Topic: Quality vs. Quantity, a chaotic analysis of the concepts
My chaotic thought process doesn't very well fit the categorization of the traditional posts whose topics can seem to be limited to a single concept. My plan with this type of writing was more a journal type, but my ego, and self seek input from others on my concepts so I post here a long train of thoughts. Feel free to comment as my purpose is to seek discourse. I appreciate insights that may help me communicate my thoughts more effectively with others. Hopefully with discipline I may gain a more focused ability to convey ideas but for now I give you this.
To be wrong there must then be a correct, and I still don't know if there can or is such thing as the truth. In a world built on what could possibly be layers of illusion what is correct? Is the illusion the truth, is there such thing as the truth. Well lets try to understand this confusing concept. One day you will die correct? Well when you die, do you really cease to exist. Definitely your illusory physical self dies, but what if your soul lives on. What part of you is your soul? Is it your personality, your knowledge, your sum total experiences? If it is the sum of all experiences then does the person you are at death fade into the background of all the composite lives that you ever were? Would you identify yourself as a human, or as the time when you lived as a snake, or when you were a crystal. You see how a simple concept such as trying to understand the truth about do you die completely at death or live on can not simply be answered as a yes or no question. More importantly how can you know the truth of any answer, we will go back to the life after death analogy. Say when you die you become what you expect to become. In this instance a Christian would see Saint Peter at the gates of heaven, where someone who didn't believe in anything after death may be stuck on earth as a discarnate entity living outside the laws of the illusion, but somehow perpetually locked in it. Two different answers to the same question of what is life after death. Similarly there could be an infinite number of possibilities that arise from this situation. So when trying to define the truth of the afterlife, it may be impossible to define what life after death is like. The point here being, as there is the possibility that there is no concrete answer to any question. Even mathematics can never be completely without flaw. Yes 2 + 2 will always equal 4, but numbers only represent things. You can take two apples and two bananas and now yes you have 4 pieces of fruit, but you also have 2 round shaped fruits, and 2 oblong shaped fruits, not the 4 you have when you are measuring the quantity fruits. These simple numbers can measure an absolute quantity but they can never be used for abstract qualities. If I were to ask if it was better to have 2 apples or 3 apples, the answer would most likely be 3 apples. However what if the 3 apples were rotten, and the 2 were not. The 2 would then be better. The numbers not representing quality can be used to deceive a mind which has been placated into having no capability for abstract qualitative measurements, having only the capability of understanding simple mathematics.
I believe this point may be crucial in the upcoming future. I believe we will soon see the world put into a battle where two sides exist. There will be the sterile side of clean quantities, versus the abstract, chaotic side of quality. The government will be on the side of quantity where everything in existence will be analyzed as a clean quality. Governments do not see people as individuals, but as resources which they may use to overwhelm the smaller resources of other nations. This is the hive mindset, the idea that the people exist as entities whose only value or purpose is when they are a functional part of their government. When a person does not contribute to the society of which the rulers of it compose its mind, they are seen as a cancer which needs to be destroyed before they draw off a certain quantity of valuable resources, like a cancer is removed from the body.
On the other side you have the quality. You have the things that make your friends, your family, your favorite television personalties memorable. Those people who you hold dear who you know qualitatively could never be considered by you as a cold number, as just another death in Iraq, just another suicide, another cancer victim. Those people to you are a list of memories, and their personality has imprinted on your soul, a piece of which you will carry with you forever, as long as you exist, whether that end in death or at the end of time. Those people who will seek quality of life, not how many dollars can I make, cars can I own, beautiful people I can do, will be on the side of individuality. They will stand up against those who call them a quantity, call them another person to add to their endless list of faceless stats.
Most interesting to this whole discussion, is that it appears this whole battle will take in the illusion we believe is reality. It will be fought, and may take the lives of many of us here currently. Those who have not been able to remember that yes they have lived before this, and to see therefore they will live again as will their loved ones and everyone else, will be absolutely terrified by this battle that may take place. For them to die here will be the end. It doesn't matter if they are close to death anyway, there will be some who will stab those with a full life to live in the back just to extend their lives for a couple more years. This fear, a fear that can be seen on the face of every Bush supporter in this country will be a decisive factor in the war of quantity verse quantity. Few would give up quality of life, but all who think that death is the end will give up quality of life to add to the quantity of time they have left to live.
I see a view of two utopias that will come into light soon. One utopia will be the governments version, the institutions version, where the utopia is the beauty of the institution and how well and efficient, cold, and clean, chiseled and flawless it performs, the perfect melding of a human society into a government structure, with those leaders providing the simplistic function of the controlling mind forcing all of its extremities to do as it commands with perfection. This society may appear beautiful from the outside, but it will have no soul, its inhabitants will feel empty, it will provide no nourishment for the only thing which is important to an individual, its soul.
The other utopia will be the utopia of quality. Where its being work in a mutual cooperation, with respect for quality of life, and all things living, that will live, and have ever lived. I cannot tell you what this society will look like because there are none who have had the vision to see it, and explain it widely to others. It may be a society similar to that of the ancient American civilizations, where balance was the most important things to the society rather then the male type dominance based ideals that wiped them from the earth, and replaced them with quanitity.
What can a human do in this situation? Can the sides be known for sure? If individuals are to hope to maintain their individuality they must quit seeing things as black or white, as quantitatively yes or no, true or false, good or bad, light or dark. I believe we must look in detail at what makes up things. Our leaders are not just greedy megalomaniacs. Regardless of what evils lie in our opponent you can rest assured they have some good qualities too. They have made mistakes, have guilt, have conscience if only fleeting.
The next concept to come to mind recently as I witness everyone in the world declaring they are right. The Catholics think they are right, the Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Scientologiets, Metaphysicians, Historians, they are all right, right? Well because each one of these groups has some good points about reality, but have many contradictory beliefs, how then can any one of them be right? I got to thinking that well maybe there is some mixture of all those things that is right. But more recently it has come to mind what if there really isn't such thing as right. I used to seek all the answers, but what if the only answers can be known by a mind that isn't limited by thinking in 3-dimensions, a mind that only can comprehend sequential time, a mind that cannot believe if it doesn't see. We must look at the world with a lack of arrogance that allows us not to have the answers, without the necessity to be right. For once we are “right” , then what room is there to learn, what about all those helpful ideas that others who are “wrong” give you, but you do not listen to because you are right.
What if what is right is relative, like karma. A man who has no karmic debt will need to live a life completely different than someone who has an enormous karmic debt to pay. In that sense what is right is completely different for those two individuals. Thinking that a hive mind is perfectly suited for insects, but is it what is best for beings that have individuality, an absolute conformity hive mentality may be very destructive to an individuals soul.
I have no answers, only questions.
