Friday, December 26, 2014

Ironic Insanity

ironic insanity:

it's easily done. you're led to believe, certainly by the age of twenty or thereabouts, on earth, that first of all, you're a mortal, you're going to die and perhaps that's the end, that the universe and earth are billions of years old, that you're surrounded by billions of people, and perhaps the most pernicious, that everything moves, you move, objects move, other people move.

but what if that's all wrong? that the truth is the complete opposite of what you believe? it's as if someone wanted you so crazy, perhaps Descartes' demon, so that what you believed was actually the furthest away from the truth so that you would find the truth almost impossible to accept when it was put to you.

first of all, death in the original sense is probably not real. time goes on and on and you, your mind, with it.

secondly, what if Earth history were mostly false and the correct date October 20, 443? Year 444 will be a leap year and January 1, 444 will be March 9, AD 2015. consider that much of Earth history is about people that were never real. what if lots of other people you know are not real? that earth is mostly populated by robots, to use the ancient word, or philosophical zombies, which i guess is the academic term, or NPC's or non-player characters, a term from computer gaming, and that the real people are hard to find? not to say that you never meet another real person on Earth, of course. that perhaps the real population of this reality is much less than the billions purported?

and finally, about motion. it's even hard to express what the truth is, as the falsity is so ingrained in the mind. there are several ways to put it. "physical motion is not real". that's the first statement that came to me. "perceived motion is not real". "motion is only virtual". "the concept of motion, that things move in space, is not real, and only virtual, in the sense that you may see an image and think things move but they don't in actuality". of course, you, wherever you are in real space, are there forever and i am here, where i am, forever. when you walk forwards, your body is not really moving in space, you merely see what is in front of you coming towards you. put mathematically, you are not moving relatively with respect to the room, what is actually happening is that the room is moving relatively with respect to you.

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, December 6, 2014

An Opinion on Pride Confidence and Arrogance

an opinion on pride confidence and arrogance:

in language, words may have a fuzzy meaning, several words may mean more or less the same thing, such as in the case of pride, confidence and arrogance. generally, recently, pride is rather neutral, it could be good or bad, confidence is thought of as good, and arrogance as bad.

having thought about it today, let me offer my opinion on what each word may really mean, in essence, and how the three words could be differentiated.

pride is something like, "i am very good and i deserve all the good things in life".

confidence is something like, "everything's going to work out great for me".

and finally arrogance is like, "i am right", to the extent that other people seem wrong, or at least less right than myself!

so as you can tell, defined as such, the three are not quite the same thing. but what am i? now i've been accused of all three in the past, but really, i protest! pride is not something i've felt a lot of. am i very good? how can i be when i'm this paranoid thinking about evil things happening? do i deserve anything? what does deserve really mean anyway?! confidence, no! i'm thinking about things going wrong all the time! so i'm left with, if i am guilty of any of the three, arrogance. i am not wrong! perhaps i am right!

CLEARCHARGE