Everything flows and nothing abides.
“Only a dead fish flows with the river”
A dead fish is ‘flowed’ by the river.
Flowing with the river is a choice!
‘Give me the power to change what needs to be changed, the power to accept what needs to be accepted and the wisdom to choose between them‘.
“How absurd to imagine that something we can make could actually deliver us from problems we could not free ourselves from!”
Dr. Allen Ross, Dead Idols or the Living God
According to Abraham Maslow, people’s lives are ‘staged’.
During the first four, each individual ‘must’ – ‘inside’ whatever circumstances Mother Luck had granted them, provide for their ‘needs’.
Only after they had reached the fifth stage, individuals have the opportunity – but no ‘obligation’ other than that each of them impose upon themselves, to ‘reinvent’ their own personae. Maslow had used ‘self-actualization’ to describe the process.
In religious terms, the whole thing is known as ‘coming to peace with oneself’.
No more ‘absurdity’ here!
There’s so much each of us can do in order to move ‘forward’…
‘And where is this famous ‘forward’?!? How are we, individually and/or collectively, to determine which is the ‘good’ direction?!?’
Is our ‘imagination’ good enough to come up with a solution for the “problems we could not free ourselves from”?
The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
that it may dwell in a shrine.
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.
It is used as fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
Is ‘induction’ a comprehensive enough solution?
Or ‘too much of a good thing’ will never fail to become ‘bad for you’?
Confused?
Let me put it another way.
‘One size fits all’.
How many times have you been really satisfied by such a ‘solution’?
Do you really think an ‘idol’ fashioned by a carpenter – by the most talented carpenter, even, will ever satisfy the needs of at least one blacksmith?
‘But how about the idols fashioned by Plato’s king-priests?’
To answer this question – this excellent question, if I may say so myself, we must turn back to Dr. Allen Ross’ Dead Idols. To the difference between the Dead Idols and the Living God, to be more precise.
‘Criterion for what?’
If you pay close enough attention to what’s written above, you’ll notice that not passing the falsifiability test doesn’t mean than an assertion is false! Far from it, actually!
Not passing the falsifiability test – ‘if a claim is compatible with all and any states of affairs’, only means that that claim is both ‘true’ and unscientific! Simultaneously true and not scientific!
‘And what has any of these to do with God?!? With the Living God or with any of the Dead Idols humankind has built for itself? And later discarded?’
I’m afraid you’ll have to come back for the answers.
Or, to put it differently, I’ll gladly welcome you back!
nicichiarasa 