I realized that a portion of an e-mail interchange I had the other day with a friend, set out a pretty accurate concise expression of my core philosophy/belief system. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to post it here, and encourage others to do the same. The 250 word limit is admittedly arbitrary - if you wish to start a thread for 10 or 10,000 word statements, please do so.
Tho your posts may be as many and as long as you wish, I encourage you to set off a discrete portion that expresses your belief system. Nor do you need your statement to be wholly original. I am certain that portions of my following statement may have subconsciously been lifted whole from other sources.
I also encourage folks to comment - including debating - each others’ statements. Personally, I will give priority to comments/criticisms from folk who have similarly attempted to express their personal views.
BTW - I probably spent maybe 10 minutes on my statement, so please don’t think I am expecting anyone to present a flawless philosophy worthy of carving in stone. It is possible that we might be able to offer constructive criticism, as well as competitive thoughts and beliefs, to help up edit and amend our personal statements, as well as our understanding of our inner processes. Or perhaps we will simply end up with a lot of hurt feelings and unnecessary carnage.
Here goes.
**Life, and the natural world, are wonderful and sufficient for me. And the universe of which we are a part is all the more fabulous the more we expend effort to understand it. I do not see the allure of assuming a posture of being weak, threatened, and “mystified” living in an “unknowable” and often threatening world.
It is possible that there are certain things the human brain is incapable of understanding. But this is not reason for despair - or special celebration. The universe evolved simply in accordance with certain physical rules, not with any particular goal in mind, most certainly not the goal of being understandable by humans. Similarly, the human brain evolved in accordance with natural selection. I see no reason to believe that a capacity for understanding the universe’s every secret would have conferred our species with a competitive advantage.
I suggest there are fantastic opportunities for stretching one’s familiarity with what IS known and knowable about ourselves and our universe. The more I learn, the more I find to celebrate. I do not understand why a person would choose, instead, to define themselves in reference to the relatively smaller portion that could arguably be described as unknowable. Nor do I understand how or why they develop detailed mythologies to “explain” what they do not understand. I would also prefer hearing mystified persons identify exactly what they consider so mysterious, instead of repeating vague poetic allusions.** (240)