This site is part of the TEARMASTER GROUP of websites comprising of:-

• tearmaster.me       This site.
• tearmaster.net       Primary Philosophy Portal
• tearmaster.art       Panpsychism, Solipsism, Idealism
• tmaster.co.uk       Language and Paradox
• botherings.com       Questions and Understandings

BELOW IS A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS and... OTHER MATTERS

PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS-

Have you any idea what is going on? ..............

That is the question musing on matters philosophical seeks to answer. We communicate through language, but words often do not convey our true meaning.

There a picture of a Pieris below.



The butterfly imset to the top right is also named Pieris. Pieris brassicae, the Large Cabbage White.

The same word, Pieris, representing a beautiful shrub and a despised pest. (The caterpillars of this butterfly can devastate food crops).

Pieris is a name derived from Pieria, a region close by Mount Olympus in Greece. The act of musing, to muse, is to ponder or reflect on topics of interest, to allow the subject of thought to reveal itself. The Muses are Goddesses, nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Titan Goddess of memory, whose daughters are said to have played around the Pierian Spring not far from Mount Olympus.

The Muses were born to create inspiration, artistry, music, literature and science.

Greek mythology has an international status in the world of belief influencing civilisation, to the point where fact and fiction are jumbled into a state of inseparability.
As a child I was taught about the "Trojan Horse" as if it was a piece of factual military history, thinking about it today it seems like a piece of mythological poppycock. Yet there are many elements of Greek mythology that are of enormous cultural significance... but more of that later.

This site will contain introductions to many topics to be mused upon in greater depth on other specialist areas.

The primary subjects are accessible through the carousel above.

Of the eight topics linked to- Solipsism, Pansychism, Language and Dreams are concerns of human existence.
Horticultural Delights and Bonsai are concerned with misunderstandings...
Animation and Tennis are evolving subjects.

Additional pages are now accessible through the Catagory tab in the header bar or by clicking here
Here you will find discussion on your philosophical role in the state of the world.

The Dreams section above is labeled with the words- -Screen of Perception-

This is a unifying concept that will be discussed in detail on a seperate site. There will be a link here when it is avaliable.

The myths of the Greeks are deeply entangled in our languages and understanding. The existence of the mythology demonstrates just how deeply humans have pondered upon the nature of our existence for many centuries. They will be making appearances at various junctures in these musings, so below is a brief introductory video from Cayla Rose on Youtube of some of the earliest and most significant characters in the Greek tales.

PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS- Memory and Mortality are the most significant qualities life possesses.

Memory and mortality.

You forget things, don't you?

You have no real control over what it is you forget, but knowing that you forget may cause you to do things to ensure certain things are remembered. Sometimes you may write things down, a shopping list for example, and then leave this list on the kitchen table, only remembering where it is when you arrive at the supermarket.
The significant point to note is the lack of control over what you forget. It is not a choice. What you remember is also not a choice, although you may like to think it is.

The ancient Greek mythology comes from a time preceded by an extensive history, that is to say there was plenty going on prior to the first written poems of Homer, which have become the primary source of the myths as told today. The poems credited to Homer, the Illiad and the Odessey are regarded as products of the eighth or seventh Century BC, 2,800 years ago.
The Mycenaean civilisation hundreds of years previous in the Bronze Age are viewed as a time of much warfare, violence, political intrigue and high culture as anything occurring today.

The point to be made here is that several thousand years ago the peoples of the time had considered human psychology at a very fundamental level, and life had very similar problems. Very little has changed in two or three thousand years

What has this got to do with your memory? Well, nothing just yet, that comes later but I have now introduced War, Violence and Politics into my Philosophical Musings, and the possibility that your forgetfulness may be blamed on a Titanic Greek Goddess.

Mortality

Is death the ending of memory?

That is, can you be alive without memory? This is a dificult one. All knowledge is held as memory. Memory tells you to get up in the morning, what to do, what to wear, how to dress, eat... everything. Remove your memory and the body becomes helpless, literally unable to survive. You cannot satisfy a sense of hunger if it is a continually new experience, one you have no memory of how to respond to. Experience is constantly saved as memory.

When I underwent a major heart operation I was told what I was likely to remember of the event - nothing at all.

All went exactly as predicted, my awareness disappeared as the general anaesthetic did its job.

I then seemingly instantly awoke, 5-6 hours had apparently passed and I had not the slightest sense that anything had occurred.

"I" had died. My body had been deprived of "I". My body had survived the procedure despite the blood flow through my heart being cut off for what I can only say was an unknown period, maybe 2 to 4 hours whilst open-heart surgery was conducted.
The only thing I am sure of is that on awakening my last memory was of the voices of the Anaesthetist and his glamourous assistant talking to me prior to the surgery, followed by a strange sense of awareness that it was all over and I had missed the event.

In an intensive care bed with tubes and wires emerging from various parts of your body you are certainly aware something has occurred, but the sense of a gap in the normal flow of memory, of expected time not having occurred was quite noticeable.

"A gap in the flow of memory" is the best phrase I have thought of to describe the... "non-experience".

Thousands of people undergo the same experience (or lack of) every week, am I just one of millions who have temporarily died?
That discussion will be on another page.

So let's go back to the Greeks.

Marcus Aurelius- not a Greek character.

A man who wanted to understand what was going on. A man concerned with life, the universe and everything. A stoic man by all accounts.

A Roman Emporor who wrote, possibly to clarify his thoughts, in Koine Greek. Apparently there was a grat deal of conversation in Greek across much of Italy a thousand years ago.

Should you care to discover more about Marcus Aurelius his most well read book- Meditations -is readily available and chronicles the musings of a man whose concerns are as relevant today as could possibly be... in other words, nothing has changed much in 2000 years.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us that the psychological state of human beings seems to resist change, fails to learn and shows little or no propensity to evolve for the betterment of society or the individual.
So what has changed? What, if anything, has humanity done for itself over the past 2000 years?

A question that may occur to you is - Why should it change? Why am I pointing out that nothing seems to change regarding the psychological behaviour of human beings? What is it about the current state of affairs that has us both looking for change and wondering why change, or the lack of it, is something of serious concern?

Your answer may seem obvious. Environmental disasters, political instability, death, disease, doom and gloom. Pick your own personal discontent.

In Chapter 7 of his Meditations Marcus Auralius makes the following observations:-

"Look back over the past - all those many changes of dynasties. And you can foresee the future too: it will be completely alike, incapable of deviating from the present. So for the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?
Penguin Classics Edition Ch. 7 (49).

Two thousand years ago a Roman Emperor was making the same observation I am making today. The fundamentals are not for changing. Our claims to modernity are a sham, civilisation is a veneer, a very thin veneer over a society populated by those who want civilisation moulded to their own self-interests.

And so... The End is Nigh... isn't it?

Changing history requires changing the future. (a statement that makes little sense but it worthy of deeper analysis.)

The current hopefully serious commitment to changing our destructive use of energy and resources is a response to negative effects of human behaviour.
The planet, the environment in which we have no choice but to totally rely on is hopefully going to respond favourably to our actions and provide a future fit for purpose.

But if Marcus Auralius was correct, the effects of 'saving the planet' may have minimal affect on human psychology.

The really interesting question is "Will saving the planet simply extend our opportunity to be psychologically inept?

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL INEPTITUDE?

To be inept is be clumsy and bungling, to lack the skills and ability to handle something. In this case that 'something' is our own psychology.
This does not imply we are fools, incompetant, or inadequate. It implies that we do not recognise that our 'psychology' is something we need to learn about. We take it as a given, a baseline fundamental that requires no study, no practice and no thought. Our psyche is what we are.

If that is the case... we first need to understand PSYCHOLOGICAL CLARITY.

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