Where Is Your Mind?

By Arthur M. Katabalwa.

Where are we in the universe?

The 15th Century Dutch Philosopher Barluch Spinoza  said that: “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”  The freedom to think and work things for oneself, I find, is one of the greatest things one can poses especially if that individual has an inquisitive mind.

There is always a desire by the human mind to question that which is perceived as true. And for that one should be able to rationalize what the kind of environment that they occupy. We have over the centuries been conditioned to think in certain ways, to behave in certain ways and act in certain ways. The society that we live in in so many ways influences these ways, sometimes culminating in what is termed as culture.

Baruch  Spinoza

But what would happen if we were allowed to think freely? What if we were allowed to questioned that very idea that we think of as sacrosanct? In many ways, we are sanctioned by society because the norms by which the very order of nature have in them, ways and means to stifle decent; a divergent view. If one were to question the very norms that govern our ways, in many ways they would be thought of as crude.

Over time one of the things that personally fascinate me is the very existence of man. Why are we here? Are we alone? My religious beliefs provide answers to some of these questions but to a certain point. Even those beliefs deter me from asking any further questions about why we are here.

But what if we are actually not here? Isn't there a remote chance that our very own existence has been made up? In my formative years a friend of mine challenged me to think that what if all that we are seeing is just a figment of our imagination? Indeed, my mind may be the only thing that exists and all that is surrounding me is just made up. If that were to be true, I have had over four decades of day dreaming just about everything down to my own existence. My mind may be wondering in a sea of nothingness, dreaming that all that I see, the seas, the sky all exist out of nothingness. I would still frighten myself because I have imagined some of the most heinous crimes ever been....that is if they have ever been.

It is with this free thinking that one finds themselves sometimes in fascinating pickles, where I tend to disagree with my very own. Sometimes it is important to create situations where we question the unquestionable. It creates a more robust mind and I think makes the development of mankind more transient. Which worries me in itself because transiency could lead to an end in itself. Whatever may exist and may seem like the creation of normality; The desire to maintain a true world order is in its own creation imperative to our existence because to let free thinking may lead to anarchy