Discussion in the other thread with James and Arminus gave me idea of this thread.
So, the question is whether humans FLY or not, both in letter and spirit?
With love,
Sanjay
This is a good question and I think we should give it due consideration.
By ‘fly’ we ordinarily mean being able to gain altitude. Gliding, drifting and/or floating is not technically flying.
Now being able to ‘fly in letter’ could be possible in at least two ways:
- A person could wear a letter costume and fly in an aircraft.
- A person could fly in a letter shaped aircraft.
Flying in spirit is a little more complicated. First lets establish some preliminary terms.
To be able to fly one must be able to gain altitude, and to do so, one’s motion must be defined as moving against a force of gravity; since there is no absolute direction of ‘up’, the only feature which distinguishes floating, drifting or gliding from flying is not the direction of the motion, but the motions inertia against the gravitational force.
With that in mind we have to now decide whether or not a ‘spirit’ can be something that is affected by gravitational forces… so that it can be said to ‘fly’ by moving against that gravitational force.
Insofar as we know gravitational forces exist, we observe not the force itself, but the motion of the body affected by the force. So, ‘spirit’ must be something that can be observed as effected by this force in order for it to be conceived of as capable of flying. If it isn’t, then we couldn’t ever know if it were flying and we would be asking a useless question at best, or a ridiculous philosophical question at worst.
If an entity does anything by its own volition and control, it possesses the responsibility of doing it.
Human’s use tools in order to do many things. Although a tool is involved, the human is the one spiriting it. Do human’s kill, or is it just the guns? The one with control over it is the one doing it.
So yes, humans can fly.
Tertium quid, agent causation through techne. But in the case of Aristotle’s staff, the man who’s hand moves the staff that moves the blade of grass is responsible for causing the blade to move only if he is aware he has done so. If he is not aware, can it be said that he had control over that? If he had control, he would have needed to be able to not move the blade of grass with the staff, had he decided.
Define ‘control’.
In any case it would take a small eternity for us to separate all the instances in which we are aware of what our affects are and the instances in which we are not. I imagine the latter far exceeds the former.
As far as flying, I have never know anyone who could fly, but I have known girls that were fly.
To control is to determine the end result or outcome. If a pilot can no longer control his plane, he is no longer flying, merely riding along.
Stupid question. I don’t think the poster is stupid but we shall see. Words that come to mind are “meaning making” “dumb question” and 'there are no such thing as dumb people, or dumb questions. Personalities are like a stream, ever changing" and “even the dumbest questions can bring a smile to thy eye, eye migraine that is.”
According to Eckencar, a very old religious rite, humans indeed fly, albeit not their bodies, but their spirits or,souls. I personally experienced this in a dream about twice after my mother’s death, and can honestly vouch formats sense of reality. others have reported the same thing.
Can any one else here at ILP recall having this type of experience? Studies report the same kind of experience in NDE or near death experiences, and various studies mostly by people in the medical profession, have reported the common occurance of said such experience.
The studies were performed by scrubs. Yes scrubby hospital women who think they are legit scientists because they upgraded to a white coat.
You see the idioms who performed this operation forgot the basic elements of a scientific experiment, the control. They never bothered to put even a simple playing card on the ceiling to verify what was done. Probably they had bleeding panties or something, or the head-honcho dicktwat upstairs gave them a generic offlimits go away message. In that case after their period they should have put in one of those wheeled racks or something above the bed.
Zoot - 1. A person could wear a letter costume and fly in an aircraft.
2. A person could fly in a letter shaped aircraft.
Sanjay - Do you really think that I was talking about these possibilities?
Zoot - Flying in spirit is a little more complicated. First lets establish some preliminary terms.
Sanjay - Yes, this is precisely where generally mistakes use to happen.
To understand what flying actually means, let us go back to the history and look from where and how this term was generated. Flying was origanlly associated with the birds. Means, flying means to fly exactly like the birds, independently and at will.
Does human flying pass this benchmark?
With love,
Sanjay
I certainly agree with the importance of the intention and control behind the act/event.
But, it is not the same as the analogy of guns because humans can kill with bare hads too, without the help of guns or any other means. But, they cannot fly without the help of certain tools. That is the difference between the two.
With love,
Sanjay
Zoot -Define 'control
Sanjay - Yes. That is the key issue.
With love,
Sanjay
Means, if a passenger aircraft is carrying 10 passengers and one pilot, it is only the pilot who is actually flying but others not.
Is this you want to say?
With love,
Sanjay
Like you, I also do not consider myself stupid either. I may not be an intelligent person but have some commonsense for sure. I am sure you will be certainly able to realize that too.
With love,
Sanjay
Not all that, Orb.
I have not intended this thread for mythological investigations. I am just trying do define flying philosophically. That is all.
With love,
Sanjay
I took a plane. That’s how to fly.
Actual flying is really easy. All you have to do is throw yourself at the ground and miss.
It’s the missing part that makes flying difficult.
You can throw yourself off a cliff or a high tree for better effect, but the normal result is plummeting.
Despite being easy, in that all you have to do is avoid the ground, humans have singularly failed to achieve this task.
That’s why I fly using jet planes.
Let me put it in simpler way.
We know that we are all humans are walk aind run. Now, imagine that there is a man who has lost both his legs in an accident. Can he run now?
And, what if such a disabled person sits behind another biker as a pillion and moves on? Now, technically he is covering the distances in the same way of a running person, but can we say that disabled person is now running?
I do not think so. His covering of distances cannot be qualified as running because running requires some specific physical movements, which should be entirely his own.
Yes, if that disabled person can fit some artificial legs and move on those, we can consider it running, but not on the case of being a pillion. The same should be applied on the case of flying too.
The fact of the matter is that humans do not fly. Flying is used more as a metaphor than the actual sense.
Yes, there is no doubt that humans can do much better in the air than the birds but still all that is not flying in strict sense because they need a lot of help from others in doing that.
Defing gravitation for some time or able to be on the air somehow alone is not the same is as flying. That acts must be independently executed, without any outside help and at will too.
The flying of the birds is independent, self propogated and at will. They can move in the air on their own without any tools because they are physically built in that way.
With love,
Sanjay
Lev, joking is not a bad thing if done once in a while and at the right movement. Doing it every time looks bad because it losts it’s sheen and person himself becomes a joke.
Take care, please, if you can.
With love,
Sanjay
That is precisely I was talking about.
With love
Sanjay
Waste of time answering but here goes.
humans energy molecules are dense enough to not fall through the earths crust but too dense to float in slightly less dense energy molecule patterns. The gravitational force exceeds the buoyancy and surface tension force. humans are unable to achieve sufficient velocity to create a strong enough undercurrent lift force.
Does that answer your question? Or would like me to meaning-make for you and guess at a million other interpretations of the word “fly” that are culturally relevant but have no relevance to me, the thinking wo-man.