RE: Order and Chaos
10-09-2015, 01:18 AM
It took me about 3 days to realize that the destination did not matter. Not merely in some trumped-up sense that the journey is ultimately more important, but that once I had escaped from the rigid confines of the castle, I had handed my fate over to... well, fate. The journey is all that there was. Wherever I ended up, it would not be on purpose, and it would not be tailored to my needs and desires.
My extensive wilderness survival training, though taught in a vacuum, served me well, and I was able to improvise camps, fires, water and sustenance. It was nice to know that if worst came to worst, I would be able to survive exile with nothing but the clothes on my back.
I was, in fact, sleeping ON my back in a hammock fashioned FROM my clothes when I was woken one morning by thuds at regular intervals. There was only one possible explanation for such organized thuddery — I was near other humans! Quickly, I pulled my (now tattered and filthy, having been run through brambles and torn-up for bandages and firestarting material) dress on and ran closer to the source of the noise.
It was a flock of lumberjacks, uniformed in flannel and beard (even the ladies.) They were all very hard at work attacking the nearby trees, but I couldn't help noticing they were using the wrong side of the axe. Some of them were even using baseball bats.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice hoarse from lack of communication, "is there a town nearby here?"
"Why, yes, stranger," said a lumberjack, his voice hoarse from a lifetime of smoking. "It's over there, in a distance and direction." He indicated with a gesture.
"Thank you, that's very specific and helpful," I said, walking forwards towards where I had been told the nearby town was. "And by the way..." I grabbed his backwards axe and turned it around, "I think you'll find it will work better this way."
He looked confused for a second, then swung and buried the blade of his axe in the trunk of the tree. His face lit up with childlike delight and the other lumberjacks peered around their trees to gaze at his handiwork, astonished, as he enthusiastically chopped the tree down, grunting all the way. When the tree finally fell, crushing one of his fellow lumberjacks to death, the entire lumberjacking expedition erupted into joyous celebration, laughing and dancing and crying from joy.
"I'M RICH, I'M RICH!" I could hear the raspy gentlejack holler from a distance as I was en route to Town. I am so smart, and so very helpful.
At last, I arrived in a hustling and bustling hamlet. A woman sprinted by me carrying a wicker basket full of water. Another was hocking apples and oranges from a stand.
"ORANGES, ORANGES, GET YOUR ORANGES HERE," she hocked. "APPLES, APPLES, INCOMPARABLE APPLES HERE!"
"I'll take an apples there," I honked, putting down a coin from my purse on the table.
She bit into the coin and tried to bend it. When it didn't give, she threw it back in my face, spat in my direction, and began to rant angrily about my shoddy clothes and funny money and throwing quite a lot of verbal invective at me as I backed away.
I was walking backwards when an arm yanked on the torn-for-scrap hem of my sweaty dress.
"Excuse me," a voice said. Presumably, it belonged to the same person as the arm. "Could you help us settle a debate?"
Certainly, I could! After all, I was so very smart and helpful. I pivoted to face the voice and arm that had tugged on my disgusting dress. Sitting up against a nearby dumpster with their legs crossed were three blind men, all identical twins, all disgustingly old. I couldn't tell whether the smell was from the refuse or from their general slovenliness. Perhaps they had detected in my untidy condition and white hair a kindred spirit, a fellow wanderer?
The middle man, who had been the one to tug my once-white-now-urine-yellow dress, spoke first. "The question is simple on its face, but vast: Is nothing a thing?"
"My position is that is obviously not," said the man on the left, "first of all, on semantic grounds that should be obvious. And, in addition, we simply cannot consider — cannot conceive of — that which is not, only that which is. Anywhere you turn your head, you see things; there is nothing before you but thing. With the thoughts of is-nots banished from our minds, we are left only with the is, the truth, and can not help but proceed rationally, as so:
"Immediately, it occurs to us that there is no division between what our senses tell us are discrete objects. Ironically, it was my blindness that helped me to see this. Not only is nothing not a thing, there is only one thing. Furthermore, for something to come into being implies that it once was not; this is patent absurdity! What is, then, must always have been, and likewise will always be. The same principle goes for the illusion of change. All is one, one is all there would ever be, and to consider otherwise would be deigning to lower ourselves into a cavern of falsehood and deceptions — for the is-not is synonymous with the false." With such a great exertion of breath, he practically deflated.
"You yourself use the word 'not' to describe your position!" accused the man on the right to the man on the left, seemingly only stopped from physically assaulting him by the middle man. Things were clearly heated between these two. "The existence of a falsehood implies an absence of truth. And furthermore us of all people, the blind, should know that no matter how we turn our heads, we see nothing! In this way, perhaps my blindness is actually the true sight, for I imagine there is much more nothing in this world than thing. For starters, if all was one, motion would be impossible, for there would be no empty space for moving items to displace. This alone proves my case for me!"
"Motion is an illusion," peeped the man from the left.
"Motion is an illusion, change is an illusion, everything is an illusion to you! What good is rationalization if it is unsupported, indeed is exactly contradictory, to the observable reality of the world around us? Bah!" The man on the right was eminently a pragmatic sort.
"How can we trust our senses at all to deliver us an objective picture of observable reality?" spoke the man from the center. The man on the right nodded. "Indeed, one we have in common has failed us already, which is proof enough, and the remaining ones can be fooled. How many times have you smelled something that you couldn't determine what was? You, young lady, does the area's odor emanate from us or the dumpster? You couldn't tell, can you? If some of our senses can be fooled some of the time, then it stands to reason that all of our senses could be fooled all of the time; and thus we must hold the entirety of reality in doubt.
"This is where I diverge from the man on my left — your right, though," the centermost man continued. "If it is true that all around us is an illusion, then it stands to reason that in reality, nothing could very well be the only thing! The exception is my own mind, which is what is used to hold reality in doubt — if my mind were not real, nothing would be holding reality in doubt, and it would collapse into concreteness once more, like a dam holding a river back!" He chuckled. Apparently that is what passes for a joke to him. "But truly, my mind is the only thing I cannot refute that I experience. You could say I am my mind. Other than that, I must assume there is nothing.
"Life," he concluded, "is but a dream."
"As you can see, we do not agree, because we are not the same person," said the man on the left.
"As far as we can tell," said the man in the center.
"Which is where you come in," said the man on the right. "Lay the question to rest for us so we can all finally die: Is nothing a thing?"
My extensive wilderness survival training, though taught in a vacuum, served me well, and I was able to improvise camps, fires, water and sustenance. It was nice to know that if worst came to worst, I would be able to survive exile with nothing but the clothes on my back.
I was, in fact, sleeping ON my back in a hammock fashioned FROM my clothes when I was woken one morning by thuds at regular intervals. There was only one possible explanation for such organized thuddery — I was near other humans! Quickly, I pulled my (now tattered and filthy, having been run through brambles and torn-up for bandages and firestarting material) dress on and ran closer to the source of the noise.
It was a flock of lumberjacks, uniformed in flannel and beard (even the ladies.) They were all very hard at work attacking the nearby trees, but I couldn't help noticing they were using the wrong side of the axe. Some of them were even using baseball bats.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice hoarse from lack of communication, "is there a town nearby here?"
"Why, yes, stranger," said a lumberjack, his voice hoarse from a lifetime of smoking. "It's over there, in a distance and direction." He indicated with a gesture.
"Thank you, that's very specific and helpful," I said, walking forwards towards where I had been told the nearby town was. "And by the way..." I grabbed his backwards axe and turned it around, "I think you'll find it will work better this way."
He looked confused for a second, then swung and buried the blade of his axe in the trunk of the tree. His face lit up with childlike delight and the other lumberjacks peered around their trees to gaze at his handiwork, astonished, as he enthusiastically chopped the tree down, grunting all the way. When the tree finally fell, crushing one of his fellow lumberjacks to death, the entire lumberjacking expedition erupted into joyous celebration, laughing and dancing and crying from joy.
"I'M RICH, I'M RICH!" I could hear the raspy gentlejack holler from a distance as I was en route to Town. I am so smart, and so very helpful.
At last, I arrived in a hustling and bustling hamlet. A woman sprinted by me carrying a wicker basket full of water. Another was hocking apples and oranges from a stand.
"ORANGES, ORANGES, GET YOUR ORANGES HERE," she hocked. "APPLES, APPLES, INCOMPARABLE APPLES HERE!"
"I'll take an apples there," I honked, putting down a coin from my purse on the table.
She bit into the coin and tried to bend it. When it didn't give, she threw it back in my face, spat in my direction, and began to rant angrily about my shoddy clothes and funny money and throwing quite a lot of verbal invective at me as I backed away.
I was walking backwards when an arm yanked on the torn-for-scrap hem of my sweaty dress.
"Excuse me," a voice said. Presumably, it belonged to the same person as the arm. "Could you help us settle a debate?"
Certainly, I could! After all, I was so very smart and helpful. I pivoted to face the voice and arm that had tugged on my disgusting dress. Sitting up against a nearby dumpster with their legs crossed were three blind men, all identical twins, all disgustingly old. I couldn't tell whether the smell was from the refuse or from their general slovenliness. Perhaps they had detected in my untidy condition and white hair a kindred spirit, a fellow wanderer?
The middle man, who had been the one to tug my once-white-now-urine-yellow dress, spoke first. "The question is simple on its face, but vast: Is nothing a thing?"
"My position is that is obviously not," said the man on the left, "first of all, on semantic grounds that should be obvious. And, in addition, we simply cannot consider — cannot conceive of — that which is not, only that which is. Anywhere you turn your head, you see things; there is nothing before you but thing. With the thoughts of is-nots banished from our minds, we are left only with the is, the truth, and can not help but proceed rationally, as so:
"Immediately, it occurs to us that there is no division between what our senses tell us are discrete objects. Ironically, it was my blindness that helped me to see this. Not only is nothing not a thing, there is only one thing. Furthermore, for something to come into being implies that it once was not; this is patent absurdity! What is, then, must always have been, and likewise will always be. The same principle goes for the illusion of change. All is one, one is all there would ever be, and to consider otherwise would be deigning to lower ourselves into a cavern of falsehood and deceptions — for the is-not is synonymous with the false." With such a great exertion of breath, he practically deflated.
"You yourself use the word 'not' to describe your position!" accused the man on the right to the man on the left, seemingly only stopped from physically assaulting him by the middle man. Things were clearly heated between these two. "The existence of a falsehood implies an absence of truth. And furthermore us of all people, the blind, should know that no matter how we turn our heads, we see nothing! In this way, perhaps my blindness is actually the true sight, for I imagine there is much more nothing in this world than thing. For starters, if all was one, motion would be impossible, for there would be no empty space for moving items to displace. This alone proves my case for me!"
"Motion is an illusion," peeped the man from the left.
"Motion is an illusion, change is an illusion, everything is an illusion to you! What good is rationalization if it is unsupported, indeed is exactly contradictory, to the observable reality of the world around us? Bah!" The man on the right was eminently a pragmatic sort.
"How can we trust our senses at all to deliver us an objective picture of observable reality?" spoke the man from the center. The man on the right nodded. "Indeed, one we have in common has failed us already, which is proof enough, and the remaining ones can be fooled. How many times have you smelled something that you couldn't determine what was? You, young lady, does the area's odor emanate from us or the dumpster? You couldn't tell, can you? If some of our senses can be fooled some of the time, then it stands to reason that all of our senses could be fooled all of the time; and thus we must hold the entirety of reality in doubt.
"This is where I diverge from the man on my left — your right, though," the centermost man continued. "If it is true that all around us is an illusion, then it stands to reason that in reality, nothing could very well be the only thing! The exception is my own mind, which is what is used to hold reality in doubt — if my mind were not real, nothing would be holding reality in doubt, and it would collapse into concreteness once more, like a dam holding a river back!" He chuckled. Apparently that is what passes for a joke to him. "But truly, my mind is the only thing I cannot refute that I experience. You could say I am my mind. Other than that, I must assume there is nothing.
"Life," he concluded, "is but a dream."
"As you can see, we do not agree, because we are not the same person," said the man on the left.
"As far as we can tell," said the man in the center.
"Which is where you come in," said the man on the right. "Lay the question to rest for us so we can all finally die: Is nothing a thing?"