| Let's Hear It for The Doors! |
After reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, I can't shake the feeling of awe out of my system. I was turned off by the concept of egotism as a good thing, and altruism as a cardinal sin, but it certainly had some valid points. AND, it gave me a newer, shinier theory on what makes human beings. How does one classify a person's belief structure? To get a clear concept of who a person is, you start off with a general question, and, depending on their answer, continue to narrow the questions down into more specific fields of interest. In the same fashion that we classify, so do we choose our beliefs. Visualize with me a second, a flow chart. There are maybe five hallways that are branching out from the wall in a room right in front of you. In each hallway, there are two (or more) doors lining the walls. In each hallway, there is a question hanging from the ceiling, and on each doorway, the possible answers. Once you make your decision, you open another door. After you open the door, you see the several other hallways with new questions on them. Well, you can keep following one path, but eventually you are going to get stuck. You will not know which answer to choose from. Maybe, you make a guess, and choose the best one. Maybe you methodically check every option, and see how the choices behind each answer compare. Maybe you will decide to leave the hallway, and go back to the room before it, and close the door. Then choose another door. You can keep doing this endlessly, with plenty of backtracking and guessing. At one point, you might become angry and bitter. You will feel that way because you want to reach a point where there is a dead end, and you can start feeling happy. But there never is an end, as there are too many doors for you to open up in one lifetime. Maybe you reach a point where you stop that "pointless" exploring, and start to take a nap instead of pursuing truth. Or, the existentialist predicament, you realize that you are simply guessing the answer, and that you have no way of knowing anything. That is the state where all the doors have closed, and you are trying to live without opening any doors, which would be an admission of one's weakness. So you pull out your deck of cards and start to play solitaire. The beauty of this little visualization is how you can keep adding more variables to make it similar to real life. Maybe you are not alone, and that a million other people are all trapped in this door puzzle, trying to decide what doors, if any doors, to open. You make friends out in the giant waiting area in front of the first doors, and you might follow the paths your friends take. Maybe some rooms are used more than others, and some rooms are larger to show their greater importance than others. Maybe some people, after traveling many doors, come back to the waiting room to tell them the great things they have seen. They speak of what lies behind the final door, and how a person can go about reaching it. Some people are taking notes, and they follow the prophet as he leads the way to the Promised Land. Maybe some people really don't like to choose answers, they just travel through the doorways to meet new and interesting people. Sure, they might "believe" it, but only because it brings them closer to something they do care about. Maybe some people leave crumbs like Hansel and Gretel, or they carry a ball of string like Perseus, and others follow them. They are not aware of the questions they are answering, they are simply following the path it takes to reach a specific destination. As you can see, there are many ways to picture the human race. I like mine because it is an extension to the whole "layer cake" idea of man. The concept is that in order to describe, say, Hermann Hesse, we would start with the general descriptions and work our way to the specific. First, he is a living creature. Second, he is a mammal. Third, he is a human. Fourth, he is German. Fifth, he is a novelist. Then it goes on to 456: His great-great-uncle was a mass murderer, to 3214: He actually enjoys flossing, to 13245: Hermann Hesse. You reduce the complex to the specific, only when dealing with beliefs, you reduce the dogma down to the fundamental questions of existence. Maybe you should ask yourself, where do you fit in my daydream? Did I mention you? Are you the one playing solitaire, or are you following your friend's path? Or maybe you are standing down a lone hallway, staring at the question, and thinking. There is no better state to be, aside from the best state, which is what we are trying to reach BY thinking. Thinking is very important, but sometimes you have to open a door just to see what lurks behind. It is okay to experiment and analyze, but one shouldn't lose sight of their goal, which is to reach the dead end, where we can curl up and sleep like babies for the rest of eternity. Sound good? It does to me, as I am dead sleepy. (yawn) I hope this little thought experiment was of some value, but tell me what you think! - The Dark Dachshund |