The tautological emptiness of a Master’s Wisdom is exemplified in the inherent stupidity of proverbs. Let us engage in a mental experiment by way of trying to construct proverbial wisdom out of the relationship between terrestrial life, its pleasures, and its Beyond. If ones says, “Forget about the afterlife, about the Elsewhere, seize the day, enjoy life fully here and now, it’s the only life you’ve got!” it sounds deep. If one says exactly the opposite (“Do not get trapped in the illusory and vain pleasures of earthly life; money, power, and passions are all destined to vanish into thin air—think about eternity!”), it also sounds deep. If one combines the two sides (“Bring Eternity into your everyday life, live your life on this earth as if it is already permeated by Eternity!”), we get another profound thought. Needless to add, the same goes for it’s inversion: “Do not try in vain to bring together Eternity and your terrestrial life, accept humbly that you are forever split between Heaven and Earth!” If, finally, one simply gets perplexed by all these reversals and claims: “Life is an enigma, do not try to penetrate its secrets, accept the beauty of its unfathomable mystery!” the result is, again, no less profound than its reversal: “Do not allow yourself to be distracted by false mysteries that just dissimulate the fact that, ultimately, life is very simple—it is what it is, it is simply here without reason and rhyme!” Needless to add that, by uniting mystery and simplicity, one again obtains a wisdom: “The ultimate, unfathomable mystery of life resides in its very simplicity, in the simple fact that there is life.”
I (or someone) should update that page; the earliest source of the horseshoe story that I know of is from a 1927 essay by Heisenberg:
Niels closed the conversation with one of those stories he liked to tell on such occasions: “One of our neighbors in Tisvilde once fixed a horseshoe over the door to his house. When a mutual acquaintance asked him, ‘But are you really superstitious? Do you honestly believe that this horseshoe will bring you luck?’ he replied, ‘Of course not; but they say it helps even if you don’t believe it.’”
Edit: Actually that date is almost definitely wrong, the essay refers to a conference that took place in 1927, probably wasn’t given there. The earliest Google Books result for this quote is Heisenberg’s 1969 autobiography, though, so that’s still earlier and more authoritative than any of the sources given on the Wikiquote page.
This is one of the more brilliant illustrations I’ve seen, and I suspect that what it illustrates is that the Deep Wisdom of a statement is mostly the cumulative Deep Wisdom points scored by each deep-sounding concept. Thus, reversing the meaning of a sentence has little effect on its Deep Wisdom points, so long as the same concepts are being invoked.
I think we can view Deep Wisdom as an escalating status competition. It’s about taking someone else’s Deep Wisdom and elevating your own above it. As the above quotation hints at, eventually you will escalate so far up the chain of wisdom that you’ll arrive back where you’ve started again. Like a Shepard tone.
i remember i started to “reverse” things according to Lou Reed lyrics, the one of yesterday if you try to solve a problem, and fail, people will think you created it, but if you try to create a problem, and fail, they’ll think you solved it !”
Slavoj Zizek
This puts in a new light Bohr’s saying that “It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.” (Source.)
“It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is not also a deep truth.”
New light? That was the same Bohr who made the famous horseshoe quip.
Unless there are two horseshoe quotes, this one seems to be disputed:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr#Disputed
I (or someone) should update that page; the earliest source of the horseshoe story that I know of is from a 1927 essay by Heisenberg:
Edit: Actually that date is almost definitely wrong, the essay refers to a conference that took place in 1927, probably wasn’t given there. The earliest Google Books result for this quote is Heisenberg’s 1969 autobiography, though, so that’s still earlier and more authoritative than any of the sources given on the Wikiquote page.
This is one of the more brilliant illustrations I’ve seen, and I suspect that what it illustrates is that the Deep Wisdom of a statement is mostly the cumulative Deep Wisdom points scored by each deep-sounding concept. Thus, reversing the meaning of a sentence has little effect on its Deep Wisdom points, so long as the same concepts are being invoked.
I think we can view Deep Wisdom as an escalating status competition. It’s about taking someone else’s Deep Wisdom and elevating your own above it. As the above quotation hints at, eventually you will escalate so far up the chain of wisdom that you’ll arrive back where you’ve started again. Like a Shepard tone.
Opposing Bohr’s interpretation.
Opposing Bohr’s interpretation here as well!
i remember i started to “reverse” things according to Lou Reed lyrics, the one of yesterday if you try to solve a problem, and fail, people will think you created it, but if you try to create a problem, and fail, they’ll think you solved it !”