Literature of the world
I am currently putting together Literature of the World. Setting up the guidelines and goals for it has been challenging and it’s been something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
The long and short of it is that I am going to study the literature of the world starting from the earliest known works of literature we know. That would be Sumerian literature. Then Egyptian, along with Akkadian. Hittite would be next and then Sanskrit. From there we have early Hebrew writing followed shortly by Chinese literature. From there we get into classical antiquity. Greek and Latin.
This is where I would end the first phase of this project. The second phase would pick up in medieval times. I know Latin extends further into medieval times but I’m still working on the details.
So why am I studying literature? Well, for one it’s fascinating in all respects. Secondly, the written record is literally a chronology of human understanding. Everything we know about every faith, science and philosophy has been written down somewhere by someone.
My motivation in doing this stems from a great frustration rising out of my soul concerning the state of affairs across the globe. No one seems to be able to agree on anything. Certainly there is a truth though. It must be an unavoidable fact that the genuine pursuit of knowledge leads a person closer to the truth and therefore closer to the correct outlook on life, love, belief, and faith. One of the main reasons in doing this is to help bridge an ever expanding chasm between paradigms especially pertaining to science in contemplation of religion.
This has been a struggle to efficiently find a way to study human knowledge. At first, I thought I should start my endeavor to learn at the beginning of the universe. But this involves taking too many things to be assumed true without taking the intervening conclusion into account. For example, why should any believe the universe is expanding, or even started from a “Big Bang” without the underlying knowledge of Hubble’s Law concerning the Doppler Effect.
Secondly, I thought that I should start with the self. This is an intriguing idea that I still wish to incorporate into a future project. However for this purpose it seemed too difficult to find direction and not suitable for undertaking an empirical study of human knowledge. The idea was to go through a series of meditations while documenting my finds in a sort of dream log philosophical treatise. What are we, and what insights await to be found when spending significant mental and spiritual resources reflecting on the inner world of the self? Certainly things would manifest that most take for granted, and perhaps ways in discovering how to interpret what is true and what is false can be understood with a deep evaluation of the heart, mind and soul, considering it is these things that observe the outside world and all of its rights and wrongs to boot.
I would start inward and slowly evaluate, perhaps creating a mental projection of stages of rising to outward levels from the inward, and systematically observe what the most fundamental elements were to each level of awareness. It seems unavoidable that things pertaining to religion, science, and otherwise daily aspects of life should be addressed ultimately ending up with a very unique perspective on what is true that assuredly others could benefit from. But this remains to be seen for another day.
Then I thought about studying specific topics like how you would in school. Just doing it solo and at my own pace. I, in fact did start doing this. I started buying and reading books addressing most of the major academic areas of study. But even still I felt like I was having to take for granted too much information that had been previously used to create the body of knowledge of, say, archeology. This is a good example because no matter how thoroughly you explain the archeologists dating methods, a devoutly religious person will insist that the sea shells atop Mt Everest were placed there during the flood of Noah and that there is no other rational explanation for them getting there. Now, a scientist might groan in his depths at this premise, and a religious person might defend this notion until death regardless of any other bits of information. Personally, I am inclined to believe the most scientifically accepted view of this phenomenon that it was the mountain that rose out of the ocean floor carrying with it the sea creatures over an extended amount of time as opposed to the waters rising to the tops of it.
All of this said, it seems to me that there surely must have been a single explanation for what happened. Something did happen that took those shells to the top of Everest and I want to know what it was. And I believe there is a way to find out what it was. This is only one example of conflict, but it represents a major rift in thinking which in turn causes a lot of heartache for a lot of people. This represents one issue underpinning a vast array of bias and disinformation. I say this without hesitation because though I cannot say for certain what the answers are, I know certainly that I along with many(I feel compelled to not include “all”) people are biased. I don’t want to believe, I want to know. It is in the acquisition of knowledge that a person gains enlightenment. Oh how rare it is that a person should ever know anything, but positively it can be done. I know it!
So, researching individual topics takes too much information for granted residing in the realms outside of its field. So this would not do either.
Ultimately, and with much deliberation I concluded that I need to spend my life fulfilling a project that I believe will not only bring great purpose and personal satisfaction to me, but will benefit people all around the world now and in the future. I determined to read literature, starting with the very earliest that was known. Literature covers all elements of discovery, faith and philosophy and gets to the roots of every diverging belief system and field. I will outline in a future post describing my goals for this project how exactly I intend to go about this hefty work.
But suffice it to say for the moment, I have created a system for evaluating what has been written over the centuries. This system will systematically analyze the roots of all trains of thought and pinpoint their origins in an attempt to compute what is actually true devoid of personal bias. I don’t know if what I am attempting is possible but I have concluded that if it is… Than awesome! But if it isn’t than I still have gained so much. And at the end of the day, that is what I want. I want beyond anything else to learn as much of this place as I can, to love everyone that I can, and to live my life as best as I can.
I am very slowly realizing that I can do anything I set my mind to. For me it is simply a matter of harnessing the energy that I put out everyday and utilizing it to bring about my goals. The world is my drawing board. The universe is my inspiration. I am here and I have everything I need, a beating heart, an inquisitive mind, and breath to invigorate my soul. That said, I, by no means consider myself unique. The more I learn about my condition here as a human being the more I want others to know about their own capacity for the like. I find only one word that can somewhat come close to describing our potential: Incredible!