An Active ‘Is’

I think we need a more active present tense form of the verb ‘to be.’ ‘Is’ is weak. It is so often used to for light transitions, labels, and descriptions, that it no longer carries weight as a word of action and intent.

‘Mr. Obama is the president,’ I say. I don’t merely want to describe the man’s job, or give him another label (as in, Mr. Obama is male, or is African-American); I want to say ‘Mr. Obama is, and actively exists in the role of, the President.’

This all matters because our current forms of usage what is heavy seem light. We take active and intentional roles that reflect temperaments, that shape behaviors and beliefs, and present them wrapped in the same verbal packaging that carries hair color and astrological data.

To put it simply, one of these things is not like the others: ‘Jane is a redhead. Jill is a Gemini. June is a CTO.’ There should, in some ideal world, be a different ‘is’ verb to reflect the active and intentional form of being that occurs when people adopt—or are placed into—roles and identities.

But if we can't have a different word we might as well change our 'to be' thinking habits.

Truth is a Label

They say Truth is relative. Well, some of them do. And it's easy to rip that fact to slithers without getting it. Let's try.

If Truth is relative, is that statement objectively true? If so, then not all Truth is relative. If not, then, well, you should see where I'm going. If Truth is relative, can I safely drive east on I-40W under the subjective belief that east is west and west is east? Can I leap off a building by pretending away gravity? Can I morally murder, by telling myself murder is a virtuous act? No, no, no, for heavens sake no!

Now let's actually get it.

Your world, your truth and reality and being, is not made of atoms and molecules and events occurring in unique coordinates of space and time. That's a particular way of looking at the word, one which some are able to adopt to a limited extent, for limited periods of time, within specific contexts. It does not reflect how actual people think and live in the world on a regular basis.

Our world is composed of labels, values, and identities. The man on the streetside is not a forty-seven-year-old male, 5'6 and 230 lbs. No, he is a bum. A victim. An urban explorer. A disadvantaged, marginalized, alienated member of the 99%. Someone who needs to get off his rear and get to work.

The world we live in is perceived and understood in those terms - not cold scientific descriptions, but deeply personal, relative, subjective emotions, preferences, biases, and paradigms.

My Starbucks is a place to unwind, enjoy a good book and a really good dark roast. Yours is a pretentious localle for hipsters to flaunt their Apple products and soul patches.

What about atoms and molecules and other science-y things? They are part of a paradigm. Scientists, and others of a rational mind, can use it to discover how genes affect brain cancer, or how to make the Curiosity rover escape earth's gravitational field. And the rigorously, precisely articulated facts contained within that paradigm are indubitable - gravity simply exists, no matter what you think. But that is a small slice of Truth - it is not the world we live in everyday. Whether or not we choose to look through that lens is just as relative as whether the politicians today are tyrants or saviors.

Truth is all of this, the world around us, what we live everyday. Thus understood, Truth is relative.

Cheers,
The Terrible Philosopher

Definitions (Please Suggest Better Title)

Why in heck do definitions matter?

No, no, not working definitions and dictionary definitions and things that make life easier. Philosophical definitions, pursued as though they hold some kind of innate and objective truth. I read today about Bertrand Russel's laborious efforts to define an object as, roughly, a set of perspectives. The dialogues of Socrates, from what I'm told, are similar pursuits of definitive content.

And it hit me - why does it matter? Don't we have the privilege of, well, defining the definitions? Don't we, as the people who control language, just decide what they are and contain and say? When I define a floogleschnorppe as a 24 ounce dark coffee with seven shots of espresso, aren't I right by definition?

How can one meaningfully pursue a definition, and how can such a definition contain truth that we don't just assign it?

But it occurs to me that definitions for concepts established in the mind of society cannot be chosen willy-nilly. The pursuit is of a definition that satisfies the demands we place upon it. I could, were I stupider than I am, define Justice the way I defined floogleschnorppe, but that would not jive at all wit the ages of eager, thorough, and weighty discourse dedicated to the matter.

Once we find some definition that does meet the expectations we have placed on the idea (be it justice, reality, truth, number, coffee, or love) we can find corollaries that flow with crisp syntactical precision from the coherently expressed concept that we all already agree to.

I don't know whether this is the approached typically used by philosophers who pursue universal definitions of fundamental concepts, but it seems like a good approach (and a good justification for the effort) to me.

Cheers,
The Terrible Philosopher