Philosophical Conundrum
May. 14th, 2006 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo, here's a philosophical conundrum:
1. Absolute freedom requires freedom over all aspects of one's life including belief systems and personal philosophies.
2. An act of true faith requires one to place trust in something one either cannot control or cannot completely understand, otherwise it's an act of belief based on facts, logic or reason.
3. If we hold point 2 to be correct, no personal philosophy can fulfill the pre-requisites of faith. Any philosophy coming from inside oneself is vulnerable to erosion by personal bias and preference. With very few exceptions, a personal philosophy will be comprised of things that are logical to the individual within that individual's life experiences. "True faith" (spiritual, religious or secular) requires that faith to be placed in something external.
4. Can one be truly free and also have experienced true faith? Does faith necessitate voluntarily curtailing our freedoms? Is faith an inherently irrational act?
So there...
I should note that's rather nihilistic, and isn't actual so much what I *believe*. The above requires taking the idea of faith and freedom to extremes. Abstractly thinking about it though - you could argue that the ultimate expression of faith be to believe in the weirdest thing ever, and then you could go back and argue that the ultimate expression of personal freedom would be to choose to believe in the weirdest thing possible. But you can't just say that in the above scenario you could have both by *choosing* to believe in something irrational, because as soon as you move the object of your belief outside yourself, you no longer have control over it, and thus you are surrendering control over an aspect of your life.
LOOK WHAT PLAYING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS HAS DONE TO ME! MY HEAD'S ABOUT TO EXPLODE!
But you know what I have faith in? Chun-Li will never get tired:
1. Absolute freedom requires freedom over all aspects of one's life including belief systems and personal philosophies.
2. An act of true faith requires one to place trust in something one either cannot control or cannot completely understand, otherwise it's an act of belief based on facts, logic or reason.
3. If we hold point 2 to be correct, no personal philosophy can fulfill the pre-requisites of faith. Any philosophy coming from inside oneself is vulnerable to erosion by personal bias and preference. With very few exceptions, a personal philosophy will be comprised of things that are logical to the individual within that individual's life experiences. "True faith" (spiritual, religious or secular) requires that faith to be placed in something external.
4. Can one be truly free and also have experienced true faith? Does faith necessitate voluntarily curtailing our freedoms? Is faith an inherently irrational act?
So there...
I should note that's rather nihilistic, and isn't actual so much what I *believe*. The above requires taking the idea of faith and freedom to extremes. Abstractly thinking about it though - you could argue that the ultimate expression of faith be to believe in the weirdest thing ever, and then you could go back and argue that the ultimate expression of personal freedom would be to choose to believe in the weirdest thing possible. But you can't just say that in the above scenario you could have both by *choosing* to believe in something irrational, because as soon as you move the object of your belief outside yourself, you no longer have control over it, and thus you are surrendering control over an aspect of your life.
LOOK WHAT PLAYING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS HAS DONE TO ME! MY HEAD'S ABOUT TO EXPLODE!
But you know what I have faith in? Chun-Li will never get tired:
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This was brought on by D&D?
Date: 2006-05-14 07:47 pm (UTC)(Ep 17 rocked!)
Re: This was brought on by D&D?
Date: 2006-05-14 09:02 pm (UTC)Episode 17 is "The Captain's Hand" - the one where Lee gets made Major of the Pegasus, right? And Roslin does all that disturbing civil rights witholding, right? If you like freaky philosophical stuff, wait for Downloaded (18), that's a great one too.
And, yeah, this was brought on by D&D. Strange shit happens when your Paladin is aligned to lawful and good, but her god is chaotic and neutral and this god embraced insanity and change in order to adapt and survive, instead of dying like most of the other gods. So my character ends up quite rationally and logically disecting the principles of chaos and fighting her own ordered impulses in an attempt to test herself by flirting with madness. Which is...err, weird! But also fun! Especially when you meet atheist NPC philosophers! Who confuse you!
...which makes all our roleplay games sound like intellectual debating forums, which (as you well know) *soooo* ain't so. Most of the time we're running around being stupid, having a good time chatting to curious day-dreamed security cameras and pretending to be tabloid-created superheroes with wings! Yay for roleplay! Go write more in your roleplay blog! :)