Kitabı oku: «Human Being Theory. For Dummies»

Jacob Feldman

Yazı tipi:

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
William Shakespeare, Hamlet

ISBN 978-5-4483-4271-4

Created with intellectual publishing system Ridero

1.Prologue

Preface

I have a son. He is 26 years old now.

When I send him a message about very IMHO important reading, his usual answer is: TLTR – too long to read.

Therefore, first, if I want to be readable for young generation I must be brief.

Second, we all live in the world full of vacuum cleaners and dishwashers.

Therefore, good book must be as clear as an instruction for dishwasher (or vacuum cleaner, if you please).

Third, it must be new. Not as new as a newborn child, because a very new child is born on the planet every second, but as new as a good effective drug for illness

not curable before.

Fourth, it must be useful for everybody who is smart enough, useful for everyday life, like a teaspoon. Are you smart enough for a teaspoon to use?

So, let us begin.

[битая ссылка] Some of pictures in the book are omitted – but you can find them here>> to pictures

Questions we will find answers for

How to be happy?

How to keep dialog?

How to choose the spouse?

How to keep marriage happy?

How to find the job of your dream? In addition, how to get it?

How to hire good team for the project?

How to understand, what politicians say, and what do they really mean?

How to nurture your own children?

What is a good education?

Does human history have a direction? And, if yes,

Where this direction is pointing?

Does it give us any reason to be an optimist?

How this historical movement could be measured?

How can we help the movement?

What is philosophy?

Do we need philosophy in the modern world? For what purpose?

How philosophy should look today?

What is the difference between science, religion and myth?

How our thinking works?

What is good and evil?

Could we understand what happens in modern world? And, if yes,

How could we?

Practical recommendations

Usually, whenever I lecture this stuff, I draw on the flipchart and explain the drawing step by step. Then I record video and load it on Internet. You can find my video-lectures (most in Russian) at [битая ссылка] my channel. After that I write it down as a text, make pictures and load as html-pages [битая ссылка] on my site. Pictures at the site show drawings step by step. However, in the book I place only final drawing. That’s why I strongly recommend you, whatever chapter you read, find the final drawing, copy it by pencil at your copy-book, and, while reading the text, mark over step by step new details by pen. Otherwise, I suppose it will be hard for you to understand my message completely.

Disclaimer

Is it possible at all – to answer so many hard questions in so thin book like that? Is it a fraud of some kind? No, it is not.

First, the answers we will see are not the only possible ones. You can find other versions from other authors.

Second, to make some answer working in your personal case, probably additional investigation may be needed. This investigation could be hard to do. So, probably, the life is not so easy as it means to be.

Third, you can find some parameters I have missed. Anyway, let us be friends and cooperate on the subject for common good.

2.Minor models

We need instruments

One apple up on top!
Two apples up on top!
Look, you,
I can do it too.
Look! See! I can do three!
But I can do more!
You have three!
But I have four!
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

Imagine you have a table.

Imagine you have on your table an old watch. Like this one.

Fig. 1. Old Watch

Imagine this watch is working badly, and you know how to fix it.

But if so, you need some special instruments to do it up.

Glasses, screwdriver, tweezers, toolbox, … like that.

Fig.2. Glasses

Fig.3. Screwdriver

Fig.4. Tweezers

Fig.5. Toolbox

Now. Imagine you have on your table the world of human beings, like that.

Fig.6. The Globe

It works badly and you know how to fix it.

But what instruments do you need for that?

I recommend you four mental instruments to begin with.

Recognize-and-name-it operation (RNO) = glasses.

Distinguish-and-separate-it operation (DSO) = screwdriver.

Enumerate-and-sort-it operation (ENS) = tweezers.

Put-in-lines operation (PLO) = toolbox.

From now, I will say:

«apply ONE» instead of «recognize and name it»,

«apply TWO» instead of «distinguish and separate it»,

«apply THREE» instead of «enumerate and sort it»,

«apply FOUR» instead of «put it in lines».

First look at the problems

Imagine ALL the problems of ALL human beings.

Now apply ONE and recognize in the middle a Self Area.

When you are in the area, you feel comfortable or not, happy or not, but you have no logics, no rules, nothing.

In this area, you are The Self.

Now apply TWO: see, out of the area there is outer world that presses on you, torture you, and restrain you.

But between Self And Outer world there is a narrow ring of compromise.

Fig.7. Self against World

Now we will analyze the ring.

Apply ONE: problems without parameters of specific person are controlled by philosophy.

Apply ONE again: problems with parameters of specific person are controlled by psychology.

These two areas are poles of the ring.

I like to place philosophy at the top (at North Pole) and psychology at the bottom (at South Pole). If so, we have two gaps between North and South: one on the West and one on the East.

It is clear that when we go from psychology to philosophy, we have to eliminate personal data from the problem. We have two options how to do it.

We can eliminate personal data immediately and go through history and sociology.

Or we can hold them as long as possible and, in this case, go through child development and educational systems.

THREE and FOUR operations were applied there.

And here is the result.

Fig.8. West path and East path.

Second look at the problems

Look! See, now
I can hop
with four apples
up on top.
And I can hop
up on a tree
with four apples
up on me.
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

In fact, philosophy is in charge of all these different things. And I mean to say something new about all of them.

Look at the table. There are three columns in it. Left columns faces at science and deals with knowledge of different kinds. Right column faces at art and deals with values. The column in the middle deals with worldviews.

Left column contains epistemology, methodology, logics, and law. Right column contains axiology, ethics, aesthetics, and moral. The column in the middle contains ontology, myth, religion, and ideology.

Fig.9. Knowledge, worldview, values

When moving from bottom up you see that position of neutral observer is gradually transformed into position of active actor who less and less looks around, but more and more presses on things to make them fit the pattern.

Philosophy is supposed to be neutral, so we put it at the South. Now, view from the South is philosophical.

But how can we name the view from the North? I failed to find good name in the language and invented a new one: regulatorics. This is a view of someone who wants to transform the world.

Add the 12 areas in this chapter to the 7 areas from the previous one and get complete syllabus of the Human Being Theory.

Why philosophy still in the game?

Look here, you two!
See here, you two!
I can get five on top
Can you?
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

A long, long time ago, when I was a little bit younger, a simple question came in my mind.

Why philosophy still in game?

Why people pay for these boring books, why they reprint them?

I could understand people who pay to listen to violin or to watch olimpic games.

But philosophy?

Today I see philosophy as a poor answer for a real question. It looks like unsavory food you eat because you are hungry. But what is a question?

Ignore what philosophers say about the main question, don’t believe them. The real question must exist before and out of any philosophy.

Communication

Fig.10. Message

Imagine two people in dialog.

Person A sends to person B a message C about object D.

You can focus on object. This approach produces science.

Fig.11. Focus on object

You can focus on message as a tool to express your opinion etc.. This approach produces art.

Fig.12. Focus on message, its expressive possibilities

But imagine a dialog where participants do not understand each other. They want but they cannot for some reason. Probably they have different contexts in their heads. You can focus on these contexts. This approach produces philosophy.

Fig 13. Contexts differ.

Between science and philosophy

I am so good
I will not stop. Five!
Now six!
Now seven on top!
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

Suppose you have found some very new idea and you want to tel it to your colleague. But the idea is so radically new that you partner does not understand you. What should you do?

Probably you should pack your idea into right form? This way leads to logics. Probably you should tell your partner how did you get to this great idea. This way leads to methodology. Probably you should tell your friend where any new ideas come from. This way leads to epistemology. Probably you should tell your friend how this world works. This way leads to ontology.

But for really new idea all this does not help.

Unexpected result: next generation of readers will consider you as a serious philosopher.

Fig.14. Philosophers

When we have a model

Seven apples
up on top!
I am so good
they will not drop!
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

Suppose you live your regular life.

Suppose in some moment of your precious life you feel, that something goes wrong.

You feel it must be fixed. But how?

This moment of your life, this point of the space-and-time-and-person, this point and its neighborhood, I call them a problem. The problem is a part of physical world.

Fig.15. Physical world

Fig.16. Knowledge

Suppose we could describe the problem in some detailed and consistent way. I call this description a model.

The model exists in a mental world. There is a good detailed mapping between problem and model. This triplet of «problem, model, and mapping» I call it knowledge. Is it a true knowledge? Or is it a false knowledge? We do not know yet. Anyway, we try to solve our problem using the model.

Fig.17. Practical solution

First, we investigate the model and find some theoretical solution.

Second, we map this solution into the physical world and get the practical solution. Practical solution tells us what to do.

So, third, we do it, we implement the practical solution.

And fourth, we look around an decide is the problem solved now or it is not yet.

Suppose we many times came to the (almost) same problem and always solved it with the same model successfully. If so, we can say that this knowledge is true. If sometimes it works but sometimes it does not, we call it false knowledge.

When we have no model

«Where do you come from?»
said the Red Queen.
«And where are you going?
Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers all the time!»
Through the Looking Glass
by Lewis Carroll

One step back.

Suppose we have a problem but the life is not easy now and we cannot find a good model. What should we do?

As in the swampy bog, we jump from one dry place to another. Sometimes we have a choice and time to think and choose where to jump, left or, may be, right.

Fig.18. Values

When we think some images came to our mind, one image for the left turn, another image for the right turn. We can compare these images, choose the best one and make the jump toward the better future. If so, the images we compare, I call them values.

How many worlds do you know?

Five, six seven!
Fun, fun, fun!
Seven, six, five, four, three, two. one!
Ten Apples Up on Top
by Dr.Seuss

What do we know about mental world?

First, there is an eternal part of the mental world, like PI number. I call it mathematical reality. We do not build mathematical objects – we discover them like stars in the sky.

Second, there are pure mental objects, which we build. They live while we support them. Words of languages, heroes of legends, music and dance. I call it virtual reality.

Fig.19. Thinking: Worlds

And third, there are objects of physical reality that help as to control both virtual and mathematical reality. I call them symbolic reality.

By definition, physical object is a symbolic object if it points to something else for somebody who understand the pointing and this somebody exists now (or existed in the past).