Beyond the World of Comfort (my thoughts after reading 'Sophie's World')

"It was dark, nothing to be found.. except 'barrier' that goes all around and a rope that gives food and air"

Every unborn baby viewed the world simply just like the description above, and by the time they were born into this world they were amazed by it; the baby's hands tried to touch everything in sight, to feel all the things it had seen and sometimes they would even tried to taste things; by putting it in their mouth! Just to show how curious they were.

But as the time goes, the curiosity that once be the sole reason of most of their acts are becoming less and less as they will be accustomed with this new world that once were new to them. They have been lulled with the comfort of this world.

A philosophical novel that I recently read entitled 'Sophie's World' gave me new perspective to view this world, it say like this in the novel:

"To Summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs. where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' but none of the people down there care.

'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princes Di is expecting again?”

And it hit right on.. when I observe people around me, all I see is that they are just continuing their life, without trying to craw onto the fragile hairs; to think about this world! 

Nonetheless, I understand their perspective that it is in fact tiring to think and question things in this world as it would be never ending and you are going to end up with more questions at the end anyway, so why bother? But as the great Goethe once said:

He who cannot draw on 3000 years of history is living hand to mouth

Living hand to mouth... as in animal way of living; without utilizing the 'mind', the 'idea', that makes human different from animal; from the livestock that live their whole life in a farm routine waiting to be slaughtered without knowing when will it happen.

It is completely fine and normal to continue your life, doing the daily activities.. everyone do that, and you must also. But what is not fine is to think that life.. that this world is simply just some daily routine

Life is to eat, drink, sleep, go to school, graduate.. go to university, graduate again, go to work, marry someone, having children.. and repeat

There's way more in this life, there are too many things to discover and learn, even if you are not a philosopher!

But then you might ask.. what is the benefit of thinking and questioning things about this world? Well for starters, by doing that you are different than livestock, you won't be easily fooled by someone even when they claimed to be the 'expert', as you would think critically, questioning, and verifying things for yourself first rather than being fed with bunch of information that might not be correct and being completely fine with it; the same as chicken that being fed at the farm without the capability to think.

I hope by now you would understand the importance of thinking and questioning things.. back to the novel, there are many things that I found interesting and want to talk about, but for this time I would like to share the thoughts of the former Greek Philosopher Plato.

Physical World and World of Ideas

Plato viewed the reality as two separate world; co-exist with each other, the Physical World, the world that we are living now alongside the animals and plants, and the World of Ideas; the higher form of reality that from it, all the things in this physical world are manifested.

For instance, we know the characteristics of a horse; it has four long legs, hooves, a tail, strong build, and it can run fast. Plato believed that before thing even exist (a horse in this case), the idea of "a horse" already existed within the world of ideas, the same with all the things in this physical world, and then they manifested into this world.

To understand more about the world of ideas, let's get back to the beginning of this post, the description of a life inside a mother's womb:

It was dark, nothing to be found.. except 'barrier' that goes all around and a rope that gives food and air

Our physical world, that is very complex and complicated are nothing in comparison with the higher realm of world of ideas, just like the comparison of the life inside a mother's womb and our physical world. In a sense that we cannot fully comprehend it yet... just like the baby, we are still inside our mother's womb (physical world) and not born yet to see the outer world (world of ideas or you could also say heavenly world), but one thing for sure, just like the baby we could 'confirm' that higher world, or higher entity is exist although it's blurry.. as baby could sense that 'the mum' is somehow exist based on 'the barrier' or the cervix that protects them and 'the rope' or the umbrella cord that gives them food and air.     

N:B:

The name of this blog was inspired from the parable of rabbit's fur in 'Sophie's World', I thought it brilliantly captured people's mindset; they that have been lulled with comfort, so I decided to go with it.