Hi everyone,
This is my third forum post. I had become long interested in philosophy since the age of 15 years when I first encountered articles on the subject. It was fascinating, as at first sight, it challenged my thinking about how others think. The way the articles talked about philosophy was quite superfluous, and led me to wonder why would philosophers ramble and elaborate in such details, with tautology. Slowly, a reality check occurred where everyone, despite being individual and unique according to genetic makeup, also has different values, emotions, perspectives and senses when dealing with the same object, subject matter or issue. Even identical twins might perceive the same object slightly differently.
So a long standing question is, even when we use the same language in the most objective manner, are we still all communicating and implying different meanings? Imagine one communicates that he/she is very happy, although there is no concrete example to refer to. How would others receive it? They may understand the same emotions behind this communication by that person, but people experience happiness for different reasons. However, since happiness is culturally and socially constructed and has become subjected to rules of expression, to some people, happiness is meaningless. Some people might be already very happy on the inner side but on their faces, appear sulky and unhappy.
I’ve heard from a friend who says, anger is positive. Some people like to be treated what to the society may appear harmful or negative, by some people depending on their interpersonal relationships. For example, one woman says that since we live life that is governed 1% by nature and 99% by nurture, many moments of lustful urges, apart from love/affection, are signs of ‘emotional slavery’ to something that is unnecessary and that one should come out of it. To others, apart from love, lust is still positive and invigorating.
When it comes to heterosexual relationships, it can be confusing if females and males have different emotions even when communicating the same emotions in the same context and using the same language. In hindsight, do you think this issue has probably led to people to turn off from the opposite sex and start considering homosexual relationships. I think, that is even a rarer case, considering most of the homosexuals who already were same sex attracted before discovering the gender differences.
Life can be meaningless owing to incidences where people realise that nothing perceived, felt or understood is universal. Even in art, architecture and design, among the most subjective disciplines, aesthetically speaking, nothing is universal, according to postmodernism, which challenges the ideological notions of universality prevalent in modernism.
Big questions are:
- Since humans share many common traits, behavioural and cognitive, do they experience the same issue/object/idea/emotion in the same way that they are conveying in the same language?
- Is there a strong correlation between how different one person is from another, physically, and their intellectual differences?
- Even in the most objective disciplines and modes of thinking like maths and physics, is it still all subjective?
- Are there already preconceived/idealised notions of perfect, universal human being, since owing to the proverb ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, one self claiming as beautiful may be ugly to others?
These questions may appear obvious, irrelevant to the forum and stupid, I am afraid to say, as a novice forum user.
I may leave this thread for others to discuss.
Thanks