THE BEGINNING OF THE MAP OF EXISTENCE

Child Pages

• THE METHODOLOGY: HOW TO BUILD A MAP OF THE ENTIRE EXISTENCE?
• WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TRYING TO DECIPHER?
• UNSOLVED QUESTIONS
  • WHAT IS LIFE FORCE?
• SERENDIPITY
• ACCESS TO ALL KNOWLEDGE: OTHER RESOURCES

Introduction to Map

Despite the infinite amounts of knowledge around, how much do we really know about our existence?

How may we really understand and appreciate our world in a way that makes complete sense and help us to make the best of our time available to us on this earth?

We have enough Gurus, Scientists, Philosophers and even religious Priests who claim to have all the answers. Probably, that makes lot of people happy. For the rest of us, how about mapping the entire existence on our own? Why not arrive at knowledge directly? If you would like to begin this adventure, let us begin thework right away.

Where would / should the map begin? Let us start with a few  questions:

• Why anything exists at all?
• What is existence? (What exists? What are the different parts of existence?)
• How can we know about the various different parts of existence?

Remaining everything “should” come under these three heads.

Unsolved Problems

• What exactly are we trying to decipher?
• What is Life Force

3. The indecipherable nature of Existence

We exist in an inexplicable and unknown universe. The dictionary defines “inexplicable” as:

unable to be explained or understood

To the best of our knowledge and wisdom, so far, it is impossible to really “know” existence.

What makes our existence inexplicable or unknown? The first barrier is that we do even know about our own identities – we have multiple ways to identify ourselves – as animals, as our nationalities, religions, communities, roles, etc. Then there are spiritual and psychological layers. Forget about knowing about our environment – we do know even know who we are!

We have just about started exploring our existence and we run into many questions:

1. How can we understand anything?
2. How do we know anything?
3. How do we understand existence?
4. How to study the human identity?
5. How to study the mind?

Physicist Steven Nahn of MIT says:

“I absolutely believe reality is a real thing, but that does not mean we understand it.”

We probably know absolutely nothing about the fundamental nature of the existence.

George Johnson reports (NYT, 2014) about Thomas Nagel’s book “Mind and Cosmos” (2012):

Since it was published in 2012, “Mind and Cosmos,” by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, is the book that has caused the most consternation. With his taunting subtitle — “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False” — Dr. Nagel was rejecting the idea that there was nothing more to the universe than matter and physical forces.

Johnson quotes Dr. Nagel:

“Above all, I would like to extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world.”

Johnson concludes:

Here on this planet during the 5,000 orbits since people began leaving marks on papyrus or clay, we’ve come far in describing the vast beyond. Or at least it seems that way. But maybe decades or millenniums from now — here or someplace yet to be imagined — science on Earth, circa 2014, will look like nothing more than a good start.

That seems like a feasible goal: let us aim to have AT LEAST a good start in our attempt to decipher EXISTENCE.