Different levels of recongintion.

Don't be all that sure you're so much smarter.. A tree is a tree before being a metaphor/imagery/package of molecules - or many other takes. Trees might have been trees before language. Trees have a big place in the human heart. Maybe she was starting an argument, potentially enjoyable, from her perspective. At the least, it sounds like you can talk.

In my own life, I was both smarter or dumber, though I didn't know it, in both directions, than my parents many times.
Yeesh, that we could talk now.
I never really thought I was smarter than my father but I often did, re my mother. Decades later I might like to call truce and talk for a week.

I don't care which of you is presently benighted. Talk and enjoy the engagement.

Oh, and the guy was likely hitting on you, though maybe not entirely, not that that is all bad.

You have decades more to explore while being attuned. Attuned as such may lose some radiance, and at some point or other you may skip much of that. But for now, do enjoy your leaping thinking, not as a flashlight to others possibly sexy, but for yourself. That's not an accusation, as I think you already do enjoy the exploration for itself.

You will work out your own thread of thinking, however much a braid or ponytail or (what) it is.


I guess I sound a little too commenting here, but you remind me of me, and, naturally, you're not.

Well there's lots of points on that subject; what we call a tree has undoubtedly been a tree before we came along to call it a tree. Yet if 'perception is reality' then the tree exists the moment we conceive it. Or maybe 'tree' is intrinsic..... Is the world subjective or objective? Is a tree only different from anything else through our definition of it, or is there real specific reasons that are innate?
There's so many patterns of thought about that subject.
I don't want you to think I'd had a sudden brainwave and was trying to shove an idea in my mothers face by claiming it was fact, like kids when they learn about something at school and harp on about it loads when they've actually missed the point. I was just musing it. I wasn't trying to change her world or anything.


I don't want to be so arrogant as to assume I'm smarter than my parents- that smacks of ungratefulness really. It could well be my ignorance of their true opinions.
I think the point is about my mother is that she doesn't care. She doesn't see philosophy as relevant to life, and if thats the way she wants to live thats honestly fine with me. There's different types of intelligence, and just because it's this the intelligence I value doesn't mean this intelligence is any better. I probably picked the wrong person to talk to.

Yeah, the guy was most likely hitting on me. He probably recognised I'm a sucker for being told I'm clever, a foot under the door. He was quite gentlemanly at the end of the night though, so I don't think he said it just to get one thing. Sometimes the 'chatting up' situation can pull compliments out of people that are actually true, but wouldn't otherwise be said. Or whatever. Maybe I just want to believe its true.

I know I've got a lo to learn os. It's quite a young-person thing to use new found 'attuned-ness' to batter the world (and the old). I won't do that. I'm not thinking in this way just to flatter my own ego, it's a natural process and I can't help it- thus my confusion that it doesn't happen to everyone.

The only thing that greatly worries me about what you say is that it will loose it's radiance. I don't want that. The world is so beautiful now.
But then I'm living the luxury of a degree in london. Maybe life dulls thought as a coping mechanism.

What I need is a good few years hard labour. That'll do me good. Ploughing fields or shoveling coal or something.

Re: Different levels of recongintion.

People are not all "equal" even in societies where there is a presumtion of equal rights. There are huge variations in intellectual ability, education, life experiences and character. For many (probably most) people in the world, trees are concrete objects that are useful for making food, fires, houses and weapons. They have no reason to think of trees any other way. So how does questioning the existence of trees benefit anyone, really?

Assuming your question is not rhetorical, define "benefit" in the context you provided.

I never said that it benefited anyone.
People may not be all equal when put against scales of 'ability' or 'wealth' but they are all equal as people, because they are all people.
I never proclaimed my way of looking at trees was superior to those who look at them as concrete objects.

Re: Different levels of recongintion.

I'm with your mother. I don't know what the hell you're talking about either.