So this was the hardest of the philosophy branches for me to break down. I said it’s the nature of being; what makes a thing a thing.
The book didn’t break this down as much as I was hoping it would. All it talked about was ‘the soul’ and Aristotle’s 4 causes which I found too impractical; translating it to real life doesn’t leave me with anything but, “ok, and?”
So the best I can do for now is attempt to tie it into things we deal with every day.
Languages have metaphysical qualities to them. Irish and Scottish don’t have a word for ‘no’. Eskimos have 40 different words for snow. Some languages don’t recognize purple as a color. Some see blue and green. Even if it seems like they’re just noises you make with your mouth, these affect our perception of reality. It ties into how a culture may do certain things.
Cars are a metaphysical factor of urbanism. They’re one of our most private spaces. We talk to ourselves in the car. We sing out loud knowing we can’t sing. People use it for ‘that’. Or if you live with a lot of people you might sit in the car when you get home to get that last bit of alone time.We can say they’ve brought us closer to each other. A friend who lives 10 miles away is long distance if you’re on foot, but nothing when you have a car.
On the other hand, car culture
*depressing rush hour traffic* *cartoon of roads taking away from cities*
Or what smartphones have done to us socially. With social media, instant access to video cameras and web searching. Just like with cars, we can say they’ve brought us closer together, we can talk to somebody on the other side of the world, but they also separate us. If you feel out of place in a social situation, you retreat to your phone.
Personal identity is a timeless metaphysical concept. Especially now with gender dysphoria and transitionings. Some people don’t think male and female suffice to define who you are as a person. Masculinity and feminity are major ones. What makes a man? Not a male, but a man? Same goes for women. Race identity is one. That phrase “Too white for the black kids, too black for the white kids”. Even if you’re not biracial, some people don’t feel like they’re truly their race or heritage if they don’t have certain interests.
Abortion is a metaphysical issue. Some people see the fetus as a life, some see a clump of cells. Neither are exactly wrong.
End of the day, metaphysics is about what a thing does for us as humans. Animals don’t waste time thinking about this because they gotta worry about survival.
So as an individual, I’ll admit you don’t stand much to gain from thinking about this. This is more for producers who create the things we use and live with. So politicians, lawmakers, sociologists, urban planners, marketers, or even physical builders like architects, engineers, inventors, etc.
In terms of where to go next with this… again I don’t like Aristotle’s 4 causes so I’m not gonna read his book on metaphysics.
I care about this so much because I want to be a filmmaker, and to make a film, you’re reconstructing reality. But to recreate reality, you must first understand it, which is physics.
I’ll be doing a brief science series on physics, and in that I hope to get a better understanding of how to tie this into humanity. You can’t use this by itself, it has to be tied into something practical.
Grant Abraham 