[MD] Ever redefining self

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA --

> Ham said:  "Yet, while we can't experience the
> 'uncreated' source directly, I've tried to show that
> its 'value' is what we all seek in life.  This is the
> equivalent of saying 'we want its essence for
> ourself'."
>
> Ham, maybe before your thesis was not very clear
> or I not very clear about your thesis - I did try.  I
> remember discussing with you nothingness for maybe a
> month or so.  It was difficult, and your thesis seems
> to be on-going and developing. ...

Again I've had to search painstakingly for a question in your exhaustive
dissertation.  Ah, I may have found one:

> ... We want to build bridges.  A whole ceremony in the
> Amazon or a Pacific island (the place eludes me at this
> moment) surrounds the building of a bamboo bridge.
> It is spiritual.  It is logic itself, trying to organize and bring
> order to a world that has an undefinable aspect still in the midst.
> Will this undefinable ever stop being undefinable
> while we are human beings?  We don't and could not
> answer such a question. ...

I don't know anything about building bridges, but you seem to have made them
a euphemism for spirituality and logic.  Anyway, the question "Will this
undefinable ever stop being undefinable while we are human beings?" would
appear to be rhetorical.

> When I shoot a bow to kill a deer, the art in how this
> can be accomplished is practical and not practical.
> Practical in what my stomach can gain, but not practical
> in how I am alleviated, in spirit, by my intention making a
> connection with reality and the arrow bridges what I
> try to do with what happens....

Whether it's practical or not, why would any civilized person want to shoot
a deer?
Will you starve without this feast of venison for which you must sacrifice
the life of an animal?   If not, what's your motive?  If it's absolutely
necessary for you to hunt and kill for meat, wouldn't a clear shot with a
rifle be more humane than plunging an arrow into the animal's flesh?

Here comes a whole bunch of rhetorical questions:

> If we need to kill something to complete the circle
> (food), the so be it.  We will do anything to complete
> this circle.  How this is to be done?  That is the
> question that has plagued humankind for a very, very,
> very long time.  How we define essence?  How we define
> self?  How we define the universe?  How we define G-d?
> This defining of any of these is an act of our
> intellect to bridge the gap, to complete the circle,
> to conclude what essence is?  (Am I not correct?)  The
> act of defining in this manner, on the grounds of
> philosophy, is to have to admit we will come up empty.
> We will eventually notice an emptiness that in our
> seeking, in our desire, in our valuing of this
> complete circle, even in our desiring via our
> intellect to put all the pieces together, we must
> conclude that nothingness will be here, for us, as
> human beings, since our scope and our effort to put
> this all together in our valuing ...

We are all talking about the same thing in different ways.  But your
approach to philosophical dialogue appears to be shooting a continuous
stream of thoughts at your correspondent in the hope that one of them will
trigger a response.  No offense, SA, but a little discipline in your
verbiage and some direct, non-rhetorical  questions would be much more
effective.

I think you have misconstrued my ontological reference to nothingness.  By
"nothingness" I don't mean emptiness; I mean literally "nothing".  The core
of man's self is nothing; it doesn't exist.  Everything that man is must be
borrowed from otherness -- the Essence that he is separated from.  Man
becomes a being-aware by appropriating and identifying with a particular
body.  He fills the nothingness of his awareness with value relative to a
particular phenomenon at a given time and location.  This is the incremental
space/time mode of human awareness.  The brain interprets these relative
values as finite objects and events arranged in time and space, which is the
intellectual image of reality we all share.

So the "essence" of man is the value he realizes (freely and autonomously as
an individual) rather than the objects he experiences.  That value is a
finite representation of what he is not -- Absolute Essence.  Being-aware is
a self/other dichotomy that is partially broken by experience, affirming
(restoring) the value of what is made aware.  Ultimately, man gives up his
being totally to Value.  Then there is no more being-aware; there is only
absolute value
which is absolute sensibility
which is Essence Itself.

This is what I mean by value being man's "connection" to Essence.

Have I made it any clearer?

Essentially yours,
Ham