Been really racking my brain lately, trying to connect a few things together so that I can choose the right course for the future. It has caused me much stress, and only really have release from it when I stop thinking, calm down and focus on what is in front of me. The more I thought about not thinking (yeah a paradox) I began to ponder a few things. Which I think can apply to the worlds we create in fiction, and in life.
As human beings, we are always trying to create a context for the perceptions in our environment. We need these "bigger picture" boxes because it allows us to frame and give meaning to the smallest context stuff. This is why religon has been such an important part of human society since the beginning. There wasn't any science to determine the bigger questions, so religon gave humanity certainty to act day to day. And we need this certainty. We need to know that if we get out of bed in the morning that we aren't going to fall through the floor into darkness.
This is how our minds are wired. We create a context around everything, and the biggest context is what relates everything underneath it. It's this biggest context that is expressed through art, but expressed directly through living realities so it can be percieved directly, rather then lost in abstraction.
Human beings (espeically males), are highly logical creatures, and is what seperates us from all other life forms. We can percieve something, conceputalise about it, and then store it in our sub conscious so we can continue to determine the meaning of our environment. The fact that we can use the word "forest" and know what it means, signfies this. we can periceve a tree, but we can't percieve a forest because there are too many trees, so we conceptualise it, and thus, give it meaning.
But we can get lost in this conceptual world, and is responsible for a lot of the conflict we see today. A lot of dystopian novels explores this in depth because many are based on idelogies that take over society and determine human behaviour on a mass scale.
But we must realise that thought is simply a sign post to reality. It's something we have created, in accordance with our already established contexts, because we can't percieve which we don't already believe. Thought isn't reality, its the lense we view reality with, and is the corner stone of any post-modern analysis of reality, (although some go too far, i.e The Secret, and say we create reality with our minds...ludacris, how would a starving ethopian kid feel about such an ascertion?)
So step back from your thought, perhaps let emotion dictate what you do for a while. Might make you happier.
Hope to see you again,
Greg
As human beings, we are always trying to create a context for the perceptions in our environment. We need these "bigger picture" boxes because it allows us to frame and give meaning to the smallest context stuff. This is why religon has been such an important part of human society since the beginning. There wasn't any science to determine the bigger questions, so religon gave humanity certainty to act day to day. And we need this certainty. We need to know that if we get out of bed in the morning that we aren't going to fall through the floor into darkness.
This is how our minds are wired. We create a context around everything, and the biggest context is what relates everything underneath it. It's this biggest context that is expressed through art, but expressed directly through living realities so it can be percieved directly, rather then lost in abstraction.
Human beings (espeically males), are highly logical creatures, and is what seperates us from all other life forms. We can percieve something, conceputalise about it, and then store it in our sub conscious so we can continue to determine the meaning of our environment. The fact that we can use the word "forest" and know what it means, signfies this. we can periceve a tree, but we can't percieve a forest because there are too many trees, so we conceptualise it, and thus, give it meaning.
But we can get lost in this conceptual world, and is responsible for a lot of the conflict we see today. A lot of dystopian novels explores this in depth because many are based on idelogies that take over society and determine human behaviour on a mass scale.
But we must realise that thought is simply a sign post to reality. It's something we have created, in accordance with our already established contexts, because we can't percieve which we don't already believe. Thought isn't reality, its the lense we view reality with, and is the corner stone of any post-modern analysis of reality, (although some go too far, i.e The Secret, and say we create reality with our minds...ludacris, how would a starving ethopian kid feel about such an ascertion?)
So step back from your thought, perhaps let emotion dictate what you do for a while. Might make you happier.
Hope to see you again,
Greg
No comments:
Post a Comment