Tag: objective

Philosophy Now’s Question Of The Month

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In the earliest days of this daily thing I’m doing, this experiment shall we say, I made suggestions for things I would write about. One suggestion was to answer a question from a magazine I subscribe to and don’t read enough of, Philosophy Now. It involves an evil and confusing question roughly every two issues which means four months and I think I may have answered one at some point on here although I think I didn’t give much of a shit to make it decent as I knew I had missed the deadline for entering. This one though I’m going to enter. I’ll still write it on here in my usual half arsed and rushed way first though just aware that I’ll be sending it in too.

Does History Progress? If so, to what?

Time certainly progresses. I feel slightly older today than I did yesterday. Of this I am fairly sure, or at least I have convinced myself of this truth. In that case yesterday is now history and the day before yesterday is older history. Yesterday though, the day before wasn’t as old as it is now. However is that history progressing, it still feels the same now as it did yesterday just a little fuzzier. Perhaps it’s evolving but that’s my memory that’s evolving not necessarily history itself.

What is history though if not just a series of memories. Even the version we write down only captures one take on events and that is open to interpretation. What happens when this version loses it’s appeal, the fashions of the modern age deciding they don’t like the historical narrative and give an event a new one. Surely then it has progressed to something new. Again it has evolved, but does that mean it has progressed. We must looked then at our understanding of the meaning of progress. To advance, to go forward. These are positive notions surely but histories changes don’t always feel positive, advanced or even evolved sometimes. What happens when they go sideways or backwards. Hitler made changes to the history of his country while he was in power, did they progress? For him they did, but now history would suggest otherwise.

So history can make subjective progress? Again that’s a version of an event. Objective history on the other hand cannot, but then we can’t say there is such a thing as objective history. It is only ever a story and someone must always be around to tell that story. So subjectively history progresses, but to what? I guess that depends on whatever the subject decides they want it to. Or we just accept it will always change into an infinite amount of possibilities and the change itself can subjectively be called progress. Not in the moving forward sense of course but in the something other than it was five minutes ago sense.

And that is my answer. I find them quite challenging if that’s not clear by now. I’m sure the one I did before was a little bit of a ramble with too many rhetorical questions too. I suspect rhetorical questions are not always a good thing, or at least too many of them. The other approach is to make it dry and over explain but you’ve only got a maximum of four hundred words and the other answers people tend to send in are not formed in that way. Like everything it is simply practise, everything is always practise.

Lockdown Pizzas

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Drum roll please…now is the time to reveal what it was that got me all worked up the other day. Edge of your seat stuff I’m sure, it would be a surprise had you not already read the title. Yes myself and a couple of friends are selling takeaway pizzas. Let’s be honest there’s nothing like a good crisis to make a little cash. They own a bakery and as they’re still open delivering bread we thought we may as well make a few pizzas as a side project and see how it goes. It’s great though because they already understand bread so we have a really nice thin sourdough base and they have proper stone ovens so they’re stonebaked too. Genuinely they’re really nice. I’m the creative director / pizzas artist. There are no takeaways open at all in the area and people seem reasonably enthused by the prospect of being able to alleviate the tedium of this current social experiment with the idea of comfort food. On top of that we will use some of the money we manage to raise and either donate it to the NHS or if there are any local families who have been affected by the virus it would be a good thing to try and help them if possible, even just a weeks food shop. Like everything it’s a lets see how it evolves thing as clearly all is currently unknown.

But yes there was the stress. I was in a terrible fettle on Wednesday. The realisation of what we were doing all came to me at once and the intensity of the energy was just too much. I can’t remember exactly what I said in the piece on Wednesday but I think towards the end I said something about channeling the energy and even if I didn’t I have had the most remarkable two days since. Whenever I found the energy building up I detached myself from it for long enough to stop it being overwhelming, but more importantly I consciously managed to use it to focus on whatever task I needed to do. This means I have been running around like a mad man for two days but have done it in a focused controlled way which was an interesting experience for such an idle man ordinarily.

Today was ridiculous, first we found out the pizza boxes weren’t going to arrive which would make selling pizzas pretty difficult. The show must go on though so we can up with some solutions but in the end managed to buy some off a man in a van in a layby and then it turned out the vegetable order hadn’t gone through so we weren’t going to have any veggies or cheese for the pizzas. We managed to behave like toilet roll fanatics in the local co-op and emptied shelves. Ultimately both these situations would have destroyed me on Wednesday but today I managed to use the power they created for focus and drive. What a feeling. Maybe this is what people do.

Anyway I’m exhausted and I’ve got to be up in the early hours again to deliver bread tomorrow. It is simply non-stop at the moment. So as the show must go on, it may be wise to draw the curtain on this piece for today. Need to conserve my energy for another evening of pizza making after all.

Maybe And Probably Not

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How do we really know. Fixed absolute ideas of how things were. What if one clue to histories truth was lost and now we determinedly believe an inaccurate story. We miss one piece of the jigsaw, now we cannot see what once was. What if all we need is this one piece to confirm what many suspect but none can prove, do we dismiss entirely the possibility that this may in fact be the true story and not the one we think we know. When do we learn to question. Who do we trust to ask the right questions. What if we already have the piece but refuse to believe what it is showing us, at some point we need to accept, but do we ever do this as final. Should we.

And then our ideas in general. Our beliefs range far and wide. Think of all the philosophers out there disagreeing with each other. They can’t all be right but seemingly each one is. Each set of eyes view their own truth. In that case what is right. Do we have objective truths, how about one truth. Did that truth change when a new piece of the jigsaw is added and what happens when some accept it and the others turn away. If the greatest minds cannot agree, what hope are we.

How do we know the truth about scientific explanations or medicines. Both may be true at this time but new truths are constantly discovered and newer truths again. Always missing the point as the only truth being the inaccuracy of the old and therefore the latest too. How many letters behind my name are required before I can credibly speak these words. We never accept anything as final says the scientist or doctor before professing an absolute belief that they are right and you are wrong. They have facts but can they ever be true.

How do we really know that what we believe in politics. What if we are wrong. Are we strong enough, and arguably are we smart enough, to take a step back from what we believe and think we believe, see these beliefs for what they really are and readdress them. Can we do this objectively or will we be forever tarnished by the inaccuracies of existence. In these subjective times that have existed for eternity, we will never know as they run for another infinite millennia.

How do we advance society and people, and what really is the best approach to running a community. What if we’re wrong? No one person is the same yet we box the pack away into the very same space the world over. Who are we to tell others they are doing it wrong when we have never checked to see if we’re doing it right. Are we doing it right. Am I doing it right. I don’t even know what right is. I definitely don’t know their right.

As religion pokes it’s empty head around the corner we decide to not even entertain.

But to all I say maybe and probably not. Let’s start from there.

The Bonded Free

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It has taken me over half an hour to get this far as first my computer gave me problems and then I couldn’t load up the website. Throw in the fact my eyes were getting very heavy and really this was a tempting push in the direction of sacking it off and not doing anything today. But I will persevere, for that is the trip I have chosen. What it also means though is that this will be the first of two pieces tomorrow – today as you read it – and none for today – yesterday as you read it. My god I’m ready for my bed.

I was listening to a podcast today and the guest was some porn mogul who’s name I never bothered attempting to remember. He seemed like quite an interesting person and he was discussing freedom. As a Scotsman this is a topic we’re weaned on from a young age but I’ll not go into the antics of Mel Gibson and instead what freedom means for us. This porn mogul believed freedom was about being able to choose what you want to do or don’t want to, as well as being able to act upon this or not. When I was traveling around Australia about seven or eight years ago, I was in search of complete freedom and for me that meant shutting off the constant stream of guilt that I should or shouldn’t be doing something, or producing something creative, or whatever it is I think I thought now eight years later. I felt totally free, although I forgot I was looking for that, and for better or worse just kind of was. I forgot this at the time and realised a few years later when I wasn’t free mentally and really made an effort to be totally free again. This time though, the ironic thing was that this intense desire and search for freedom was in itself incredibly restrictive, there was nothing liberating about it and understandably was just an escape from the justifiable tap in my head. 

What then is to be free? This porn mogul has it because he’s got nobody telling him what to do, although lets be honest we always answer to somebody, and I had it when I forgot I was looking for it. And then Mel Gibson the Scottish freedom fighting Australian; who desired his people to be free from their bondage to a foreign crown as bondage to their own would be much more palatable. Can freedom then be defined on a universal basis or is it just another subjective construct? Can we objectively be free, perhaps the very act of pure objectivity is in itself the most liberating act of all. As I discovered a few years back, it’s probably best not to spend too much time desiring answers to these questions. The more you think the further from it you get and the more the tap opens…drip, drip, drip…the inescapable bondage of the mind.