I'm going to start off by quoting a philosophy professor named Dr. Gerard Reed.
"Deafened by our own sounds, we easily imagine we're the source of all that is."
What Dr. Reed stated here is very relevant to our world today. This quote pretty much sums up all of our world and society today. With the advancement of technology and modern science, human beings are typically blind to the infinite. We like to believe only in what can be seen and tested in a laboratory setting, or in every day life. Where has our belief in the infinite gone? We are all surely "deafened by our own sounds". With all the technology we have today, we eat, sleep, breathe, and dream technology. We spend hours watching TV or looking at our smart phones or computers, but how many of us take time out of the day to focus on the soul? The soul is all that we are. It is everything we are that is not our flesh and blood. Many of us cannot even "hear" our own souls due to the deafening noise that is our world today. Most of us probably forget the soul even exists. So, for those of us still deafened by our own sounds (myself included), it is easy to fall into the illusion that we are all that there is. We don't think about the infinite, a God, a higher power. We don't think about our purpose or the purpose of things around us. We, in our society think "If it feels good, do it."
Most people are relativists in our day and age. A relativist believes there is no such thing as an absolute truth. As my Philosophy professor Dr. Wolf has said, "A relativist believes there is only one absolute truth: there are no absolute truths." In other words, "Do what YOU think is right" or "Do what YOU want to do, and if its right for you, its right." Without a scale to determine what is ultimately right or ultimately wrong, we look to ourselves or others to make the distinction. Many of us act the way we do because of laws or its way we were brought up. When we put it upon ourselves, our peers and family, or government to determine what is ultimately right or wrong, it is very easy to imagine that we are all that there is in this universe. We have gotten ethically and morally lazy and that is why we are deaf.
We seem to have gotten lost in the maze we humans created. Without a map out - absolute truth - we can only continue to become more lost in our own creations. Here is a quote from my Philosophy professor Dr. Richard Wolf's book: "Aristotle warned that when a 'thing' is separated from its function or purpose, surely misuse, disorder and destruction would follow. Post-modern man has indeed become estranged from Truth and is ethically, morally, politically and philosophically sinking in his self-created quicksand." What he and Aristotle are saying here is that we all have a purpose. The absence of morals, ethics and most of all, truth, only serves to separate us from that purpose. Another quote from Dr. Wolf's book: "Today, since we no longer believe in anything, we no longer have anything for which to live - no cause to live or die for other than ourselves. ...Relativism has literally sucked the life out of living and left its followers wandering the streets of life desperately looking for meaning - any meaning at all. ...you will never find a young person leaving behind a suicide note that explains he or she did the fatal act because they believed their life had too much meaning."
Life has become meaningless. The things we see on TV and in movies and even the news are all feeding on our weaknesses and constantly feeding us with relativistic thoughts and ideas. Our purpose has become to be like a certain celebrity, or to make a lot of money. When we live our lives to be like someone else or to attain riches, we are not living a life of meaning. When we live this kind of a life, we are separated from our actual purpose, and as Aristotle warned, this can only bring misuse, disorder and destruction.
I had much more to say, but I will leave my thoughts for "Philosophical 2". Thanks for reading! Work on your soul!
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