Consider the birds...
Continuing my theme of sort of trying to get my head around some of topics people are ‘blogging about. By far the most common theme is religion, or pseudo-religion at any rate.
There’s a lot of people who seem confused about simple things like laughing because they saw a fat woman fall down, or because they saw someone they didn’t like crying.
So their thoughts become quite confessional and as the reader, you feel more like a priest during confessions and the anonymity of the internet is the veil between the two of you. Strangely cathartic and often it’s a mixture of incredulity, discomfort and good old-fashioned fun.
I wouldn't worry too much about doing stuff that is either ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Consider the following:
"For there is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so."
~ William Shakespeare 1564-1616, Hamlet, II.ii
Do you see evil birds or dogs? Do butterflies have good thoughts? No, of course not.
For me, it's all very simple, you do stuff for only three reasons: pleasure, profit or self-perpetuation. Or a combination of the three. Either way, Good & Evil don’t quite fit into things.
Like the man sez: don’t worry, be happy...
posted by Wayne Smallman at Saturday, January 15, 2005
2 Comments:
Dogs are wonderful creatures, aren't they?
We have a Friesian Jack Russell and she is extremely willful and has her very own likes and dislikes.
We have a chair in the dining room parked in front on the television. My mother would sit here and watch all of her mind-numbing soap operas and the like. Meg -- the dog -- would lay either besides her or behind the chair next to the radiator.
Now my mother is dead, the chair isn't used that often. And you'll find that every now and then, Meg will go into the dining room and dutifully lay behind the chair.
Now, she was under strict instructions not to jump up on the chair. My mother had a vast array of allergies, and dog hair was one of them. But every now and then, you'll find Meg curled up on the chair and she will have the most mournful yet defiant look on her face.
Why is this? Is she missing my mother? And if so, is she aware that in this solemn moment, she realizes that the normal rule of not getting up on the chair doesn't apply?
I think we need to get a handle on the idea of consciousness before we can talk about it in too much detail. It's clear to me we don't have a monopoly on it, so it's fair to say, there's a lot more to consciousness than we can really discuss.
In saying that, consciousness must surely begin with self-awareness.
I read an interesting quote from Buddha on some other 'blog that went something like: does the bee reminisce about great honey?
I think it's good example. A human would reminisce because we have the mental faculties to do so, but a bee wouldn't. A bee might remember the honey for the quality and then take care to communicate this knowledge to the rest of the hive.
A abhor the idea of Good & Evil. They're just far too simplistic and .. just stupid.
As a human, you're equipped with a bunch of emotions. Mother nature is extremely efficient, and she would not burden you with more than you need. So it's only when you take your emotions and compare them to how they manifest themselves in other animals in nature that you begin to realize that each and every one of them has survival value.
To take the idea that emotions are either Good or Evil is to dismiss millions of years of selective evolution, all of which was to result and you and I and anyone else reading this 'blog. So who are we to question their value?
I agree with you whole-heartedly.
I think if you strip away the fluff and pretense of religions, you have some solid moral themes which have stood the test of time.
So while I do not subscribe to any religion, I'm certainly not going to dismiss the efforts of a lot of clearly smart people...
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