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Know thyself

Magic--that's just a label, you know. Completely meaningless. It wasn't so very long ago that people were saying that electricity was magic."

- Robert Bloch(Psycho)

Does philosophy change with time ? Yes and no. Questions about evolution and existence have occupied our thoughts for so many centuries. New questions may also arise from extensive changes to our milieu. One exemplification is Artificial Intelligence. Will a robot ever attain self awareness and act on consciousness ? How does a human brain work ? What is the difference between a human and a machine ?

The era we live in is exceptional in every way. On one hand , we are a triumphant generation , who are quite explorative and inventive. We are those who know of universe and genomics. On the other hand , we are the same people who are mortal beings serving as a liability in most ways to the environment.

Modern humans think we are almost entirely shaped by our cultural and social history , by the civilisation which brought us . But aren't we equally influenced / shaped by our planet's biological history ? There is both genetic and cultural heritage. We are merely vertebrates and primates.

It took billions of years for us to happen after the planet evolved. How significant do you think time is ? Okay , first , what even is this phenomenon called time influencing everything ? We have horizon of the individual , then of family , of culture , of literary culture , but there is also time. For many of us it is what clock reads. A continuous, measurable quantity in which events occur in a sequence proceeding from the past through the present to the future , a much learned person would say. In classical, non-relativistic physics , it is a scalar quantity and, like length, mass, and charge, is usually described as a fundamental quantity measured in units like seconds , minutes ,hours , days , weeks , years , decades , centuries. Have you heard of concavity , where objects are closer than they actually appear ? Time follows concavity. The intervals of time seem far from each other but they are not as far as it seems. This is prominently the reason we feel at home in this universe. We come from nanobes that crawled out of the sea 4.5 billion of years ago. Our universe is almost 14 billion years old. This planet , that is the abode of our existence , is just one third of the span of the universe , and the vertebrates , has only existed for a mere ten percent of time our solar system and life have existed.

We are no infinite .

We are only conscious.

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth. ~ Goethe"

At some point , something came from nothing and it seems like everything. That is all. Everything that happens has a natural cause , a cause that is inherent in the thing itself. And all that we feel , is just sense , perception one may call. It is that which keeps differing as the atoms keep moving in the space. We are trivial but does that mean that the time we live should be put to waste ?

Fatalism is the belief that happens that everything that takes place is written / predefined / destined. We find this belief everywhere , all around the world. In the history and in the present day. We can also see the belief in ancient greece , that people could learn their fate from some form of oracle.

There are still a good amount of people who believe that they can tell your fortune in the cards , read your palm , predict your future in the stars , write a code set that tells the outcome merely by learning a training set with or without supervision. Yes , it takes a lot of time and patience to master even those . Mastering , the word in itself is a bit controversial. Can a scorecard / a degree / a project that serves not even a 0.0000000001 percentage of what your existence serves , really tell what you are capable of ? Yes and No.

Does anyone even know what is right and what is wrong ?

Here is a story about the Oracle at Delphi -

The ancient Greeks believed that they could consult the famous oracle at Delphi about their fate. Apollo , the god of the oracle , spoke through his priestess Pythia , who sat on a stool over a fissure in the earth , from which arose hypnotic vapours that put Pythia in a trance. This enabled her to be Apollo's voice.

When people came to Delphi they had to present their questions to the priests of the oracle , who passed it on to Pythia.Her answer would be so obscure or ambiguous that the priests would have to interpret it. In that way , the people got the benefit of Apollo's wisdom , believing that he knew everything , even about the future.

There were many leaders of the state who dared not to proceed with a war or take other decisive steps until they had consulted the oracle at delphi. The priests of Apollo thus functioned like diplomats and a guide. They were experts with an intimate knowledge of the people and the country.

Over the entrance to the temple at delphi was a famous inscription : KNOW THYSELF . It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal - and that no man can escape his destiny.

June gasped , she was worried about completing her assignment due three days after. She so wanted to not think about how trivial all what she is doing and what her other classmates were doing. She was trying to be hopeful that all this is going to help her sometime . " There is internet , search engine , automatic car , electricity and what not . Who thought one can know what happened in 1700 by just typing a query on the internet. How did all that happen then ? " she thought to shut her inner philosophical self. Meanwhile , Apte had that very important news that could change both hers and Myrah's life , broken to her.