Category: Post Untitled, volume one

SUNDAY, 4 JULY 2004

Is “Person A” the same person as she was five years ago? Despite ageing, and taking into account the effects of lifestyle on her appearance and physical well-being, she is probably still recognisable as the same person. However, psychologically she is merely related to the person she was five years ago. To say she is psychologically the same person, is not too different from alleging that one of my two sisters and I are the same person, just because we come from the same womb.

By law, this person is still “Person A”. She is still responsible for contracts she had signed five years ago. She can also still be held responsible for criminal acts she may have committed five or ten years ago.

She also still carries the joys and burdens of choices she has made, or incidents in which she has been involved any time during her past.

The SELF, however, does not remain constant. “SELF 2004 of Person A” is only psychologically related to “SELF 1999 of Person A”.

It can also be asked whether “SELF May 2004 of Person X” is the same as “SELF July 2004 of Person X”, or just related. The answer is again that the two are only related, but probably more closely than “SELF 1995 of Person X” and “SELF 2003 of Person X” (a particular truth for Person X, which cannot necessarily be applied to Person A).

One can even go further and ask about the relation between “SELF 4 July 2004 at 16:34 of Person X” and “SELF 4 July 2004 at 16:33 of Person X”. The answer is the same: still only related, but there is a high probability that the degree of relation is closer than in the case of, for example, “May SELF” and “July SELF”. (Again, any mention of relation in the case of Person X is not necessarily valid for Person A, because five minutes – even one minute – can make a dramatic difference in one person’s life, while relatively little may change over the course of a month in another person’s life.)

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SATURDAY, 3 JULY 2004

The difference between the ENLIGHTENED and the UNENLIGHTENED

The UNENLIGHTENED says: This is who and what I am, so I should just accept it.

The ENLIGHTENED says: These are the cards I’ve been dealt, and these are the resources at my disposal. Here are my capabilities and my limitations, and here are my interests. Considering all these things, I declare a particular vision of WHO and WHAT I WANT to be, and WHERE I would prefer to be this person. Let the work begin.

SUNDAY, 4 JULY 2004

Salute to the brilliant nine! (out of every ten)

One statement that does not get nearly the attention it deserves: People are brilliant! People are magnificent creatures who manage to survive and even live happy lives to a ripe old age, this despite the fact that they know or understand bugger all about their own species, and about how human beings function.

Someone might say, “Maybe they know more than you think.”

My opinion is, of course, most people know something, and of course they understand many things. But taking into account the totality of what can be known, what people know and understand represent such a fraction of the whole that one can hardly be blamed if you use a somewhat vulgar phrase to indicate the amount of knowledge and understanding you think they possess.

“Are you not also one of this species?” an intelligent reader may inquire.

Yes, I will answer, but I think I can get away with it by now to say that I am not nearly as ignorant as nine out of every ten people on the street.

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SATURDAY, 3 JULY 2004

I reckon a teenager who is judged by conventional standards to be in a phase of rebellion is reacting against his own self, against the people he holds responsible for what he sees as his inadequate given self, and possibly even against the environment in which this given self was born and raised.

It may be attributed to the fact that I am more exposed to teenagers in a certain cross-section of society, but it does appear that the “rebellious teenager” is a more common sight in developed, industrialised countries, where fragmented communities share a single urban landscape, and rich and poor rub shoulders on a daily basis, compared to communities where a subsistence economy is the norm, with narrower, more traditional connections between individual members of the community, and a closer cultural and socio-economic relationship between different local communities.

One could postulate that teenagers in urban communities in industrialised countries have more reason to feel ill-equipped for the lives they want to live, or even for the lives that are expected of them. Young people in these areas are after all more aware of other individuals in the same community or in other communities – both locally or in other areas – who at least seem to be much better equipped than they are.

I also believe – although I can only risk a humble opinion on this – that the particular economic environment in which teenagers indirectly find themselves, or where they know they will find themselves as adults, are conducive to feelings of inadequacy. Socio-economic position – where the teenager finds himself vis-à-vis his parents’ economic activities, and where he believes he will likely end up as an adult, as well as competition with peers in terms of material possessions intensify internal conflict within the teen between his view of what he is at that moment, and what is presented to him as the ideal.

Finally, I believe that too many adults, or then in this case specifically the adults in developed countries who have to fulfil the role of parents of teenagers do not have the slightest understanding of the processes of identity formation, nor do they have any idea of the most elementary philosophical issues that teenagers are confronted with. This lack on the side of the parents contribute to the fact that teenagers try to formulate answers to the questions of WHO, WHAT and PLACE in their own ways, and sometimes in any way that is remotely satisfactory. Ignorance is once again the culprit. Enlightenment is once again salvation …

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SATURDAY, 3 JULY 2004

Allow me to lay some truths on the table:

1. Identity plays a vital role in the normal functioning of an individual.

2. The particular community in whose midst an individual is born and where he or she grows up plays a central role in the formation of identity.

3. It is very common that a particular religion is closely connected with a particular community; this particular religion is in many cases a crucial determinant of identity for people who were born and who grew up in this community.

4. For the adherents of various religions, it is essential to lay claim to the universal application of a particular religious “truth”.

5. It is understandable if a person who was born and who grew up in a community where a “universal application” religion is a key determinant of identity, continues to recite these claims for the sake of their own particular identity, and also that they will communicate these claims to the next generation.

A question: Can a rational person be blamed if he has a sceptical attitude towards the claim to “universal truth” by the adherents of any particular religion?

To put it differently:

a) Communities all around the world function as sources of particular identity.

b) To question, as an outsider, the validity of a particular community as a source of identity, simply because your own identity does not come from that source, is illogical. (This would mean that someone who was born and who grew up outside your community can also question the validity of your community as a source of identity because their identity did not originate from the folds of your community.)

c) A particular religion is in many cases closely connected to a particular community, and plays a pivotal role in defining identity for people born in that community.

d) Community A is thus equal to Community B as a source of identity.

e) It can also be said that Religion A is equal to Religion B as a source of identity.

Three questions:

1. On what basis can followers of Religion A, taking into account the above points, still insist on universal application of their “truths” – across all historical, cultural, and other boundaries?

2. On what basis can the followers of Religion A – most likely followers of that particular religion because that particular religion had been a primary given factor in the process from which their identities developed – make the assertion that the value of their religion extends beyond the value of Religion B – that plays a similar role as a determinant of identity in Community B?

3. Where can the line be drawn between religion as a transmission medium of “timeless truths” (no matter how true they may be), and religion as a determinant of identity?

After thorough consideration of this subject, there remains a question that one cannot resist the temptation to ask: WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

It’s easy to recite one of the principles of secular religion and answer, “The truth is relative.”

However, I still believe that there is an ABSOLUTE, UNIVERSAL TRUTH. I also believe that the particularity of fate data with which everyone is confronted at birth, the givenness of instruments with which to express an awareness of individual self, and the significant role of religion as a co-determinant of identity are all pieces of the puzzle that is the TRUTH.

Finally, do I think it is possible for a human being – a living member of the species Homo sapiens – to know the absolute, universal, timeless truth?

My answer remains, without doubt, no.

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THURSDAY, 1 JULY 2004

The value of personal agendas (I)

In the end, a personal agenda can be a catalyst for intellectual growth or for the pursuit of some or other ambition. Plato also needed his own personal agenda – opposition to the relativism of the Greek philosophers known as the Sophists – to come up with “universal and particular” – concepts that a had significant influence on the development of Western philosophical tradition.

FRIDAY, 2 JULY 2004

The value of personal agendas (II)

If the four members of the Beatles had not rebelled against their given selves and the options of adult life that were deemed appropriate considering what had been given to them but had in fact wholeheartedly accepted these things, they would quite possibly have become dockworkers or teachers of office clerks in Liverpool.

If Vladimir Lenin’s brother had not been arrested by agents of the Tsar’s regime and later executed, Lenin’s personal agenda may not have driven him to playing a vitally important role in the establishment of the Soviet Union.

In other words, accept yourself … to an extent?

[In the language of the digital age: I accept my operating system to a degree, but here is nevertheless a few hundred additional lines of code that I want to work in.]

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