Even if you only touch on the international news, you realize that this has recently been a bad time for human existence: a bombing here, several celebrity suicides there and natural disasters seemingly everywhere. We are living in a culture of death and destruction. The end is nigh! I should be afraid to exit my door in the morning. But, should I: does the reality shown through the Internet (and other forms of electronic media) really exist? I suspect not.
This week, I got to thinking about life. What is it and why do I have it? This line of thinking, immediately presents me with a great conundrum: I have life, but do you? I cannot be 100% sure. This questioning has a long pedigree in both religious thought and philosophical inquiry.
“What is life? Science cannot tell us. Since the time of Aristotle, philosophers and scientists have struggled and failed to produce a precise, universally accepted definition of life. To compensate, modern textbooks point to characteristics that supposedly distinguish the living from the inanimate, the most important of which are organization, growth, reproduction and evolution. But there are numerous exceptions: both living things that lack some of the ostensibly distinctive features of life and inanimate things that have properties of the living. …
To better understand this argument, it’s helpful to distinguish between mental models and pure concepts. Sometimes the brain creates a representation of a thing: light bounces off a pine tree and into our eyes; molecules waft from its needles and ping neurons in our nose; the brain instantly weaves together these sensations with our memories to create a mental model of that tree.
Other times the brain develops a pure concept based on observations — a useful way of thinking about the world. Our idealized notion of “a tree” is a pure concept. There is no such thing as “a tree” in the world outside the mind. Rather, there are billions of individual plants we have collectively named trees. You might think botanists have a precise unfailing definition of a tree — they don’t. Sometimes it’s really difficult to say whether a plant is a tree or shrub because “tree” and “shrub” are not properties intrinsic to plants — they are ideas we impinged on them.” (1)
That being said, it is the wonderful, and yet terrifying, experience of that realization of life that Munch (1863-1944) documents so aptly in The Scream (2): “My God, I am alive – I exist!” But then: “Now what?” That “now what” is a “call to arms” in the committed – to those dedicated to life itself. But, with so much purported brutality, I must bring this “line of questioning” back to me, personally.
Have I ever been shot? How about being stabbed? Hmm – maybe I have been blown up? No, you say. Do I know anyone who has been shot, stabbed or blown up? Do I know anyone, who knows anyone, etc? You get the point! My world is a peaceful place filled with love and kindness, for the most part. Yes, random violence does exist, but not usually for me. This leads me, quite obviously, to the conclusion that I (we) live in a mostly peaceful world, not the world of mayhem and violence that is presented to me (us) on a daily basis from the BBC app in my (our) phone, for example.
Just this small realization has totally changed the way that I see the world. I do not look for problems and for the most part violence has not visited me in my sixty-one, almost sixty-two, years of life. To extrapolate: it must be the same for everyone. Now, it would be naïve to believe that violence, war, and murder do not exist in our global society. Of course, they do. To claim, however that our extant civilization is dangerous and foreboding, however, is to utter a falsehood. It affords a wonderful experience filled with joy, happiness and spiritual development: all the beauty that I want, notwithstanding the information I am constantly subjected to.
The great Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273) leaves us with a thought: Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
A closing thought: It is so difficult to describe the way in which each of us lives. What bonds us, I am sure is love: love for our family, love for our friends, love for our students and love for the society at large. It is difficult, nigh on impossible, to believe that we are intrinsically wicked. We are kind and thoughtful beings, in the main. The world of pain and suffering is but a footnote to the “really real,” to quote J. Herman Randall Jr. (3)
To sum up: This week we spoke about the joy of life and how it does not possess most of the attributes of pain and suffering that we are constantly exposed to.
Just for fun – Camila Cabello
A philosophical question: Why does time pass so quickly when we are enjoying an activity, but seem to be endless when we are forced to do a task that we abhor: remember cleaning out the garden shed?
This week, please reflect on the grandeur that is “your piece of life.”
Every day look for something magical and beautiful.
Quote: Remember that your reality is seen through your eyes and your eyes alone.
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