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Saturday, April 29, 2006

Thinking of You, Dear Illusion


We humans crave our being....yes we do....most of us at least. Don't you think that we have the most special ability? Call it reasoning, call it thinking but I prefer the second. Some certainly think but they lack good reasoning after all. Hey hey! We have souls, what about this? Well let me be clear then; following you we and animals are in the same boat. Animals do some thinking for sure..but they can't tell the product of multiplying 1 by 1....OK OK some people actually couldn't do it!! Beethoven never was able to do the fancy arithmetic by the way. Anyway, At least most of us we people can learn how to tell this. Addition is more intuitive, we can reason it very well indeed. I prefer making it more distinctive for the moment. Bear it as it is. We can use and employ our thinking and feelings but have you consulted your precious soul or whatsoever before? Anyhow, what is it about thinking? Actually you've just hit the point!!! I am serious no bluffing. Let me rephrase..What is thinking anyway? What sort of things it is? Well, clearly I think it is some kind of a product. Elusive answer...it is really. Drop thinking now. How about music? It is some kind of a product too..Oh are we going in circles, my friend? No not at all. Get an instrument..let it be a piano, then, simply hit a key, a very materialistic key, isn't it? You will hear a tone roaming in the air. OK but you missed that we humans produce 'sounds' as well..voices to play the righteous. Well you got what I missed..I told you we humans got this very special ability, thinking. Anyway, sound is a result of some materialistic acts or causes. There is no sound as long as nothing vibrates the air around. Even MIDI format, artificial one, can't be generated without a suitable hardware, say, a computer. Back to the issue after our long drill, thinking is a result, not the very same type of result though, of our biological construction, there is no thinking without a capable brain. Well, right to some extent but I'd like to reach the source, there is no thinking without life. I am shocked, my friend. What is that you're saying? Can't you see that mammals got the same kind of life. Even worms got life but I am not sure if it is the same...different sides of things. Well your reasoning failed you this time..but your thinking took you there, didn't it? Well there is something to tell, chimpanzees are the most intelligent animals. Their genes are not so much different from ours..still there are differences anyway, I don't know what causes what. Anyhow, We Got The Thinking would be a nice humane motto. There is a very interesting thing about thinking generally and about awareness in specific; both accommodate differences.. they simply tolerate them. I mean that thinking is influenced by the communities in which humans live. You need a brain to think, then, your thinking is shaped by whatever social and environmental circumstances you were through. Family and other influences aside, we could possibly share many thoughts if we were through the same circumstances. But we could have many different thoughts as well, right? Yes I think you are right but why? Here interpretation involves in play. Family backgrounds, social constructions or circumstances as well, our nations and psychological aspects. All these things contribute to our thinking. Let's get back to our musical drill. You said that I have to get an instrument to get a sound, but to get a musical tune a musician must play this instrument not me. Well, good point but I meant sound in the first place. Assume that there is a book above the piano now it is falling down, for some reason, then it hits the keyboard...sounds, tones, will be produced. Arbitrary they are yes indeed but they are tones at the end, some form of sound. To produce music a musician is needed.. yes that's right. He tames the tones and orders them to produce a musical tune..at least he, the player, believes that it is musical. He is using his thinking and surely his feelings to produce it. You know, I am listening to the tune he is playing but I find it no musical....I don't like it....I don't think it is coherent. Well, this is my very right. I interpret differently that's all. I am talking reality not fiction, my friend. Wagner was considered as the composer of future..how sarcastic?....Anyway, his music has proved him as a music master leaving the old sayings to burn away. Thinking needs taming too..ordering as well...insight to be proper, I think this is a cultivated sort of thinking. Social and environmental circumstances tame thinking, then, thinking shapes awareness. Awareness is some kind of knowledge in my opinion. Not all things that can be considered knowledge are true and not all knowledgeable people are truthful. You may interpret my thinking and understandings as nonsense....you think differently. But maybe....again maybe either of us is right about some of the differences.


They are materialistic instances and their actions controlling us. And indeed our thinking must lead to or at least must be based upon and concerned with some tangible instances. You know....even love can be considered as a result of livings....a result of what we encounter in life. Some are fond of thinking in its own right....I count them fools myself. Well, thinking in God is not a very different issue....how? OK....humans often think of God in a way that reflects their own images of life....I am not an extremist at all....let's carry on. These images are basically the 'things' they faced in their life....be it family, be it critical situation, be it a position one took earlier, be it anything...the point is that this 'anything' always has an impact on how we interpret God himself. Religion is beyond reasoning that's all....and if you tried to reason religious teachings, you would carry the burden of making a very fertile logical flow...this is never the case anyway. People just follow their passion....and maybe instinct when it comes to religions. Then, their passion becomes their thinking....that thinking may not be logical at all by the way. Yes it is not that simple but let's keep it impulsive to some degree. I guess it is reasoning that feeds religious clashes. Reasoning in such cases becomes a thing that distorts logics. And clashing logics feed clashing values. Logic is not a very rigid sort of things by the way...but it has many variations.


Logic is only logical when it really mentally depicts a very corresponding picture to reality. Reality is logic in its own right but it may be so cruel so that we need to replace it by another logic....we have to change things in real to change their logic. Life, reality, sets its logic....at first this logic may be just enforcement of rules but reality is persistent, isn't it? Tracing it from the opposite side, our logical visions can help us to set reality to what we imagine. But to change the existing, boring, cruel, and.....to some extent filthy reality, we have to change what makes its logics....to change real things in real life in a really coherent way of thinking. We have to use the unused relationships among things....those relationships that avoidable to people, organisations or state to change life. Time is logic's best friend or oppositely enemy number one. Time may justify logic helping it to hold true or it just may drain it of its dead cold blood. But time is an illusion really it just rises from time!!!! Time is our measurement of what is going on, what happened and what will happen. It is our measurement of actions and interactions always happen, happened, and will happen among real things. This way a year may become a lot of centuries.....just if it is filled with proper and strong actions. These strong actions only become that strong because they really use the true relationships among real things.....truth is a changing thing at the end. Yes it is changing....just fluid as water and sometimes just as air. OK so what is history then? I tell you social classes in essence this is the 'truth'. But when I look at the history of my love I find it a history of me not of my social class....OK my social class always had and will have an impact on me.....but my social class cannot love another social class. It is my love. Anyway, lengthy emotional drill, wasn't it? It helps you know. Reality can be changed...logic can be changed.....We just have to find the right replacement and to find this we have to find our way in real life to the real relationships among things. Those relations that are often hidden. Quoting you Marx it would be reason has always existed but not always in a reasonable form....but I remember you Lenin saying "“a lie told often enough becomes the truth" Oh I didn't forget you dear Einstein....you really said it....reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.....

Life is our Reason, our Lie and our Reality So Let's Make our Illusion



2 comments:

El3en Elsehrya said...

First, I would like to say that this piece of article is very interesting, but very controversial and raises lots of issues.
The controversies it raises are as old as humanity.
The question about the relation between the “mind-body-soul” model of human is a big question.
What is the relation of soul to mind, what is the function of each? What is lost with death? Both? neither?
Another question s what is Mind ?. Well, I will answer you using what I know based on my background.
SO, most scientists now consider thinking as the main function of mind.
Mind is believed to be located functionally in the brain.
In some diseases and in coma states, you lose thinking, often in particular diseases u lose one particular aspect of thinking, like word finding, spelling, mathematical arguments, orientation in space, orientation to time, abstraction, executive abilities , planning…etc.
There are now areas in our brain that are known to be responsible for each of the aforementioned functions. One other function of the brain that relates to Mind and thinking is MEMORY, which is located in specific areas of the brain.
Based on those scientific –not philosophical- findings, Mind is considered by some scientists as a collective feature that u acquire with the overall function of your brain cells in harmony and simultaneously . Phenomena similar to wetness as a function of collection of H2O molecules, texture as a collection of threads.
This question is an ever lasting question that will not end.

Another aspect of your article is about the illusion that we live in. You know that we see , hear, perceive what our brains are prepared to see, hear and perceive.
For example, some animals are color-blind, they do not see colors, and their reality is different than other reality. And if we assume that there are other creatures that are more noble than humans they might see different whole perspective of what we call nature.
This type of illusion is a limit of what our brain is capable of.
There are other types of illusions that are potentially reversible, and those are the kind of illusions most humans are living in now.
Just for the sake of controversy. Bin-laden for example is a big illusion, is he for real ? Is he alive ? Is he dead? What difference does his make anyway? Reality does not matter. What matter is what the media and the US wants us to know. And just for the sake of being more controversial, somebody’s terrorist might be somebody’s hero.

Your article is too deep to be commented upon in those few lines.

PS. U may need to translate this to Arabic; it would be simpler to be digested.

Kareem Alkaseer said...

Thank you for your well organised comment. I guess you explained what you are saying in a very clear way..I think I actually couldn't do the same. So, I salute you.

Anyway, a healthy brain accepts data from the outside world then it threads this data into what becomes the mind. I agree with this for sure. But I like to add one thing: the brain is a very materialistic thing while the mind is not. The mind is the brain's precious outcome. Let's get to some fine example, sounds below 20 Hz and above 20 kHz are never heard by humans. Does that mean that these sounds don't exist? No they exist but we are not naturally aware of them. Moreover, we humans actually use these kinds of waves - sound is a sort of waves. We use them because they really exist. And if we have never known about them, they would have existed also. We all use mobile phone, and these mobile phones use some kinds of waves that we humans cannot naturally hear or see. But at the end they always there in the air, most probably there are thousands of them around me while I am writing this. Also, the screen that you are reading this on now deceives you by the way. The "picture" you see on it is not continuous as you see it - but the dots on the internal sheet of the screen are being lit on and off so rapidly...your eyes don't see this because their nature is to store the pictures they capture into the brain/mind for a while longer than that it take each dot to let on and off then on again. anyway, if this is not the case, these screen would never have been manufactured. We humans found a real relation among materialistic things then we used it. albeit, these relationships deceive us!
Many animals don't see the world exactly as we see it. But seeing is not believing. Seeing was the way the materialistic world deceived us. right? Relations in nature exist no matter if we humans or any other race aren't aware of them. They eventually have impacts on us. Scientist always work to explore the world and to use their findings and to integrate them. They don't invent the world.
         The world exist outside our brains
         We are barely trying to know it
In my post I meant that we have to exploit the relationships among things to change our world. And to know such relations we have to analyse the world. The best thing about knowledge is that it nothing but sharing thoughts, it is accumulative.
In Egypt, we need a change. But how can we bring about a change without knowing such relationships. We must not follow anyone who says I know. This Mr. knew-it-all is always a big liar. Also, we mustn't Shout and Cry in the hope of the departure of the regime. This way we are just going to replace it by another variation of itself. The regime is inside us, that's all.

Thank you for your very inspiring comment, I really appreciate that. I think I will add these few line to the post so that it becomes clearer. I hope it helps. I will translate into Arabic as well.
Have a nice day.