I believe many existentialists begin their exploration with a faulty set of premises, especially regarding the meaning of life. To explain this in any understandable way Im going to have to go on a bit of a detour. First of all let us look at what ideas are. Are ideas logical entities? electrical patterns? emergent traits of complex systems? - as it is we have no conclusive idea about what an idea is made of or where it comes from (except on a very rudimentary plane). But here a trick of logic might help us, because we can look at all the possible explanations and see what they have in common, if all explanations share one thing we could try to move on with the assumption that this is true. Ideas, whatever they are seem to be imprinted upon some medium. Thats to say, they arent simply found in nature, nature holds facts, stuff which is there, and our ideas about them are interpretations/descriptions imprinted upon a medium which is not the one we found in nature. In more basic language: An idea is a description of something - but not the thing itself. For kicks and giggles lets look into the medium/media relationship. What does it mean for something to be written, and for something to be written upon. Carbon and paper have had a long successful history of applying themselves to each other to form descriptions of something which are neither carbon nor paper. When I write upon paper, what happens is that carbon and paper is imprinted with a form of glyphic code which can later be translated back into a mental state. Let me be specific: I have a mind state which means that I am thinking about a polar bear. So my brain is currently ionised in a way which means that my consciousness is perceiving a polar bear as being rendered in full HD by my mind. This is an imprint of ions and complex biochemicals on a neural network. This imprint is translated into a carbon and paper form with the aid of my fine motor skills and a pencil (and a lot of people chopping down pine trees in order to make the paper, lest we forget their endeavours). If someone is lucky enough to be able to read my glyphs they will represent a neural state in their mind which will end up in their consciousness seeing a polar bear. This is basic translation of states between different mediums, not magical and performed all the time in nature in various ways. The most obvious way is the way we are translated from DNA into human beings. Some of this is partial translation, or translation of a need within the system - such as when plants excrete hormones to affect other systems to behave in different ways. But how does all this relate to the meaning of life? Dont worry, Im not going to lead you down some meaning-as-derived-by-fundamental-functions rabbit hole. No were going into a wholly more intelligent direction. First of all we will attempt to see our basic premise of existence not as foundational but as state. The basic mistake of existentialists is to think we are at the heart of meaning. Imagine a piece of paper with an unsolved mathematical problem at the top. Line after line the problem is being solved by a range of intermediary steps. At the bottom is the final solution. Now try to see the world with dimensions and fundamental laws as a metaphor for this piece of paper. You may choose to have time representing the journey down the paper, while this is easily grasped it is flawed in its extreme translation though - just be aware of that. The hardest to grasp - but also most correct - metaphor is to see the conceptual possible beginning of the universe as the top of the page - and the ultimate expression of the universe at the bottom. But that doesnt mean that we are at the bottom of the paper currently, we are simply bouncing between the laws and the dimensions trying to figure out the possible expression of the universe. You see if you decide to try to jump off planet earth, you will hit the barrier between the force of your jump and the gravitational pull (depending on your strength), and an expression is formed, which wasnt expressed when it didnt happen. But, look now, you probably think: Nice, weve got it figured out then. The meaning of life is at the bottom of the paper: So Theis, you raving idiot, youre claiming that the meaning of life is synonymous to the very expression of the universe, how unoriginal, empty and stupid. Well, no, because see we forgot one thing: The paper. You see the universe IS being expressed. It IS being solved. The basic premise we got wrong is that we are part of the solution, and that we somehow have any interest in the solution. We are a more likely the side effect of integration somewhere along the way. Somewhere mid-page the math turns a bit complicated, and life expresses itself somewhere, this is cool sure, but not the ultimate solution (also if it was, itd probably be a bit bigger, but thats my personal opinion and not founded in anything logical). So what was I going on about with paper and imprints of states and stuff? Assuming that were a state, and were imprinted upon something, that something is also something. This is where the existentialists go wrong, they look upwards - probably inspired by their religious tradition - for meanings. In fact when they say meaning they mean explanation, but let them have their m word for now. When in fact meaning is created downward, down the well so to speak. This is a fairly complicated state to translate into words, as it might show here. In other words. Dont look upwards for god, look downward to that which for you are god. Instead of searching for explanations in the sky, create meaning from the clouds upon where you stand.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:45:07 +0000
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