"We don't need to explain our love. We only need to show it." - Paulo Coehlo
my first reaction to this, as a philosopher, was NO WE NEED TO DEFINE/DESCRIBE/EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. plus i'm just argumentative. plus there's something relevant going on in my life.
after some meditation on the topic, though, i changed my mind.
i wanted someone to explain the nature of our relationship. okay, so he loves me to some extent. as a friend, whatever not that i would really know since he hasn't explained it to me? i asked him about it, and he answered in riddles that explain nothing/everything as usual (by everything i mean not love but literally EVERYTHING.)
but then i realized something. he shows it. he is my friend, and he is a new but good friend. he has never been anything but nice to me. and the love he shows positively correlates with the explanation of that love: he is my friend. the other confusing actions involved are not actually a show of love. those are, and i'm hypothesizing, probably a mere reaction to visceral desires.
SO. i'm basically done with subjectivity now. let's move to an objective application of this particular scenario to the macrocosm.
if this can be applied as a general principle, then all relationships suddenly make so much sense. if someone doesn't show you love, then don't waste your energy on loving that person.
if someone shows you the love of friendship, then love that person as a friend. if someone shows you the love of family, then love that person as a family member. if someone shows you the love of true intimacy, then love that person intimately. ETC.
"and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make." i'm all about the equal exchange of energy in relationships, in case you didn't notice. if that exchange isn't fair and equal, it will even out karmically at some point anyway.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
My Metaphysical Framework
I believe, at this point in time, in panentheism. God exists, but God exists in everything and everything exists in God. Existence itself is God. I see divinity everywhere, particularly in live creatures and nature. I suppose, though, that as man-made goods have existence, God must be in them too. Why?
There's this awesome proof for God's existence, one of the first I ever learned, in which God supplies the existence that existing things must receive. It goes something like this:
P1. All existing things are caused by some other existing thing.
P2. In order to break an infinite metaphysical regress, there must be some uncaused existing thing that supplies the existence that caused existing things must receive.
C. God is uncaused existence itself.
I came to panentheism because I have wondered since I learned that proof as a freshman how the uncaused God could supply existence without somehow imparting divinity to caused existence.
There are other, non-philosophical reasons why I believe in panentheism, but I will save those for a post about my theological framework. There is no place for subjective personal beliefs in metaphysics.
There's this awesome proof for God's existence, one of the first I ever learned, in which God supplies the existence that existing things must receive. It goes something like this:
P1. All existing things are caused by some other existing thing.
P2. In order to break an infinite metaphysical regress, there must be some uncaused existing thing that supplies the existence that caused existing things must receive.
C. God is uncaused existence itself.
I came to panentheism because I have wondered since I learned that proof as a freshman how the uncaused God could supply existence without somehow imparting divinity to caused existence.
There are other, non-philosophical reasons why I believe in panentheism, but I will save those for a post about my theological framework. There is no place for subjective personal beliefs in metaphysics.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
"Love is a Parallax"
I thought I'd start off with a Sylvia Plath poem I found today. Btw: "parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines."
"Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'
'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.
So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
implacably from twelve to one.
We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
who insists his playmates run.
Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
should inflame the sleeping town.
So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
playing his prodigal charades.
The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
graves all carol in reply.
Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
while footlights flare and houselights dim.
Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.
The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:
Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.
So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.
Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart."
"Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'
'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.
So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
implacably from twelve to one.
We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
who insists his playmates run.
Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
should inflame the sleeping town.
So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
playing his prodigal charades.
The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
graves all carol in reply.
Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
while footlights flare and houselights dim.
Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.
The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:
Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.
So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.
Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart."
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