Re: You are not what you do.
I think Von is right, and I shall go further: that what we put in words, so often a poor approximation of what we really want to say, are (just as often) (and over time) deracinated from the ambiguity of its inception; and then, secure in the definitude of its signification, it presumes the name and office of Myth, reverses the power relation between utterer and utterance, and tyrannizes the thoughts and destiny of him who was too inchoate to express precisely what he meant in the first place.
I explain: Before one quarrels over whether one is what one does, one assumes that (personal) being exists; that is, it is a definable thing, a meaningful and finite term that can swapped about in an equation of logic. After assuming its finitude one also assumes that doing is a wholly separate existence, and is another term in the equation. Doing so, we are trapped, not either in "we ARE what we do" or "we are NOT what we do," but in the false dilemma that we are ONLY either.
I have many, different little theories, an untidy collation I do not try to combine into a theory of everything. I think meaninglessness is like waste heat: no one actually sets out to make your life meaningless, or to make you do what he thinks is meaningless, but which you think is otherwise; rather, everyone tries to do what he or she believes in, and when they come together, meaninglessness arises, seemingly ex nihilo, but which requires only a little more philosophizing to find the cause thereof, as they eventually did for waste heat. When that day arrives, I am confident Occam's Razor will excise that hoary myth of adversary.
I explain: Before one quarrels over whether one is what one does, one assumes that (personal) being exists; that is, it is a definable thing, a meaningful and finite term that can swapped about in an equation of logic. After assuming its finitude one also assumes that doing is a wholly separate existence, and is another term in the equation. Doing so, we are trapped, not either in "we ARE what we do" or "we are NOT what we do," but in the false dilemma that we are ONLY either.
I have many, different little theories, an untidy collation I do not try to combine into a theory of everything. I think meaninglessness is like waste heat: no one actually sets out to make your life meaningless, or to make you do what he thinks is meaningless, but which you think is otherwise; rather, everyone tries to do what he or she believes in, and when they come together, meaninglessness arises, seemingly ex nihilo, but which requires only a little more philosophizing to find the cause thereof, as they eventually did for waste heat. When that day arrives, I am confident Occam's Razor will excise that hoary myth of adversary.
