Only humankind is able to express mental experiences symbolically. Fear, danger, glee and instinctive love are inner experiences of even the animal kingdom, though these experiences cannot be specifically articulated other than by limited rather generic sounds and body language, which it is assumed would lead to much confusion were it not for the miracle of natural instincts. In the human field, an emotion of fear that is subsumed as a notion of terrorism is universally delineated despite t...
Human nature from time immemorial has questioned the substance of its existence. What is consciousness and why can it not satisfy the curiosity of what is one’s inner being? No matter the degree of philosophic intentionality of the self there is always a haunting reflection of another. Because of this human nature invariably turns to what seems the invisible within, an incomprehensible mysterious phenomenon that seems an integral element of whole being. There are three epistemological p...
Out of the punishing darkness of savagery and tribal warfare is the speculation that a godlike charismatic figure with a sense of subtle punishment emerged to the awe of the tribe. One who stole meat longer lost a hand, but perhaps was scaffolded for a time without nourishment or gorged till he puked; the woman who committed adultery was quaintly tortured until she revealed the co-perpetrator who was then by the husband humiliatingly switched on the bareback and penis. The wife, if impregnated...
The pursuit of happiness is a nebulous phrase that requires examination. First, happiness to one is another’s sadness: marriage is symbolic of an enduring love or simply contrived convenience, pregnancy brings great expectations and paints color on the face of a mother-to-be, or brings depression and drooping lips. Happiness itself is volatile because in the dynamics of daily living it is always under duress. When things go well, there is a sort of honeymoon of happiness, but soon the hug, bec...
“The aim of a presidential campaign is enlightenment, not confusion.” “Ethics is a study of what constitutes propitious behavior for the benefit of all.” “Blogging is a process by which personal views become public in the market of ideas and in touch with the sensitivities of others.” “Political science is a study of public corruption and the path to corrective measures.” “Religion should inspire the soul to engage in matters of the heart and mind of other souls.” “Tr...
Many progressives urge Kerry to get tougher with respect to Iraq — “cut and run,” deadline for troop withdrawal — echoing Kucinich. McGovern tied that in ‘72 with Vietnam and where did it get him? Only in ‘68 would it have been possible with the charisma of Robert Kennedy. Kerry is no RFK. Besides, there is no comparison — no aerial bombing killing millions, no 30,000 US troops [at RFK time] killed — even though the same knuckle headed policy exists. What the progressives fail to take into accou...
When feeling good about life we are able to block out the bad, which we know is ever lurking, yet somehow we are blest — the bad is for others. The young mother in a grocery aisle turns her back on her child secured in a shopping cart and is confident that the child will still be there — missing children are for others. When we drive by a serious traffic accident, we are momentarily saddened by the awful things that happen to others, yet we are comforted by automobile commercials that motivate...
Uncertain World There is scarcely any certainty in the world. The best that can be expected is the mental impressions upon things an events. When we infer that Saddam is Saddam [S=S] there is certainty since the subject and predicate are the same. When we state S=M, the predicate adds to the subject, even though the subject itself is not changed: Saddam is a Murderer. However, the statement is an assertion and not true unless followed with contingent predicates or sufficient reasons, such ...
Nietzsche’s inquiry into the nature of God as omnipotent and omniscient, concluded that He could not be goodness but rather cruel if “being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind , in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was the truth?” Believers would immediately counter that humankind is not privy to truth except when God wishes to reveal it, and in the meantime faith is tentative knowledge. However, it is not as simple as eithe...
Agnostics and those of faith are not far apart. Generally agnosticism means that one cannot be sure that a deity exists; on the other hand a worshiper may claim the existence of God or gods, but the implication is in virtue of faith which by its very definition cannot be certain, though denying lingering doubt. Agnosticism is in reality skepticism — not able to hold a tangential divinity in the palm of a hand and therefore in all probability does not exist or at least unprovable. Yet many agno...
Can something as gross as a Picasso produce an aesthetic feeling wherein one is arrested in beauty? Obviously there is no beauty in asymmetrical concoctions so that the aesthetic experience must be modified to an arrestment of a myriad of internalized experiences or nightmares of the viewer. This may seem presumptuous in light of the esteem of this artist as arguably proclaimed the finest artist of the 20 th century. Still, traditionally art was deemed beautiful when it imitated and exc...
What does it mean to be conscious of? Conscious of the outside world or conscious of oneself? To Heidegger it is the latter. One must first be awed by the, presence, nay, the power and dread of being in the world. Animals of the wild sense the dread, animals domesticated feel comforting presence of being cared for by a structure not their own. Humans feel the power of being in the world by the sheer strength of intentionality, that is the ability to project their being onto a world they have ...
Apparently, blogger Anathema needs some explanation for my blog on individualism. It is not necessarily opposed to holism, which is a theory predicated on collective action springing from a priori ideas similar to Plato’s realm of ideas, except that they tend to omit the required active intellection of an individual to sort out these forms of consciousness. This not simply the chicken or the egg dilemma; it rather presupposes that the collection of forms are already out there whether or not ...
The philosophy of individualism implies that the universe is made up of individuated material down to the infinitesimal particle, ruling out a holistic responsibility for reality. Even in the big bang theory which ostensibly calls for that mysterious infinitesimal “thing” — the mother of individualism in which all things are at rest in potentiality — to exhale its becomingness but not as some grand scheme of seamless wholeness but rather as helter-skelter free spirit of things finding individu...
There is a fascinating lure about Buddha. A man gifted with health and material splendor from noble birth, nevertheless, grasped the essential tragedy of existence, becoming sensitized to the millions of his countrymen suffering under the power structure of caste. Buddha walked among them, loving them, instructing them, giving them hope and courage—most important, courage. Here he promised them literally nothing but the strength of themselves within: One man on the battlefield conque...