An Onion is Not an Artichoke

(Before It's News)

Life is complex. It is a mixture of politics philosophy and economics, which some people study, in an effort to understand. Approaching life as something that needs to be understood is the work of an alchemist; it is complex and results in failure because you cannot understand what cannot be understood. Some of us pretend we can understand life and the solutions to our daily problems. Politicians make this claim; perhaps like Fermat we can claim that we have the proof but the margin is too small to bear it, which of course is no proof at all.  Philosophers have insights but that overwhelming philosophy which answers all questions is elusive; it cannot be. Economists confuse themselves looking for an explanation for economic activity which will provide a perfect state of economic entropy. They are deluded.

Of course there are insights and perception, but these are not a cohesive framework, but mere glimpses of parts of a machine. We think that knowledge displaces ignorance but it does not. It moves from a wise mind into a less wise mind, diluting the wisdom of the wise in order to provide a small enrichment of the foolish.

So the study of politics philosophy and economics is like a man to treble business bound who stands in pause of where he must begin and all neglects. And yet out politicians and leaders are experts in the study of these disciplines; better to have studied life although they have no chance of understanding it, simply a chance of gaining a little wisdom from the study of life.

Trying to understand life is rather like trying to peel an onion. As you take each layer off, you find more of the same underneath. The more you take off in an effort to discover what lies at the heart of the onion the less you find. You end up with nothing. There is no heart in an onion; it is a collection of layers, no more than that. If you peel an onion thinking that it is going to reveal a heart, to show some substance you will be disappointed. An onion is not an artichoke.

Filed under: climate change Tagged: economic activity, fermat, heart of an artichoke, layers of an onion, philosophy and economics, politics, the study of PPE, wisdom

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