Tiger got to hunt

[Resha Caner]

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
- Kurt Vonnegut

 

[GrowingSmaller]

God said "be" and that was the grade I got.

 

[Resha Caner]

Anyone who declares an absolute truth is wrong.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I wonder what it would be like in a more knowledge based civilisaiton, where people's priority was understanding.

 

[Resha Caner]

I wonder what it would be like in a more knowledge based civilisaiton, where people's priority was understanding.

You'd end up with the Blues and Greens killing each other in the Hippodrome over an iconoclastic controversy.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Is killing one another the wayto settle a dispute about factual matters? Wouldn't people know about the ad baculum (appeal to force) fallacy? If people were interested in accumulating knowledge they ought to be informed about this fallacy, and of course avoid it.

 

[Resha Caner]

Is killing one another the wayto settle a dispute about factual matters?

If someone's dogma contained the principle that everyone who opposed him needed to die, I don't see how "facts" would dissuade him.

Wouldn't people know about the ad baculum (appeal to force) fallacy? If people were interested in accumulating knowledge they ought to be informed about this fallacy, and of course avoid it.

Are you saying passion has no place? That knowledge has no flaw?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

If someone's dogma contained the principle that everyone who opposed him needed to die, I don't see how "facts" would dissuade him.

But I dont see how, in a knowledge loving civilisation, people would come to have standards like that. Science, for example is in part a cooperative effort, and it's not part of the method to kill people with opposing views. Rather, people use rational evidence based reasoning wherever possible.

Are you saying passion has no place? That knowledge has no flaw?

I am not sure what you mean.

 

[Resha Caner]

But I dont see how, in a knowledge loving civilisation, people would come to have standards like that.

This is starting to sound like Ayn Rand's objectivism. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? She meant the book as a defense, but it only revealed how incredibly naive such a view is.

What you propose is not achievable. I might as well imagine the Hundred Acre Wood.

Science, for example is in part a cooperative effort, and it's not part of the method to kill people with opposing views. Rather, people use rational evidence based reasoning wherever possible.

Ever read about the "medical research" done by the Japanese during WWII? How rational was that? It was "science" whose purpose was to determine the best way to torture the enemy, the best way to kill the enemy, and how much pain Japanese soldiers could be expected to endure.

I am not sure what you mean.

I'm sure we can all imagine some ideal "knowledge." But in real practice, what we think is knowledge can mislead us. Further, the appeal to knowledge is often an appeal to put aside emotion. I think that is a mistake. It is not true that one is all good and the other is all bad. Knowledge has its place, but so does emotion.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

This is starting to sound like Ayn Rand's objectivism. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? She meant the book as a defense, but it only revealed how incredibly naive such a view is.

I never read tohe book, but I was not proposing anything anyway. I was lookingat a hypothetical.

What you propose is not achievable. I might as well imagine the Hundred Acre Wood.

I guess you could be right. But I am glad to hear tha Ayn liked knowledge anyway, that is not part of his normal rep (which seems to be for extremely limited government). Maybe I am just a fan boy of knowledge, and naively expect everyone to have the same "virtue".

Ever read about the "medical research" done by the Japanese during WWII? How rational was that? It was "science" whose purpose was to determine the best way to torture the enemy, the best way to kill the enemy, and how much pain Japanese soldiers could be expected to endure.

SO not all knowledge benifits humanity. There wuld have to be a focused effort then, on what medical doctors, psychologists, nutritionists etc believe to be useful.

I'm sure we can all imagine some ideal "knowledge." But in real practice, what we think is knowledge can mislead us. Further, the appeal to knowledge is often an appeal to put aside emotion. I think that is a mistake. It is not true that one is all good and the other is all bad. Knowledge has its place, but so does emotion.

I agree one must not neglect the emotions. But part of the utlility of the intellect is that it allows us to face emotions in an an organised manner.

 

[Resha Caner]

But part of the utlility of the intellect is that it allows us to face emotions in an an organised manner.

I could agree with that in part, but I'm one who thinks there are different types of knowledge - emotional as well as rational knowledge. So, not only does reason inform emotion, but it can happen the other way around as well.

I am glad to hear tha Ayn liked knowledge anyway, that is not part of his normal rep (which seems to be for extremely limited government).

She (not he) was nearly an anarchist (at least IMO) - an extreme individualist. Her fault (again IMO) was to make intellect a tyrant. There were parts of Atlas Shrugged that I really enjoyed because she humorously characterized one human fault - the hangers-on of our society who attach themselves to the hard-working, produce nothing themselves, and then complain that those who are working aren't doing enough.

But her solution was based on the mistaken notion that only these 2 groups of people exist and it is easy to distinguish them. She would cast aside these useless people, and the useful people who remain would have no obligation to anything but themselves.

- - -

Anyway, what I liked about the poem in the OP is the parallel drawn between the tiger, bird, and person. Each "trait" - the secret of each's survival - is implied to be an irresitable instinct. So man's instinct is his intellect. Such a parallel knocks intellect off the pedestal on which man likes to place it.

Second, there is the tension between the three. The tiger survives by hunting, the bird by escaping, and man by ... where does intellect lie on that scale?

Finally, the second stanza says we can't do these things continually. The tiger and bird need to rest. How does man rest his intellect? By pretending to understand.

I find it a very cool poem.

 

[Paradoxum]

Knowledge is good, but knowledge without love is meaningless, even depraved.

 

[Resha Caner]

Knowledge is good, but knowledge without love is meaningless, even depraved.

Yep. And love without a guide is blind. To me they seem to go hand in hand.

 

[Received]

Anyway, what I liked about the poem in the OP is the parallel drawn between the tiger, bird, and person. Each "trait" - the secret of each's survival - is implied to be an irresitable instinct. So man's instinct is his intellect. Such a parallel knocks intellect off the pedestal on which man likes to place it.

Second, there is the tension between the three. The tiger survives by hunting, the bird by escaping, and man by ... where does intellect lie on that scale?

Finally, the second stanza says we can't do these things continually. The tiger and bird need to rest. How does man rest his intellect? By pretending to understand.

I find it a very cool poem.

Have you read Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos? He has a fascinating passage talking about boredom -- how its etymology is unknown, but seems associated with (I think) "borere", which means "to stuff." To him, boredom is being stuffed with the self -- a self-reflective state of consciousness that results from a lack of self-transcending possibilities. In a memorable passage he compares a dog to a human being by saying that when a dog has nothing to do it goes to sleep, whereas when a human being has nothing to do it gets bored. It seems to be an indirect argument for consciousness as an exclusively human faculty, and also seems to hold that meaning (in the sense of self-transcendence) is more fundamental than understanding.

 

[Received]

BTW, I think Lost in the Cosmos is perhaps the most creative philosophical work ever done, tugging at the finish line with Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

 

[Resha Caner]

Have you read Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos?

Nope, haven't read it. I'll put it on the list.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Whilst it might be good to beciome absorbed in a task, and lose direct self consciousnes because attention is elsewhere, I do not think that all self consciousness per se is inherently inferior.

 

[Received]

Self-consciousness seems to be a default setting for freedom. Without it we'd be incapable of choosing; you can't find a footing to leap if you're already in air, stuck in transcendence, absorbed in the task at hand. It also seems to allow us to savor our moments of self-transcendence, and is palpably present during moments of pain -- which makes it the basis of value as well. As such, a perpetual state of self-transcendence is just as inferior as a perpetual state of self-consciousness. The goal seems tending toward the middle, although I'd say our fullest realization of our humanity is in a state of being-toward-becoming.

 

[Resha Caner]

As a plain-spoken summary would it be fair to conclude that what you're saying is that we were created to always be in motion? Maybe the rest many seek is not peaceful because its contrary to that nature, but we can't be in motion all the time (at least not in this life) so we need to rest sometimes.

 

[Received]

I don't think we're created to *always* be in motion. That would mean, according to my still-shaking-off-grogginess, gimme-the-coffee comment, we wouldn't ever have a real sense of self. The sense of self is found through self-consciousness. It also means we wouldn't have freedom. To choose something means being in a state of self-consciousness and intentionally following through with a possibility. We do need to rest sometimes, and this rest is found continually throughout the day, unless we're caught up in a rare perpetual state of self-transcendence, or are on drugs.

So I don't think perpetual motion is the absolute goal, if that means having no moments for self-consciousness at all. A striving for becoming interspersed with breathing points of being is more like it.