Tuesday 10 April 2018

Another Ramble Through Ignorance.

I’m led to question how much value we should place on material life. Is it better to live with suffering or die and be released? Are we released when we die? Are we anything after we’re dead? If we are, do we feel a sense of homecoming or a sense of loss? How can we be expected to know the right way to conduct a life without the requisite information? Religions claim to offer it to us, but religions are largely human constructs however much their adherents claim otherwise. And they’re widely contradictory.

I suspect that the only feasible road is to do everything with an eye on always doing the good and right thing as an honest reading of our consciences dictates. And then we hope for the best. But I might be wrong. And it might not matter anyway. And where do I go from here? A little more Bach and then to bed.

3 comments:

Madeline said...

In archaeology I think we tend to be materialists - not in the traditional sense of the word, or in the sense of the more recent word materialistic, but in appreciating the tactile and practical qualities of matter. Your post brought to mind a book I just finished called "Craeft," which is all about the potentialities human beings have realized in the matter around them. To me it also points to the complicated relationship that humans have with matter, as being dependent on it and yet seeing ourselves as detached from or superior to it, by virtue of our immaterial souls.

The question of the soul presented a huge problem for early alienists, who couldn't reconcile the idea of the immortal and divine soul with the disease and decay of the brain. Psychiatry essentially emerged to bridge this divide, but ultimately absolved itself of the responsibility entirely by taking a strictly materialist stance.

As for knowing the right way without knowing all the information, I think of how the roundness of the Earth was first proven in ancient times using only shadows and trigonometry, thousands of years before anyone saw it from space. And how scientists projected the idea of life forms and cellular structures that were smaller than the eye could see before the invention of the microscope. And how somehow we know the universe is expanding, again because of math, or something. We're always half (or mostly) blind to what the universe contains. Acting in accordance with reality requires a series of painstaking calculations.

Madeline said...

I realized that these last two comments may come across as even more pedantic than usual. My outlet for inconsequential rambling has been somewhat restricted lately, as I've been away from campus burying my head in my own research. This year more than ever I've come to respect good editors as the people who make the difference between decent writing and a verbose pile of sludge.

JJ said...

Not pedantic, Mad. Pedantic you never are - just ahead of me in the matter of mental energy (as well as knitting, art and several other things.) And I'm hoping to live long enough for the scientists to get around to explaining (using math, of course) how so much gray matter can be squeezed into one parson's head. Or even one person's head (by way of correcting a typo in an out-of-the-box sort of way.)

As for my odd little late night ramble, I still think the starting point has to be whether the individualised consciousness (as opposed to the universal variety) is a function of the brain, or whether it is independent and merely attached to the brain for the duration of a lifetime. Tired now. Please don't stop commenting.