Master Lecture: How do we begin to think about the world?

Thinking about the world. Sounds hard. Imagine, thinking about every corner of a round world.

We are like dust in the wind, so as the song goes, we are but minor specs in this world that we live in. Who we are, what do we do, our likes, our dislikes, out hopes, our dreams, all of these are like our own world, massive, big, infinite, but is confined in the minds of this spec of dust. Like dust in the wind, one might say that that dust hold little importance to the world, but then again, one spec like this can trigger a world war, can trigger the start of a new religion, can trigger the unity of nations, a paradox. This should be why we should think about the world. We may be specs of useless dust, but it is this way of thinking that would make this spec part of that sand clock that could be part of time.

In school, it is inevitable that there exists this group of “cool” people. They are an exclusive group and not everyone can be a member, well, mainly because if everyone was a member then no one is cool anymore. There must be those who are uncool for comparison. Similarly, for me, the world is similar to this structure of school society. There is always this group, in the world’s case, a group of nations where everyone wants to be part of, but only a few lucky population, race, and culture can be a part of. Of course everyone is supposedly allowed to go to these nations but why is it that this freedom seems to not exist? In this world that we live in, one cannot just go from one nation to another. You must have certain things to go to this place and even after that you cant be a part of that nation, you can only stay there for a certain amount of time. Imagine this during old time when this norm does not exist yet, imagine telling them that they cannot stay to other parts of the world. Imagine that they are nomads and are looking for more abundant areas and you tell them that they can not go to this certain area where there are fat animals and blooming trees, they might just as well kill you and go on with their lives. But now, it is o so very different. But of course there are reasons for the existence of this norm. Conflict is often caused by confusion, miscommunication, misinterpretation and personal interests that this kind of norm was developed. To prevent conflict among nations, they world developed this set of rules where everyone should abide in. the freedom of people to choose where to live was taken away from them. This is the price we pay to prevent killings, wars. But was it worth it? Giving up this freedom to prevent deaths? There might be other reasons though. Like who can be our allies? Knowing who might be our enemies? To whom to we ask help? Who can understand? Where to find certain specifics? We can compare our differences because of this. Also to find order in things, it is inevitable that in every part of the world that there are differences in almost everything: climate, animal species, land forms, culture, breed of tress, race, etc. that in all this differences, we can group together with those who are just like us and find a common understanding on how to deal with these differences differently from each other.

In everything that was mentioned, there is a common thing, which everything is invisible and is only in the human mind. The subjective human mind. There is really no one way of thinking about the world because of the subjectivity of the human mind. To deal with this subjectivity, we use a common pattern of this subjectivity and start from there to tell how people should think about the world. This is where ethics probably started. Ethics is a subjective way of deciding where certain factors are considered. People developed this to find order and to know how to deal with individuality. To punish what is different and to reward what is common.

So how do we really start to think about the world? Well this question did answer itself. We start to think about the world by asking questions about the world. One question in particular is who do we think we are? Are we mere specs of dust or are we moving bodies that can cause the end.