it in your heart that it is the answer. This obviously contains some implications when it comes to religious belief, and I do not plan to talk about any of that today. Remember, this is Plato's definition, not mine.

There are obviously problems when it comes to this definition. One very basic one is that truth is ever changing. Not to say that everything you know today will be thought of as obsolete and silly tomorrow, but there are certainly basic constructs of our world that have changed throughout the history of human thought. Remember the days when we thought the world was flat? Well, you shouldn't unless you have been reincarnated, but that was the generally accepted theory across the world for many years. Now thought of as stupid, it is what our ancestors truly believed. That was the "truth" of their time. What's to say that all basic fundamental theories of human life won't be different by the end of this century? Despite it's problems, we must labor on using this definition because it is in fact the best one for the job.

**********WARNING**********
Now, here's the crazy thing. Based on this definition and my argument to come, it will appear as if knowledge doesn't exist, ever. WOW! If I happen to shatter your world of thought and make you believe that everything you have ever learned is shit, calm down. Yes, that would make me look pretty damn good, but there is an important element to all of my philosophical arguments. No matter how life changing a thought can be, we still exist in a world where others still play by the rules. We can bend what is around us, but please, no existential suicides. There is also a decent chance I am completely full of shit.
**********WARNING**********

FINALLY, we can begin! It starts with the very creation of language. Back in the days of cavemen, verbal communication was very limited. Since their survival depended on them working together, they began to create sounds to represent different sounds or urgencies. Grunting one way would mean you're thirsty, while grunting another way would imply that you are about to get eaten by a lion. This system is surprisingly useful when it comes to concrete examples, but becomes rather limited when one moves passed that.

As we became more civilized and began to live within the protection of villages and cities, our language grew. Survival from day to day was no longer the challenge that it used to be, so we naturally had time to think and develop philosophies. Humans began contemplating the abstract, and in turn came up with words for these ideas. Love, Freedom, Hate. We attempted to use the same form of language that was meant for concrete items and transform it to represent abstract ideas. It's the modern day equivalent to trying to save a MS Vista document onto a 15 year old Mac. Don't believe me? Look up the definitions of these words in different dictionaries and you will get different definitions in each one. The problem with abstract terms is that they mean different things to every single person. The meanings are based on experiences, not a concrete object that we can all look at and identify. So, as we talk about one of these terms, and try to express our combined knowledge on the subject, it's simply bullshit. None of these truths are held equally from person to person. The language of abstract ideas is dead.

"Oh, but Scott, we can still communicate about concrete things! Right?"

Sorry, but you are fucked here as well. Even with a concrete object, how do you know that what you are seeing is what your friend is seeing? We grow up and learn colors individually but have no way of verifying it with each other. Why can this principle not be applied to the objects around us. What if every single brain exists in it's own parallel universe where the laws operate completely separate from one another? Is it so hard to believe? The human mind desires so much to exist in peace in harmony with the environment around us that it has the ability to simply erase unpleasant aspects of our memory. Is it so hard to believe that it could cover up such a difference in thought? It wouldn't have to work that hard because like vision, language is based off of learning a definition for what you interpret. Interesting, huh?

Don't get me started on translations. Not only are you going from one flawed language to another, but some words don't even have equivalents in another language. So, now you must rely on an interpretation by a human that must pass through their own personal experiences and then to a different language that doesn't have a word for what the hell you are trying to say.

Now, of course this argument is a lot less detailed then it needs to be, but you can get the general idea. It is impossible to verify if what one person says is the same as what you are hearing. So, are we really talking to each other? Can I ever pass my knowledge on to you?

Good Enough for now,
Scotty

These thoughts all started when I saw Waking Life for the first time. I took it and ran with it, maybe you can do the same... If you have seen that, take it one step further with What the Bleep Do We Know!?... Good shit!

"Rock your head back and blow your breath up high. Don't forget to smile when your lips kiss the sky."