Li! Don't tempt me with another one of your morality debates!! You know I can't resist it! Well, because perhaps I'm such a sceptic about the whole idea of an inborn morality. Law---we can safely chuck out of the window after all we know how flawed that is--although I'm not denying its necessity.
Yes MOrality--tsk tsk that tricky issue I would rather not think of--but you know I am a little bit on the left on this issue. Well Li, I don't believe that either of us can be right, at least if we do cliam that one of us is right and the other wrong--then it throws our argument into some doubt afterall any argument that claims to explain everything and definitively point out that it is itself flawless and right in and of itself--would be a bad argument. Every good argument well argued would take into views the points of the other side. Oh and I don't consider destroying the opponent's view point by point as argument--that is the tyrant's way of arguing. And I find any point of view which cannot tolerate an opposing view dubious. that being said makes it very hard for me to launch into what I feel and believe--but which I still find myself doubting every now and then (when and if I do happen to think about it)
Sometimes I find myself getting to this point when certainty is dangerous for me. As I grow older I find uncertainty so much more attractive. I always think: Perhaps I don't know and understand this world as well as I thought I did when I was younger. The words 'perhaps, maybe' just become more attractive somehow. I don't know if this is a good change, but I like embracing the questions so much more than the answers now. in fact, I like the questions--turning it over and over in my mind--answers just seem minute and unimportant. For a big question such as this--an answer would seem insufficient even foolish perhaps.
Sometimes I feel that certain answers for some people are important and it may be a guiding light for the way they live their life and see the world through. I find putting doubt to that a little cruel. That is something a younger OiYing would not hesitate to do, doubt afterall is also a gift from God in my opinion. It allowed men to fly, and new things to be borne and things to be created. If it is not for absences and gaps (which doubt is a form of) perhaps human imagination would not be as fertile.
That's why I hold on to my doubts and my questions because the world for me is more beautiful because of the arbitary, the uncertain, the doubtful. Perhaps you may find this dangerous for me to hold this blurry vision of things even when it comes to morality. But again, maybe becauase morality always only allow black and white and for you to pick only one side, I find it very suspicious, and I prefer a world where there are more shades and colours--a dream one. one in which being right or wrong is not as important as feeling loved, inspired and to have lived and dreamt. That's why I might more easily forgive a lover who has murdered than a judge who passes out death sentences coldly on his high chair.
BUt maybe that's just who I choose to be--a dreamer, rather than a moralist.
By: Nippy | Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 12:48 PM | | 
On the bus--I saw someone's grafitti "Live Fast, Die Young."
A random thought:
The reverse is true after a certain age--probably once you hit 50.
Live Young, Die Fast.
By: Nippy | Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 12:43 PM | |
I was bored and re-read some of my old posts, some of them gave me the shivers. I don't know, maybe it's just the way I sounded--kind of arrogant--the way teens or really young people who have not been touched by the world sounds. I don't know--maybe it's the certainty I have and the solid crystal clear worldview I could hold in my hand, but I slwly find melting as I grow older. That the world is not- a certain. It is not solid--it melts drips and is messy. Is it a bad case of self-loathing if I say, I hate the way I sounded? MAybe blogs are a good way to capture that--those thoughts, but not just those passing thoughts but they way every sentence is spoken by a 2-years ago me. And it scares me that I feel that me is so foreign and if that me would talk to me this very instant, I would hate that me.
Every sentence sounds like little shots-- angry shooting out against the world which refuse to solidify. Perhaps I knew it even back then, but just had too much ideal and the magic of being young to see that--that there was where my anger sprang from. OR maybe I wasn't even angry at all. Maybe this "anger" is just something I coloured on form hindsight--like those handtinted black and white pictures--with the artificial colours floating a little above reality--come at you from the place of dreams.
Old photos may scare you sometimes, but you don't hear them speaking their insides to you, all you see is the change on the outside, on your skin. But in there--that indefinable thing we call our selves, our being..sometimes when you get a testimony of that past version--it gives you the creeps--no it is not the passing of time or aging which scares you. It is what old people probably fear and feel all the time--just that slippage--where you come face to face with a use-to voice and that oivce is so much stronger and real then this slowly indefinable you. Perhaps the only moment when we were real, with a full substance is when we were born slowly our certain world and existence comes aprt--and we conllect shadows, and sometimes we turn invisible.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, October 09, 2007 at 1:57 AM | |
Thanks dear sim for the comments section. It works beautifully!!!!
Sim, my sis just bought the Lion King musical soundtrack--it is very very intensely beautiful, the have African music arrangements. I just know you'll love it.
Come over and we will find the show on broadway and watch it together!
By: Nippy | Saturday, October 06, 2007 at 11:44 AM | |
So, books have been written about it, scientists have tried to quantify it, and poets have tried to romanticize it, philosophers have thesis and theories about it. But still, love--this feeling is a bloody mystery. I don't think it can ever be explained ratinoally, nor can it be totally flung to the irrational and be claimed something unconcious or even animal. Becuase yes, there is that animal part of it all but then there is the nobler, spiritual part of it which we perhaps have tended to over-romanticize at times.
I remember detesting JOhn Donne--he and his love poetries, which fails to be romantic but which if you have ever been in or out of love will find covers a pretty wide range of emotions you go through when in that bad state of (life)--of being in or out of love. I mean bad, not in bad bad, but just that feeling that you are not quite yourself, (and hearing a non-stop cycle of love songs at yoru work place every single day doesn't help very much.) I try to be my normal self and to continue functioning ever so normally but hell--Frank Sinatra comes on and proclaims very blatantly that someone is "under my skin", that "the world will always welcome lovers." MY thoughts drift and I can't quite seem to control my mind lately. My mind-which I always view as my one holy water against foolish and nonsensical dreamy soap-opera romantic-thoughts--doesn't quite work.
I think flowers and chocolates are foolish. (and still do) Suddenly I don't know what to do with myself.
I am acting totally strange, and silly of course. Being overly-emotional at times and feeling foolish very suddenly. Everything seems to be a reminder of the "supposed beloved"--of course the sharp reminder here is you may have a beloved, but you may not necessarily BE the beloved. BUt that's the world for you. Still the feeling keeps going, very honestly. I wish I could say, "hell. I'm one of those girl, who can just throw everything to the wind, and walk away and never even shed a tear". But then if anyone ever tells you that she /he is lying, because this feeling will never let you go. No matter how much you rationalize against it, and how much you know you need to stop obsessing, it haunts you. UNtil the time is ripe, the feeling will shed from you like dead leaves and you can smile again. (back to your normal self)
And it is very very sexual--attraction, I mean. Or would you rather call love. People who tell you that love should be pure only has half the story right or are probably too damn blind to see that we are driven by very primitive needs and instincts even science and the oldest text have no ancient script for. It is like African drum beats and heat. It is so unfair that men should be allowed to speak so freely of this while women are suppse to not just not speak of it but not really care about this aspect of attraction and love. OF course, if sexual interest is all there is--that is called lust and that is quite different.
BUt everytime I see him, I just think "how incredibly sexy he is. And how much I want to..oh well that's my secret.
But scientists, poets and philosophers will all fail, because at the end of the day it is really a lot of confusion, feeling lost and stupid, running around after geese and sheeps while the big band plays the Titanic theme and the milky way winks. And God is probably enjoying the soap opera with a smile and a lemonade.
By: Nippy | Thursday, October 04, 2007 at 2:30 AM | |
