Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Point of Pointlessness or Why I guess I’m guessing

Dining philosophers

I think I accurately imagine that I’m not being factual in this blog. Not that I think I’m any less factual than anyone else, just that I have no way of relating what I know to be facts. Actually, what I know to be facts are an indescribable, unstructured, confusing mass of impressions…beyond the scope of telling.

Telling, or writing (in this example), has, since its recorded beginning, been linear. One word follows the previous in order to create a meaning.

But my observations are not really linear. How could they be? A building is not linear. Cyberspace is not linear.

This linearity gives writing a slightly dishonest certainty. In writing, one thought must necessarily follow the other, in order to create sense. In the world one moment follows the next, but many hundreds of causes may or may not lie behind each occurrence, each circumstance.

Actually, a person has to choose to believe what they think they observe.

And actually, with the same mechanism one can choose to believe any number of things…like another person's money should belong to oneself, or that another person really deserves to be punched in the face or executed, people act on beliefs like this every day.

The truth is that any observable happenstance is likely to be connected with every other observable happenstance, caused by all the remaining observable happenstances…any interpretation of special important connections, necessarily depends on a personal opinion.

Not to mention the fact that the syntax of each sentence also imposes an unrealistic structure on spoken and written statements: a subject must take an action which sometimes affects an object, but causes and effects in the world are much more uncertain. When an abortion occurs, did the mother kill the fetus? Did the doctor kill the fetus? Did the disapproving parents kill the fetus? Did the person who impregnated the mother and refuse support kill the fetus? Or did the fetus just die? Or was he or she never alive, and therefore never killed? Choice of subject, and object are biased, personal, political decisions.

So ultimately, in order to write this blog, I admit I simply dreamed up, a set of connections, among phenomenon that I guess I observed. And so, right now, probably, is everyone else, who is bothering to make a sentence.

The point of this nearly pointless blog is that I don't have an opinion today, but that's okay and I guess I wish other people would occasionally consider not having an opinion either, based on the probability that their opinions are, in the end, just guesses anyway.

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