sidereal
05-10-2006, 02:51 AM
Sorry folk, though ive been a student of their music for many years, i don't know much about the personalities nor lyrics in tool.
To me it seems as though here Maynard is degrading humanity for positing the individual "will" as the meaning of life. Well, i personally think that with our current mental capacities, humans cannot come to an understanding of any higher/all pervasive meaning to life. If you ask someone to rationalise their beliefs down and down the chain of thinking, they will reach a point where they can go no further, and thus revert into their own subjective 'truth' about the ultimate nature (if there is one) of 'reality' and thus about why they choose to do one thing over the other (and why, perhaps, other people should do the same). Thus the individual will becomes the only shared "objective" bench mark for life, as we can grasp no other yet. I guess this means that our current rationality can only really be used to illustrate the limits of itself (in coming to grips with anything bigger than us)! Now, at this point some people may surcum to fatalism and throw in the towel and declare life meaningless, or the more desperate and perhaps creative individuals might embrace this lack of inherent meaning, and (even in the light of not being able to grasp a higher meaning) work with what they have to live well. People have different takes on life obviously, because if there existed objectivity, this would not be the case. It is these differences that possibly provide some glimpse of hope (in my subjective opinion) for attaining some sense of greater meaning. Even though our minds are too primite to comprehend the "all" at the moment and thus point to any clear direction in life (like i said, i think people's values cannot be proven objectively, and thus cannot give a fundamental "should" reason to others. Even something as fundamental as "don't kill" cannot be rationalised down to some all binding reason to obey - im talking beyond subjective human laws here obviously), i think our current rational abilities might be a step in the right direction, if YOU will. Let me explain. Evolution works through differences, random hypotheses. Genetic mutations occur all the time in organisms, and if such a mutation helps it to better adapt to its environment, that organism will rule. now, perhaps we as a species have risen to rule our natural environment for a time because our rational knowledge has given us the tool to adapt to 'reality' better than other animals. But at the moment, our rational knowledge cannot posit anything more objective in life than will (will to greed, will to cooperation if you want, but still nothing has been found to indicidate what we "should" do, which is different to "could" do). So maybe it becomes evident that our current state of affairs (the will, our current rational abilities) is simply a step in the right direction to attain more meaning out there.
I could understand why Maynard might think we as a species can do more if we cooperate, but I just can't understand why Maynard would employ semetic (christain, jewish...) symbolism to express this. To me it might be as though he is using such symbolism to say why we SHOULD not be the monkeys. Such symbolism is taken from very dogmatic and absolute ideoligies, and absolutism is not something we should accept in my opinion as, like i said, the only thing our current rationality can 'objectively' do in the deep scheme of things (atm), the only current absolute we can really accept, to be a bit paradoxical, is to point out the errors in abolsutist viewpoints (such as those religious ones) which all compete for our allegiance...
what are people's thoughts?
To me it seems as though here Maynard is degrading humanity for positing the individual "will" as the meaning of life. Well, i personally think that with our current mental capacities, humans cannot come to an understanding of any higher/all pervasive meaning to life. If you ask someone to rationalise their beliefs down and down the chain of thinking, they will reach a point where they can go no further, and thus revert into their own subjective 'truth' about the ultimate nature (if there is one) of 'reality' and thus about why they choose to do one thing over the other (and why, perhaps, other people should do the same). Thus the individual will becomes the only shared "objective" bench mark for life, as we can grasp no other yet. I guess this means that our current rationality can only really be used to illustrate the limits of itself (in coming to grips with anything bigger than us)! Now, at this point some people may surcum to fatalism and throw in the towel and declare life meaningless, or the more desperate and perhaps creative individuals might embrace this lack of inherent meaning, and (even in the light of not being able to grasp a higher meaning) work with what they have to live well. People have different takes on life obviously, because if there existed objectivity, this would not be the case. It is these differences that possibly provide some glimpse of hope (in my subjective opinion) for attaining some sense of greater meaning. Even though our minds are too primite to comprehend the "all" at the moment and thus point to any clear direction in life (like i said, i think people's values cannot be proven objectively, and thus cannot give a fundamental "should" reason to others. Even something as fundamental as "don't kill" cannot be rationalised down to some all binding reason to obey - im talking beyond subjective human laws here obviously), i think our current rational abilities might be a step in the right direction, if YOU will. Let me explain. Evolution works through differences, random hypotheses. Genetic mutations occur all the time in organisms, and if such a mutation helps it to better adapt to its environment, that organism will rule. now, perhaps we as a species have risen to rule our natural environment for a time because our rational knowledge has given us the tool to adapt to 'reality' better than other animals. But at the moment, our rational knowledge cannot posit anything more objective in life than will (will to greed, will to cooperation if you want, but still nothing has been found to indicidate what we "should" do, which is different to "could" do). So maybe it becomes evident that our current state of affairs (the will, our current rational abilities) is simply a step in the right direction to attain more meaning out there.
I could understand why Maynard might think we as a species can do more if we cooperate, but I just can't understand why Maynard would employ semetic (christain, jewish...) symbolism to express this. To me it might be as though he is using such symbolism to say why we SHOULD not be the monkeys. Such symbolism is taken from very dogmatic and absolute ideoligies, and absolutism is not something we should accept in my opinion as, like i said, the only thing our current rationality can 'objectively' do in the deep scheme of things (atm), the only current absolute we can really accept, to be a bit paradoxical, is to point out the errors in abolsutist viewpoints (such as those religious ones) which all compete for our allegiance...
what are people's thoughts?