Yep, agreed - I think that's a perceptive comment.
What results have your explorations turned up so far? Or, in other words, how would you evaluate this approach?
Thanks, Laird. I appreciate your comment and your question here.
I think this experiment of mine makes me feel less like I have to know all there is to know. It feels like I can just let the world and my life be whatever the hell they are and it is okay if I don't understand it. I have my ideas and I can do my researching and reading and listening to podcasts and such, and I can write posts on discussion forums like this one, but it feels like I'm expressing personal experiences of ideas and not describing some Great Truths of the Universe.
In this experiment of mine, I also tend to think that that's what everybody else is doing, too. Just talking about their inner experience of ideas that feel good or useful or personally meaningful to them. Even though
most some percentage of people in the forums I visit seem to
think they are doing something else; they seem to think that when they share an idea or a theory or an interpretation that is important to them, they are somehow expressing an Absolute Truth of the Universe or that they have solved the Great Mystery of the Universe. I don't begrudge anybody feeling that way or talking that way. I have talked that way too. And when it comes to the ideas that people express, even if they don't seem useful to me, I try to appreciate that they are somehow useful to them.
I have spent time training and practicing art. In my view, a lot of art itself is considered to be expressions of something human that would be hard to express any other way. In my view, a composer who writes a symphony or a writer who writes poems are not trying to solve the Mysteries of the Universe or trying to make Definitive Statements About the Nature of the Universe. And yet that music and that writing can have a powerful impact on the world.
In this metaphor that compares human culture to an ecosystem, organisms in the ecosystem change in response to the ecosystem changing. So if I'm a plant in an ecosystem and there's a new kind of bird or insect or pest that has evolved or migrated into my ecosystem, I may evolve in response to those factors. Likewise, human culture changes in response to other changes in the culture. So the artist who contributes a personal expression is changing the culture in response to previous states of the culture. In this way of looking at things, a powerful new symphony or piece of writing does not need to be an Absolute Truth of the Universe, and yet the art still influences the culture.
Taking it a step further, as some philosophers do, we can consider that even the research reports of scientists are expressions of inner experiences of ideas. "Good science" and "new scientific knowledge" may be considered expressions of inner experiences that are very USEFUL for particular human purposes.
The view I am trying to practice here is not composing music or writing poems. I am experimenting with considering my writing here to be an expression of my inner experience of logic, reason, imagination, desire, etc. If we were so inclined, we could consider this way of looking at things to be the introduction of a new mutation in the ecosystem that is this forum. Maybe it will be useful and maybe it won't. Maybe it will stay around and maybe it won't.
I appreciate that there is some degree of circularity to this perspective I am exploring and in the way I am trying to answer your question. In my view, the ecosystem we live in, the ecosystem of the world and our culture, may not be such that the perspective I am exploring is particularly useful at this time. It is clear to me that people putting forth theories as if they are the Absolute Truths of the Universe is a very useful practice to many people individually and in groups for many different kinds of reasons. But in my view, the ecosystem is always changing, and it is difficult if not impossible to predict what mutations will be useful in the future.