Wednesday, December 12, 2012

You're at very best a fiction

Ta-Wan


"I", the person my wife named Ta Wan (a mildly derogatory pronoun Ta followed by a reference to my wearing glasses, wan in her language), have been quite busy of late. My normal schedule has been added to by needing to do more around the house than normal plus take my wife everywhere in a wheel chair while she recovers from a broken ankle. We don't have a car, so even such things as shopping or hospital visits have been several hour long missions navigating bumpy footpaths and getting on and off trains and buses - often with her wrestling to keep a hold of several bags of shopping. 

Anyway, my normal blogging has been put to one side and, while our upset routines have been little compared to fellow rambler Trey and his wife, I've hardly put finger to key in a couple of months. I did sit for an hour and write one long ramble (viewable over on my personal blog) which was a mishmash of ideas that arose from my typical reading matter which is commonly comprised of: physics, cosmology, neuroscience and eastern philosophy. On that note, this free will thing I'm fascinated over is still hot and exciting brain gum. 

From my eastern philosophical Taoist root, I'm prejudiced to begin and end my thoughts in oneness and so my love of physics and neuroscience stem from both their excellent scientific core, that being testably falsifiable, and their creeping arrival at how the universe is in fact one. Some people just feel all is one and some are quite in opposition to the idea, so the standing of science alongside my philosophical leanings is quite the foundation my finite, flimsy, fictitious ego needs to hold onto as it crumbles away into oblivion. Science has given me stuff I can see, feel, touch and benefit from, it has a transparent, testable truth, is open to change views on new evidence - this I find real and valid when placed in opposition to the completely philosophical or the religious. 

Neuroscience then is the current hot news, new ideas, hardly understood, very much in its infancy but with instruments only dreamed about that can explore the workings of the live and active human brain, making repeatable tests and related claims that the brain and the body just animate. In the way, a flower just grows and turns out the shape and colour it does we also just come about. The flower can't choose blue leaves as it would not photosynthesize, it can't choose the colour or shape of its flower, it is what it is. In a much more complex, yet similar way, we can't choose how tall we'll be or the colour of our eyes. Further, we can want whatever we want to want - but we can't choose our wants.  

Our "decision" to be a plumber or school teacher are just as much "decisions" as our height or weight. Our "decisions" over what to eat or not to eat are just as much "decisions" as what we dream about. The trace to the causal root of the apparent decisions is a false, after the event, concoction of our brain and not the true causal chain - as there is no causality. The universe is a ceaseless, timeless, flowing and even if you believe that 'yourself' that You learned yourself to be between the ages of 1 and 2 then even still, you're not a thing separate to the universe, you're the universe and the You, is at best, a fiction.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.