The art of thinking, A chain of thought with a variety of different philosophical questions

Chapter I:
Definition of Life

For as long as we have lived, we have thought. Thought; a concept created by a brain so powerful it can bring rational thought and emotional feeling together. The downside, it can also destroy the bond between those two ways of perception.

People who act more on emotional feeling are deemed overreactional beings. People who act more on rational thoughts are praised as intellect and smart people.

I believe I am a dualist, but I do believe one way is vital for the existence of the other. For there to be rationality, there must be emotionality and the other way around. When asked for a rational opinion, the question is actually: give me an opinion without emotion. But for opinions to be, there must be emotion involved.

We simply can’t exchange thoughts without emotion involved. If you do, it isn’t your opinion, but a given fact. Where we see the separation of the two ways the most: science. Science is the most rational based way of perception of the world around us.

The fact that we could get so separated of our own emotion and feeling to understand the world around us, shows us how powerful our brain actually is. It is so strong that it can dismiss its own nature, just to get a physically perceivable way of the world and existence itself.

The urge to find and understand the origin of our existence has driven us through many ways of living. We have seen many different religions in our history, from Greek gods with various characteristics to a monotheistic god like Jaweh who symbolises love and justice.

That has always been the way of our understanding of the world and we let it be, it was a way of life. Till there were those who were curious, weren’t satisfied with obeying and non-critical thinking about the world around us. They started to dismiss the reality of that time and made it religionless. From praying to be healed, to doctors of our time who tackled almost all of the diseases at the hand of science.

In a way science became its own atheistic religion. People believe in science just like people believed in gods. There is one thing these two have in common. The search for life; how we are alive, why we are and what made us be.

One thing they don’t have in common is the emotion. In religion we find ourselves with norms and values. Whatever religion you are a part of, you must have encountered the norms and values of that religion. From charity in Christianity to Buddhist values like wisdom, kindness, patience, generosity and compassion.

An interesting thing about all the norms and values is that they are universally accepted. If you ask a person if he thinks that patience is a good value, then he will most definitely say yes.

The fact that everyone experiences these universally accepted norms and values, wherever you go in the world, means that we’re somehow connected in a way that isn’t perceivable or provable by science. The fact that that is present, proves that there is a meaning of life beyond one religion or science.

For some, science represents life, for others, religion does. I think that we have been looking in the wrong place to find the meaning to life. We have been looking outside to the world around us, but what if we have to look inside? The universal norms and values suggest that we have a part of life inside of us.

Take for example the urge to reproduce. Of course not everyone feels this that intense, but the urge is definitely there. The sole biological purpose of a human or animal to reproduce is to pass on genes so that they can keep living on. Why is that? What makes us so urgent to keep living on? We can’t put it in a formula or see it happen in our brains. It must be something greater. Is life a god? Is science the formula to life? Is life a good thing?

Is life a good thing? We think about that when we see nature going on without any looking back to the loss it endured. Is life good if something alive can stop an alive being from being alive? These questions get clouded by our feeling of moral good.

Life doesn’t have a personality as it can be everything alive, means life can’t be a form of thinking like us. Which means it is not a person in our way of perception. This brings us to if life itself has morals, or if that our brain has made that concept to stay alive.

Take for example a lion which kills a gazelle. A life form stops another from living. Isn’t that cruel? Just so that the lion can keep on living, another creature has to be sacrificed? At least we know life doesn’t have the morals we have. Therefore morals must be a concept that our brain has created to stay alive more easily.


Chapter II:
Life, Morals and Characteristics

In the previous chapter I talked about morals quite briefly. In this chapter we are going to zoom-in into the laws of life and the morals we give to it.

The way we are, the way we perceive things, the way we react on things is all based on experience and character. Otherwise known as nature & nurture. You see, when you experience something bad, something shameful maybe, we remember that, we feel that when we think of it.

Take for example a time when you got bullied at school. Most people will remember how they felt. When something similar occurs later in life, we tend to react differently than someone who didn’t experience bullying at all.

At first this seems perfectly fine, logical or even a given. For me, it raises some question marks. Do we start off with a set of characteristics? If so, why is that different for everyone? If not, isn’t everything nurture instead of nature too?

Of course you see differences in curiosity or one more emotional sensitive than others when they grow up, but is that nature or nurture? Is the way you handle a kids natural reaction of influence on how they’ll do it next time?

We can most certainly say that everyone who has a regular and normal growth of the body inside the womb, has a basic reaction on the emotions they feel. We all know babies cry when they want food or want something to drink. That’s a basic reaction in the baby fase of growing up.

In this fase we see that love of a parental figure is vital for the survival of the baby. We see in kids with a turbulent home situation quite a few different results of the behaviour of children in society. There are kids who turn out to be troublemakers, kids who will be peoplepleasers and kids who just suck it up and become quiet.

What makes a kid get one specific and unique personality of the many personalities that are out there. Is it the nature of on how they react to certain situations or is it how they’ve been treated in these situations? Or both?

For certain we can say they get a set of morals and values based on their experiences. If you grow up in a family where everything is allowed, you tend to be more initiative and creative than households where there were strict rules and limitations to one’s being.

The free kid will have a set of morals based on ‘do what you want’ and ‘live in the moment’ where the limited kid will have more structured and high aim-like morals.

So where you grow up in, definitely influences your morals and values. Do morals and values create your characteristics or do they just shape them to some degree? And how directly? For example: I tell someone their hair is nice. Most people get a happy feeling and will be more confident. Is that till someone says their hair is not nice? Or is it a permanent marker on someone’s being?

After some time that person will probably have forgotten my compliment at all and go on with their life as they always did. This is only very specific. My influence on a person’s behaviour depends upon how they feel at that time.

In the example I just gave, this person probably felt quite alright given that he has already forgotten the compliment the next time I meet him. If I told someone who was doing not so great, then maybe it has more of an impact. And even there is an incredible amount of nuance.

That way we can see people are infinitely unique and complex that we can’t label it with some sort of guidelines. That proves that nurture has an immense impact on our behaviour, but does our behaviour reflect our characteristics right?

Is there even a way to conclude someone’s natural characteristics? There will always be basic traits in a behaviour of a person. A certain curiosity, a certain caring etc. Those traits are a few of many where people lock into when they’re comfortable and not overthinking things.

The awareness of feeling also has an influence on how we behave. If something bad has happened and I feel bad about that, but somebody comes up with a funny joke, then you can get a little joyous. When you feel an emotion in a time where that emotion doesn’t fit, then you can become more easily aware of that. You notice behavioural changes easier in unfitting circumstances, for that emotion triggering the emotion fitting to the situation and falling back into the standard emotion of the situation.

For example you are at home and feel at home, you can get comfortable and do things you like; drawing or making music or doing something else. You’ll feel quite good and you’ll be good feeling the whole time because that’s the standard situation you’re in without any influence of other outside influences.

Chapter III
State of nature, by E. Schaeffer

Let me sketch a situation for you. A person out of society, living solely on their own. Living in their natural state, there has been no nurture or influence of other people. Only nature and the person exist. The way nature goes, is the way the person will go. Let’s say the person built a house and it started raining heavily, the person discovers a leak and it’s the first time the person encountered this problem. The person won’t know what to do at first. With no experience at all he/she will start looking for a solution. He/she found one and it stopped raining so there’s no need to think about that again. The next time it starts raining heavily again, he/she will implement the same solution again, but with less thinking about it. So even without influence or nurture by other people, a person will always somehow be nurtured by nature itself. Everyone encounters problems in their lives and their nature will be impacted by that experience. We call this nurture, but out of experience.

So now we know what nurture is, but how do we describe nature? Well, like this: nature is the fundamental set of traits and talents of a person. A person without any experience of life at all. The way a person’s nature gets shaped is by nurture through experience, either through own experience or through experiences of others who share them with you.

As we now have determined the way I perceive nature and nurture, we could apply this on something personal to me: My life. I’ve had my fair share of nurture and I can definitely claim that I have a certain nature.

We can say that I, as of right now, am a curious and passionate person. A little showcase: someone comes to me and we don’t know each other, I haven’t seen anything he/she has done, or how they behave. In this situation my nurture-shaped nature will be at its most natural state.

It is difficult to determine traits though. Is it in our absolute nature? Or is it something based on nurture? How do we answer these questions? Can we even begin on starting to answer them? Is it upon us to answer them? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I will be trying to answer it the best I can. You, the reader, will go with me on my journey to the answer.

Chapter IV: The Journey to The Answer, introduction

As I mentioned in Chapter I: everyone has a basic set of emotions they can and do experience. For example: happiness or sadness. We already have that inside of us when we get born. This suggests that, even if you look at where and how you are now, we all have a basic nature. A nature without nurture, but still with emotions.

In this case we can conclude that everyone, with the same history, should be the same. A non-nurtured baby from another mother would experience, feel and think everything exactly the same as the baby who came out of the mother in question. Except, this just doesn’t feel right. Does a mother-baby bond mean nothing then? Does the bond just start when the baby is born and that it smells the first person it comes in contact to?

It just doesn’t seem right. It can’t be. My theory: when you get pregnant, there must be a little nature of the mother and father be passed on to the baby. And this has been proven. I have, in my logic, logically theorised about characteristics in the nature of people. This has been proven, I am over the moon. It’s a beautiful validation of my thinking process.

We can build on this now, as it has been proven.

Part 1, Where does it start?

The first question that comes to my mind: but where did it start? We can say, based on research, that everyone has a set of genes of the last 3-ish generations combined. This can, of course, only be in the presence of a once living great-grandparent. There was a time where we were as humans and there has been a time where we were not.

Following the evolution timeline, the first actual human is quite difficult to determine. What defines us as human? Our cognitive function? Our emphatic capacity? Most scientists say that we are very similar anatomically to great apes, but the part that divides us from the apes is our cognitive ability, like articulate speech and abstract reasoning.

When we look to religion there are an immense amount of explanations to be found. From Christianity’s creation and Hinduism likewise, to the Greek Chaos who gives birth to the universe. In these creation myths there is always a higher power involved. Why is that, why must there be an explanation of our existence?

Now you must think: well he’s contradictory, he’s doing exactly that what he is questioning! And I hear you, but I’m okay with not knowing. I do this for fun! Now to get back to my philosophy. Why is it that people need to clarify our existence?

Part 2, The urge of needing security

This urge of needing security is quite interesting. Feeling safe in a sense of security is so needed by people who live there life in the society of this time. The perception of security is very restricting though. Take a religion like Christianity, it’s so set on everything what we don’t know is explainable by referring to a God. I think that religion restricts your capability of being open to everything and everyone around you. I’m baffled by the way some Christian’s see Buddhism or Islam. A lot of it is just untrue! Or something like plucking the splinter out of one’s eye while having a piece of wood in your own.

The closedmindedness is mainly a product of fear. A lot of Christians say that reading the Quran or reading books about Buddhism is opening up yourself for evil and whatnot (definitely not just the case with Christianity, but with a lot of religions out there). It really polarises everyone and prevents people from being openminded. So by being closeminded yourself, you also make other people closeminded. All in the name of a sense of security.

For people to be, people must allow them to be.

Part 3, The wanting society

There is a form of tolerance needed by people to let people be, but is that possible in our “wanting society”? Our society is, like Rousseau said, focussed on property. The need to have what others have to feel satisfied. To come back to the question, my answer is yes. I think a lot is possible which might not be possible in other people’s views. I think almost everyone has the capability to think morally good and close to themselves, but they have just strayed away from themselves over the years, decades and centuries. Away from their nature. Towards rationality which, in a lot of cases, destroys the link with one’s nature.

Science is of course the prime example. Science is not the problem itself though. If used right, it is a powerful tool to learn about the world around us. The problem is that when it becomes the goal and not the tool anymore. This causes it to become some sort of lifestyle or belief. Everything has to be explained through science whilst it is beautiful as it is. There are a lot of things not explainable by science, but very true.

There are so many ways to get to the truth, science is but one of them.

The writer of this article (me, Elnathan Schaeffer) is currently working on this project as it is a project to be criticised and altered to get closer to the truth. Do comment and criticise for the truth is out there.