On Cute and Method

 Day 10

Everything here was written in October-November, 2022. There are 52 posts total, one for each day I wrote.

The world tends to be very self-referential. When we think about or describe some part of the world, some gem-thing within the world, then because the world is a gathering of all that is, we then use the world to understand the world. This is most clear in definitions or descriptions, when a complete definition or description of a particular thing requires information about the rest of the world as well. There are also instances where we are not so concerned about particular things, and we are instead assigning things to classes or groups, such as heavy, close or cute. What is the gem of something like 'cute'? It is the same as any other gem of course, but what does that mean when we call them 'cute', then? I tend to imagine it as something like a gem of a thing that appears to be a gem of cute to us, from a certain angle. Sometimes we see something cute and see it as both a certain thing – say, a dog, a child, or a bush – and as a cute thing. Other times we are concerned only with the cuteness of the thing, like the first time we see a kitten. We haven't assigned the kitten a name as a thing yet, but we can understand and see the shards that makes up our experience of a kitten, and recognize them as cute. We can also see claws and fangs and eyes, but what if we have never seen anything with claws or fangs or eyes before? Then we would have no name for these things. It is the same with cute, where cute is a certain gem, and the language for what cute is only comes later. The gathering of cute into a complex gem comes after seeing it as a more simple gem. After many interactions or considerations, cute becomes more defined, becomes a stronger gem that is harder to dissolve and supports more of the world. What comes out of this is also an interesting property of cute, that cute is relational. That is, not necessarily that cute has a relational existence, but that the question of if something is cute depends on relation. What is cute to me may be ugly to you, and vise-versa. Anything can be cute, and anything can be uncute. This reflects the idea that 'cute' is a gem, a piece of the world, every gem possibly connected to every other gem.

When I say that something is apparent is a relational way, what I am trying to talk about is the idea that beauty lies is the eye of the beholder. I am also trying to talk about the idea that what something looks like depends on where you are standing, it depends on what type of logic the world is composed of. The logic of the world changes all the time, the way that things are connected to each other moves of course because of differences of time and place, of events that determine things like how close friends are to you, whether it is raining outside or not, and how happy or sad you are. When a close friends criticizes you, you take that criticization more seriously then if a complete stranger says the exact same words to you. When you decide if it is a good idea to grab your umbrella or not when you go outside, will most often depend on if you know it is raining outside or not. You may find a joke hilarious when you are happy, but not be able to laugh at it at all when you are sad. Everything, every gem and moment, is unique. Every moment is part of the entire world, and your world is ever-shifting; t is ony the foundations that tend to stay the same. So, to say that something has an absolute existence if right, it is to say that everything which is is. To say that something has an absolute existence is wrong, it is to say that something must always be the same. To say that something has a relational existence is right, it is to say that whither something exists or not, is in the world or not, depends on other parts of the world. To say that something has a relational existence is wrong, it is to say that things never have to appear to us, but sometimes forces from the world are so strong and are so heavily disruptive to a foundation that we feel forced to acknowledge them. I doubt any of these statements necessarily applies to every gem everywhere in the world, but none of them seem impossible to apply either. It depends on what the world is, and what the world is depends on who you are, and upon reality. This reflects the two issues of the unknown cores, the inner core of free will and the outer cores of unknown possibilities of existence. Everything within this space is called the world.

This suggests that if we want to escape the world, that we can do several things. I have though of five, though there are possibly more. Several of them can blend together, and the boundaries between them are not always very clear. These are just general guidelines, a vague sort of picture. I haven't got anything better at this time. This is just the types of categories that I tend to think of my actions as. The first is to investigate the world, the second is to investigate the unknown self, third is to investigate the outside unknown, the fourth is to destroy, and the fifth is to create.

To investigate the world is to investigate the logic of how things are. We look at how things are connected to one another, and try to reveal more of the world from what is already in the world. There are of course many methods of doing this, such as pure logic, or thought experiments. It is what is commonly called armchair philosophy. My method of doing this is either to dream, or to consider a single sentence. What I call dreaming is just that, it is laying awake at night trying to sleep, lying in bed half-awake in the morning, walking by the seashore or in the woods, basically being by oneself, and just thinking about things. This is often when we realize like in flashes of light how to understand a particular problem, or grab the key to understanding a certain philosopher's idea. It is when we re-organize the world into a new shape, and when we tear apart the world tiny piece by tiny piece, to investigate what comes out of it. This method revels things that were hidden in the world at large, certain patterns and powers. It is the method of gate-opening. My most common method of doing this is to consider a particular sentence, a particular world-gem and then think – this sentence is true, this sentence is revealing something about the world. This not a rule, but a piece of advice, a guideline. What can I learn from it, if I actually believe it? How can I understand this in relation to the entire world? Indeed, I often feel that advice is the best of philosophy.(Take that as some advice)

Investigating the unknown self is to consider your own actions and thoughts in order to learn more about the self. You can investigate the self of mind, of body, or of spirit. The self of mind is how you think about things. It is considering why you are always afraid when you see a certain type of person with a certain build. It is to think about why you are sometimes an asshole,and other times a sweet guy. In this way what you investigate most of all is not the world at large, but rather your castle. To tell yourself to calm down when making a decision, to make yourself wait a day until you make that big purchase, to get a handle on your stress before it takes you down, are all things you learn by this type of investigation. To investigate the body is to realize that you are angry when hungry, that you are stupid when you talk to a pretty girl, that a certain type of music hypes you up and another type calms you down. To learn that you are mental, to figure out that you are addicted, or to find out that you feel terrible because you have insomnia are all investigations of the body. It is an investigation of your realm, of everything that touches you and how it effects you. The investigation of the spirit is the investigation of why you make decisions. It is based on the council, but it is also an attempt to understand the unknown core of free will at the heart of you. To figure out that you value freedom over life, justice over fear, money over camaraderie, or another over the self are understood by investigations of the spirit. The body feels, the mind thinks, and the heart acts.

Investigation of the outside unknown is to try and investigate the unknown cores at the heart of things in the the world. This is most commonly the investigation of physical and sensible objects. Thus, physics and chemistry give us more power over the world and reveal things to us, such as atoms, that we could always see but did not know that we could. It is how we learn such ideas as energy=matter, for every action there is a reaction, and that nothing can be created or destroyed. It is how we learn what is healthy for us, and what is harmful to us. It is the investigation of color and sound. Because everything is, every new law of the physical realm also is, and we understand that reality is such that it can contain something that looks like this law. The laws of Newtonian physics are, we think now, not correct, but they are still useful and suffice for many basic experiments and activities. The laws of the quantum realm, we think, overtake and explain the Newtonian laws, but allow for further powers and reveal more about what kinds of things can exist, and so it appears that we have learned something. The structure of the world that we have has certainly expanded, and we understand that more things are possible than were possible before. It is one thing to to know that something is impossible, but it is another to know that something is possible. Remember to be possible simply mean that it can appear in the world, that it can appear to be the case. This form of investigation has so much power because most often the things that force us to acknowledge the world, that seem to have so much force that we feel we cannot escape the conviction that they exist, that are such disruptive things in the world that the world shatters before them, are these outside physical things. A pillar of my world is the fact that my mother loves me, and this is a thing that I understand from physical actions. A pillar of a world may be that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the mind is expandable by physical processes, that I need to go to work in order to get money to eat, or that matter exists. All these things are based on information we have from things that are not readily and easily identifiable as us, our mind, body, or spirit. They are also not already in the world, because we must often do experiments to learn new scientific facts, or are surprised by how much being hit with a baseball actually hurts.

The act of destruction if most commonly the act of asking 'what if?' What if the world was a dream? What if the speed of light is not a constant, if people are just intelligent animals, if souls do or do not exists, if aliens exist, if I was wrong about this or that belief, and so on and on. It is to destroy some structure of the world, to try and doubt and face up to the impossible. It is simply to imagine if you were wrong. It is to have self-doubt, and to question. Most importantly to question. After destruction is creation, and after you tear things down you then attempt to build them back up again.

The final type of act is the act of creation. Here you also appear ask 'what if', but this question is not destructive, but imaginative. Here you imagine adding something to the world, or you imagine the world in a new configuration after some sort of destruction. The two types of acts are intertwined and are two sides of the same action. However, the act of creation has something else as well. It is the act of attempting to do the impossible. This is something that destruction finds difficult to to. The act of destruction might sometimes be called the act of creating a paradox, of creating a something that cannot exist in the world, then placing it in the world, and so leading to a hole in the fabric of the world. Thus, the act of creation often leads to or results in an act of destruction. However, after that hole has been created then you can either ignore it and be an intentional ignoramus, or you can jump in – and leave the world behind, a sort of total destruction. From this moment of floating in the void you construct the world again, and this is what happens when you understand and move beyond a paradox that was in your path. Destruction can only destroy what has been created, but creation can always create something new. Creation can arise from nothing. One is limited while another is not. The other way in which you act out creation is when you attempt to do the impossible. When you make stupid decision that somehow work out, when you effectively prove things like the speed of light or the existence of other stars. When you pass through a time of trial that you had no idea how to escape, or when you dare, not only to dream, but to live that dream. Creation is the most essential power. “Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his – cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.”*

I do not know if we can escape the circles of the world. Yet, since the world is open, it may not be impossible to do so. We seem to always end up in some sort of creation, standing on something. Else that, or we destroy all that is, even ourselves. To think that we can escape the circles of the world, to believe that we can move beyond appearances, to believe that perhaps we can actually know for certain that we have understood the actual laws of reality, is a fond hope. It is a dream. It may be that we have achieved some of that dream, that various beliefs in physics, religion, or psychology have revealed to us the truth, and a part of the whole truth. It may be that this is not the case, and that we have more, much more, to learn. Our world may match up to reality in some way, or it may not. We will not know until it is challenged. To shrink from the challenge is not always cowardice, but is often survival. We seem to need period of rest, periods where we sleep and are not aware of our dreams. Times in which to gather our strength and heal. Yet, the hour again comes whereupon we wake up, where we face again the challenge of the harsh sunlight.

*The American Scholar Address by Ralph Waldo Emerson