The Republic of Heaven

I firmly believe that each and every one of us can be some kind of philosopher, I would like to see all of your personal philosophies.

Let Me get you all started:

One of my belieifs is quite similar to one of plato's. In the "afterlife", there is a mass where all the souls collect. Whenever somone or somthing is born, a chunk of this giant mass of soul material breaks off to inhabit to newborn child. The new soul would have faint memories of the other times it was on earth, but would otherwise be completly new to Earth. One problem with this is that there is a finite amount of the "soul matter" and overpopulation would lead to there being not enough soul to go around.

Kinda out there huh? Well just streach your imagionation and give me a reply.

I invent philosophies all the time; trouble is, when I think about them, not a lot are true. 'Cept this one: Generalisations are always wrong.

Dante wrote:Generalisations are always wrong.

Sense the contradiction in that .

That is an excellent point, I didn't notice that, what a hypocritical statement. Okay. All generalisations are wrong, except this one. I thought it was quite good as well. Dang.

Heh, don't worry, it's still an awesome little phrase. I'll have to remember it.

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' The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think the same than those who think differently.'

A quote I picked up from another forum user in another forum. Untrue in a lot of cases but, ahem, apt in this one.

I've recently begun thinking about how the Matrix could theoretically be real. Well, not the matrix obviously, but something like it. Think about it- we all think it just can't be true, but if it was true (and considerably better designed than the film version) then we would think that, wouldn't we? *taps side of head* Not just a hat rack, my friends.

eloquent wrote:

Dante wrote:Generalisations are always wrong.

Sense the contradiction in that .

Maybe "Generalizations are generally wrong?" Maybe not.

I believe that people will always do what they want. They may feel conflicted about what exactly they want in the first place (whether to please someone through sacrifice or to indulge in more self-serving gratification), but in the end, choices always follow from an inherent decision. There's no such thing as having no choice. We just have such conflicting desires that while we have already decided to appease one desire, we yearn to fulfill the other desire as well.

Second (and this should make sense), we can never know that anything outside of our own minds exists. This is somewhat harkening back to the Matrix thing: for all we know, the world's just a bunch of self-delusion, an unending dream.

Yes, all we see as reality via our senses is subjective. The environment in which we operate is constructed entirely from different data gathered by our nerves.

Here's a pessimistic one: All life is pointless. Think about it: All humans, in one way or another, exist to serve life. Which in turn, exists to serve life, which exists to serve life... if there is any point, it is to brighten up the universe, but for who? God? If that's all we exist for, then God exists to serve himself. It would be so much less complicated if we just didn't exist. How cheery is that?

On the bright side, a lot of pointless things can be fun, so there's an argument for enjoying life... I think I'm making sense.

Dante wrote:That is an excellent point, I didn't notice that, what a hypocritical statement.

No it's not, it's just a rather neat interior paradox. Like me saying 'All women are liars'. Proof of the arbritrariness of the sign, and language in general.

*cough*existentialism owns*cough*

Dante wrote:Here's a pessimistic one: All life is pointless.

I would agree, with a stipulation: that any purpose that can exist must need be our own, self-made. People can make a point to life if they want to and live up to that belife if they choose. Everything we achieve and strive for is our own doing. No matter what, no one can give someone else purpose: that choice must come from within.

You don't have to defend yourself, Louisa.

I believe that everyone in life experiences the same amount of happiness and depression. In the end.

what qualifies a person as a philisopher?

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I like existentialism. There, that can be my philosophy.

I'd also like to think that we all are here to serve some purpose--that at least makes me feel better, being a tiny being in a giant world.

Dante wrote:Here's a pessimistic one: All life is pointless. Think about it: All humans, in one way or another, exist to serve life. Which in turn, exists to serve life, which exists to serve life... if there is any point, it is to brighten up the universe, but for who? God? If that's all we exist for, then God exists to serve himself. It would be so much less complicated if we just didn't exist. How cheery is that?

Not really, IMO...the point of life is to keep living. "Life" not being a single organism, but rather an abstract object representing the survival of the organisms’ species. (Thus, for "life" to continue living, an individual may be required to sacrifice themselves..."life" ≠ "life of individual") It's really pretty much the same as many religions where you have a god/goddess (or you have some goddesses/gods) that create everything or some such, and they determine their creations' goals...the only difference is that rather than there being an all powerful being that created us, there was evolution which created us. Of course that's not to say you can't have your own ideas of how to accomplish the rather open ended "survival of life" goal.

Laura wrote:I'd also like to think that we all are here to serve some purpose--that at least makes me feel better, being a tiny being in a giant world.

Well, if the purpose described above doesn't seem very cheering, there's always the possibility that we're in a quantum computer simulation (I think there's even some probability number that shows it's actually very likely)...chances are it's being run for research purposes so your tiny insignificant life would be part of a much bigger purpose.
It would probably also be run at a much higher speed than real-time (which means They, who have the computers, must be using some truly impressive computers). Hell, we, who are in the simulation, may be doing our own simulations sooner than you may think...which brings up an interesting point: If we make a quantum computer more powerful than the one simulating us, then we would probably crash that computer, effectively destroying the universe. Damn, I hope They're keeping Their backups up to date.

Very deep Gabe, rocking the philosophical tree.

My strange philosophy was written in my sig.

"For the path has no end, follow the path wih no fear"
Unfortunately I can't follow my advice.