Andresens Toes

[ProKeymaster]

Andresen’s Toes

Andresen – ‘Andresen’s Toes’

I have a little toe.What is a “theory” but an account or explanation. One might start off with an account or explanation of something little, then, add onto the explanation more and more items that you intend to explain or give an account of. This seems the easiest.The first thing I want to explain is something about the construction technique I will try to use.

Its a little bit about where to start and how all the pieces hang together.I’m going to put together something like a building with a foundation upon which everything else is resting. Then, on that foundation will be a series of floors, each floor will rest on a floor beneath it, and be what other floors will rest upon. In all, it will be a multi-story building. Actually, I want to talk about two such buildings.

There’s the first building that, unfortunately, we all live in at the moment. People have been living in this building for a long time. It has a foundation and many floors one piled on another above it. The second building has been there for a long time. Unfortunately, this one is mostly unoccupied.

The first building…the one where all of us live…is explained or described by a toe. Actually, by a big toe. This big toe is the theory which people have pretty much accepted. This is why most people live in this building.

They live in the place because they accept its account or explanation of everything. If they didn’t accept its explanation, then they wouldn’t live in the building. I might be asked, what the hell am I talking about? It seems people sometimes think a toe has to do with some science being done…like where Einstein and others try to come up with a mathematical equation that unifies the fundamental forces of the universe into one mathematical theory.

But, it seems this is not what Andresen is talking about. Instead of mathematics, he’s going on about a building with a foundation and many floors above. The kind of theory I’m wanting to talk about is more on the order of what Gautama was getting at when he spoke about the “four noble truths.” He said, briefly, 1) life is suffering, 2) suffering is caused by attachment, 3) the cure for suffering is to not be attached, and 4) some practical advice about how to give up on attachment.

I’m wanting to give a lot of credit to Gautama for this claim of his. But, it points toward the toe I’m wanting to talk about, whereas, he didn’t give enough to describe the toe that people eventually were going to be adopting. I think Socrates and Plato had it a little closer. The Allegory of the Cave is a pretty good part of the toe which most all of us have committed ourselves to.

It is a metaphor which describes for us what science and religion (at least the Abrahamic ones) is all about and how the two are related to each other. The kind of toe I’m talking about is all about philosophical ideas and not just the narrow concerns of the physicists. Well, enough said to start off with.

Andresen – ‘Re: Andresen’s Toes’

There’s a floor in this building which has two tenants. In one room we have the scientists. They think “salvation” is about what one can accomplish on ones own. Its about resolving the conflict between two hypotheses by going out into their room, the world, so to speak, and discovering exactly what’s what. Once they have an understanding of the facts, then they can use that understanding to determine which one of the original hypotheses was correct, or closer to being correct.

It is through this process, and others related to it, that problems are solved, products are created, disasters are avoided. This, at least, is their thought. In the other room their are the creators, the movers and shakers, the watchers, the landlords, or what some also call the gods. Its in this room that all the things are real whereas all the things in the first room resemble the things in the second room, and are only cheap imitations thereof. Some say the things in the first room are mere shadows of those things in the second.

Some say that the people in the first room are merely brains in vats and their heads are programmed to see, hear, taste, and otherwise experience all those things that really exist only in the second room. In any case, however the effect is produced, “salvation” in the second room is a matter of kissing the boots, or the hem, or the ass, of whomever has power over the second room and what goes on in it, as well as the first room, where everything in it is determined by what happens in the second room. Now, one might believe there is only one room, the first room.

Such people find it impossible to believe there is a second room. They cannot find any evidence of any second room in the room that they occupy. So, they conclude, there cannot be any second room. Others, hear stories about there being a second room, and listen to what might go on in that room, and argue that one cant know whether there is a second room where things are real instead of illusory. Others not so enamoured by flashy experience argue that its their service to the movers and shakers in the second room that will “save” them in the relevant ways. This floor is all about what goes on in these two rooms.

Andresen – ‘Re: Andresen’s Toes’

I was hasty. There are hallways on this floor. If you go down one hall, then you’ll find the debate between the scientists and the religionists. If you go down another hall, then you will find people who wonder about a different metaphor, i.e., the kids who find themselves on a playground run by a bully, amidst a whole lot of other playgrounds each with their own bullies.

Down another hallway you’ll find people who discuss the metaphor that we are zombies driven by our insatiable hungers and the commands of our voodoo masters. These are some of the hallways on this floor and some of the metaphors that explain our lives that we find there.

Tina – ‘Re: Andresen’s Toes’

I thought about this and in terms of your definitions are you saying that the hallways are just places where members of each of the two rooms meet to have dialogues/fights/debates/ etc? What about the dialogues/fights/debates/ etc between the tenants of the same room. Scientists vs scientists or religionists vs religionists?

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