Suicidal Ape
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It is obvious that we can't find a common ground. We are still believers, not rational creatures. Just listening to any conversation, it's impossible not to hear at least once: I believe. That's nothing wrong with the word itself only what this word implies. We witness and contribute to our very own tragedy just because we believe. We believe that this is right and that is wrong. We believe that we have the right while the other one doesn't. We just believe, illogically.
As Isabel Peterson wrote in The God of the Machine that Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends...
It's fascinating but deadly when we, the people, reason our belief. It's how we justify murder. Reason is belief and belief is reason. Instead of growing more apart, belief and reason merged, creating the apotheosis of absurd. The majority of world’s populace resumed to extreme behavior in order to get their point across. The few, the rulers, hone their speech and deeds on falsehood, knowing that the masses are gullible and that nonsense repeated with enough conviction will eventually become an irrefutable truth.
Buffalo Soldier after Buffalo Soldier is spawning every second, fighting to death against their very existence. Giving examples of these suicidal behaviors is like counting the sand specks in the desert. The credulous mass will stampede on itself in their seldom reachable and futile aspiration. If not disabled or killed in the process, they surely attain no escape once they slump off the cliff.
One must be muffled, dismayed and shattered observing millennia of suicidal deeds. It might be understandable for sheep, wildebeests and many other reasonless creatures but to observe the same conduit performed by humans, makes me scramble in the dictionary for an adjective or epithet only to return fruitless and barren.
In our quest for becoming human, enlightened and tolerating, we created the guillotine and lethal injection instead. And we apply it feverously onto ourselves.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just a scene in a play that has infinite numbers of acts.
Cynically, I must give standing ovations to this perennial spectacle of debauched reason.
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certainty
it seems that the word "certainty" is understood as certain proof, whereas is not. if I say "I doubt the existence of someone who is called Jaia Papitz, and I think that her reply is an automated reply, because I'm not able to represent her visually, and nothing is able to convince me otherwise right now", well, I'm actually right to doubt your existence, even though the certainty of such a thing is, well, a weak one. If I would think that Jaia Papitz really exist, this is not a certainty, but a belief, in lack of any clear and irrefutable evidence. I said that we first must be certain to doubt, which is not a contradiction (deconstruction cleared that a long time ago) because I am, in the beginning, certain of my own existence, which is the basis for any further doubt. Berkeley doubted even the existence of the world, but not his own existence.
As for the bushman from New Guinea, he is basing his own life on beliefs because, in the first place, he does not recognize such a contradiction. And this is a cultural trait, not an irrational one. There is a difference between these two.
This is just an addenda. I understand your criticism about belief, I just wanted to make it a little clearer.
:)
of said
Thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay... Epistemology is brutal when knoks at your door. I won't go point by point but I found this quote that I'd like to share :
"CERTAINTY is an EMOTION not a FACT!" Also, cultural (national, religious etc. - which intertwine) are very irrational. My point I was trying to convey regarding one's belief being irrational yet one acts as if it was true. Also, there must be outlined the vehement difference between right or wrong and true or false. For instance, one is right to believe that the apples falling from the tree is a resault of a divine power yet that person is elaborating on a false premise. Of course, what we find irrefutably to be true today, tomorrow might represent the ultimate false.
P.S. Jaia is a he not a she but that needs to be demonstrated... :)
iExile is spam proof as of know. Auto replys by a spam programm - impossible...
I'm waiting for more of your writings... I really liked your "input/output"
belief is not the problem. demonstration is.
I must object. We all believe something, and that not because our reason merged with belief, but because reason means also belief. We all know that the earth is round, even though we haven't seen it for ourselves. We believe that tomorrow is another day, but we don't know that. To be able to doubt, first you must have a kind of certainty. I am certain that I'm here. But how could I prove it to you, or how would look such a doubt? You cannot say that you know you have two hands. How would you demonstrate me that, if I were to be blind? Never being ale to see a hand, do you think I would be able to recognize it, because someone told me that I too have two hands? You believe in your thoughts, but you do not know them, as long as the unconscious is...unconscious.
demonstrated, denied and repeated every minute
I appreciate the objection and the eloquent argument however, what I was trying to convey in the article (unsuccessfully, perhaps) it’s revealed, in part not entirety, in your reply.
The article is a social commentary not a thesis of epistemology. As I was trying to point out we, as people, rely extensively on absurd belief when the facts are contradicting, fighting passionately against our own interests. Now, we can debate at length what one’s interests are but I’m not going to march on that path now. You say “To be able to doubt, first you must have a kind of certainty” where, as you know, that represent a contradiction. One doubts because one’s uncertainty. Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. Which, in most cases, the belief is illogic and/or false. For instance, the unconditional belief in a god which no one had seen or touched or demonstrated, other than illogically, its existence. The one with such belief is so certain and will not doubt god’s existence. Conversely, a person of reason must doubt god’s existence since there’s no evidence about god’s presence.
“I am certain that I'm here. But how could I prove it to you”? You just did.
“You cannot say that you know you have two hands. How would you demonstrate me that, if I were to be blind?” Well, a bat is able to “see” through other means than the eyes. Through sonar, the bat is capable to depict a very accurate picture of its surroundings. A blind human is able to recognize through the tactile sense the similarity between the hand he/she poses and the one of a person he/she touches.
To conclude, I must point out that an aborigine from Papua New Guinea who never had come in contact with what we call the civilized world, seeing an image projected on a bush but not seeing the source, he was mesmerized. Not knowing how the image was conceived he started to believe that the gods spoke with him. His belief is false even though he had empirical evidence but lacked knowledge.
As for our world, I’m more inclined to think that belief had become a conditional reflex just like the bushman’s.
P.S. Welcome to the site and I’m looking forward to reading your work.
Buffalo Soldiers
Keep telling that history:
Read the novel, Rescue at Pine Ridge, "RaPR", where Buffalo Bill Cody meets a Buffalo Soldier. A great story of black military history...the first generation of Buffalo Soldiers.
How do you keep a people down? ‘Never' let them 'know' their history.
The 7th Cavalry got their butts in a sling again after the Little Big Horn Massacre, fourteen years later, the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre. If it wasn't for the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, there would of been a second massacre of the 7th Cavalry.
Read the novel, “Rescue at Pine Ridge”, 5 stars Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the youtube trailer commercial...and visit the website http://www.rescueatpineridge.com
I hope you’ll enjoy the novel. I wrote it from my mini-series movie of the same title, “RaPR” to keep my story alive. Hollywood has had a lot of strikes and doesn't like telling our stories...its been “his-story” of history all along…until now. The movie so far has attached, Bill Duke directing, Hill Harper, Glynn Turman, James Whitmore Jr. and a host of other major actors in which we are in talks with…see imdb.com at; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0925633/
When you get a chance, also please visit our Alpha Wolf Production website at; http://www.alphawolfprods.com and see our other productions, like Stagecoach Mary, the first Black Woman to deliver mail for Wells Fargo in Montana, in the 1890's, “spread the word”.
Peace.
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