Thomas_More
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I agree with you about size.
But you are assuming that consciousness is only our kind of consciousness.
We know, from our own brains and nerves, that matter thinks and feels. So it has consciousness. Our type of consciousness, or intelligence, results from the specific formation of our material being, the material formation of animals on this planet. What of other formations of matter?
When we say we think and feel, we can only comprehend those words as members of an Earthling animal species.
We are an example, one terrestrial example, of matter being conscious. There are doubtless trillions of examples who could equally think it their “role” to “introduce” self-knowledge to the cosmos, which you appear to be claiming as our “role”, as though we have an importance beyond ourselves.
Even if we establish socialism in our society, it does not guarantee that we will still exist for long in evolutionary terms. As Great Apes, Gould says, we are a branch that evolution has not much more to do with, having exhausted adaptation. This makes us ripe for extinction. Even if we have tens of thousands of years left, we are likely to become extinct without discovering life beyond this planet.
To say it is our role to bring self-consciousness to the universe is, therefore, arrogant and ludicrous.
As for humility, who can behold the cosmos without feeling awe, vulnerability and humility? Even if we have millions of years left as a species, we will only ever comprehend the equivalent of a speck of dust. We are still ignorant of more than 99.9% of fellow beings on our own planet!
I put the phrase badly. It just means the consciousness of being star stuff, with everything else, and not a separate “self” for whom the universe is “outside” of one’s “self.” (Which is the standard, illusory, feeling).
Socialism is a human social movement. It can’t pretend to anything else.
Yes, humans should be able to reverse some of the ecological damage they have caused, and some might argue that our disappearance might achieve the same result.
But drawing up a blueprint is not the same as gloating over a chimp’s inability to do so.
And you too may prove as vulnerable as he, in the passage of time.
” If you were of a philosophical (or metaphysical) bent you might even describe the evolution of humans are the biosphere becoming conscious.”
Again, arrogance. And especially ludicrous on the part of some little ants at the tail end of one little galaxy, who don’t even see the other life forms under their noses as worthy of consideration.
This is what I mean by most people not being ready for the realisation of cosmic reality. I would suggest some humility, and awe, before such self-aggrandisement. Otherwise you are behaving no differently from the religious, who believe in the specialness of “Man.”
“…the universe becoming conscious of itself through our agency.”
What human supremacist arrogance!
We are a tiny microscopic blip in one planet’s evolution.Gautama, btw, wouldn’t have heard of a prayer wheel.
ALB, you are continuing to confound philosophy with religious practices.I think the Eastern religions would say I don’t understand them. I don’t care. I think Hearn would understand me.
I’m not speaking for Eastern religions. I think language has changed meaning, and Buddhism was so absorbant of the beliefs and superstitions of those it encountered, that its original thought was submerged.In reading Buddhist texts, I retain only what speaks to me, and I speculate with regard to Sanskrit terms to which other translators give a different meaning.
Suffice it to say that materialism long preceded the famous (to us) European materialists, and, together with the other ancient Indian materialists, there was Gautama, and later Nagarjuna. Later, for all his faults, there was Lafcadio Hearn, who did not call himself a Buddhist but who, I believe, understood the original better than most avowed Buddhists do.I’m not ecstatic just because I understand I am part of the cosmos. It is simply an extension of understanding most do not in fact like to accept.
Which is why they cling to religious fallacies which separate them and tell them they are the special creations of an anthropocentrist deity.
I’ve just said I don’t mean heaven when I say nirvana. I simply mean the perception that we are not separate from the universe but are part of it. Most do not feel that, but feel they are separate, “inhabiting”, the same as they think “they” inhabit “their bodies.”
By natural philosophy I mean the study of nature: astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, geology, evolution, etc.
Social philosophy is Marxism and other thinking concerned with society.A word isn’t mumbo jumbo because it’s a foreign word. It’s mumbo jumbo if conveyed as such.
We say, “This is heaven, this garden!”
But if we say, “We go to Heaven when we die”, that’s mumbo jumbo.
You are interpreting Nirvana in the religious sense, of “heaven.”
It simply means enlightenment in terms of one’s relation to the universe.
I don’t translate nirvana as bliss. Simply as understanding, or perceiving. Most Buddhists would say i’m not one. Well, in that case i’d reply, i’m not. My reading of Hearn, of Nagarjuna, and others has led me to my own interpretation of Gautama’s natural philosophy. Monks and kings might misuse him to lull people into social subservience, but that, the Buddhist RELIGION, is not what i’m talking about.
We are at cross purposes.
Social philosophy should be kept separate from natural philosophy.
One might as well say to Einstein:
“So we are talking about the speed of light while we still live under capitalism?”
Or: “So you can understand socialism while still living under capitalism?” …
