I just can’t subscribe at all to it, z10. This no-truth philosophy. This no-true-knowledge. It never really interested me. Nobody ever managed to sell it to me. It just doesn’t engage me. Its so whimsical and self-indulgent, and by its very nature leads nowhere. It’s a spiritual dead-end in my opinion. Yes, ok, we can never truly know anything. But so what? That’s it. That’s where that thought diversion ends. A little bit of intellectual masturbation. Been there, seen that, heard it, explored that possibility. Why linger there? Lets go back to reality. Its much more interesting there. Reality is as real as it needs to be. Reality is as objective as it needs to be. Reality is the realm where beauty dwells, where everything we recognise and love, manifests and takes form.
I’m an artist. I have to take hold of life - watch it unfold, knowing that its there, study it, sense it, reach out and touch it, rely on it, need it, want it, experience it, taste it, be aware of it, consciously. I need to understand it and be able to describe it. I need a measure of control over it. A mastery of it. Know it intimately. But more importantly, I need to be affected by it - love it or hate it, enjoy it, be stirred and inspired. I need my ideas to crystallise, not evaporate into vague phantom possibilities. They need to have form, life, meaning, substance, not float away before they ever had a chance to be something. Its my purpose to weave the tapestry, not pick it apart as I go along. I need patterns, shapes, colours, even if I have to apply my own. I need something to get my teeth into. I need to bite into it and lick the juice that runs down my chin.
The creative soul is always hungry, never really satisfied. The hunger is like a crying baby, when you have tried everything and you still don’t know what it wants. It needs constant stimulus, excitement, hardship, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. It is this well of desire and inner conflict that true artists draw power from - an alien empathy and understanding of the world, with so much emphasis on their place in it. It is their greatest gift and also their biggest flaw. They wish only to make sense of this gift, to express it, to share it passionately, for it to be considered and appreciated, and ultimately set themselves up for misunderstanding, criticism and rejection. The lucky ones find a comfortable outlet, and live happily ever after in relative complacency. The greatest ones always want something more, and never get it.
It is not as simple as creating beautiful works of art. Beauty is a fickle and subjective concept - a man-made, intangible entity. For this reason, there is no such thing as good or bad art - only truth or lies. That’s it for me - truth or lies. There has to be truth. Real, tangible understanding. Truth is my lifeblood. Because you are giving yourself, you need it to be worth something. If not to others, then at least to yourself.
I am happy with this awkward truth, however True it might or might not be. It makes sense, and it must be appreciated fully for what it is, be explored, driven forward. I can only be fulfilled by sharing this reality, and I’d be purposeless without it. Even this humble understanding, this human amount of certainty, of this narrow spectrum of reality is enough to fuel my fire.
Great, but the discussion then just becomes about what you'd prefer to consider as true, not what is true. Or rather, what your own subjective standards tell you is good enough to constitute truth.
I guess thats what makes the philosophers philosophers, they see the problem of coming to know the ultimate truth as a challenge, and not a dead-end.
I consider myself as something of an artist too (in spirit, not in talent of course), and I chose to both weave and unravel the tapestry. I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive.
Though I understand the need for truth, something to grasp. To always question and to accept that you may never know is a difficult, frightening thing.
So I guess the discussion sort of ends there, but good luck in your endeavors
Topic: Atheism is NOT a Belief