A Path to Somewhere

Have you ever noticed how you hold some things as objective facts, while others seem to be up to an individual's taste? Have you ever had even the slightest feeling something was off, when someone claimed a fact, where you just saw subjectivity?

Do you have a wordless feeling, a search for something that is hard to point at?

Come join my wondering.

Consider an apple, its exact appearance is not important, just that you recognize it as an apple. First minutes pass and nothing seems different at all. Then more time passes, minutes turn to hours, turn to days, the apple slowly begins to soften and with more time passing, the apple shrivels and at some point begins to rot. If we wait longer, for months or years, at some point we find that the only remains of the apple are a few specks of dirt, the apple is gone.

Now, when was the apple last? When did its existence end?

Assume you have high-speed recorded footage of the apple from all angles and you are free to scrub back and forth through it at any speed you desire. Now, where would you draw the line? Could you pick a month, a week, a day or even an hour? What if we go smaller still? There still has to be a moment when the apple's existence ends.

We can go further still, to the level of the atom and freeze the apple in time. Instead of waiting, we now select individual atoms to be moved slightly or eliminated altogether. There still has to be a point where the apple existed before the change and does not exist after our change is made.

Would you even have an idea how to find this point? I don't.

Finding this point is an impossible task and so we must work from the assumption of having found this exact point for our further inquiries.

How absurd would a rule to describe a universal Appleness that lets us find this point have to be? An apple produces ethylene gas, which slowly diffuses. At which point is the ethylene gas not part of the apple anymore, when it is produced, when it moves 1nm from the location where it was produced? 1 µm? 1 cm? 1m? 1 lightyear? Why there? What about the stem, is it part of the apple? To what extent? What about the core of the apple with the seeds, do they belong to the Appleness?

Even if there were such a rule, could we even hold it in our minds and take it into account when we reach for an apple? Could you hold it consistently in your mind over time? Would you draw the line the same way tomorrow? I could not.

All this uncertainty about the Appleness does not change reality, but only our thoughts about reality. Reality is still real.

Say we find the edge of Appleness at a 1 second resolution, if it is an apple now, it isn't an apple 1 second later. Why is the boundary here and not 1 second later?

Is there a reason why we couldn't name related categories that only differ slightly? For simplicity we are using the same starting point as the apple category; we then go one second further and call this a Bpple, another a Cpple, and so on. Even with just single second steps, the categories explode in number and nothing is stopping us from going down to the Planck second, if we so desire. We can also let categories start or end sooner or later, have gaps in the category's timeline.

Which one of those categories is the true Appleness? How can we be sure? This is like enumerating the permutations of matter in the universe and not finding natural junctions of reality.

Now take some imaginary sandpaper and try to see where the chair ends. The map is not the territory and the territory itself is not an absolute found in nature, but staked by a subject. We simply have a shared subjective understanding about rough categories without absolute boundaries.

The apple we talk about is not gone, the category is just placed in the mind of each individual and not as an inherent attribute of reality.

I say, the distinction of a continuous reality into macroscopic objects is itself subjective.

An aspect of reality that is measurable is temperature. It is a measure of the kinetic energy of particles, where we know of a minimum and a theoretical maximum. We can consider those parts to be as objective as we can hope to be as observing subjects. The experiments can be repeated and the conclusions verified, reality is knowable to a degree through science. This however does not make any of the drawn lines on the scale objective, even less so our personal thresholds for hot and cold, which we know to not even be stable for ourselves through time.

When Socrates awaited his execution, he reasoned with Crito about whether Socrates should flee Athens. They debated this as a matter of justice; each saw their view as just.

I see no reason to treat moral categories any differently from the objects and physical properties we already examined. In a universe where no subject remains, where is justice? Is it in the flow of a river? Can the arrangement of rocks be unjust to the river? What would that even mean? Why would we assume then that justice lies outside the individual? The inner world is where the individual holds the map, and map, territory and experience converge into one.

Does treating values and morals as subjective diminish them? What would an objective morality demand? Is it complete obedience to the finest measurable degree? If not, why? Does it sound desirable to follow morals to the greatest precision we can determine at all times? Where lies freedom? So would we not need some range of moral freedom, in which all behaviour should exist? And that range, is it supposed to be discoverable in reality, instead of the minds of individuals, with all their quirks and differences? What do you believe?

Does not some general overlap in subjective opinion about morality suffice to build trust, bonds and social structures? Even when conflict in everyday situations ensues, is there not also subjective flexibility that makes co-existence possible? If morality is subjective, it always has been this way for us and these questions do nothing but point where the foundation lies, inside each mind. Where morals are grounded should be irrelevant for any personal responsibility, when you lie to yourself, it does not matter if you are subjectively or objectively lying to yourself, only that you do it.

The apple kept rotting regardless of what we thought of it and the foundation of morality was always where it was.

I think any curious spirit might want to point the thinking we explored together on the self. I suggest doing this twofold. Once, begin in physical reality and work towards your mind. Then second, walk your inner world, search the thought and behind the thought. This is as far as I can accompany you toward the cave threshold. The last steps can only be taken alone.

Part 1 tried to point at something that many teachings also point toward; I want to encourage you to look elsewhere for what I tried to show. Institutional decline over time is a real problem, but much of the pointing remains recognizable if you know what to look for.

When I consider my own mind and peek behind the thought, I find that I can't reduce beyond a point of silent being and with it I see a will that steers towards the being and at some point moves the focus to the outer world again. I can not tell if being and will are in union, or just connected, with the will resting when focused on the being.

When I talk about will I mean an unworded doing, that shifts the focus, that gently steers the thoughts in a direction, like another limb. I can not reduce it further. If the will is an illusion, then how did I find the being?

I find it honest to grant every other mind the same core of being and will. Isn't this alone already enough to derive a golden rule? Within someone's will, I see two boundaries. The first is what you are willing to accept being done to by a specific someone at a moment in time. You might be perfectly fine with being kissed by your partner at any moment, but that probably isn't true for a stranger at the bus stop. The second boundary is what you are willing to do to or for someone else at a moment in time. You might want to give someone close to you a gift for their birthday, which you would not want to repeat every day of the year.

I don't see those boundaries as entirely static, but flexible in nature, when you match your boundaries to a desire of someone else. To me this voluntary cessation, or extension of a boundary, can be called the core of love, compassion or kindness. I see them as different words for the same thing here.

I will even go further and say: words don't have meanings, meanings have words and different people may hold the same meaning and express it with different words. They may also use the same word to express very different meanings, a source of conflict simply from misunderstanding the other.

It is love to not press an ever extending, consuming boundary on the other and it is also important self-love to not yield to any desired extension of someone else, otherwise love will consume itself or let itself be consumed.

Do you know people who are trapped in absolute views? The translation between your worlds may have to be one-sided, or risk a misunderstanding where none needs to be. It is however unwise to ever give up your innermost boundary and break yourself on the absolutes of someone else.

Where do the limits of free will lie? When I examine myself while talking and forming my thoughts, I can clearly tell, that I don't explicitly choose word by word from all possible words. That however does not mean that there is no steering at all. Starting and stopping thoughts at will can take some getting used to, but is generally achievable. How is it for you?

When I try to monitor my thinking, while I do it, it feels more like steering a stream, switching lanes, stopping or redirecting the thoughts, reflecting on them while experiencing them. Outside events, or whatever grabs my attention can momentarily draw me in a direction, but continuous directional control away from that will let me break away at some point. I think that is the best phenomenological report I can give.

Are we curators of ourselves by steering toward who we want to be? How would you want to be if you could decide? Isn't relegating decisions to a presumed absolute truth denying this multiplicity with developed individuality? Does the assumed absolute ought only leave you to accumulate the flaws you can tolerate while striving for perfection?

Outside the cave, dangers await the unwary. Existence will hold up a mirror to your soul, any leaning you have might spiral into absolutes. It will limit existence in thinking about how the world is, or ought to be, forming new absolutes where there are none.

If you find yourself in such a situation, be reminded of Socrates, of whom the Oracle claimed none was wiser, and who found his greatest wisdom in knowing he knew nothing. I can see no better fit for that admission than the outside of the cave. We now know that we know nothing, but still keep looking and trying to understand what we can with our candle in the dark.

From this point, how would you want to be, if it was up to you?