Superstition

You’re reviewing a post you made, and you’re wondering if you should add a line at the end, to change the emphasis. You’re not sure whether you should or not - perhaps there’s a moral dimension to the choice. So you finally decide to add that line to your post, and then … the computer hiccups … and nothing happens. Your edit was lost in cyberspace.

It’s perfectly natural to have that initial reaction - maybe it was meant to be, or - maybe somebody is watching over me.

:smiley: Happens to me all the time. But, to suggest some force outside me causes this to happen is, for me, a problem. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. What affects me mostly is what I believe about this. If your belief suffices on the visceral level of interpretation–all well and good. Maybe Nicholas of Cusa was right in suggesting that the entire universe is knowable because we are an integral part of it.

I wonder if it’s a natural initial reaction because of teachings we grow up with, or if it transcends that? Is it cultural, or universal?

I do think the universe is knowable (in theory, or in essence - but I can’t see things beyond the event horizon, for example) because we are an integral part of it. But what are you thinking of when you mention Nicholas of Cusa? I’m not sure what you’re getting at there, but I’m intrigued.

The Nicholas of Cusa reference-- If we are part of all that is, we have access to all that is. Of course the event horizon is a substiantial barrier to any universal knowing. This, however, does not negate or reach beyond that horizon. All we can know of anything universal is found in our intersubjective agreements about what we experience. Human potential in growth and development may require a sense of some absolute as incentive. The motion, however is onward and upward, from unknown to known, from mental/physical to spiritual.

I tend to think that as well, though if we make too much of it, we end up emphasizing what we shouldn’t. You know? Kind of like how wanting something too much can prevent you from actually getting it. Our deep belief in absolutes functions even when we aren’t aware of it. The function of our awareness is naturally, I think, to see through such absolutes and proceed without fear. Then things go more swimmingly, to borrow one of Ben Franklin’s favorite words.

Yes! Unfortunately Nicholas of Cusa was a neo-Platonist. He thought absolutes exist and incorporate our relativistic perspectives. Where I agree with him is on his idea that Aristotelian logic is based on seeing contradictions when these complement in “spiritual” awareness., i.e., left brain awareness is not the whole picture of who we are, what we do and why.

It’s related to the fact that we see agency everywhere. It’s an evolutionary trait.