Maurice Merleau-Ponty built on Heidegger's philosophy about the study of things.
Yet while Satre used it as a jumping off point for Existentialism, Merleau-Ponty ran with the idea and created a treatise that tried to understand humans existence with things, our relationship with things. Unlike Heidegger and Satre, who considered all thought to stem from an adult brain, Merleau-Ponty went along the lines that this was created from childhood, from the womb onward. In effect we are born into an existence of feeling and interaction with the world around us.
This may seem like common sense to say, but think about your own interaction with your world.
For instance, when your hand touches a pencil do you notice that your hand is touching a pencil? Note, that it is also true that the pencil touches your hand. Yet we do not try to notice the emotion of the pencil touching you. You could ask, what does it feel like for a pencil to be touched by human skin?
Unlike Existentialism, which makes things real in your immediate reality, phenomenology notices that everything is around us waiting to interact with us; to have an experience with us.
This is in tune with my ideas to the teachings of mindfulness and how it boosts the imagination in all of us. Because everything is there waiting for you to experience, you just need the belief and imagination to make it so.
Imagine sitting in a cafe and putting a cup of lovely sweet coffee to your lips and then thinking how it feels to be sipping that coffee, not only from your lips point of view, but from your mouth, throat, stomach; and then from the point of view of the cup, or the liquid which you pour into you. That coffee went from a growing bean to a grain of coffee pieced together with other grains to create a blended cup of beans in liquid form. It goes from one living thing to another.
Mindfulness
By using mindful meditation you can interpret and understand your own unique experience with the wider world. In essence, all of our worlds are different. We may see the same object but we interpret them differently; the same with news and events, notice on news reels that two different eye witnesses will record the same event with differences. We all have our own ways of seeing and interpreting, and there is nothing wrong with that.
By meditating, and using my technique on meditation by losing yourself in music, you can hear your inner self speaking to you and telling you your truths. You can access a higher plane, dimension if you like, and see why you interpret things in certain ways and where that ideology has come from.
We are free, if we choose to be; free of our thoughts, our actions and our restrictions. Freedom can be scary which is why things are put into place to block that freedom. Such as self imposed time restrictions. I guess in choosing those then we accept that it is a choice we have made. By understanding yourself and why you see and think the way that you do is a step towards mental freedom.
My depression and anxiety is an outcome to the restrictions and fears that I have placed on myself by my interpretation of events, conversations and interactions that I have had through my life. I still find it hard to accept that at times, and maybe it is impossible to accept it fully as it goes way back in my life; but I can try and having a mindful approach to the world is my way of trying to make MY WORLD a better place.
I have been reading the excellent book by Sarah Bakewell - At the Existential Cafe, Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails.
I like your reasonings. I always wonder if the trillions of people on this planet see the colour 'blue', for instance in a slightly different way, because we are all unique. It makes sense to think as you do. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I would think we all see colours in a different way and some of that is judged by our emotional response to the colour. An interesting thought.
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