I would have wanted to title this Tea with milk, out of my personal preference of the beverage but for some reason the almost alliteration and quick phonetic flow was too seducing to give up.
Anyway, before we proceed a simple question, do you like your coffee strong and black or smothered in cream, or for teetotalers, would you rather have that saintly beverage mixing the breath of nature and supplement of cattle. Or the bitter reality that we all have come to know?
If you do have your favourite cuppa in hand for a neither pointless nor insightful piece of work. Pun intended. A recent thought which has been bugging me was of absolutes. As someone who often wished to see the world in black and white to simplify things. As someone who wanted things to be a little less messy and let one man's hero be that for everyone finally has had to realise nothing will ever be so. What is ever so hilarious is that what we consider to be absolute stands might in a few years time be fuzzy midways themselves. World history has shown enough in this regard.
We all seem perpetually stuck on this spectrum that is expanding either side. While we may not want to be physically at either end we look to them to know our reference but slowly it seems we just lose sight. It isn't as much of stretching of the sides as it is the expansion of the centre. What is a balance today becomes slightly polarized tomorrow and slowly keeps increasing.
I mean a few years ago I wanted to debate this with someone, that actions, if seen independently without context can be classified as black or white, but when you analyze them with things like purpose, they become shades of grey. My point was shouldn't we see actions as that? Purely by themselves. Though now I realise that my thinking was extremely immature, because seeing an action without purpose is like having a fire purely out of its existence. It does not make sense. An action is an agent of change. A change is precipitated by a reason and unless you see the reason you cannot understand the change. Of course things brings us back to the land of fuzz rather than discrete.
I don't have a whole lot to say on this topic because I feel I am not in the best place (in maturity) to analyze this, but I find the lack of a common defining standard or yardstick disturbing. I mean if I were to look at measurements, without a standard it becomes a confusing mesh of random events and for some reason if we have reached as a species a position where our actions have yardstick but existence and purpose itself a enigma what have we really been doing all these years? \
Update: I think this is a a discussion which might be one on which I have maintained a rather mistaken point of view. For one, I believe the most appealing thing about absolutes are the clarity and ease of functionality they promise. Of curse that would imply a set of actions to follow. On contrary I believe they are in opposition to the very essence of life. Any development we make, any progress we make has to be done as way of tackling am issue differently. Which can be done only if you think differently. Probably the day the world starts dealing in absolutes will be one where we as a civilization will just cease to grow. Probably not the best thing you know.
Anyway, before we proceed a simple question, do you like your coffee strong and black or smothered in cream, or for teetotalers, would you rather have that saintly beverage mixing the breath of nature and supplement of cattle. Or the bitter reality that we all have come to know?
If you do have your favourite cuppa in hand for a neither pointless nor insightful piece of work. Pun intended. A recent thought which has been bugging me was of absolutes. As someone who often wished to see the world in black and white to simplify things. As someone who wanted things to be a little less messy and let one man's hero be that for everyone finally has had to realise nothing will ever be so. What is ever so hilarious is that what we consider to be absolute stands might in a few years time be fuzzy midways themselves. World history has shown enough in this regard.
We all seem perpetually stuck on this spectrum that is expanding either side. While we may not want to be physically at either end we look to them to know our reference but slowly it seems we just lose sight. It isn't as much of stretching of the sides as it is the expansion of the centre. What is a balance today becomes slightly polarized tomorrow and slowly keeps increasing.
I mean a few years ago I wanted to debate this with someone, that actions, if seen independently without context can be classified as black or white, but when you analyze them with things like purpose, they become shades of grey. My point was shouldn't we see actions as that? Purely by themselves. Though now I realise that my thinking was extremely immature, because seeing an action without purpose is like having a fire purely out of its existence. It does not make sense. An action is an agent of change. A change is precipitated by a reason and unless you see the reason you cannot understand the change. Of course things brings us back to the land of fuzz rather than discrete.
I don't have a whole lot to say on this topic because I feel I am not in the best place (in maturity) to analyze this, but I find the lack of a common defining standard or yardstick disturbing. I mean if I were to look at measurements, without a standard it becomes a confusing mesh of random events and for some reason if we have reached as a species a position where our actions have yardstick but existence and purpose itself a enigma what have we really been doing all these years? \
Update: I think this is a a discussion which might be one on which I have maintained a rather mistaken point of view. For one, I believe the most appealing thing about absolutes are the clarity and ease of functionality they promise. Of curse that would imply a set of actions to follow. On contrary I believe they are in opposition to the very essence of life. Any development we make, any progress we make has to be done as way of tackling am issue differently. Which can be done only if you think differently. Probably the day the world starts dealing in absolutes will be one where we as a civilization will just cease to grow. Probably not the best thing you know.
The thing is "absolutes" existed, exist and will exist. It is just on a grand scale of 'humanity', it has ceased or at least been severely questioned (for good) thanks to critiques of 'Enlightenment' and 'modernity'. We all need our yardsticks and reasons, it just becomes a personal struggle to find them, or not-depends on the individual really. Religions, states, international organisations, oh and colonisers of the present and the past, they all try to set and create certain yardsticks and reasons and then implement them. The very imposition and promise of efficiency through these absolutes creates possibilities for further problems. Well, it's complicated. Although I agree with you that it is unsettling to not have some basic common standards, however, knowing how the powerful almost always impose their standards as THE standards, I would rather have multiple competing yardsticks and reasons to think through and select from, rather than any imposition of an absolute one.
ReplyDeleteYou're right there. It is appalling how a will of the few can become a common standard to judge most things. Right it makes sense to have these multiple choices, but it is kind of disturbing how there is an increase in these options as in the emergence of a middle ground to another middle ground . I mean it is good because of choices and all but how it also starts pushing people towards something which they're not but are now closer to compared the alternative, like politics between capitalism and socialism. What earlier might've seemed like heavy socialism might now be considered as minor left leaning.It is this increasing partition and division which is worrying because it is splitting everyone while at the same time alienating each one individually because thoise people honestly don't associate with the groups they're now considered a part of.
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