Everywhere a Cluck Cluck

EIEIO

Enough
Is
Enough.
I've got this,
Or it's over.

The first iteration of Notes That Missed the Basket had 144 notes.

The next was More Notes That Missed with 37 notes.

I'm now working on Still Missing The Basket with 52 notes.

Warning: 53 is a prime number. YES, you're right; we shouldn't be superstitious about numbers. BUT when I reach 53 notes, this blog is due for some maintenance. In anticipation, I have been busy printing out everything making a pile of paper an inch deep or more to ensure that my excellent thoughts survive the purge.

Yet reading it, I find I often disagree with what I had to say back when. That's me, a yes-but sort of guy. For me, it's not over until I stop the yes-butting. Then it all goes in the basket. You can catch a thought before it's gone or yes-but it yourself to keep it alive. Yes-butting is recommended. Tag along as I yes-but Plato once again.

What came first, the chicken or the idea of chicken? That question takes us back to Plato (~400 BCE), whose thoughts were foundational in western tradition. Plato imagined that certain ideas (forms) are more real than mere material objects that are imperfect instances of those eternal ideas. According to Plato, the idea of chicken was the egg from which a chicken hatched. Apparently millions agree since this is the premise behind creationism.

Yes, but Plato could have got it backwards. Viewing the universe objectively, it looks to me like objects exist prior to ideas. Plato didn't know DNA. If he were here thinking about ideas while knowing about DNA, he might conclude that mind emerges from matter through a lengthy process, mindless atoms aggregating to make living things which replicate with variation until consciousness appears. Then ideas emerge from mind in response to experience, and continue to evolve as experience modifies them. Perhaps objects generate ideas, not the other way around.

Yes, but this thought, like every thought, is incomplete. There are, in reality, objects like a prize-winning chicken, that emerge from ideas such as an ideal chicken producing eggs or meat for market. 

The latest iteration of chicken involves both mindless variations in DNA and thoughtful ideas of poultry breeders about what constitutes a good chicken. Chickenness is not an eternal idea. It continues changing as DNA and breeder have their way. The idea and the object participate in Being and Becoming, and the cluck-cluck goes on.

You have witnessed in these notes my attempts to express abstract ideas in emotive and memorable phrases, 

like these:

Life is Being and Becoming.

We have a say in what happens next.
God's plan is that we make a plan.
If we don't care, God doesn't care.
Care enough to make a plan.

God plays dice.
People play the odds.
Smart people play the violin.
Wise people practice with ear plugs.

The meaning of life

is that we search for
the meaning of life.

Don't sell your soul for an idea.
Ask questions, or it all goes in the basket.

Everywhere a cluck cluck.