June 15, 2011

Four Attitudes About UNKNOWN

Telescope and night skyImage via Wikipedia
"Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?" After several thousands years of civilization, the question remains as the same as beginning: we still face that mysterious world of UNKNOWN.
Probably, the attitudes (driven by different thinking styles) toward this UNKNOWN divide us in different types of people: rational, irrational, superstitious, skeptical, or something else. Below is what I could think of now about four different attitudes toward this UNKNOWN.

1. To understand the existence of UNKNOWN and accept it, to admit there is a immense part of Universe that is beyond our current (or even future) understanding, to suppose we human may or may not eventually understand this Universe, is an attitude of rationality;


2. To irrationally affirm the "knowledge" of UNKNOWN, to factualize UNKNOWN, to mystify or decorate UNKNOWN as human wishes, is an attitude of religion, or "conventional" superstition;

3. To hold our reason firmly as a solution to everything, to deny the existence of UNKNOWN, or to believe that just because we have known a great deal so we will know everything sooner of later, is an attitude of modern "religion" - worship of science;

4. To absolutely deny any possibilities to reach the truth of "UNKNOWN", to disbelieve completely about science in terms of discovering the truth of universe, is an attitude of agnosticism, which is also irrational, because it kills "HOPE" (or possibility) - the only thing that perhaps will be always "alive" (as long as the Universe exists).

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on attitudes avout the unknown. I appreciated reading them. Here's a quote I want to share:

    "“It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that--it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown--then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?”
    -- John Lennon

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  2. Perhaps it is like the two sopranos duet in "Marriage of Figaro : great transcendent beauty
    covering the real face of reality and nature,
    which is impersonallity, brutality, cruelty and complete disregard for its creations.

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  3. Count Sneaky,
    thanks! that how we do need beautify the 'unknown', since we don't seem to be capable of changing the ugly 'known' part.

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