Enough of 'the news.'
It only takes you to bad places.
'Extremes' along a linear paradigm are not the true picture about reality.
Reality as human beings are told about, is a linearity of things, where at one extreme is some crushing pressure going inwards into itself until 'nothing;' and then in the other direction things expand in number and sizes and distances apart until again the effective virtual 'nothing' because you can't measure anything.
Looks good. What is it? |
But 'as human beings are told about it' becomes a political story in which if you are Giordano Bruno then you will be horribly killed, or if you are some FBI director then you will illegally listen in to people to check that they are not being informed by 'Giordano Bruno' - and track them down and more or less kill them if they have been listening to unacceptable ideas.
I have recently been hearing some lectures from pretty academically well-credentialed persons, on the subject of what they all refer to as the 'Platonic Theory of Forms.'
These ideas were not ever presented as 'theories' even though they are framed inside of staged discussions as if there were two or more people in a particular situation talking to each other and discussing complex subjects. Despite even that it is possible to say they are spoken of inside the dialogues as 'theories' in fact taken from the perspective of a reader outside (EG you) of the dialogues they can clearly not be theories at all but are in fact being presented as statements, as assertions without any substantive supporting lines of logic and evidence from humans' observed and experienced reality.
It's very important to notice this.
Plato is of all people the example par excellence of someone who insists on logic and supporting factual evidence for a conclusion.
So what is he doing here?
He is revealing something. Something he doesn't want to be killed for having revealed.
But what?
Today, if you look at any - and I do mean virtually any at all - academic or published commentary about the Forms of Plato, you will be taken always to a literal interpretation of the word, or in fact the phrase (as it is used in the original texts) - 'the Good.'
'Okay children, come inside now.' 'Aw mom, we're having fun.' |
Now something that eludes a lot of people is that metaphors are significations of real things. They are not the things themselves, but they are supposed to be like them and to give insights into them - the real things being talked about.
Metaphors are not, 'not real things;' they are totally real because they stand for actually real things. Unless it is a false metaphor or one about a genuinely non-existent thing.
One person I was listening to repeated the common thing they all say, which is that the Platonic Forms exist outside of Matter and physical objects and have an influence over them.
Well this is in no way correct about what Plato writes. He does not say they have an influence over Matter and material objects - he says that all Matter complies with them always and everywhere.
Thus, for example, there is no place in the Universe in which you can see a naturally 'existing' (made by nature) perfect actual triangle with straight line sides and actually perfect straight lines and connecting perfectly to enable there to be three inner angles all complying to the major theorem. ...And yet, there is no place and no types of Matter (even flowing water) which must not strictly comply with these rules if the necessary formation is forced onto the Matter.
In other words, the nature of Matter itself does not abridge the power of intangible primary mathematical and geometrical forms (ideas). And it does not ever abridge it.
The same lecturer that I was listening to managed to say that from the intermediary philosophical position between Cratylus and Heraclitus (1: everything always changes/2: nothing ever actually changes), Plato created his synthesis of the theory (his, 'theory' of Forms).
Plato goes to some lengths to restate what is also the assertion present in the Bible (he is not related to the writing of the Bible of course, but people in different places were having similar thoughts at roughly the same sorts of times, vis-a-vis say, the Old Testament), namely that something is necessarily un-created, and outside of Creation (simply meaning 'material Nature'), but this highly-credentialed lecturer apparently never got to those many passages everywhere in the texts. Plato did not create the Theory of Forms, he observed it in reality. He noticed there was such a thing as the 'un-created conceptual which yet exerted actual force over the real material.' I will explain properly in a moment, because people like Dawkins childishly focus narrowly and exclusively on the notion that it is possible to draw common patterns from existential material reality; it is, but that's not what we're talking about here.
But now I am going to reveal here to you the critically useful importance of what was being said and how it was being said.
At the top of his 'Forms' Plato placed 'the Good.'
Plato was using a metaphor when he said 'the Good.'
And he doesn't quite define its meaning fully either. He does say in several places that 'necessarily the Good must also be the Beautiful...' But he doesn't really explain that either.
However now I am going to give an insight into something about this whole picture - in a way that you can make actual functional, material use of it:
If you at least take on their face value, the words this lecturer I was listening to, said - 'The Forms exert an influence over Matter...' ...then you can appreciate a basic concept like that vibrations effect changes on material states. We use ideas in formed states to describe complex but repeating patterns - colors, musical notes, that kind of thing.
The stumbling block that all standard thinkers fall at, who have approached Plato when it comes to the Forms is this - he says, and correctly, that the Forms cannot be seen with normal human eyes, and yet they are far more real (he doesn't explain) than what people do see in the material context.
And so people are left with a vague thought (only) like this one for example, 'invisible' sounds and vibrations cause effects on visible objects. So at least, 'the Platonic Forms' are invisible but can exert influence over solid objects. (We love solidity).
So fine, it's simplistic but one thing about it works in the minds of humans: 'unseen' is there for sure, for real; we know - in the head, in the mind - that the musical note scale is a template of frequencies, and so we know for certain that a completely 'non-materially existing and invisible core thing' (the musical note scale) can exist outside of all material things... ...And yet exert some effects on real objects when employed by intelligent beings.
The complex elements in Plato's Theory of Forms... Right? Right Bill, am I right here? Parker & Co bespoke and MTM, dude. Our place. Remember when we set off the fire alarms? LOL (That really happened). |
Plato is going so far up in the stratosphere, and even beyond there with this though - he's just not making it explicitly obvious what he's really saying.
But I will here and now.
He says 'the Good' and 'the Beautiful' but I say ('and,' not 'but...' lol) sentience ascribes meaning to a range of things, and this meaning can be small or it can be very great.
People have got a hold of the concept that musical notes can move taut strings in wave motions (this is straight Pythagoras here). But what moves you to ascribe meaning...? It's your 'psychology,' right? LOL
The next-to-useless commentators say 'exerts an influence;' me and Plato say it absolutely dominates all Matter everywhere.
You know the orchestra makes strings and pipes vibrate, and that they get sounds thereby.
Tchaikovsky knows how to compose those sets of vibrations whereby they will cause a reaction inside your brain and mind because you are ascribing meaning to those sets of notes and vibratory layers.
Now, if these things are true and correct, then why do you believe that the Good and the Beautiful cannot or will not make you rich and powerful? Because if you possess meaning, and the ascribing of particular meaning is common to all sentient beings, then all other sentient beings are looking to you once you are in that meaningful condition.
Is there some intangible music you are not listening to? Is there some formulation of variations of vibration, of unseen invisible frequencies that hold meaning, the very essence of meaning to all sentience?
Does meaning come from one thing only or from many things? Is it simple or is it complex?
The true description of reality contains the fact that it is a relationship of things and most complex.
The higher up the strata of Platonic Forms, the closer you get to what he is prepared to call 'Absolute Divinity.' And we must be able to see meaning in what it is that is really there at that spot.
Now...
That 'thing' is not a thing at all, and it cannot be a 'thing,' but the object of all meaningfulness and which is necessarily also always in relationship because otherwise there can be no other relative 'thing' to which meaning is an intelligible fact, 'object' in the epistemological sense. 'Material object reality' that we see with our human eyes is only a subset of the Forms! It is in fact inside the Forms themselves, albeit it may indeed be part of them for real.
So in terms of full and correct understanding, we are going up the Forms, from functional object-affected Forms - like the musical scale/vibrations/photons/wavelengths/etc - to sentience-meaningful things.
Sentience is you - you search for meaning - meaning is in the Ultimate Object of Meaning; but that also exerts the most power of all of the Forms.
Did you get that?
And the key fact for you is 'exerts the most power.'
So what are you waiting for? I'll tell you what - you are really not sure what motivates the object of your concept of meaning...
The reverse of an extreme condition is not another extreme condition - it is the center or median position, the moderate one, the one that lacks extremity.