Have you noticed how blogs and emails are training us to read backwards? Or if you want to read forwards, you have to go to the bottom and read upwards?
Blogging sites post your most recent post first and the oldest (that fits on the page) at the bottom. If you come to a site for the first time and read posts from top to bottom, you’re reading backwards in the order of their posting.
If you wanted to read them in chronological order, you’d have to find the oldest and read upwards.
In my second post I raised the topic of mind versus brain. There is (or, perhaps more accurately, may be) a duality. I mentioned that there are two basic schools of thought: one holding that mind emerges from brain and the other holding that they are distinct, that mind is – somehow – not physical. For now, the duality of the brain/mind question is open.
But there is definitely a duality in the two schools: the two opposing points of view. In this post I want to focus on the idea of duality and the idea of ideas in opposition. This post is about Yin and Yang.
One last very important distinction: there’s a big difference between being ignorant and being stupid.
To be ignorant is to not know something.
We are all ignorant. In fact, given how much there is to know, we’re all far more ignorant than not. Granted, some more than others, and if there is any crime, it is in remaining willfully ignorant in the face of knowledge.
That’s stupid.
While we’re on the topic of important distinctions, let’s also try to draw a line between the idea of liking something and the idea that something is good.
Very often people conflate the two. For example, that a “good” movie is a movie they liked.
In fact, good and like are different measurements, and I wish more people understood the difference.
A bit of Haiku:
A Thing is rarely
The whole or the only Truth.
Most Things are that way.
It’s useful to break the connection between the idea of fact and the idea of truth. A fact is a datum that stands on its own regardless of opinion, belief or perception.
A truth does reflect the opinion, belief or perception of a person.
In my first post I mentioned René Descartes and his seminal statement, “Cogito ergo sum.” I think, therefore I am. Because this statement and the ideas that spring from it lie at the heart of my philosophy and interests, it is a fitting topic for my second post. I also mentioned beginnings; these beginning posts explore such core topics as form my core and inform my mind.
And mind is the topic at hand. “I think, therefore I am,” concerns one of the most central, most personal, most mysterious, most fantastic aspects of our existence. It concerns something each of us shares every waking moment, but which remains–thus far–completely unknown.
That every moment mystery is that we think and experience. Each of us has a voice inside their head; an «I» that is us. It’s the driver of the car that says, “I’m hungry,” or “I’m going to the library.”
SidebandsSideband posts are miscellaneous thoughts that accompany the main thread of posts.
Think of them as small paths that meander off the main road. Some branch off, go a short ways and die after a short while.
Others are scenic trails that follow along the main road. Quotes is an example of the latter. It’s too early to run into one of the former, but I’ll point out the first one when it arrives.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was…”
Many of you will recognize that as the first words of John 1:1 in the Christian New Testament Bible. There’s also a cross-reference to the very first words of that Bible (Old Testament in this case), “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This is about words and about beginnings.
Others might recognize it as a conflation of the lead-in to a Moody Blues tune, OM, from In Search of the Lost Chord, and the title of a song from another album, In the Beginning, from On the Threshold of a Dream.
(Yes “album.” I’m old!)
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