the emperors new clothes: an opinion on perspectives and thoughts.
i started thinking about the emperor and his new clothes today. not that
i fancy fat, pompous naked old men. but i do like the big hairy types.
anyway, it speaks to me in two ways.
Firstly,
everyone is here the emperor, and we all think we know it all. everyone
else is unfit to wear the clothes that attributes an opinion worth
listening to. When that guise falls apart and we are revealed in our
nakedness, our words revealed to be empty rhetoric, we keep up a
pretense to save face, but it is one that everyone sees as plain as a
limp dick hanging off your ugly groin.
i believe that the point
is to be aware and conscious of what you think you know. the limits of
our perception extends to what we can see, hear, touch and taste. we
cannot know what lies beyond the concrete wall, or how a strange fruit
would taste (although with technology, and information nowadays, but
that is besides the point), much less any kind of absolute truth or
knowledge that one should so grandly proclaim in all their hautiness to
be true. Nothing is true. Reality does not give you answers (that is
what filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang says). and what answers science can give
you presents only empirical, rationally-defined truths, but not the
stranger, irrational but equally true truths that are very often the
flipside of the same coin.
We must, then, at all times keep at
the tip of our minds the knowledge that we *do not know anything*--it is
definitely a thought that i must keep in mind. Because in your
hautiness, not only do you reveal how little you actually know, you make
a complete fool of yourself. If you're lucky, a child points it out to
you. if you're not, you live in complete oblivion to the laughing stock
you actually are.
Secondly, many of us here are those in the
crowd. we grow up learning particular habits: how to be a 'man', or a
'woman', how to act 'appropriately', what kind of morals we should
possess, how to live ethically. In fact, only today did someone (i shall not name
any names) posted a picture on facebook:
#BROTIP 1217 whenever possible, leave at least one urinal between you and the
other guy in the rest room.
i replied, "just saying. but if you have to learn how to be a 'bro', whats it say about you?"
These are all a set of codes that differ
in time and place that is tacitly imposed upon us, which we internalise
and fail to realise are habits and habitual, not nature and natural.
case in point: intercultural communication problems and especially so if
you were to be transplanted into a rural native tribe. there, no notions of
'manliness' or 'ethics' that you have come to learn will help you.
it is not that
they are barbaric, it is you who is pompously theatrical. in the end, we
become all the less human in that we acquiese to conventions of proper
ways of acting. we shut up when we should speak, and talk behind the
backs of others because we've been socialised to be 'polite' in their
faces.
Im not advocating anarchy. im advocating critical thinking
and the constant renewal of our thought facilities by not allowing it
to become lazy and habitual. we must keep asking, why do we do what we
do, how does it affect the people around us? That is why a child is
considered the best philosopher out there--s/he comes without any
preconceived notions of right or wrong, and is defined by the constant
questioning of why things are the way they are.
You see, a child,
according to Freud, is ruled by primal desires, before our 'conscience'
which tells us how to act in society, and what we should feel guilty
about kicks in. This is why the child blurted out what he did to the
emperor--he hasnt yet internalised the conventions of 'proper
etiquette', and it is he, in this state of primacy, that becomes all the
more important to reveal all these silly habits that we build about
ourselves. For beneath all the habits which we build around us like
castle walls is arguably something quite raw (i will not call it a human
essence, because i dont believe we have any essences, but i won't call
it empty either, a blank slate, because i believe we are more than
that)--and it is a rawness, a state of heightened awareness, if you
will, like an open woud that hurts that keeps us on our toes. We must
all always stay so child-like. That is innocence, not any silly idea of
virginity. True innocence is the innocence of thought and the purity of
conception, which might explain how child-likeness is a quality that is
desirable in achieving religious faithfulness.
so that's
something for me to think about. perhaps in writing my thoughts down i'm
one step closer to remembering that i must not know anything, my
perceptions are skewed, and my thoughts are habits. it is this that i
must overcome.
i fancy fat, pompous naked old men. but i do like the big hairy types.
anyway, it speaks to me in two ways.
Firstly,
everyone is here the emperor, and we all think we know it all. everyone
else is unfit to wear the clothes that attributes an opinion worth
listening to. When that guise falls apart and we are revealed in our
nakedness, our words revealed to be empty rhetoric, we keep up a
pretense to save face, but it is one that everyone sees as plain as a
limp dick hanging off your ugly groin.
i believe that the point
is to be aware and conscious of what you think you know. the limits of
our perception extends to what we can see, hear, touch and taste. we
cannot know what lies beyond the concrete wall, or how a strange fruit
would taste (although with technology, and information nowadays, but
that is besides the point), much less any kind of absolute truth or
knowledge that one should so grandly proclaim in all their hautiness to
be true. Nothing is true. Reality does not give you answers (that is
what filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang says). and what answers science can give
you presents only empirical, rationally-defined truths, but not the
stranger, irrational but equally true truths that are very often the
flipside of the same coin.
We must, then, at all times keep at
the tip of our minds the knowledge that we *do not know anything*--it is
definitely a thought that i must keep in mind. Because in your
hautiness, not only do you reveal how little you actually know, you make
a complete fool of yourself. If you're lucky, a child points it out to
you. if you're not, you live in complete oblivion to the laughing stock
you actually are.
Secondly, many of us here are those in the
crowd. we grow up learning particular habits: how to be a 'man', or a
'woman', how to act 'appropriately', what kind of morals we should
possess, how to live ethically. In fact, only today did someone (i shall not name
any names) posted a picture on facebook:
#BROTIP 1217 whenever possible, leave at least one urinal between you and the
other guy in the rest room.
i replied, "just saying. but if you have to learn how to be a 'bro', whats it say about you?"
These are all a set of codes that differ
in time and place that is tacitly imposed upon us, which we internalise
and fail to realise are habits and habitual, not nature and natural.
case in point: intercultural communication problems and especially so if
you were to be transplanted into a rural native tribe. there, no notions of
'manliness' or 'ethics' that you have come to learn will help you.
it is not that
they are barbaric, it is you who is pompously theatrical. in the end, we
become all the less human in that we acquiese to conventions of proper
ways of acting. we shut up when we should speak, and talk behind the
backs of others because we've been socialised to be 'polite' in their
faces.
Im not advocating anarchy. im advocating critical thinking
and the constant renewal of our thought facilities by not allowing it
to become lazy and habitual. we must keep asking, why do we do what we
do, how does it affect the people around us? That is why a child is
considered the best philosopher out there--s/he comes without any
preconceived notions of right or wrong, and is defined by the constant
questioning of why things are the way they are.
You see, a child,
according to Freud, is ruled by primal desires, before our 'conscience'
which tells us how to act in society, and what we should feel guilty
about kicks in. This is why the child blurted out what he did to the
emperor--he hasnt yet internalised the conventions of 'proper
etiquette', and it is he, in this state of primacy, that becomes all the
more important to reveal all these silly habits that we build about
ourselves. For beneath all the habits which we build around us like
castle walls is arguably something quite raw (i will not call it a human
essence, because i dont believe we have any essences, but i won't call
it empty either, a blank slate, because i believe we are more than
that)--and it is a rawness, a state of heightened awareness, if you
will, like an open woud that hurts that keeps us on our toes. We must
all always stay so child-like. That is innocence, not any silly idea of
virginity. True innocence is the innocence of thought and the purity of
conception, which might explain how child-likeness is a quality that is
desirable in achieving religious faithfulness.
so that's
something for me to think about. perhaps in writing my thoughts down i'm
one step closer to remembering that i must not know anything, my
perceptions are skewed, and my thoughts are habits. it is this that i
must overcome.