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2005 25 January :: 6.34 pm
it seems like there are certain classes that get my mind racing, and anthropology is definitely one of them. there is so much information, so many things we want to prove and understand. and i keep thinking that maybe there's an answer... or maybe it's just that we assume there's an answer, even if there is no answer to anything. i would love for everything to be a science and to explain everything else and numbers making sense and black and white creating gray but only 1 shade of it so that we can understand, but there are too many things going on at once to understand. we have not existed long enough nor will anyone exist long enough to ever fully understand anything, if it is even possible to do so. where did the universe come from? we are stuffed with mathematical formulas and equal signs, books that have fronts and backs, chapters and page numbers, beginnings and ends. in our minds, there always has to be a start and a finish. we do not comprehend infinity. so when and where and how did the universe start? the UNIVERSE. not just our planet, but all of the trillions of planets, stars, moons, etc. inside this galaxy and every other galaxy in the whole huge universe. what are we? what do we mean? what is our value? what's our connection to other worlds in the whole scheme of things? what if we don't have one? what if we truly are meaningless and random, just one of trillions of other planets filled with animals and plantlife, with humans who suffer and hate and love and fear? how can we wake up every day and do this, whatever it is that we're doing? what is it? what is everything? what is nothing? i don't know if we glued all of our brains together if we could have the brain power to figure it out.
nothing. how can there be such a thing? how can a word exist for something that isn't anything? blackness is not nothing, it's still something. we talk about vacuums in outer space. what is a vacuum? the absence of matter? how can that be? one of science's laws is that matter can neither be destroyed nor created. if matter cannot be destroyed, "nothing" cannot exist. is there an opposite for everything that does exist? if there is no "nothing," can there be "everything"? what do we mean by the word "exist"? what does it mean to be? to see something, to touch something... to smell it... that means something exists? mere perception is supposed to be the equivalent to existence? what is existence? to be "alive"? does a rock exist? anger is an emotion.... we've all experienced it.... so does it exist? love, jealousy, sadness... they live inside our heads. so does everything that "exists" only exist isolated in the mind?
it's all we are. my God... we are only brains! we are absolutely nothing else. bodies are just machines. everything you perceive is produced inside your brain! how do you know what you're looking at is really there? because other people see it? how do other people see what you see? there's a connection between eyes and the brain, and the eyes sense light and color, and those sensations are converted into electrical pulses that can travel along the nerves inside the brain, which produces a picture inside your mind. "mind" is a concept, a construct. we have some collective consciousness of things that are going on, we "think," we "talk" inside our minds without having to speak outloud. without learning a language, would that be possible? there is no spot in the brain that we can label as "the mind." the whole thing is involved in our awareness of ourselves and our environment and all of the pretty little things we discuss and eat and touch and stare at. but our minds are only aware of our selves to a point. our brain is only partially aware of itself. i can think and understand that i have a brain, but i am unable to really comprehend that it's this gray sponge that's causing me to type all of this nonsense that somehow has meaning! i can't understand my own brain, i speak as if i am one and the brain is another, when in fact we are one in the same. i'm not aware of all of the gazillions of processes going on in my brain right now in order to complete this task - motor skills for my fingers to hit the right keys on this keyboard, visual processes going on every nanosecond... the nerve endings in my flesh and muscles are sending messages to my brain and telling it that this table is hard as my arms rests on it. but i have no awareness of it. i don't control these things... i don't control the beating of my heart, the inflating of my lungs, the white blood cells that are attacking bacteria in a paper cut on my finger, i have no clue about any of these things. all of these things, these are miracles. how can people not be satisfied with this? we are the most amazing things ever... organisms, things that are alive! we're alive! we take it for granted, we take everything for granted. things that are here must have always been here. that's how we think. this is fascinating.
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