What role does imagination and nature play together on each other?
It is through imagination that we finally see nature, whether our own or that of the world around us. The human brain makes sense of things we can’t fully comprehend, and it shows you the key to understanding through your imagination. Now, everything that we imagine doesn’t have to have a viable or important meaning, but that doesn’t mean day dreaming is useless. </making excuses for my laziness>
It seems that imagination is the seperation from us and nature.
Nature does not operate on the whims of man yet we hold steadfast that the cosmos should conform to our imaginations.
In the end we conform to it, whether by choice or otherwise. Imagination is just that, seeing the non-existant. A way of looking at things so that they make sense. Placing padding around the cell to soften the impact.
It doesn’t negate the fact that most of humanity’s existance is a elaborate imaginative lie.
No, but neither does discussing it. In fact, going by this view of the world, nothing will ever change that fact, least of all arguing about it on a forum.
Extrinsically nothing will change but through our intrinsic formations there is the possibility of change…
Why should the constructs that we use to understand our reality be considered lies?
In other words, we may change things by impressing our will upon the cosmos? Or do you mean simply that by changing our lie to ourself that we can escape?
I mean that we can only hope to change the lie in ourselves to escape.
There is no changing of the extrinsic cosmos in my mind. It simply doesn’t recognize us and it never will.
The cosmos will never conform to the imagination of man.
Because they don’t exist anywhere else accept for within ourselves.
So, being unique means being false? Should’ve guessed from your sig .
If you think of the cosmos as a being as you seem to, then what role do we play? Are we just cogs, or etc.?
Why should we accept a division between our minds and the world?
I think it is a deception. Whether or not it is useful is up to the interpreter.
We are like a flower in the middle of a desolate isolated desert.
We grow and blossom only to wither into dying being blown unto the wind.
We have our delightful moments and functions only to be transformed into blowing dust of the atmosphere extending to oblivion. In short we are like a background of a beautiful temporary painting that eventually decays into nothingness over years of standing.
Xunzian, If our minds were a part of the world, wouldn’t thought change the world? While thought can influence people to do things, it never seems to directly change anything.
Because it just is.
Precisely.
We’re just there to make the universe feel pretty? Might explain many people’s vanity, but to say that we only have moments of functionality is to say that an ocean is a rain drop. Tell me, if we weren’t here to view the cosmos, would it still exist? We are neccesary to the universe, especially if it is a living being.
–Internet Encyclopedia entry on Wang Yangming, section 3: “Redefinition of the World.”
Now, Yangming was overly influenced by Buddhist philosophy and its ‘mind only’ school; however, I do think that his relationship between the world and the mind is fundamentally correct, I merely think that instead of placing the mind first and having the world be a product of the mind, we have the world first and the mind is a product of the world. The subject/object classifications remains intact, it is merely a question of which gives rise to the other.
This is where I veer off into Yulgokian territory and suggest that the ever-changing nature of the material world is what gives rise to the patterns that we see (rather than the patterns that we see being the mechanism whereby the material world is made concrete). The patterns we see give the world continuity (the White River runs right by my apartment complex) while recognizing that the world is indeed ever-changing (the White River right now is different than the White River yesterday, you can’t step into the same river twice, yada yada, you know the drill).
As for changing the world that we experience, I would recommend that you look into semiotics. We do create the symbols whereby we understand the world. That is the point.
I like to think of us as temporary cells of the body that is earth much like planets and suns are temporary cells of outerspace.
Everything has it’s function and moments of being only to be continually recycled for other creations that take it’s place.
The cosmos doesn’t need mankind.
That is the false assumption on our part.