Thoughts continued

I wrote this in response to an ongoing conversation I am having with @logiczombie. You can see the conversation here. I am posting it here in case anyone else may be interested in reading it or in joining the discussion.

Image by 8926 from Pixabay

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I believe it's important to think about and discuss what may lay beyond our epistemological limits. It's important that we remain open-minded.

Perhaps, it is possible to expand our understanding. Or perhaps, we may realize that we have been approaching some things in the wrong way.

Perhaps, we can adopt a fresh perspective. One new perspective could change our entire reality in an instant.

I personally love pondering about what noumena may exist, even if I am limited in my ability to even perceive whatever that might be.

I find it so fascinating!

I mean, how many things did we have no idea at all about, not that long ago? How did we come to know about them? I'm guessing someone somewhere had some ideas and did some exploring, right? (Granted some things were discovered purely by accident.)

And really, when you think about it, many people do the same thing on a daily basis. But, they take it a step further and actually believe in that which they can't even describe.

This reminds me of this controversial quote by Paul Tillich: "God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him."

Which was described as: "When you argue that God exists you are arguing for a concept and God is beyond all concepts. You cannot capture God in language, and if you can, then God is no bigger than your word for God."

I don't believe that a lot of people really think about this, particularly when they argue that their God is the right God while everyone else's God is the wrong God.

These type of conversations really serve to remind me just how limited we are. Sometimes, we look around and see all we have done and fancy ourselves intelligent. Yet, we forget that we are limited to only that which we can perceive. Yet, even though we can't quite see it, we have an awareness that there is so much more that exists beyond our ability to see or know. That leaves me so curious.

Yes, because of our limitations, it makes sense that we would primarily deal with what we can somewhat understand. For practical sake, that would be looking at ourselves as an individual. That gives us a focal point to start with.

In terms of responsibility, what responsibility do we have beyond ourselves, to the collective? Should we be accepting more responsibility as individuals, as a society for the care and well-being of each other?

Placing blame, on the other hand, is a tricky thing. We can't blame a victim for being a victim. We can't blame someone for something they genuinely don't know or can't understand. Then, we can throw into the mix trauma, conditioning, mental illness, etc.

It becomes harder and harder to place blame.

But, whether we place blame or not, we still have the issue at hand to deal with. So, rather than pointing fingers and placing blame, the first priority should be to deal with the actual problem.

Which is fine, until people start looking at things from a preventative standpoint. I personally find this causes a lot of problems in society.

First of all, you simply can't prevent something that has already happened. At most you could maybe prevent an escalation. However, this often results in a lot of rulemaking and restrictions (again ignoring the actual cause, and not solving the actual problem).

I believe we do exist beyond thought and action because we impact the world just by existing. Whatever we impact will have a further impact and so on and so forth. In essence, that chain could continue on forever.

It really does come down to what we see ourselves as being, to how we define our existence. If we are a piece of the whole, then yes, we exist beyond thought and action. If we are only individuals, we still impact beyond thought and action, because our impact has an impact.

It's all very interesting to think about isn't it?

-Akiroq