The point of my writing this to have a record for myself on my thoughts on this matter. If you agree with these viewpoints, great. If you don't, well I don't really care.
We lose our lives in such trivial things. Technology.. economics.. careers...entertainment..
But the truth is that underneath it all are questions unanswered. Even in some of the best minds. We just don't know.
Why are we here? Where do we go next? Who do we believe? What do we believe? ..
And there are subproblems associated with each of these questions.. arising from candidate explanations of the universe. Be it empirically founded or otherwise. Possible solutions just give rise to more questions. So it seems.
From a point of view of honesty, everything is just a puzzle - which we choose to ignore. Most of the times. We work with abstractions of the world.. in a way that makes "life" feasible. We build on these abstractions and create wonderful, beautiful things.. and experience things which are almost magical at times.. all the while being unaware of what's really going on..
And when we do try with our limited intellects to grasp at the problem.. we tend to choose to believe in one view point or the other.. depending on whichever is comfortable for our world-view and our education. And which gives us some emotional support.. perhaps.
There are wide arrays of spiritual arguments.. different models in which the universe is created and will be destroyed.. and the reasons for living and what happens after. So elaborate in construction and beauty of argument. It appeals to the human in us to go with such a belief system. But is it just a construct? My heart says no.. but is it saying no just because it doesn't want to let go of its belief and is afraid of the consequences of not believing in such a system? No. The answer is more elaborate than that. There are a wide variety of experiences in our lives which make no sense at all.. without this sort of spiritual model. Life is tremendously unexplainable and uncontrollable.. and it seems to the limited intellect that it cannot possibly be occurring due to randomly occurring phenomena.
You may say, that its a weak argument to base a belief on. But what happens in personal experience, is far more impactful to the person in question and is a local truth to him/her irrespective of what anyone says. Its his empirical experience, for himself. Could you argue thats stupid? Sure. But then, that's just another viewpoint. To the believer, what he believes is true. It might not hold empirically to other people, but its his truth. And for such a person, who believes in something against another faction of human society.. his world view colored by what are cogent arguments for his existence according to his scripture, can perhaps translate to violence. In one of its various forms.
But such situations are rare. In common experience, the desire for humans to go with a belief system is to get through life's up's and down's. Its not to hurt another human. We're in this together. Mostly.
For such people as myself, there are subjective observations in these belief systems that are beautiful abstractions to work with. And in our personal lives, they serve as useful tools to navigate this complex world. They give us some degree of meaning and purpose. And overall have an effect of positivity - atleast in my case.
So, does this mean our subjective truths are the actual truth? I don't know. It is to us. Although the breadth of this topic is inherently so widespread that any explanation can be argued against. Confusing us to oblivion. As laymen trying to navigate life.
The small handful of empirically minded people in the world have created such amazing things in the past x * 100 years. Believing in the strength of experiment. Yes, believing. You can call it whatever else, but that's what it is. I'm supposed to be an empiricist. But I have seen from my experience how my hypotheses color the way I see the data. Maybe there are better empiricists out there who are unbiased to perfection. I don't know any myself. And the data itself.. proves so little. There are large sections of human experience unexplored by such scientific methods. Navigating life by forming empirical experiments and testing hypotheses is just an idealized notion that nobody can live by. There are always emotions involved. Always. Sure, methods of science are useful for certain kinds of problems.. but certainly not for the human lives we lead. I have a healthy distrust for science as I do for religion.
As a human, we believe in something. The clean slate approach - if there is one, is not so clean. Because, we grow up with emotions in us and the notions of the world around us and we react to it emotionally. The pursuit of science itself stems from our emotion of not-knowing and our happiness of discovering something useful is yet another emotion. A similar process exists for the spiritual sciences.
If a subjective reality based on empirical science works for someone, without the need for other metaphysical explanations, if his existence is felt to be complete in his view. Then, good for him.
If a subjective reality based on a spiritual outlook works for someone, without the need for other physical explanations, if his existence is felt to be complete in his view. Then, good for him as well.
But is "good for him" , enough? It seems incomplete. I argue that spiritual sciences have a lot to offer. Perhaps aiding in a different aspect of life. And anyone not recognizing this is losing out on a wealth of knowledge and a system of thought that is as worthy - if not - more worthy than the empirical school of thought.
The question of what is the "actual" "objective" truth remains unknown to me. There seem to be just subjective viewpoints and as a layman I have a smitter-smatter of beliefs stemming from both the empirical and spiritual schools of thought. But in day to day experience, the quality of life I live - non physically- is most influenced by the spiritual dimension. And the physical being is nourished by the empirical and technological aspects. And of course there are interactions between the physical and the non-physical. For instance, my work and the external situations around me though physical have an effect on the way I think. And the way I think influences my physical behavior - to myself and to other people and animals.
Is thought physical? Is emotion physical? In some sense, yes. But it has an aspect to it which isn't described by numbers. Its incomplete to capture the essence of those phenomena by a number, an equation or a set of equations. There is the "being" of thought itself that is an experience not separate from us. That aspect makes us conscious of the world we live in. And the questioning of what thought is by thought itself is a phenomenon I am still trying to come to terms with. To put in a short way, we are nowhere near understanding ourselves - even physically speaking - to a matter of completeness.
So am I saying that that which is not explained by science is spiritual? The god of the gaps?
For me, the extent of human knowledge is so miniscule, on the order of things. And the constant distrust on its own theories that science has put forth.. makes it of limited utility to the average human trying to live a life. If in some millennia, humans do make a theory of everything and explain "important" things to people - which I don't believe is possible due to many reasons, will there be no necessity of the spiritual process anymore? I won't engage in this hypothetical.
What am I saying then? I'm saying that human life.. in its brief, wonderful form on this earth, is subject to various processes. And for the human in question, navigating this world effectively demands believing in a set of abstractions - either derived empirically, spiritually or through some other frame of reference. And that's how we navigate the complexities from a personal perspective. From the idealized need of understanding the external and internal world, our views are colored by the beliefs we hold. Some of them offering perspectives that others don't. And its our duty to explore these schools of thought, with a view to understand. For we spend such insane number of years learning such existentially trivial things as programming or management or what have you, the value of such philosophical explorations far outweighs the benefits of the other things we spend our time on. Not trying to understand the nature of life and living whilst being alive is a disgrace to life itself.
We lose our lives in such trivial things. Technology.. economics.. careers...entertainment..
But the truth is that underneath it all are questions unanswered. Even in some of the best minds. We just don't know.
Why are we here? Where do we go next? Who do we believe? What do we believe? ..
And there are subproblems associated with each of these questions.. arising from candidate explanations of the universe. Be it empirically founded or otherwise. Possible solutions just give rise to more questions. So it seems.
From a point of view of honesty, everything is just a puzzle - which we choose to ignore. Most of the times. We work with abstractions of the world.. in a way that makes "life" feasible. We build on these abstractions and create wonderful, beautiful things.. and experience things which are almost magical at times.. all the while being unaware of what's really going on..
And when we do try with our limited intellects to grasp at the problem.. we tend to choose to believe in one view point or the other.. depending on whichever is comfortable for our world-view and our education. And which gives us some emotional support.. perhaps.
There are wide arrays of spiritual arguments.. different models in which the universe is created and will be destroyed.. and the reasons for living and what happens after. So elaborate in construction and beauty of argument. It appeals to the human in us to go with such a belief system. But is it just a construct? My heart says no.. but is it saying no just because it doesn't want to let go of its belief and is afraid of the consequences of not believing in such a system? No. The answer is more elaborate than that. There are a wide variety of experiences in our lives which make no sense at all.. without this sort of spiritual model. Life is tremendously unexplainable and uncontrollable.. and it seems to the limited intellect that it cannot possibly be occurring due to randomly occurring phenomena.
You may say, that its a weak argument to base a belief on. But what happens in personal experience, is far more impactful to the person in question and is a local truth to him/her irrespective of what anyone says. Its his empirical experience, for himself. Could you argue thats stupid? Sure. But then, that's just another viewpoint. To the believer, what he believes is true. It might not hold empirically to other people, but its his truth. And for such a person, who believes in something against another faction of human society.. his world view colored by what are cogent arguments for his existence according to his scripture, can perhaps translate to violence. In one of its various forms.
But such situations are rare. In common experience, the desire for humans to go with a belief system is to get through life's up's and down's. Its not to hurt another human. We're in this together. Mostly.
For such people as myself, there are subjective observations in these belief systems that are beautiful abstractions to work with. And in our personal lives, they serve as useful tools to navigate this complex world. They give us some degree of meaning and purpose. And overall have an effect of positivity - atleast in my case.
So, does this mean our subjective truths are the actual truth? I don't know. It is to us. Although the breadth of this topic is inherently so widespread that any explanation can be argued against. Confusing us to oblivion. As laymen trying to navigate life.
The small handful of empirically minded people in the world have created such amazing things in the past x * 100 years. Believing in the strength of experiment. Yes, believing. You can call it whatever else, but that's what it is. I'm supposed to be an empiricist. But I have seen from my experience how my hypotheses color the way I see the data. Maybe there are better empiricists out there who are unbiased to perfection. I don't know any myself. And the data itself.. proves so little. There are large sections of human experience unexplored by such scientific methods. Navigating life by forming empirical experiments and testing hypotheses is just an idealized notion that nobody can live by. There are always emotions involved. Always. Sure, methods of science are useful for certain kinds of problems.. but certainly not for the human lives we lead. I have a healthy distrust for science as I do for religion.
As a human, we believe in something. The clean slate approach - if there is one, is not so clean. Because, we grow up with emotions in us and the notions of the world around us and we react to it emotionally. The pursuit of science itself stems from our emotion of not-knowing and our happiness of discovering something useful is yet another emotion. A similar process exists for the spiritual sciences.
If a subjective reality based on empirical science works for someone, without the need for other metaphysical explanations, if his existence is felt to be complete in his view. Then, good for him.
If a subjective reality based on a spiritual outlook works for someone, without the need for other physical explanations, if his existence is felt to be complete in his view. Then, good for him as well.
But is "good for him" , enough? It seems incomplete. I argue that spiritual sciences have a lot to offer. Perhaps aiding in a different aspect of life. And anyone not recognizing this is losing out on a wealth of knowledge and a system of thought that is as worthy - if not - more worthy than the empirical school of thought.
The question of what is the "actual" "objective" truth remains unknown to me. There seem to be just subjective viewpoints and as a layman I have a smitter-smatter of beliefs stemming from both the empirical and spiritual schools of thought. But in day to day experience, the quality of life I live - non physically- is most influenced by the spiritual dimension. And the physical being is nourished by the empirical and technological aspects. And of course there are interactions between the physical and the non-physical. For instance, my work and the external situations around me though physical have an effect on the way I think. And the way I think influences my physical behavior - to myself and to other people and animals.
Is thought physical? Is emotion physical? In some sense, yes. But it has an aspect to it which isn't described by numbers. Its incomplete to capture the essence of those phenomena by a number, an equation or a set of equations. There is the "being" of thought itself that is an experience not separate from us. That aspect makes us conscious of the world we live in. And the questioning of what thought is by thought itself is a phenomenon I am still trying to come to terms with. To put in a short way, we are nowhere near understanding ourselves - even physically speaking - to a matter of completeness.
So am I saying that that which is not explained by science is spiritual? The god of the gaps?
For me, the extent of human knowledge is so miniscule, on the order of things. And the constant distrust on its own theories that science has put forth.. makes it of limited utility to the average human trying to live a life. If in some millennia, humans do make a theory of everything and explain "important" things to people - which I don't believe is possible due to many reasons, will there be no necessity of the spiritual process anymore? I won't engage in this hypothetical.
What am I saying then? I'm saying that human life.. in its brief, wonderful form on this earth, is subject to various processes. And for the human in question, navigating this world effectively demands believing in a set of abstractions - either derived empirically, spiritually or through some other frame of reference. And that's how we navigate the complexities from a personal perspective. From the idealized need of understanding the external and internal world, our views are colored by the beliefs we hold. Some of them offering perspectives that others don't. And its our duty to explore these schools of thought, with a view to understand. For we spend such insane number of years learning such existentially trivial things as programming or management or what have you, the value of such philosophical explorations far outweighs the benefits of the other things we spend our time on. Not trying to understand the nature of life and living whilst being alive is a disgrace to life itself.
