A thing is called sacred and Divine when it is designed for promoting piety, and continues sacred so long as it is religiously used: if the users cease to be pious, the thing ceases to be sacred: if it be turned to base uses, that which was formerly sacred becomes unclean and profane. - Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, Chapter XII.
It's pretty obvious Spinoza was talking about religion here. I'll leave that commentary to more learned men (or at least myself at another time). But this passage made me reflect on what any object's meaning really is. Specifically, the value we attach to things. Is not all value just ephemeral? Can any value truly, truly be objective? If you extrapolate this out somewhat, values are types of adjectives in the sense that squares are types of shapes. Well, is there such thing as an objective adjective? I suppose you'd have to really reach towards solipsism to answer that affirmatively, but it's thought provoking. I wonder to what extent adjectives, and returning to my original argument, values can be objective. That is, permanent and part of the object.
I immensely value some of my things, and act rather carelessly towards others. This I suppose could be an externalization of my valuation of those things, similar to how Spinoza values some religious objects above others, based on how they are currently used. It seems wrong to think of my values and valued objects as only thoughts, temporary thoughts. I value my car, for instance, and my computer and my books and my video games. Are they only valuable so far as I derive happiness from them? Seems like an easily answerable 'yes', but not so fast. You could certainly say my books are valuable even beyond the value they bring to me. Hence, is there a universal approach I am missing? I feel as though these questions have already been addressed in previous readings, but I have been to boneheaded to realize it, or at least to internalize it.
I am now reading a very promising book on how food shaped world history. Only up through the second chapter, but it's very potent stuff. One of the seemingly more minor details was that carrots were originally white and purple - only in the sixteenth century did Dutch horticulturists produce an orange version, which stuck. I couldn't care less what color my carrots are, but this is interesting stuff. How many other 'natural' foods are anything but? Corn and wheat have also been addressed in this book, along with rice to an extent. But other produce? Meat? I wonder what it would have been like to eat a hamburger made a few millenia ago. Or what a salad would have tasted like. These are probably very first-world suburban questions, but that's life.
I'll close with another gem from Spinoza. It being the object of the Bible to make men not learned, but obedient.
It's pretty obvious Spinoza was talking about religion here. I'll leave that commentary to more learned men (or at least myself at another time). But this passage made me reflect on what any object's meaning really is. Specifically, the value we attach to things. Is not all value just ephemeral? Can any value truly, truly be objective? If you extrapolate this out somewhat, values are types of adjectives in the sense that squares are types of shapes. Well, is there such thing as an objective adjective? I suppose you'd have to really reach towards solipsism to answer that affirmatively, but it's thought provoking. I wonder to what extent adjectives, and returning to my original argument, values can be objective. That is, permanent and part of the object.
I immensely value some of my things, and act rather carelessly towards others. This I suppose could be an externalization of my valuation of those things, similar to how Spinoza values some religious objects above others, based on how they are currently used. It seems wrong to think of my values and valued objects as only thoughts, temporary thoughts. I value my car, for instance, and my computer and my books and my video games. Are they only valuable so far as I derive happiness from them? Seems like an easily answerable 'yes', but not so fast. You could certainly say my books are valuable even beyond the value they bring to me. Hence, is there a universal approach I am missing? I feel as though these questions have already been addressed in previous readings, but I have been to boneheaded to realize it, or at least to internalize it.
I am now reading a very promising book on how food shaped world history. Only up through the second chapter, but it's very potent stuff. One of the seemingly more minor details was that carrots were originally white and purple - only in the sixteenth century did Dutch horticulturists produce an orange version, which stuck. I couldn't care less what color my carrots are, but this is interesting stuff. How many other 'natural' foods are anything but? Corn and wheat have also been addressed in this book, along with rice to an extent. But other produce? Meat? I wonder what it would have been like to eat a hamburger made a few millenia ago. Or what a salad would have tasted like. These are probably very first-world suburban questions, but that's life.
I'll close with another gem from Spinoza. It being the object of the Bible to make men not learned, but obedient.
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