The Meta-Post

It's been a while since my last post, during which much has happened, as is often the case when I'm not meditating on top of a mountain, seeking divine afflatus for my next post. Of course, all these happenings themselves serve as plentiful inspiration for contemplation and composition. What's been missing is the time to actually contemplate and compose. Now that it's the holidays, will that time finally be available? Possibly. These holidays mark a new phase for me, where I will focus on learning and thinking. Nonetheless, a new series of posts is in conception; has long been so in fact, but I finally feel ready to tackle them (a few months from now).

This new series will build quasi-hierarchically, and topics covered will include alphabets, words, names, languages, stories, and mind. The observant reader has already realised that this list strongly resembles the content in Reflexive Reflections. Indeed, the ideas expounded there will be present, implicitly or explicitly, in this series. Perhaps some of them will be elaborated. Perhaps others will be refuted. There is still a process of exploration due to take place. But a coherent school of thought and space of ideas will be mapped out.

Thus, a descriptive philosophy of the world will emerge. This will necessarily contain my ontology, epistemology and phenomenology. But the undertaking of such an endeavour will itself say something about my beliefs. What I am attempting is nothing short of a Grand Unified Theory, a synthesis of everything I know about the world.

Why bother with that at all? Because a prescriptive philosophy, i.e. ethics, aesthetics, etc., must be founded on descriptive philosophy, if not necessitated and encapsulated by it. If we look at the level of string theory or cosmology, we will undoubtedly find that humans don't matter in such a worldview. But the mind is, to borrow terminology from motor neuroscience, the final common pathway of our (human) experience of life. Looking at anything with the mind will reflect the mind back off it. Everything we view is thus shaped by the mind that views it, and so mind is present in everything. Reducing everything and expressing it in terms of the mind is thus a good way to create a coherent worldview, and one that matters to humanity. Therein lies human nature, as well as answers to the questions of how to relate to other entities possessed of that nature, and how to fulfill the true potential of that nature. And those are the answers which that nature impels us all to seek.