Dan, I know I may be accused of sounding arrogant, and I will cop that accusation - while denying it. These are not questions that have not been answered. There is an extensive body of literature on this theme.
I started off when I was 16 - with Paul Brunton's Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga. That was over 50 years ago when books on the subject were findable but scarce. So I read the established classics - now drowned by a cacophony of unimpressive commentators and speculators going to print with half-baked ideas for the sake of ego and whatever benefits arise from their problematic and temporary fame.
I got what was really a classic grounding in esoteric thought that prevailed from the late 1800s into the 1970s. So I got educated in Vedic thought, Buddhist metaphysics, Zen metaphysics, Qabala, Theosophy, Hermetics and the Western Mystery Tradition. I was a child of time really. There wasn't a lot that was easy to find back then. I am not saying my education was comprehensive or complete - but it was coherent and substantial - compared to what a person starting a similar quest over the past 2 decades might encounter. I know there contributors to this forum with similar backgrounds -you can pick those who have passed esoterica 101.
Now we are awash with published commentary that has no idea of the legacy that was/is a foundational body of knowledge that maybe they should have accessed before they went to print.
It is known "whether these big questions are fundamentally answerable or not." They have occupied the best minds of humanity for millennia. It is pretty much settled. Our challenge isn't to go back and re-litigate battles already won, but to take the next step in our evolution by rethinking how we understand our reality on the evidence we have accepted.
The fact that we are returning time and again to issues settled by good science demonstrates that the issue is not science, but culture. What is contested is not so much knowledge but how that knowledge influences culture -alters power relations, status and so on.
I say we accept the established cases -and if we do not know they are established, go back to confirm they are. That done, we can move on into new territory. Look Frank DeMarco's works for example - or Jane Roberts.
I have complained to Alex before that we are fighting battles already won, but I have since learned that while this may be technically true, it does not meat we are necessarily ready to move on. There is so much investment of self-identity in what we know to be failed models of reality, but we are still bonded to them. We have to be both courageous and compassionate in moving on. For some, that is a traumatic separation.
Thank you for the reply, Michael. These discussions are of great value to me.
My primary goals in these discussions are to explore how the
context of my life and the purposes and goals that arise in my life seem to color my judgments. I also want to share these perspectives with other folks out there who may find them useful. It is
not a goal of mine to try to persuade people that I somehow have THE ANSWERS. And I do not expect
everybody to find my approach useful.
It is known "whether these big questions are fundamentally answerable or not." They have occupied the best minds of humanity for millennia. It is pretty much settled.
I can appreciate that
in many contexts and for many purposes, the idea that the questions are settled is acceptable/useful. But in the context of my life and for my purposes, the questions have not been settled.
When I consider my purposes and goals, I tend to think the big one is “I want to live a good life.”
I suppose this is a fairly common goal today and probably has been throughout history.
I think many (not all) Christians, occultists, atheists, new agers, spiritualists, etc are able to have “good lives”.
The Christian church I grew up in claimed that non-believers would go to hell. No question about that. They also claimed that accepting Jesus was the way to have a good life while one is alive, too.
My exploration of
context and purpose is an attempt to avoid that type of rigidness. I want to see what else we can do besides “the only way to have a good life is to have correct theories that are accurate in terms of FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH."
I am curious to know what you think about this question: Do you think people have to have accurate theories of life, the universe and everything in order to live a good life?
If it is the case that one can have a good life without “accurate theories of life, the universe and everything,” it begs the question, why do we spend time pondering these big questions on this forum if “correct answers” are not vital to the goal of living a good life?
For me, I think coming here is a chance to connect with people on the level of ideas; an offshoot of the basic human need for connection. I also tend to think that my desire to develop ideas and express ideas is wrapped up in the messy milieu of emotional energies, desires, and physical need that fuels much of my existence. Also, I will abashedly acknowledge that there is a part of me that thinks if I can just figure it all out, it will be like I've won the cosmic lottery--all my problems will disappear, all my suffering will cease, I will transcend all the messiness of this world. Personally, I want to move away from this vague desire for the cosmic lottery, but since I'm trying to understand my own context and goals, it seems necessary to acknowledge.
***
I have training and professional experience in the creative arts. Part of training in and practicing arts is about exploring the interplay between “form” and “function.”
Something I have been exploring lately is that argumentation as a form (or
mode of discourse in academic terms) is not a particularly good form for exploring the notion that there may be no fundamental truth. To some degree, argumentation as a form generally presupposes that there is fundamental truth, which is a problem for certain contexts and purposes.
So for my exploration of the usefulness of the idea that there may be no absolute truth, I am shifting away from argumentation. This shift brings my energy away from trying to be “accurate in terms of some hypothetical absolute TRUTH”, and brings my energy to the question of how do I use these ideas and discussions in my efforts to live a good life.
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Michael, since you mentioned sources, here is some background on where I am coming from. (Rorty is a primary source):
Some of these ideas are considered to have their roots in ancient Greek philosophy with thinkers like Pyrrho and the Skeptics. Some argue that Pyrrho picked up his philosophy from his travels to the east (what is now India, etc). Some contemporary philosophers (ie Richard Rorty) suggest that Plato's notion of Ideal Form essentially "won out" and has been the major influence on most western philosophy and theology for the past roughly 2000+ years. Rorty's work (primarily established in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979) is essentially a careful analysis of the more "modern" challenges to Plato's conceptions that Rorty traces through Descarte, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Nietszche, Peirce, James, Dewey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Sartre, etc. There are many, many book in the field of philosophy that explore these ideas, though it is unfortunely difficult to find well-written, readable books that look at how to apply these philosophical notions to the types of questions we explore here at Skeptiko. The American Pragmatist William James touches on pragmatism and mystical experience in his
Varieties of Religious Experience. (You can see some of my other sources at my thread called
Ways of Not Knowing.)