Hey all, I thought I’d post this thing I came up with at an ungodly hour of the morning. Let me know what you think!
“Use rhubarb to clean your pots and pans! If your pots and pans are burnt, fear not! An application of rhubarb over the afflicted area will bring back the shrine in next to no time. Environmentally friendly too!”
A: I could really chew on one of those right now.
B: It’s almost nine in the morning.
A: I love it, that feeling you get when you know exactly what it is you want, and nothing else. It’s the thought of biting into a rhubarb that teases my sense of taste.
B: I’m more lost in the thought of why there was a rhubarb advert on television at this ungodly hour.
A: Anti-capitalists on a rampage?
B: It worries me when you link rhubarb to capitalism.
A: I liked that advert, it was saying “dont buy that Fairy liquid crap”.
B: Worried about the exploited kids making plastic containers for Fairy all their lives?
A: Someone’s gotta care.
B: So you’re taking a liking into an advertisement aimed to sell mass rhubarb to consumers, and you’re calling it anti-capitalism?
A: Isn’t it so, if you’re also attempting to stop Fairy?
B: It is so, but it is a tactic to mass sell something by sacrificing consumers of another.
A: I’m pretty sure, and dont hold me to this, that a huge company like Fairy make far more money than someone who wants to sell rhubarbs.
B: Too early. Tea?
Pause; tea, no more sugar, stale buscuits, newspaper, bathroom, gas bill.
B: Do you accept that you enjoy your taste buds reacting pleasurably to just a thought?
A: How do you mean?
B: You said something about biting into something and enjoying it.
A: Rhubarb.
B: Yes, you said it as if you enjoyed the thought of it.
A: No doubt, I’m going to buy one. And I guess I do accept it, if I revel in the pleasure of the thought.
B: That’s assuming pleasure is an essence to a flourishing life.
A: Which it is.
B: So if your taste buds are gaining pleasure from this, then are you obliged to enjoy the thought also?
A: Yes.
B: In this case then, A, the senses govern the mind?
A: No, B, senses purely mediate the pleasure between the subject and the thought. If I were to anticipate the smell of a rose, I would be holding it to my nose, and between my thought of anticipation and the rose itself, my sense of smell processes the pleasure that is the smell of the rose.
B: If the sense of smell causes pleasure which is the smell itself, and the sense of taste anticipates the pleasure of a bite of rhubarb, surely pleasure is therefore the sense itself?
A: I would be inclined to agree.
B: Then it would not be possible for sense to be the mediator as well as the pleasure.
A: Why not?
B: Because something that is the means cannot also be the end.
A: I think you misunderstand, B.
B: Excuse me, it takes me a few hours for my mind to awake after my body.
A: Lets just say the sense is a catalyst.
B: Between the objective and subjective?
A: The catalyst for pleasure to travel from the object to the subject, yes.
B: So I can assume from this claim that you also believe something like pleasure has its own entity?
A: You can.
B: Exterior to the mind?
A: Of course. If it was interior, my claim would be destroyed.
B: That would be rather easy then.
A: Finish your tea.
Pause; washing up, sloth, dishwasher, electricity shortage.
B: Already?
A: It’s that dishwasher.
B: We should go put more money into it.
A: Yeah we could. Or we could have another cup of tea and a cigarette?
B: Electricity?
A: Tea?
B: Ok fine, then we go top up.
A: Cause and effect, my love.
B: No it’s not.
A: Why do you say not?
B: Tea then electricity? That’s merely a combination of two events.
A: And what is cause and effect?
B: An effect is an event or action followed on from a previous action that caused it.
Pause; tea ready on cooker.
B: Going to the shop to top up electricity does not necessarily derive from drinking tea.
A: It’s almost an unintended agreement of subjective actions, a law.
B: Precisely.
A: Did we not agree that we will make tea, then go to the store?
B: We did.
A: So in that sense going to the store is an effect of us having tea.
B: You’re silly.
A: Every action of every person is interlinked with others, all from an effect of other causes. Every action sets off another action in an infinite chain of what we call cause and effect. In the same way the making of tea will cause another action, and perhaps millions of minute actions after that, until it proceeds to our visit to the shop. Therefore, logically, tea causes our topping up of electricity.
B: Logically.
A: That’s right, I forget nobody uses logic these days. If something is absolute logic it’s absurd in the world we live in.
B: As absurd as the manner of our language changing for when we talk about philosophy?
A: Exactly.
B: I wonder if that then puts a strain on language.
A: I doubt it, one can always describe something as “that thing with the white stuff on it”, rather than naming it a dandelion.
B: I guess so.
Pause; tea and cigarette.
B: Did you ever agree with Zeno’s Paradoxes?
A: I cant remember. I do remember disagreeing with a name familiar to that. Remind me?
B: The Race Course?
A: You might need to be a little more specific.
B: If a runner, sprinting in a one-hundred metre race, was to go from start to finish, he would then have to pass a middle point. Once he reaches the middle point, there would then be another middle from where he is to the end, and again and again. This then means the sprinter can never logically finish the race.
A: Logically.
B: Anyway, he used this to make any infinate regression claims absurd.
A: I remember now.
B: I can use that to make your cause and effect claim absurd.
A: Go on.
B: If every action sets off another action of what we call cause and effect, where did the first cause come from?
A: If I were to take on that question, I’d be then refering back to the Big Bang theory and questioning deity itself. For the sake of getting nowhere, I have to claim there is an infinite regression of actions regarding cause and effect.
B: To which we can call absurd.
A: Dont be too quick to negate the claim, for absurdity and the infinitum is the very essence of our acceptance of life and the universe.
B: If it wasn’t so early I’d criticize what you just said.
A: I guess the absurdity of acceptance saves me again.
Pause; sex, shower, clothes, gel, wallet, door, stairs, street, cigarette.
B: You smoke too much.
A: You’re a dualist then?
B: Huh?
A: Back in the flat, you said it takes a few hours for your mind to wake up after your body.
B: Oh, yes.
A: So you believe the mind and the body are seperate entities.
B: That’s right. Dont you?
A: I dont think I’ll ever be sure of it.
B: Well we seem to be patient for the truth, since the ancient age.
A: I think I’ve accepted that everything is based on absurdity.
B: Why?
A: Many reasons, one of which strikes as obvious. Religion. After every question, every form of scepticism by man about life, the universe and divine being, one is still unsure of the truth. After every strong belief and claim about the world, one is still not granted proof. How can man cope with such a feeling? Quite simple, he shelters himself in the belief of a higher being, a religion. One doesn’t question whether the belief is a fake one, that’s been done throughout life, but instead enjoys the feeling of security. Abiding by a law of religion, certain rules to follow, praising a higher being; after all the doubting, one takes comfort in the very belief he once doubted, because he knows he cannot ever truely know. It is this absurdism that creates the world as it is today.
Pause; shop door, bell, electricity, milk, bread, sugar, cereal, fifteen pounds, bell, shop door, street.
A: Whoops, sorry.
L: Sorry.
B: True, but it also depends on the individual.
A: How so?
B: Not all people end up in religion. For myself, I’ve always said that after all issues raised, all doubting and questions, that life is what you make it. You live in the moment of every event, and there are no real questions except the illusions from things like the curious mind. Whatever one believes, that is what he believes, that is what is in store upon the after-life, or whatever he might believe in. If someone believes there is another world for souls after death, then there will be another world for them. If another believes the brain just switches off forever, then this is what happens for them. A selfish belief in itself, but isn’t that a good thing?
A: And what of those who truely believe they can fly, but in fact cannot?
B: You said it yourself, “in fact”. Our very conscience places a barrier on our beliefs, limiting us to what we know as human abilities. Someone once said the universe is unlimited and the mind limited, therefore we can never know everything. I believe the mind is unlimited and the body limited, therefore one cannot simply fly.
A: I like it, but there is one problem.
B: What?
A: I forgot to buy rhubarb.
B: Silly plum.
