we need to have awareness of our immediate environment before we can aspire for any “change” in our immediate environment; awareness of our environment is made possible by our sentiant nature (collection of senses).
To aspire for anything we need awareness of the existance(or potential existance) of what we aspire for. If I want to get out of the rain, i need awareness of things which provide shelter and the means by which i can aquire them. To get rid of hunger, i need awareness of things which make hunger subside and the means by which i can aquire them.
That said, awareness does not suffice for results. We need to act(physically move) to aquire any material things we aspire for. Without physical action we only aquire sensations.This is true for everyone.
When we move arround in our environment, we change the focal point(s) of our perception and thus attain an awareness of different things existance.That said, if we move far enough away from any fixed object we have the potential to lose the perception of it. This is all the proof needed to prove that our senses have a limited range.
As a result of our sentiant/conscious nature and our memory, we can develop personal preferances. Some things we experiance are pleasurable and some are painfull while some are indifferent. With the aid of language/memory we can give accounts of our experiances to others,while some people have the capacity to give more detailed accounts than others. This exchange of information and opinions allows us to learn from others experiance and thus we don’t have to experiance everything for ourselves to become knowledgable.
The main differences between people are genes, history, beliefs, skills, location, appearence(which could be attributable to genes). From these categories of differences we can find many similarities also. The capacity to differentiate these differences and similarities is also a result of our sentiant/conscious nature. Our senses can differentiate a persons appearence from anothers, through language we can differentiate a persons beliefs/history from anothers. The beliefs which are held in common amongst most people are what we call facts or “knowledge”. Question; How do we differentiate knowledge from falsity? by means of language i have the capacity to formulate falsities. The claim that i am 300 years old is substantiated as true or false by my birth certificate, voting records,and more generally by the fact that no humans live that long and i’m speaking human language(which animals can’t).
So what is knowledge and how do we attain it?
I would say that knowledge is attained by formulating a theory(a claim as to the way things react to other things) and testing this theory. Upon repeatedly proving, by means of an experiment, that the theory gives an accurate account of the phenomena(s) in question, can me make any claim of “truth” or “knowledge”. so knowledge is a belief which is substantiated by evidence. That said, its the evidence that is necessary to attain knowledge. How do we attain evidence? experiments. Knowledge is not something mysterious in any way. In fact , its the opposite of mystery.
That being said , the knowledge we need to survive is miniscule in comparison to the ammount of “potential knowledge” in the universe.To survive we need to know what type of foods are edible(helped by the tounge/stomach) and what ammount of food suffice for survival. The body has a cleaver indicator of this in the bitter taste buds(linked to gag reflux to identify potentially poisinous substances), the stomach/asophagus which have a gag reflux which are used to expell potentially damaging substances) and the body also has a charectoristic growl and sensation involved in “being hungary” that makes it hard to not be aware of. Also, there are certain tell tale signs which tell us of dehydration. We also have the skin and the nervous system which indicate any environmental stimuli which are potentially hazardous or fatal. Which means our bodies are a key element in learning to survive.
If one wants to attain more than survival one has to expand they’re knowledge base. They need awareness of the potential existance of what they aspire for, as its impossible to aspire for nothing unless one aspires for death/unconsciousness, as well, they need awareness of the means required to aquire what they aspire for. In order to aquire anything one needs to act; conscious experinance is the only means by which we can aquire knowledge and possesions.
At the moment one commences action, ones personal capacity becomes more evident through the effectiveness of ones actions and thus we attain an awareness of our limitations. These limitations we become aware of play a key role in the formation of our future aspirations. Our aspirations are concerned only with the future, as they are the motivating force behind human actions. Our aspirations are what we strive to bring into existance and this is done through conscious action. There are also other factors, arising from our perception of our body/environment, which can influence our decisions; ie screeching tires, growling dog, man with a knife, pain, pleasure, hunger ect. and our reactions to these stimuli are either innate(instinct) or based on prior beliefs we hold to be relevant to the current situation. (instinct tells us to gag on bitter and potentially harmfull substances and i believe that jumping out of a tree, because of gravity, will result in me approaching the ground at an accelerating rate untill contact is made) Its our actions which define the relative succes or failure we attain in our lives. So, to sum up, a will free from action exists as a potentiality or an idea and true success is measured in deeds, as they say.
how do we measure deeds? certanly not by a yard stick! we can speak of the effectiveness, morality, pain, pleasure incurred and other than that what value can we attribute to a deed?
when someone judges the succes or failure of any action, it is easily determinable in relation to the goal which was set out to accomplish. If i want to graduate from college and get a job, the success or failure of this action is easily determined by evaluating whether or not I acccomplished the goal i set out to do. With regard to pain and pleasure, our nature makes it impossible for us to be falliable in any claim to pain or pleasure(if the body/mind are working correctly). Pleasure and pain are charectoristics which are inherent in some actions/reactions to stimuli. When we speak of the morality of any action, this is where people have been in endless debate. What do we define as a moral action? Any moral judgement is made in light of both the effects and motives of those involved. There would be few people who would say that taking a drink from ones own fridge is "immoral"and yet with the clearity with which we can determine the actions which actions are “moral” when we say an action is “not moral” we find many people at odds with each other… how do we define our morality and what makes one correct and another wrong? Every human has the freedom to act in any way they please provided they have aquired the means to do so, so what makes an action moral or immoral? The easy answer is that morality is a matter of personal preferance and we call actions immoral if they are opposed to our idea of an ideal or perfect world. What is an ideal or perfect world? im sure that the answers of that question would be as diverse as the people answering. If a man advocates he has built a boat that works perfectly, we can test his theory by putting it in the water, but how do we test if someones morality is perfect? i would say that only through having a judical system and law enforcement can we actually see the effectiveness and acceptance of any system of “morality”.
With the diverse range of aspirations/beliefs/history of different people, its not any suprise that any implemented system of enforced morality has its share of people who refuse to abide by it. During our history, our beliefs/aspirations change, and hence peoples idea of what is socially acceptable also changes. In a world of adaptive moralities,i.e. a morality that is situational, it is only fitting that the laws which govern people change. As such, i can say with strong conviction that there will never be a universally accepted system of morality, but , if there was a universally accepted moral standard, would we really need to enforce this system?
In our world of adaptive and evolving moralities, conflicts of interest are commonplace. We can only hope that the delicate balace of personal freedom and moral responsibility can be upheld on a large scale and continually.