Yeah, so, Blogger's been acting a little strange lately. It eats my posts...eats my comments...I can't even remember what I posted on the other day that I thought had gotten published, but apparently hadn't. Oh well. It's a little screwy with the heat, I guess.
The weather is now sufficently warm enough to start practicing my bubble-blowing skills again. I plan on having somebody come out and take pictures of them so I can post them up on here.
Umm...not much else to talk about, really. My friend's creepy boyfriend quasi-stalked me over Instant Messenger the other day, and apparently she was in the room while he was doing it. Very strange. I have odd tastes in the people I associate with. Take my roommate...
My parents got me a cellphone. I guess I'm a couple steps towards becoming my worst nightmare. Or at least a facsimilie thereof. Never thought I'd see a cellphone that I like, but...it's pretty cool. It flips, and take pictures, and neat little things like that. Hank is jealous. Maybe I was more anti-cellphone culture than I was anti-cellphones themselves.
I have a really good, interesting (to me) topic for my German philosophy class, but I'm not sure how to phrase my various scattered arguments and points. It all started last night when Hank and I were talking about music downloading. I remarked that human beings are the only organisms that strive for things far beyond what they already possess; the striving of beasts and other living things is only for the fulfillment of immediate necessity. I then realized, out loud, that the lust which drives us on is our ultimate undoing in many things; a man's lust for power, fame, money, or success can put him in danger of many evils that no other creature will ever know or be able to fathom.
So from that, we might extrapolate the idea that every action, every creation, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, merely by virtue of existing. The only being which is above this necessary limitation is God, who by His very nature must exist without ever being destroyed. To argue with this is to argue with the fundamental nature of a Being who is outside of time, space, or full comprehension.
Thus, death and life are not merely two sides of the same coin. If we could imagine a coin with only ONE side, which was both life and death in resonance with each other, we could come to understand the idea of the annihilation contained within every aspect of Creation. However, the only being who can fully comprehend Creation is God, who made it and whose existence is not accompanied by annihilation.
Often I have used the phrase "Death is the mother of beauty" in arguments with friends, where I posit that beauty is a subjective effect of our own mortality. If we were all immortal, beauty would have a very different meaning, because that which is temporary would be harder to understand. But because beauty is also susceptible to the destruction that is the end result of all creation, we are able to grasp its glory, and realize that it is made all the more sweet by the fact that it will one day fade.
Another way to look at it is from a Spinozistic standpoint. If we agree that God is an "infinite substance," and that one substance cannot be produced by another substance (P6, The Ethics), then God cannot create another infinite substance. Ergo, anything that he does create (I'm veering away from Spinoza now) would have to be finite in its nature. By my reasoning above, anything finite in its nature will carry with it the seeds of its own destruction in its subsequent actions and creations.
A third way to consider it: To be human is to live consciously for the future. To live for the future is to admit a finite space of human existence, for in an infinite space of time there is no past or future. To admit a finite space of time demands a reconciliation with one's own mortality. And to confront one's own mortality means facing the annihilation that accompanies all creation.
Wow. This started off really lame and shallow and got way too deep too quickly. I'ma go do something that involves little mental activity for once.
The weather is now sufficently warm enough to start practicing my bubble-blowing skills again. I plan on having somebody come out and take pictures of them so I can post them up on here.
Umm...not much else to talk about, really. My friend's creepy boyfriend quasi-stalked me over Instant Messenger the other day, and apparently she was in the room while he was doing it. Very strange. I have odd tastes in the people I associate with. Take my roommate...
My parents got me a cellphone. I guess I'm a couple steps towards becoming my worst nightmare. Or at least a facsimilie thereof. Never thought I'd see a cellphone that I like, but...it's pretty cool. It flips, and take pictures, and neat little things like that. Hank is jealous. Maybe I was more anti-cellphone culture than I was anti-cellphones themselves.
I have a really good, interesting (to me) topic for my German philosophy class, but I'm not sure how to phrase my various scattered arguments and points. It all started last night when Hank and I were talking about music downloading. I remarked that human beings are the only organisms that strive for things far beyond what they already possess; the striving of beasts and other living things is only for the fulfillment of immediate necessity. I then realized, out loud, that the lust which drives us on is our ultimate undoing in many things; a man's lust for power, fame, money, or success can put him in danger of many evils that no other creature will ever know or be able to fathom.
So from that, we might extrapolate the idea that every action, every creation, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, merely by virtue of existing. The only being which is above this necessary limitation is God, who by His very nature must exist without ever being destroyed. To argue with this is to argue with the fundamental nature of a Being who is outside of time, space, or full comprehension.
Thus, death and life are not merely two sides of the same coin. If we could imagine a coin with only ONE side, which was both life and death in resonance with each other, we could come to understand the idea of the annihilation contained within every aspect of Creation. However, the only being who can fully comprehend Creation is God, who made it and whose existence is not accompanied by annihilation.
Often I have used the phrase "Death is the mother of beauty" in arguments with friends, where I posit that beauty is a subjective effect of our own mortality. If we were all immortal, beauty would have a very different meaning, because that which is temporary would be harder to understand. But because beauty is also susceptible to the destruction that is the end result of all creation, we are able to grasp its glory, and realize that it is made all the more sweet by the fact that it will one day fade.
Another way to look at it is from a Spinozistic standpoint. If we agree that God is an "infinite substance," and that one substance cannot be produced by another substance (P6, The Ethics), then God cannot create another infinite substance. Ergo, anything that he does create (I'm veering away from Spinoza now) would have to be finite in its nature. By my reasoning above, anything finite in its nature will carry with it the seeds of its own destruction in its subsequent actions and creations.
A third way to consider it: To be human is to live consciously for the future. To live for the future is to admit a finite space of human existence, for in an infinite space of time there is no past or future. To admit a finite space of time demands a reconciliation with one's own mortality. And to confront one's own mortality means facing the annihilation that accompanies all creation.
Wow. This started off really lame and shallow and got way too deep too quickly. I'ma go do something that involves little mental activity for once.
1 Comments:
Actually, Sonny Ericandy, it was Henny Youngman who popularized that joke. I don't know if he wrote it -- with vaudeville, who can tell? -- but it was always attached to his name. I think it was the title of his book.
Post a Comment
<< Home