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RE: Is the concept of understanding an illusion?
Nice piece i must say. There are some arguments on the true substance of air. Some have actually argued that it is not material.
To equate understanding with familiarity is to limit 'its' scope. When someone had an experience, understood it and communicate such experience to another person, can it be called 'familiarity'? In this case, the other person have not had the experience and the explanation does not strike a 'resemblance' but yet it was understood without linking it to any past experience. When we try to 'charge' a statement with our personal interpretation, it is better we avoid affirmative or universal claim so as to be on a safer side. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the comment I'm interested in hearing more if you are up for it. I am using this definition of familiarity: the quality of being well known; recognizability based on long or close association. I would argue that in order for a person to understand a concept that they have not experienced they would indeed need to rely on a previous understanding. When we see something that is unknown, our brains immediately try to make sense of it by relating it back to previous experience. We form prototypes and associations in our mind in order to make sense of things. For that reason, I do not think that an individual could understand something independent of previous knowledge. This article is actually a bit of a sequel to a previous article I wrote but basically what I am arguing is that it doesn't matter how many words a person uses to describe something or how far they break something down into its fundamental parts, the world starts off as a mystery and our belief that we understand the world is just an illusion.
I was wondering where you were going (or went) with this. Now that I "get it"... challenge. :)
I have a belief in money. Is it an illusion? If not, why not? If so, how so?
I would say that money is an illusion in that it is just an idea. It's an agreement. We could give value to anything really (which is what we do), but the value only exists in our mind or our collective mind. We could function as a society without money. It would require the development of an entirely new system of resource control and distribution of course but its definitely possible. Money is a relatively new ideology when considering the entirety of our human evolution. It quite obviously did not always exist.
I had hoped that my challenge would require a bit of thought but at this point, it's kind of obvious at this point that you've already been there, done that. :)
Next. :)
From the above quote it appears that money serves some purpose in a way that if you take away the money, it MUST be replaced by something else. What's the necessity? (If money didn't always exist, then what did? [or has?])
I would say that money serves a function if resources are scarce or in general if individuals need to be limited in what or how much they consume. Everyone cannot consume endlessly if we wish to survive as a species, that much is certain. In fact, I think that we will see an evolution of our monetary system in the near future, possibly to a carbon based monetary system in which individuals are limited to their consumption based on how much carbon is generated by the products manufacture and use. As for the question "if money did not exist, then what?" I think we would need some sort of cooperative system in which there was no competition or greed. People would need to work together rather than compete with one another. They would need to be united. I have faith that it is possible but I think we are a long ways away at this point. What do you think. You have an idea in your mind - what is it, I'm interested?
You're right, but to be honest I'm more interested in understanding your ideas on the subject first.
So, this begs the question: how does money stop people from consuming endlessly? What stopped the cavemen, supposing that no money of any kind existed in the caveman days?
Sorry for the delay in response, I thought I replied to this question already.
Money stops a person from consuming endlessly by limiting them. People tend to have a finite amount of funds so they have to choose to spend their limited resource on what is most important to them. In comparing cavemen to modern man (woman) the answer is complex but I think it has to do in part with a hierarchy of needs. Cavemen focused the majority of their energy on basic survival. Only when their basic survival needs were met were they able to day dream or to engage in leisure activities. Cavemen likely only took what they needed in their present moment because it would be wasteful in terms of energy expenditure to take more. Today, survival is easy and most people do not have a worthy purpose which consumes their time and gives their life meaning. Today, most jobs are meaningless to people so they combat their boredom by satisfying their ego. They consume. Basically, people work at jobs that they find meaningless simply to acquire money which allows them to survive and buy crap that satisfies their boredom and takes their mind off of the fact that their life is meaningless and they are unhappy. If a persons life had true meaning then I believe that they would consume less. My brief thoughts on the subject.
I am still interested in what you have to say though.
You've seen Fight Club, haven't you?