Category: Irrational

Fairy tales…

But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
~ C.S. Lewis

When we are kids we love fairy tales.

But now we have grown up.

And we consider fairy tales… fairy tales.

Now we believe in science. Now we believe in what we can see. Now we believe in us and in what we can measure and analyze. Now only things that can be proved matter.

And yet, the world we live in is not so void of miracles as we might think.

A cosmos where everything is without us knowing why. A world where you change every minute and yet you are still you. A universe where particles can be in two places at once, where cause might come after the effect. A cosmos where time does not exist even though we believe it does.

A cosmos full of life without any reason. A cosmos where we seek knowledge without knowing why. A world where we believe we can understand why without even knowing why we are alive.

We tend to ignore miracles.

Only because we believe we will one day explain them.

But what if we never will? What if the explanation of these miracles is me? You? Everyone who make this world be? What if we are the ones who keep this world alive? What if miracles are more common than you think?

We used to read fairy tales as kids.

And guess what.

These fairy tales are the things we keep on seeking still. Dragons, mermaids, the tooth fairy. We used to live in a world of magic. And this magic is the only thing that keeps us alive.

Beyond the Excel spreadsheets, the meetings, the customers and the things we believe make up our life, dragons, mermaids and fairies keep whispering to us. The one secret we choose to ignore. Because it is terrifying.

You once were a kid…

But you were too afraid.

And you believed the worst fairy tale of them all.

That you grew up.

(That the child has died…)

But worry not.

One day you will cry.

And it will be right then,

that the child will come back.

(And smile…)

Whispering a terrible thing you knew.

Listen dad.

Since I was born.

Within thing void world.

I always smiled.

But…

I was never a child!

Cutting skin… Moving cells…

Image by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels

When we cut our skin, groups of cells rush en masse to the site to heal the wound.

But the complicated mechanics of this collective cell movement — which are facilitated by rearrangements between each cell and its neighbors — have made it challenging for researchers to decipher what’s actually driving it.

Notbohm and doctoral student Aashrith Saraswathibhatla recently made a surprising discovery that sheds new light on how this collective cell migration happens. Through experiments, they found that the force each cell applies to the surface beneath it — in other words, traction — is the dominant physical factor that controls cell shape and motion as cells travel as a group. (1)

Moving through traction.

Staying still through motion.

Living through death.

Dying through living.

Seek knowledge in the irrational. It is only there were knowledge is independent of any assumptions. And inside its chaos, you will find the peace you seek. For only in the irrational ideas are stripped of all their clothes. A the king can be really a king. Especially because he is naked.

Think. Via not-thinking.

How can you move, if not by your inability to do so?

How can you stand still, without others moving around you?

How can you be alive, if you weren’t dead?

Breath…

Why doesn’t any animal have three legs?

Photo by Spiros Kakos from Pexels

If ‘Why?’ is the first question in science, ‘Why not?’ must be a close second. Sometimes it’s worth thinking about why something does not exist. Such as a truly three-legged animal. At least one researcher has been pondering the non-existence of tripeds.

“Almost all animals are bilateral,” he said. The code for having two sides to everything seems to have got embedded in our DNA very early in the evolution of life — perhaps before appendages like legs, fins or flippers even evolved. Once that trait for bilateral symmetry was baked in, it was hard to change.

With our built-in bias to two-handedness, it can be hard to figure out how a truly three-legged animal would work — although that has not stopped science fiction writers from imagining them. Perhaps trilateral life has evolved on Enceladus or Alpha Centauri (or Mars!) and has as much difficulty thinking about two-limbed locomotion as we do thinking about three.

This kind of thought experiment is useful for developing our ideas about evolution, Thomson said. (1)

How fascinating.

Everything started with Nothing.

Then One came into existence.

We are still in the phase of Two…

And there is no way to get any further.

For going further means that we get to three.

And from there infinity is one step away.

Leading to nothing more than zero once again…

But there is no infinity.

There is no two.

Not even One.

For only everything exists.

Infinity!

In the palm of a small kid…

Lance Ah Kair, (2022), What is Existence?

[The essay below was submitted to Harmonia Philosophica in the context of the “What is Existence?” call for philosophical essays]

Photo by Spiros Kakos from Pexels (source)

What is Existence?

Feeling is largely unknown. Some are even heard to say that feeling is not emotion. I have often wondered if there is an affect called ‘pain’ that can analogue between the physical and the mental. I hesitate to say ‘psychic’ pain, since I am not quite sure if speaking about a psyche has any more substance to it than speaking about a finger, at least in reference to what might be existing. I am likely more the being of my feelings than I am the being of the psyche. My finger indeed hurts, but I’m never so sure what my psyche might be doing.

I refer existence to the ‘what’. What is existence. Question mark. By this I do not step into the irrational and stay there, for, how could I speak irrationally about what is irrational? Perhaps I would say something like,

“Peanuts! Rock the urine stars of liver meat going “squash war it thus spittle churn. And atom * running slime %: geographica —Uranus space_# toilet into (cough) dirt Russian 7 halves?”

take some acid for the theater of the absurd, and my essay would be over. I would start walking from my home and continue walking until I literally fell over dead.

I must go in and out; quite libidinal, but again, hardly likely psyche. My irrational essay must be referring to an historical understanding of what is rational, which then, to my ears, makes no sense and really makes me want to stop this essay right now, never send it, but as well, I now know for sure in my heart and mind, in all confidence that the editors already read it, published it, and I am now already done for my Ted Talks in the season; I again step out of my house and walk forever, never encounter anyone because I have already met everyone who is important.

What is existence. The two routes I am playing with, “the ol’ in-out, in-out”, concerns where or how I find the what. Is the what referring to something outside of itself, thereby having nothing it expresses in itself, eternally an empty space of referral to something else that “is”? Or, is the question itself merely a statement of fact, such that its referral is substantiated itself by that which comes to meet it? Both of these questions, therefore, are not necessarily contingently isolated and constituting different manners of answers with possibility. That is the question mark that never exists but in the rational world that is, at root, irrational: always referring to the ? great unknown. And one wonders if there must be a faith to hold it all together? Well, just start at the beginning and ponder just ‘what’ is referring existence.

Ouch!

Lance Ah Kair, Feb Saturday 2020 also. (2022)

Submitted at Harmonia Philosophica for the “What is Existence?” call for essays

Philosophy BY children!

Philosophy BY Children!

Philosophy BY children!

A new group to publish and discuss the answers of children to the greatest philosophical problems of humanity was created: PHILOSOPHY BY CHILDREN! Philosophy is not ‘for’ children. Philosophy can only be conducted BY children! We must forget how to think in order to think! True philosophers should always question everything. And who is better in doing that those who have learnt nothing?

> JOIN THE GROUP HERE https://www.facebook.com/groups/philosophybychildren to also SHARE YOUR STORIES about wise things children have said regarding the greatest philosophical questions of all time!

Why philosophy by children?

Thinking is always based on specific axioms. Any person must start from somewhere when pondering on any question: The things he knows, the things he thinks he knows, his beliefs, his hopes, his wishes. In that sense, any attempt to think freely is hindered by the very notion of thinking per se.

The only think to truly think is to forget how to think!

Harmonia Philosophica has been trying for a long time to promote the idea of non-thinking or of irrational thinking as the way forward regarding philosophy and science (search articles related to ‘irrational’ or ‘non-thinking’ for that). In that sense, looking at what children have to say regarding the big questions of humanity is a way to get a glimpse of what that non-thinking could look like.

CHILDREN’S PHILOSOPHY ARTICLES

To be continued…

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