Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:14:16 -0800 From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Who We Are To: List Some of these thoughts were provoked by "Le Differend". ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ~~~~~~WHO WE ARE~~~~~~~ I. GOD AND GODS AND MEN AND MYTHS God truly came alive when wily priests pointed to the heavens: "up there!" they said, "beyond the stars" "invincible, omniscient, almighty" (how conveniently invisible ...) earthbound gods of stone or clay, failing worshipers, got smashed to bits, priests too believers shelter God in their personal interior universe when death comes wholesale ...fires floods and plagues... priests bow down get new readings from on high preserve the values of their flocks with words one day the world thought God had died and Nietzsche said: "yes, oh yes, God's dead", he said. and "man, the measure of all things" sought out a new divinity to be a god himself...... Yet he was Nature's child a Being different from Nature's other children... or so he claimed. the tribes of Men make myths and gods... mould their own Masters in myriad forms down all the ages now civilized - we: Homo Sapiens King of species rain Death upon our kind our fragile selves a tiny mote in cosmic space and time II. WORDS infants first use body language thrashing limbs smiles and screams then words mothers and fathers talk to infants infants talk to themselves language informs consciousness and memory creates a self... situated in the flux of humanity the biological world the inanimate cosmos language is strange invades our brains enables thought does my cat talk to himself? language precedes each generation contains rules and rules for making rules, and valuating we come to language as we come to food an institution already here language is... awaiting newborns they arrive..... III. OBLIGATION language conveys ancestral obligation... sleeping in genes? one day a voice says: "you ought" binds us to duty knowing right knowing wrong conscious and aware... Our personal universe not wholly private, being obliged... IV. BEING HUMAN what happens? what just arrived? what goes on inside our conscious being? the only being we KNOW! ask language; ask all the languages of the body, of the arts... I could not talk to myself had others not talked to me children raised by animals have human form, human senses, human perception not "human" being V. OBJECTIVE TRUTH Science discovers, Employs instruments disciplines technologies to find, define, objects. Science states, asserts describes theories and facts, the "truth", the "being real" of objects. the Brain, all about the Brain tissue, cells, currents of electricity neurons, synapses.... but, inside consciousness the content of a word? two hundred fifty nine definitions of "self" simple four-letter words: love, hate, and fear, science can't penetrate doesn't know... (the spoon within the soup knows not its flavor) VI. RELIGION AND ART Religion, art, aesthetics, provide first-hand reports describe the singular contents of consciousness and memory of lived experience Artists are ever trying to express the reality of being human 'midst people and things the score is not the music, the canvas not the painting, the performance not the play music, paintings, drama we, one-by-one in heart and mind make real, souls of the living souls of the dead poetry and dreams we one by one make real. Other species, other brains, know other realities we think... what really happens talking to ourselves, talking to others?
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