I have some strange thoughts. And makes me question Rene Descartes thoughts behind his famous phrase: "I think, therefore I am."
I think, therefore I am...what? It has become my personal opinion that something happened which resulted in Descartes just not finishing the phrase. When people read it they were all like "ooooo that's deep man" and continued to smoke philosophically out of their pipes. So once again, we get a bunch of freakin' stoners thinking that something is really friggin sweet when if you really think about it you're like "wha?"
This statement "I think therefore I am" was a way of proving personal existence. I am able to have conscious thought, therefore I must be conscious. So I hereby deduce that to be conscious, one must indeed exist.
Perfectly sensible, indeed it is. My hat is off to you Descartes. But this leaves me at the opening statement. Which is that I have some very odd thoughts.
Thoughts of Nyall:
-What would it be like to wear watermelons as slippers?
- Bouncing on the clouds would be fun wouldn't it?
- How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?
-What if everything was the same shade blue?
-I want to get a ferret and train him to fetch my watermelon slippers.
-If I followed that person home, would they notice?
-How much scotch tape would I have to eat for it to be lethal?
Now I ask the question: Why?
Why on Earth would somebody think these thoughts. Nobody needs to know what it would be like to have fruit slippers! And why would anyone wonder that anyway? Lastly, what would thoughts like that prove? "I think, therefore I am stupid"? "I think, therefore, I am crazy"? It could be countless other things.
Take actual insane people for instance. A lot of them claim to have heard voices telling them to do things, those are thoughts that they have. And with those thoughts they have created another entity. Sometimes a completely other person. The fact of whether that person telling them to do things is real or not, has no real matter. Because somehow or other, that false being has effected the world that we live in. And has therefore become real. In case that is a little confusing, I will explain it like this.
IE: Somebody murders the president of the United States and claims that a man named Greg told him to do it. After extensive psychiatric assessments they come to realize that Greg is none other than a delusion of this assassin. Whether we like to think it or not, Greg altered history. He had a direct roll in changing the outcome of our world. And if our world truly is a physical and conscious world, than one would have to be physical and conscious to alter it, wouldn't they?
Moreover, is it possible that one doesn't have to think to exist? Or maybe it could be "I think, therefore I am all powerful" or "I think, therefore I create". Either one works really. Children play God all the time. They don't even know they're doing it. When you call your child in for dinner, and they're outside running around the street (at least that's what you see). In reality ( at least theirs) they are running through the forest, being chased by knights, fighting in a war, or simply can't touch the ground because it's lava. This is all creation, due to thought. They created a world that they can play in, and it's all subject to change. However, it's subject to change solely on the thoughts of the creator. Which is sort of contradictory to the whole "I think therefore I am". If you really think about it. If all of that is possible, if people can create alternate realities completely in their head, due to thought. Than maybe we're all in our own creation. Maybe no one but you exists, everyone else is there due to a synapse firing off a signal in your brain. Maybe it should really be "I think therefore, I am not".
Humans have advanced very far in science and technology due to thought. We too can play God. Through thought has come the power to create and destroy with the greatest of ease. We (though the laws prohibit it) can make other humans, without reproduction. We can build them, and pretty close to our exact specifications. But we can also destroy an entire continent with the push of a button.
This all leads me to repeat what I already said. My hat is off to you Descartes, though I greatly wish I could have known the entire sentence.
"I think, therefore I am___________"
Way to mind fuck me....
ReplyDeleteSo, I’m going to have to do this in more than one post. Sorry! PART ONE
ReplyDeleteWell, that's what the past was, wasn't it? A series of unfortunate events (no pun intended) to bring the world to the mediocracy that it is today; the simplicity of the complicated world that now exists? Those people smoking out of their pipes were probably saying things like "Oh, cheerio mate, this one's a doozy. That Decarte's guy is fucking genius." Only they'd obviously talk in more of a sophisticated manner.
Your description of Descartes' quote puts a lot of thought into the reader. It brings them into the world that is a mindfuck, as Andrea stated before me. Children playing God. That's not something that people would really mention every day. It's more so a "Oh look, he has invisible friends." Maybe he does! Maybe his invisible friends are in his army of war-fighting dragons in the land of Wadatinchu. Maybe he's created his own universe, and he actually sees these things. That child could be pure fucking genius for all we know. Maybe we are all in our own creation. I don't know if you noticed, but it connects to what you wrote about yesterday. Or, rather, what we talked about after you had written it. That rather than being what is supposed to protect the world, we really are the virus. We’re the virus that someone created. That someone being God. Sure, people say he is on top of the world and somehow magically just existed... but in reality, someone probably created him. A God on top of our God; and there’d be one on him. Whatever his name is. Or her. Who’s to be sexist?
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ReplyDeletePART TWO
ReplyDeleteI know I’m jumping all over the place with this, but ‘in’sane people. Schizophrenics. Are we sure that they’re actually insane? Maybe the people that they ‘see’ really are there. Maybe this whole other worldly place exists, the place of the supernatural. There are so many stories that one has to wonder why it has been ‘made up’ out of the blue. This fake, ulterior world. Maybe this Greg character you talk about is actually dangerous. Maybe we just can’t see him. What if he was really punishing this other guy for telling on him, what if this guy somehow randomly got these “bruises” that just happened to show up on his legs? It’s actually happening to a friend I have now – she’s getting bruises and she doesn’t know where they’re from. What if Greg was punishing this guy for saying “Greg told me to do it”? It could make sense. Just not in our world. Not in this perfect place of pristine people.
Why might you ask your questions? Because you have the mind of a thinker. The mind I sometimes wish I had. I was sitting in the lounge yesterday with some people and one guy turned to me and said “Are whales smart?” And it came from nowhere. To me, that was random. But then he showed me a picture of a whale’s brain. But that’s not really that random. Not as random as yours. You think impossibly- or rather, you think about things that we just wouldn’t do. Watermelons as slippers would be hard to carry
PART THREE
ReplyDeletearound, and very gushy between our toes. I personally don’t think bouncing on clouds would be fun – because I’d fall right through the cloud itself. Not only because clouds really aren’t like cotton candy gum drop balls, but because I’m clumsy as fuck and it would be just my luck. And as for the age-old question of the woodchuck... A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. But realistically? It really varies on the individual woodchuck itself. A woodchuck chucks 35 cubic feet of dirt each time it burrows... so if it could chuck wood it would be an amount equal to 700 pounds. Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do. When I read about everything being the same shade of blue, I literally looked around my room in awe. I pictured everything blue. I pictured how paper would be useless because nothing could be written. I pictured the depth of my roommates eyes and how everyone’s eyes would almost look the same. It was really trippy.
The thoughts of a person are usually unique, besides those carbon copied people out there. There are some that share the same ideas and notions that others share, but it is usually not collaborative. That is, until someone like you writes them down and makes others think about it. Descartes was probably in the process when he got a raging erection that needed to be tended to, or something. Your theory makes it seem like he really was going to write something else at the end of his sentence... but we’ll never know, will we?
...
Sorry about the length. You just make ME have mental Diarrhea.
haha! no worries! That's what this is for! I want people to think about things. So many people are so caught up in un-necessary things (not that discussing Renee Descartes famous phrases is necessary but it at least gets you to use your mind, and think outside the normal hypothetical "box" that we seem to be stuffed in all the time) like who's with who, and what am I going to wear this weekend? That it numbs ones brain to a point of not being able to produce rational thought about anything OTHER than what is programmed into them by professors and literature. Not to say that those sources of information are poor, in fact they are the exact opposite. However, it really desensitizes the mind to have conscious thought about other things. And without conscious thought, there is no existance.... right?
ReplyDeleteWhat about unconscious thought? The times one catches themselves lost somewhere in the depths of their mind - the abyss of nothingness that is sometimes there. What about there? Sure, conscious thought is a lot better [and a lot better remembered] but unconscious thought happens too.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I don't think about what I'm going to wear this weekend... I just kinda pick clothes up in the morning. Maybe that's why I'm not as fashionable as some, but who gives a crap. I don't really have time to write more, but you know me... I probably could.
I like your stance, but is unconscious thought really thought? Well, yes, obviously it is. But it depends on what kind of unconscious thought that you're having. Take breathing for example. Technically it's automatic, but it's still unconscious thought. Because you can control it. If you wish, you can stop breathing, you can breath faster or quieter or in some abnormal pattern. You can manually breathe. But if it's unconscious thought as in spacing out or "day dreaming" I don't think that counts. Because, to me, if one is sitting down in a living room, and all of a sudden space out. To them, they might not be in that living room anymore, but it wasn't a conscious decision to alter the world around them. It just happened, which to me seems like a good stand point to say that nothing is real, because you were just sailing on a ship in the Caribbean and when someone grabs your attention you're actually sitting on the couch in the living room. And when it comes to vast emptiness and abyss, you can't think about nothing. You can think about nothing as a concept, but if you're thinking about nothing, you're still thinking about something, it just happens that, that something, is concept of nothing. A vast emptiness that is never filled.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the unconscious thought that keeps us breathing plays an entirely different tune. Maybe it's the ability to unconsciously think about something that proves our existence. The ability to control certain variables without giving it any thought at all is almost a supernatural power. You always get the outcome that you want, because you've gone through the process of thought, without actually doing it. To me that seems like a more viable explanation of existence than simply thinking.
One thing I've always thought interesting is that you don't notice the sound of your breathing until someone points it out. Seriously, before you read that, you couldn't hear your breathing, could you? And now you probably can. It's just a weird thing I've picked up over the years.
ReplyDeleteI do understand your theory about breathing. One just knows to breathe - the body works it. But then, you can stop breathing... you can start breathing again. It makes sense that it is both an unconscious and a conscious thought. As for spacing out, I don't know how you space out, but I don't space out like that. My type of spacing out just brings me to some weird space in my mind where I'm still where I physically am, I'm just barely hearing anything. I stare at a spot on the ceiling or a wall in the distance, and somehow completely ignore everyone around me. I've never been to a ship in the Caribbean, but it sounds like it could be interesting - and I do understand how you're curious about what now exists - or doesn't. Is our world of unconscious thought really reality while our 'conscious' thought is ... a dream/fake/whatever you'd want to call it?
I agree with your last statement even though it's hard to understand. It's only hard to understand because it's so complex even in its simplicity, if you understand what I'm saying. Maybe our brains have more complexity in unconsciousness than we can consciously think of.