Ghost-towers

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

If philosophy does actually make positive & meaningful contributions to the world, then here is a metaphor to help us understand what a philosopher is actually doing:

He is sitting amidst the top of an invisible tower, hoping that someone will follow the same groove in the ground that the philosopher did, discover the existence of the tower, and climb to the top to discover the philosopher.

The philosopher waits for this to happen, because it will give him confidence in his own knowledge of the ghost tower’s existence. After all, the people living in the world below might just think the philosopher is insane if he didn’t have another witness to verify the existence of the ghost tower.

Why doesn’t the philosopher just climb down and then bring other people back to the ghost tower? Because he is too stubborn with fear, and he fears other people’s stubbornness.
He is stubborn with fear because he knows that its possible he might never find the tower again if he leaves it.
He fears other people’s stubbornness because he knows that people do not normally believe something that sounds so ridiculous and unrealistic, and they might be simply unwilling to follow him to the tower because they are convinced its just a waste of their time.

He doesn’t know the precise nature of the tower - he just knows that it exists. What if it were to disappear when he leaves it? Or what if the sections of it disappear after he originally stepped over them? He knows only that staying seated at the top of the tower is his best chance of doing something that isn’t regrettable.

After all, the tower might not be as wide as he remembers it - if he stands up he might lose his balance and fall to the ground.

Even bending down to use his hands to examine the dimensions of the tower could have the possibility of making him lose his balance and fall.

In fact, these very thoughts make him feel too scared to move, or breathe too deeply even.

Then he thinks to himself “Even if another person were to come up here and find me, they’d be stuck up here too! I couldn’t do that to someone - especially when its for no good reason other than because I don’t want to be alone while I’m stuck up here.”

Because of this, he doesn’t even try to yell down at the people below passing by - he just remains seated at the top of the tower, petrified in fear.

2

The human animal is the only animal that fears. For; all the struggle that other animals display to stay alive, is not from any fear. That is to say a psychological fear.
Unmeditiatively a mind will succumb to ego produced fear. The ego as a additional survival tool of the human animal; a tool not of the other animals, main function is to keep the organism alive.
It produce fears. A mind trapped in fear is not free. If fear is in the tower; then ego is there and in control.

The ego produces “you”. The “you” exists as a product of fear. This survival tactic is nothing less the the ego itself vying for its own.

It fears not being.
It fears what others think.
It fears not belonging.
It fears.
The “you” must die. To let go is feedom.

Many have been to the mountain top. From there they see the circus is in town. They may come down to the spectators and participants of the show and try to explain “the tower”. The circused will only think that he is just an other part of the show.

3

If we evolved to have an ego, then nature deemed it necessary for some reason

4

And if for some reason humanity was meant to abandon egoism eventually, then it would still require egoism in the present to do so. Otherwise, people going against this grain could just exploit it indefinitely.

People have to learn from experience not to exploit their ego - and for our race to let go of it completely, well everyone would have to slowly build up to it so it could be done in uniformity.

Or everyone could just suddenly realize that everyone else is a human being just like them, and no one deserves to be in pain and suffering beyond what they can truly tolerate.

5

What you’ve just described is vanity.

I like the ghost tower analogy. Any system of law and new understanding is an invisible construction for invisible concepts like value and ethereal connections between words which usually have absolutely nothing to do with what they signify except the fact that they have been chosen to signify them. But despite the fact that it was you who came out with the idea, I think you’re using it wrongly.

I have meant to ask the board whether they have all become philosophers precisely because of pain and struggle. But I don’t believe that this theme will necessarily be to the same extent between each philosopher, at least nowadays if not when they first started philosophising. And even if they still feel pain and struggle, perhaps even moreso now than before, it won’t necessarily be out of vanity, insecurity or fear.

I find my ghost towers to be particularly vitalising and encouraging. They fill me with a lot of satisfaction without the slightest hint of the neuroses you describe. What you describe seems to be much more of a personal experience - but not necessarily an uncommon one.

6

Vanity has a purpose. Everything has a purpose. We know this. I think our job is to just try to figure out “To What Extent” those purposes exist.

7

You’re absolutely correct.
But I once viewed them to be vitalising and encouraging, and was able to do so for quite a long time, but the schism came from over-using drugs. I found that trying to use logic by itself to justify philosophy ultimately wouldn’t work. Good philosophy requires experience. And it requires enough experiences that they are able to accumulate over time into ideals.

The perfect philosopher never felt like he had to write it in order to be correct.

8

The human body is not us. The human body is but an apparatus for the manifestation of us. Us or we or me or I is the entity produced from thought. Matter does not produce thought. The body is nothing but a process and part of a bigger process. We are not the body.
It is the body with that nervous activity. The nervous activity called ego,because of the human body’s more evoluved central nervous system. A nervous activity to keep it alive. A fear.

The human animal is one thing --but what is Man?
Man is a term used to discribe an ethereal being.
WE are an image concentrated from consciousness. We are are more like a spirit. Fearless.

9

Are you still a rookie?

Without giving a practical reason for what you’ve just said, aren’t you just turning the “One” into a “Ten”? Or perhaps vice versa - turning Ten into a One?

The mind and the body are a duality. They could be the same thing; they could be two different things - the only thing differentiating this is the context of your interpretation.

From the perspective of evolution, nature might have “given” us a mind so we could react and adapt to unpredictable changes in the environment.

Have you ever looked into Chaos Theory?

10

Yes our perspectives of -just what heck we? are different.
Apparently you see “us” as being a body or something else- when you say “nature gave us a mind”.
And I say " “we” are mind".
You solidify yourself into material. Material or matter if you prefer ,does not produce thought. But some how you have looped yourself back into believing you are matter.
I expand into mind. I am a spirit with a body and not a body with a spirit in it.
I’ll read up on “Chaos Theory” thanks.

11

So can you remember being a spirit before you had a body?
Or is it just wishful thinking to think that you are “a spirit with a body, not a body with a spirit in it”

12

I speak of spirit as opposed to material.
I speak of being an immaterial. I say that all we are is thought. I see that we are a product of experience. I am tied to my history. Any variation of that history, that is to say a different sets of experiences, and myself changes. The self comes out of the world. The self is not a permenant or predetermined intity. Just to clear thing a little I do not beleive in souls, past lifes, or reincarnations.
I never existed before and I will not exist again.

13

so I guess we pretty much won the cosmological jackpot then huh

… to be born as human beings, I mean

14

We are not born human beings. The organism is born, but “we” come out of the world.
The organism is a process. It is dissolving and recomposing constantly. It is a long explanation but quickly milk comes from the cow, the cow cow comes from the grass, the grass come from the sun. Nothing is permenant everything is in on its way to becoming something else - so is the organism we call the human being.
The organism you manifest in could have been raised in Afghanistan, it would answer to another name it would be another self. We are a whimsical creation from our history and experiences. Any hodge=podge mixture of experiences could and did create the entity you call me.
The ultimate awareness is the realization that all there is thought, otherwise we will reduce our self; that is to say, we will fool our selfs into a minute speck.

15

I see we have another immaterialist on the forum, excellent. I presume you have either read Berkeley or you would enjoy reading him if you have not yet done so.

His argument revolved a fair amount around the active nature of experience being immediately evident - as opposed to a passive inert substance ‘matter’ acting as a medium (contradicting the evident immediacy of experience) or being a cause in itself (contradicting its supposed passive inert nature). Whilst I sympathise with his argument this far, I believe it is sufficient to argue that thinking of existence in terms of matter is simply one of many ways to conceptualise and name the world. Calling it matter and treating it in a certain way is not the necessary and only way it must ‘objectively’ be. It is not required that one must call it ‘spirit’ instead, to agree that the world is immaterial (not necessarily made of matter). Neither is it required that one must say it is not made up of anything, possibly giving the false impression that if it’s not made of anything it doesn’t exist. Clearly it does.

“We”, as in the linguistic understanding of ourselves, is a product of society. Whether understanding can take place without the verbal language of the mind - when one ‘thinks’ - is another question. But it is sure that “we”, “matter”, “spirit” etc. are all “Ghost Towers”. Attempting to understand, using concepts within a structure, is the activity of attributing invisible lines (ghosts) around objects and ideas to make them discrete, and re-building them into a structure (tower) with invisible forces and language.

This I see as more of a necessary procedure to get along in modern life with all its established formulations of understandings and communications of these. The philosophy element, to me, is more about appreciating different forms of doing this so that one is open to re-building an improved version. This is not a necessary purpose, neither is the vanity of sticking to one tower despite everything, even when everyone else has abandoned you at the top and you miss them - or of when you’ve built your own and no one else is up there with you. To what extent one assumes these things is up to you, and can be to any extent. Reason won’t lead you to the “correct” one, but it can help you decide which one you prefer as long as you decide where you are happiest to (at least temporarily) cease re-evaluating, and build/climb from there.

16

What we are the most happiest in. The conceptualization of existence is what will produce a satisfaction and almost a happiness. One can be blissfully happy or one can live in angst one can philosophize.
I think that to conceptualize existence in terms of matter is evidence that no real thought has
been exerted. Nothing deep has been contemplated or examined.
We can not be material in the ghost tower. We can be material in a tower. The material in the tower can be happy blissfullly but a philosophing immaterial will be in angst. I say it will be in angst untill the letting go is complete.