Part Of A Paper I Am writing--What do you think? - Writers Forum

Jp · 05-11-2005, 06:15 AM

Part 1, section 1:

Society is the collection of all of our relationships to form a whole, however, that definition leaves something to be desired when dealing with mankind. We've developed into a civilized race, that has developed values, morals, and for that matter, a conscience all it’s own. Our societies state of consciousness is why humans differ from the rest of the animal kingdom. Some might say; that it is actually the individuals awareness that sets us apart, but I hold differently. I say this because of my belief, but it would be good to illustrated by the existence of physical pain. Physical pain makes a creature realize it exists. If there was a creature that existed without pain it would not be aware of itself and thus kill itself off quite quickly, (that's assuming the creature is mortal.)

On a side note: I would hypothesis that pain is what stemmed on the development of the simple brain.

You are probably saying, “that’s silly, pain might have made creatures become aware of their bodies, but certainly not mentally. And by no means could it have help them discover right for wrong.” But isn't pain the first instance of choosing an alternative because of consequences?

Part 1, section 2:

I am theorizing that all creatures know right from wrong.

Lets say hypothetically a brother and sister were to grew up without any contact from other humans. If the brother killed his sister would he of known it to be wrong? No, he would not, but that only shows that we are not born knowing right from wrong. In other words, it has to be taught in order to be known. Another animal has to be taught this in order to not randomly kill.

Case and point:

Recently some orphaned bull elephants were killing rare rhinos in South Africa's Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Reserve. In a conservation effort several decades ago, orphaned elephants were moved from Kruger National Park to Hluhluwe-Umfolozi reserve where there were no elephants. They grew up without the influence of their mothers or older bulls. It is thought that without role models they didn't know how to behave and were taking out their aggressions inappropriately on the rhinos. Older bulls were brought in to teach them how to behave themselves. What could you say happened if it was not because they did not know right from wrong? If we are not special because consciousness, then why are we?

Part 1, section 3:

The human body consists of flesh and bone; it is built from carbon, and designed from a complex double-helix, that is linked by hydrogen. Our brains can matriculate ideas faster than the universe is expanding. Human kind has developed universal ideals that have bosomed since civilization first reared it’s head. Humanities single uniting factor will always be our unique desire to know. This unquenchable desire has taken us to the bottom of the sea, atop skyscrapers, and to the moon and back. Man kind dreams, as all living creatures do; however, we tend to do it while awake.

All animals in nature are born with tangible senses that makes them capable of memory. A creature can only be as good as its memory, and
remembering is key to learning; for if a being cannot remember it is doomed to relive the past. That creatures longevity is purely based on how it learns from it’s mistakes; moreover, how it relates one mistake to the next potential mistake.

Us humans thought; therefore we became gods, in a sense--able to conform the land around our needs. That is to say, we are capable of High-Thinking; the part of humanity that can make us noble. Nobility should be what our race is striving for in this modern day and age. We live on a planet that we have spread thick over. Each man woman and child now has 6.4 acres to call their home, and a vast amount of those acres are deemed uninhabitable. This little blue marble we call Earth is quickly shrinking beneath our feet, as it does, humanity as whole needs be involved in heavy thought. We need to think about just what type of ends we want this too come to. All of this has to come to some sort of an end. It is humanities choice.

If there is some sort of an end to the things we do here on Earth;
we must have some sort of desire for ourselves because of that fact. If we do not aspire to something more then what we are, then all the things we have achieved are in vain. Furthermore, if we can’t aspire, we
might as well except the inevitable; lay down and let chaos reign.

The thing about humanity is: Awful things have took place through
out our history, but all the while, we were always thinking up truly
beautiful concepts. A good example would be a sense of conscious; the
knowledge of right from wrong. We’ve thought up Love, marriage, and
even more amazingly, we have thought up the idea of “soul mates.”

Lets examine the idea of soul mates. We first had to come up with
the notion of a “soul,” and it being the place where the ‘you’ emanate
from. This says a lot about the way we think of ourselves. We don’t think
of ourselves as mere flesh, blood, and bone, but rather, we think of
ourselves as a presence that lives inside our fleshy exteriors. A presence
that can be ‘tuned’ to a specific humans soul.

Another good example is the concept of peace. It suggests that humanity knows that war is wrong, because surely the word peace is not meant to describe the time between two wars. These are just a few of the concepts that actually make up what it means to be human. Yet, these concepts haven't always existed in the minds of men, they evolved.

part 2, section 1:

I will begin this section on a slightly personal note: I dropped out of school or rather was pulled out, given the fact, that I was too young to have drop out. At the time, leaving school seemed like a good option. (Given the events that were going on in personal life.) However, I had no idea, in doing so, that I would later on be left without a sense of direction. Interestingly enough, I did not feel lost for a number of years. That feeling only came about after the self-realization that I was living in a world, that would only except me if I conformed to it’s stipulations. A world that could destroy me, if had chose not change.

It turned out that my self-realization was one of four stage I would eventually have to go through...

NOTE: I cannot change the past, nor would I, because I feel that every instance in a persons life is what makes them who they ultimately will become. Albeit, the bad instances can have as much or more effect on a person destiny, as the good instances can have over him and his destiny.

There are four stages to a lot of things, for instance, the human development. Any given individual will eventually go through four stages. I.e. "birth, youth, maturity, and old age. If you correlate these stages of human development with a progressively higher level of consciousness, as an individual reaches the next stage, the following pattern emerges.

The first stage is the progression of an individual from birth to youth. A process that coincides with the awakening of the child's unconscious mind. The second stage, is the change from youth to maturity, where a gradual sharpening of mind takes place. A process that continues through death, but ultimately climaxes when a distinct awareness of one's own self arises. This now self-conscious person will continue on to third stage. In this new stage he develops what we will call a higher-consciousness (for want of a better term.) All of these stages cumulate when he enters into the final stage, where his thought processes change. This elderly man is now regarded as wise. Society doesn’t regard him as wise because of his many years of experience, but rather, because of his new way of thinking. A way of thinking, that if taken advantage of, can allow him to look beyond himself and his years. He is then held to be wise, by most cultures, because he can see the bigger implications of things.

In the example above there happens to be another fourfold pattern. This four stage is as follows: Imagination, passion, understanding, and judgment. Every adult understands the difference between fantasy and reality. Moreover, adults understand that fantasy is not clearly distinct from reality in a true child's mind. After this child matures to being conscious of his existence; he reaches puberty. This youth now tries to express in words what for the child is only a dream. By contrast, the mature self-consciousness adult rationalizes the world through understanding. If understanding is developed to it’s fullest extent in the mature adults mind, he reaches the fourth stage: Judgment based on his accumulated understanding to form a larger picture from the whole.

I have shown that oftentimes things come in fourfold, but I’d like to do it once more. The myths of society comes in the form of imagination. The passion of society come in the form poetry. (Although it comes many forms.) The understanding of a society comes in the form of philosophy, and last but not lease, the judgment of society comes in the form of science. Furthermore, I would like to bring up the aforementioned realization I had came to after dropping out of school. My self-realization that ‘I would have to conform to the world around me, or be destroyed by it’, marked my passage to the third stage.

Part 2, section 2:

I am theorizing that society, in and of itself, follows suit in the human fourfold construct of thought. I.e. Imagination, passion, understanding, and judgment. Moreover, I am theorizing that societies fourfold construct relates directly to the human minds fourfold development. I.e. birth, youth, maturity, and old age.

First, we must think about: if a society can reach old age, and if it can, where does the judgment in it’s understanding come for? I ask this because of the fact, that a societies populous is always being replenished. Thus, if a society can reach old age, the judgment of that society cannot be purely based in the minds of those who are living. I am suggesting that the judgment in a society is based upon its understanding and use of higher-Ideals.

What constitutes a higher-ideal? well, one example could be the idea of romantic love. Romantic love is deemed to be of a higher metaphysical and ethical status than sexual or physical attractiveness alone. - Aristotle's version of the ‘special’ love two people find in each other's virtues-one soul and two bodies, as he poetically puts it. It is deemed to be of a higher status, ethically, aesthetically, and even metaphysically, than the love that behaviourists or physicalists describe. It initially stems from the Platonic tradition that love is a desire for beauty-a value that transcends the particularities of the physical body. For Plato, the love of beauty culminates in the love of philosophy, the subject that pursues the highest capacity of men's thinking.

If a human do follow society in ths fourfold construct, what changes could represent it’s, “Coming of Age,” if you will, to the four steps that are involved in such?

#1. The birth of civilization, and the subsequent society it created, I hold to be regarded as humanities awakening of it’s unconscious mind. Moreover, this point and time in out history could of been humanities; innocent, youthful, childlike imagining. Or you could go back even father, to the time of tribes. The forming of tribes could been the birth, and the governing rules could been awaking. [Either theory is just as relevant...]

#2. Societies change from youth to maturity could of came in time of the greeks, when philosophers gradually sharpened their minds. A time which brought about humanities realization of self. Moreover, the realization of existence, as a way to explain the world around us.

#3. And In turn, humanities change from youth to maturity brought about humanities gaining of experience.- The realm of understanding, that which pertains to the world around us. This is still going on today, as this paper clearly proves, in the fact that I wrote it.

#4. Arguably number four, Judgment based on accumulated understanding to form a larger picture, has not yet occurred for humanity. We have the understanding: Many great thinkers have taken the time to show us the way, but we haven’t yet formed a larger picture from our knowledge. That is to say, humanity is still growing up. I hold that we human are still on the third stage, “We are changing from youth to in our maturity.”