All is Vanity

[Brute_Force]

Having spent many years in study and searching for answers, I find myself arriving at the same conclusions drawn by King Solomon from his pursuit of wisdom. I find so much of what is said here on this forum and elsewhere as "old wine poured into new bottles."

From time to time, I come upon ideas that seem novel and intriguing, but like all ideas they become old and stale when looked at through the prism of time.


3 What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun goes down,
and hurries to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south,
and goes around to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they continue to flow.
8 All thingsc are wearisome;
more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
"See, this is new"?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.
11 The people of long ago are not remembered,
nor will there be any remembrance
of people yet to come
by those who come after them.

 

[rgraham666]

Love is older than wisdom, boredom or disillusionment.

That's enough for me.

 

[Stella_Omega]

After half a century-- I still have not gotten tired of;

Love,

Sex,

Friendship,

Conversation,

Creating art,

Building,

Growing things,

Being around animals...

I might make a difference to someone during my lifetime, and I might make a difference to some lives that come after me. That's good enough.

 

[tickledkitty]

Being and Nothingness
(to quote a philosopher)


i haven't done anything
meaningful in so long
it's almost meaningful
to do nothing

i suppose i could fall in love
or at least in line
since i'm so discontented
but that takes effort
and i don't want to exert anything
neither my energy nor my emotions

i've always prided myself
on being a child of the sixties
and we are all finished
so that makes being
nothing

--Nikki Giovanni

 

[slyc_willie]

I might make a difference to someone during my lifetime, and I might make a difference to some lives that come after me. That's good enough.

We all will, Stella.

That's the wonderful thing about being human. No matter what we do, we are important to someone.

 

[rengadeirishman]

there are three quotes, that i think sum up my feelings on life.


It is better to die on your feet, then live on your knees-Emiliano Zapata.

Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once- Shakespeare

What is left when honour is lost?-Publilus Syrus

 

[neonlyte]

Borrowed time.

Ideas wait for imagination to take hold of them - the SO.

Impermanence is just a veil waiting to be parted.

 

[gauchecritic]

It's not the ideas that count, it's the way that they are formed and what they are used for.

There have been many points in my life when I find that a conclusion that I have drawn is already encapsulated in an aphorism or saying, and just because someone thought of it before doesn't mean that the thought isn't original.

MiAmico is rather fond of discounting leftist feelings promulgated here as mere regurgitation of Marxism. (we all know the irony with which he is bound in that thought) but there are many people that come to those conclusions themselves without ever having heard of Freidrich Engels.

It may well be that there is nothing new under the sun but there has never been and never will be again that particular person that thought of that answer. Any answer. The difference being that having the answer they come up with unique questions to be asked.

So, and I'm absolutely certain that someone must have said this somewhere at some time: The answer isn't always what you're seeking, it's the question.

(Just thought of one example of that, Douglas Adams.)

 

[neonlyte]

It's not the ideas that count, it's the way that they are formed and what they are used for.

...

So, and I'm absolutely certain that someone must have said this somewhere at some time: The answer isn't always what you're seeking, it's the question.

(Just thought of one example of that, Douglas Adams.)

Yeh... I like this. The SO likens ideas as metaphorically hanging in space waiting for people to grasp them. She formed a website in 2000, gave it a name. In the same month, a guy formed a website with the same name (one is .org, the other is .com) They both deal with the same topic from the entirely different directions of a baker and an artist. In all the intervening (?) years they did not meet despite the similarity of idea approached from two different perspectives. They did finally meet a couple of months ago, brought together through a mutual acquaintance. What was astonishing (to an outsider) was the degree of reverence each held for the other as if they had spent years communicating without ever actually speaking.

Hmmm... the question always frames 'self', which may be why I try to write.

 

[Brute_Force]

Thank you for reminding me of what can be joyous and good. I have a tendency to become a bit tired of it all sometimes and crave the feeling of newness that I have not felt in a long time.

It's time to get out my David Lynch movies and be reminded that when linear approaches to thinking become trite, turn everything backwards and see it from another perspective.

 

[Recidiva]

These are cycles, always subject to creation and destruction.

Each theme and cycle may be repetitive, but each moment is unique.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Gottfried Liebnitz invented the first mechanical calculator, back in 1689 or 94, thereabouts.

Charles Babbage came up with the idea of a re-programmable "differential machine" that would perform many different arithmatical functions, back in 1822. He was never able to build it, though. Among the factors that stopped the process was the dearth of constant power to propel the mechanism. He came up with a second version, which wasn't built until 1989-91, and it works very well...

Brute, I know that feeling you speak of, very well. It's frustrating, for sure!

 

[R. Richard]

7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they continue to flow.

From Wiki:
The Basin and Range province's dynamic fault history has profoundly affected the region's water drainage system. Most precipitation in the Great Basin falls in the form of snow that melts in the spring. Rain that reaches the ground, or snow that melts, quickly evaporates in the dry desert environment. Some of the water that does not evaporate sinks into the ground to become ground water. The remaining water flows into streams and collects in short-lived lakes called playas on the valley floor and eventually evaporates. Any water that falls as rain or snow into this region does not escape out of it; not one of the streams that originate within this basin ever finds an outlet to the ocean. The extent of internal drainage, the area in which surface water cannot reach the ocean, defines the geographic region called the Great Basin.