The scientist aims to look at things in the way they really are, they aspire to just look at the objective reality. I do like science but I can not share this kind of vision. As soon as we name something or someone we create a mental label and this one will filter everything related to that someone or something. Because of the linguistic charged we will attached certain features or characteristics to what we are trying to "objectively" look at. Outside the laboratory and the scientific context there is more than just an objective reality: we fall in love, we do and defend irrational things and sometimes these things are the most precious to us, like friendship. When we name someone as a friend we are attaching a whole list of characteristics to this individual, these characteristics are related to the person's behavior, culture, age, ocupation etc, but aslo this list is related to our friendship definition.
No matter how simple we think an individual is, no one is that simple. Some characteristics, a mental list, some concepts will not capture the complexity of any human being, those things will be only approximations so we can understand that complex being. I also believe that it's absurd trying to get rid of those lists, that is not my point, what I am trying to highlight is the fact that our perception gets distort by them. Some religions, cults or spiritual paths assert that they have the right set of characteristics so we can look at any human in the right way, but I believe that's also very presumptuous. The question goes into a different direction, given that I do not accept any particular list as "the one" everything comes down to how do I want to feel about that person, thing or whatever stuff I want to name and attached characteristics to it.
Do I feel grattitude when I call someone my mentor or friend? Do I attached loyalty and honesty when I call someone my girlfriend or wife? Is it actually possible to choose how I feel depending on the words that I use to name people, relationships and things? Some people believe that philosophy helps us with this because it studies concepts, their creation, the social implications, their historicity and relations to other concepts. I think this could be tricky, we might go back to the same spot we were trying to avoid a few lines back using a different door : having the right list of concepts. I think philosophy gives us the freedom to choose from a wider variety, the freedom to choose that pair of glasses that we will use to judge, evaluate and attached meaning to things, relationships and people. There is one more trap: the universal relativism. If everything that matters is how I want to feel about something or someone then the set of concepts that I choose is relative to that. I don't think that's the case either. Some concepts can make us feel lonely, isolated, alienated, deppresed etc. If we accept as a common agreement that we all persuit our wellbeing then all those concepts taking us into those difficult scenarios will be discarded.
There most be some kind of biological footprints so we can have some orientation about which concepts will do the job of keeping our wellbeing. I agree with Jack London in "Before Adan" when he chooses "playing" as one of this primigenial concepts related to our wellbeing; no matter how ancient and primitive the characters were in the book, playing was involved in the definition of previous concepts like friendship and love. Nowadays there seems to be a tendency towards doing things in a ludic way, from the applications we use in our phone to pick up a ride, paying taxes, to our very own jobs. But what about people? Do we now behave in a playfull way? I believe that our behavior is rather cinic than playfull. Playing involves more than fun, entertainment or simple ways of doing or behaving. First of all it requires time, something that we do not have a lot nowadays. Playing with people does not mean being mean with them, cheating or lying to each other. It means choosing to spend time with someone for non productive purposes. It is about letting your guard down and being open with someone, knowing that this other individual will not hurt you in any purposeful way. It is about trusting the other when it looks irrational to do so because you'll get no real production out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment