Various thoughts and reflection

Note: This writing is part of the Coins That Shatter the Mirror cluster, reposted from my earlier archives as part of the BetweenSparks project. Read the full cluster on Wattpad.

When I am out and about in my daily life, I have thoughts... Sometimes they are profound enough to be stored into the notes on my phone.  Usually though, they sit there so long I do not remember the entire reflection that made those thoughts... So here I will post random quotes from my phone and talk about them.

"Reality is painted by perspective. Use more color"

As innately subjective creatures (who behave existentially pragmatic), we are limited to observing reality and the universe through narrow lens of perception. By constantly looking for new perspectives we can either 1. make our understanding of reality larger and/or 2. see reality from many different ways. Either/or - the idea stands that trying to gain more perspective will allow someone to understand more about reality.  No matter how small and trivial, or large and significant the reality can be expanded.

"He who has the wisdom to make standards is wise enough not to do it" - from the book Wayism

While I want to agree with this quote, I want to disagree.  Indeed we should realize standards are made by reflection of societal norms and our personal perceived standards of what is 'good' 'wrong' or 'neutral' (in various combinations). But instead of not making standards at all... we should do the critical-divergent process of constantly reevaluating our perceived standards. Indeed, our standards may never be the most wise, or the best AND with that knowledge we should never assume them to be the best.  Yet, in the moment there could be wise standards, but as far as life long standards, that is where I agree it is most wise to not have have them.  Like any other thought, standards should be seen as always developing and evolving with other standards that come into your mind.

"Existentialism: You haven't lived until you think about death all the time" -Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein (Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes)

Although this quote seems to have a humorous tone, I completely agree, lol. I already wrote a post about how death and dying = philosophy.  Basically though... How can you truly appreciate the life you have if you do not understand the lives that are no longer here? This gives us Westerns a bad impression of death; we mourn for a few days and try to get over the death.  In Eastern tradition the death is more of a celebration; some wear bracelets to mourn for years.  I would even argue this effects our diverse metaphysical contemplation of East v. West - the way we look at death.  For our cultures, death is death, the end - it's over.  For most Easterners death is the beginning (as their religious philosophy denotes).  Today, if we look at how our language has evolved, you can see a huge difference between languages like English and Mandarin - the biggest being the nouns and verbs.  English has far more nouns; nouns symbolize static and solid articles of expression.  Mandarin has more verbs; verbs are the opposite; they express action.  From the philosophy of death, in diverse practices and philosophies, developed diverse languages that modern man uses from their ancient applications.  Hard argument to make? Yes, but, just look at the differences of existentialism practices between West and Eastern philosophers.  One will see how the former argues causes and effect and the latter argues more of a synchronicity.

"How intelligent can you be if you cannot defend yourself in basic hand to hand combat?"

 This came to me talking to my best friend who practices martial arts.  My thoughts are shallow here: an evolutionary standard for survival has been based on 'the fittest' - the strongest, the best adapters - for the longest part of our anthropology. How can we (as individuals) today suggest we have a higher intelligence than our ancestors, but could be thrown back in time and be probably killed by them without much effort.  Maybe you could argue strength... But, some of the worlds best martial artist do no more weight lifting than cardio and calisthenics, or simply just meditate. I guess, this entire idea is shallow - why do we need to fight? Well, while you train in any art there is discipline, but with martial arts the discipline is physical.  I would also definitely argue, in general of the human psyche, that bodily kinetic intelligence is real - muscle memory and whatnot.  Definitely a part of intelligence we over look (even take for granted) as individuals, if we do not balance activity between the body and mind.


"Moral questions are the in the fabric of what is human nature"

Self explanatory I hope. If there is a human "nature" we obviously have morals which infringe on whether or not that nature is good or bad - as all the philosophers in history attempt to resolve.  So, by default I assume that if you worry about ethics and morality (studying the subject) you will be able to understand human nature far better than perhaps even psychology.