Power

Why is there not nothing? This question remains as fundamental to modern science and philosophy as it did to the ancients. But it has been overlaid with so much detail that it appears to be outside the scope of common sense, to which it must return.

Yet the answer lies in the very sense by which we recognise there is a question to be asked – for we know there is not nothing and that ‘the something’ is capable of asking questions about the state of being in which it recognises itself. The problem comes in ‘being’ trying to look outside itself, as if the question about ‘why existence exists’ can be answered by something else – which precludes the questioner from ever knowing whether the answer is really the answer.

So to imagine a ‘something else’ leaves us to speculate forever about the ‘more of it’ in which the answer lies. And is it not sensible to assume that the ‘more’ extends beyond what is already – which takes us straight into the territory of a greater form of being – a power-to-be that we already know to be far greater than nothingness and all the forms of being we can imagine?

Mike Laidler

The Genie of the Bottle

December 11, 2014December 11, 2014 ~ philosophyalive ~ Leave a comment

All the forces in the universe cannot muster the power to move a humble bottle from one table to another, nor can they formulate the intention to do so, yet here we are accomplishing such feats on a daily basis whilst wondering how nature empowers us to do it.

So should we be talking about the absence of intention in nature whilst exercising intentionality as a part of that nature? And by what belief do we suppose that the unintentional powers of nature can explain intentionality for us, or equate to the same?

Equally, the idea of psychic powers seems to go to the other extreme by downgrading the special nature of the psychological powers already at our disposal, which act upon the world and change things through faculties that are alien to known natural laws.

Perhaps there is a lot more to know about the nature of the ordinary. Nature has no mental powers and yet it acquires them through us as a part of nature. Then what about the nature and potential of personal awareness? And what will we do with that potential? Do we assume it is there to serve our whims in the pursuit of pleasure and distraction? Or do we merely meander through life at the whim of others without elevating our potential, and with it that of the world? For is not our existence interwoven with that of a universe of which we are a part – a universe that now contains the power of self-awareness?

Then what of the potentials we may host? Perhaps the next step requires a simple act of recognition that can begin only with itself, personally, thereby to glean a reality of which both nature and personality were recognisably deficient until then.

It appears that we have the power to awaken the Genie, which, by comparison to all the remaining powers in nature, introduces something truly magical into the universe.