Breaking Down the Idea to a Bundle of Perceptions

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Following John Locke’s empiricism and refutation of innate ideas, David Hume (1711 – 1776) argues that knowledge of the world comes from experience. To be more technical, humans have simple sense impressions (e.g., a speck of color), and afterward they have simple ideas of the impressions. Humans then combine these simple ideas into complex ideas (e.g., a tree).
More significantly, for Hume, complex ideas should be able to be traced backwards in this operation because only ideas that come from impression can be considered true. Is the complex idea of a tree traceable back to simple impressions? Each part of the idea of the tree (shape, color, the sound in the wind, etc.) can be traced back to simple ideas that were used to construct it. Also, each simple idea can be traced back to a simple sense impression.

Hume – Breaking Down the Idea of the Self

The idea of the self is a complex one: a lived unity that proceeds (and changes) through time. Can the idea of the self be traceable back to simple impressions? The complex idea can be broken down into simple ideas (e.g., particular feelings, perceptions, judgments, and actions), and these simple ideas can be broken down into simple impressions just like the idea of the tree was broken down.
Unlike the tree, the connection of one part to another cannot be observed. The feelings, perceptions, etc., that humans have are connected only succession. What ties the succession of perceptions together? Answering with the self commits the fallacy of begging the question. The self as the unifier is presupposed and not proven. It appears to be the case that the self as a complex idea is combined from simple ideas and then laid back over the flow of experience to be the subject of perceptions, etc. For Hume, there is no philosophical justification for this combination of simple ideas into the idea of the self.
If the self is, instead, thought to be a single unit (that is, a simple idea), then it must be traceable to a simple impression. Moreover, this impression must be invariably throughout one’s life. A human must have the same impression at 7 and at 77. However, there are no impressions that humans have that are invariably the same.

Music and memories Increase longing for the past

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It is normal for individuals to have a treasure chest of wonderful memories of events in their lives, particularly exciting events that occurred in the distant past. Quite often, a person may reflect on days which are long gone and may even find themselves longing for what they suppose are happier times.
Whenever someone reflects on life — and such reflection results in yearning for another bygone era — the person is suffering from a condition termed nostalgia.

Music can Influence Longing for the Past

A person’s longing for a specific era in the distant past may be increased by the hearing of a song from that era. For example, if one belonging to Generation Y was attending high school in 2000, he might recall the popularity of the Blink-182 song, "All the Small Things." Whether he liked the song or not isn’t particularly relevant. It is the context in which the song is placed that has special meaning.
The person’s mind may be overwhelmed by memories of fellow students singing its lyrics in the school yard, or memories of the actual song being played at the school social that year. Indeed, if such longings occurred between 2005 and 2008 — when Blink 182 was temporarily disbanded — the person might be shattered to learn that they are no longer a musical group. A precious link to the past is thereby destroyed.

Memories can Influence Longing for the Past

If someone visits a place where they grew up but had long since moved, the longing for that time in the person’s history may suddenly become intense. This is a common trigger for nostalgia, even for those without nostalgic predispositions.

The Truth of Post-Modern Thinking

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Post-modernism is theorized as a breaking-down of the ``master narratives' of teleological progress, a deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, a dissolution of the coherent individual into contingent subjectivities, and an interrogation of Western white heterosexual hegemony. Like the people at the Tower of Babel, modern man has been fragmented and scattered. There is no center of discourse any longer. So exactly what is postmodernism? The situation is profoundly complex and ambiguous. But basically speaking, postmodernism is anti-foundationalism, or an anti-worldview. It denies the existence of any universal truth or standards.

The Incredulity Towards Metannarratives

Jean-Francois Lyotard, perhaps the most influential writer in postmodern thought, defines postmodernism as "incredulity towards metannarratives."For all intents and purposes, a metanarrative is a worldview: a network of elementary assumptions . . . in terms of which every aspect of our experience and knowledge is interrelated and interpreted. Metanarratives are, according to postmodernist scholar Patricia Waugh, "Large-scale theoretical interpretations purportedly of universal application."

The Arrogance of Post-Modernism

The postmodernist's, it would seem, would tolerate having a coherent worldview so long as it is kept from being asserted as universal in its application. This is not the case though. The goal, so to speak, of postmodernism is to not only reject metanarratives, but also the belief in coherence. Not only is any worldview which sees itself as foundational for all others oppressive, belief that one may even have a coherent worldview is rejected as well. Nevertheless, there are many worldviews around today, and the postmodernist finds it to be his responsibility to critique, or "deconstruct" as they call it, such worldviews and "flatten them out," so that no one particular approach or belief is more "true" than any other.

Truth or no Truth; That is the Question

What constitutes truth, then, is relative to the individual or community holding the belief. As we have seen, for the postmodern thinker, there are no absolute truths or foundations to work from. Properly speaking then, postmodernism is not a worldview per se; it does not attempt to construct a model or a paradigm that orders reality; reality alludes attempts at conformity for the postmodernist, and so he deconstructs all attempts at creating such absolute foundations. So there is no “truth” for the post-modern thinker.
Modernity and Christianity debated as to which view was true; postmodernism attacks both Christianity and modernity because they claim to be "true." Christianity affirms certain necessary beliefs that must be assumed in order to make sense out of the world (e.g., that the triune God exists, that he is both transcendent and immanent, that the Bible is his Word). Postmodernism rejects the idea that reality makes sense in any absolute fashion, and reduces any construction to personal or cultural bias.

Short Love Sayings by Women

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Short Love Sayings by Women

  • To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others. (Anne-Sophie Swetchine)
  • Age does not protect you from love, but love, to some extent, protects you from age. (Jeanne Moreau)
  • Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour! (Aphra Behn, 1640-1689; The Emperor of the Moon)
  • Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret. (Aphra Behn; The Lover’s Watch)
  • There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters. (Alice Thomas Ellis)
  • I sometimes think the gods have united human beings by some mysterious principal…Or is it as Plato has supposed, that souls originally one have been divided, and each seeks the half it lost? (Lydia Maria Child, 1802-1880; Philothea: A Romance)
  • He woos me with those honeyed words that women love to hear. (Emma C. Embury, 1806-1863, “The Widow’s Wooer”)
  • Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood. (Louise Beal)
  • Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love, though I’d stepped in it a few times. (Rita Rudner)
  • Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. (Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)
  • To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven. (Karen Sunde)
  • Trouble is part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough. (Dinah Shore, 1917-1994)

Short Love Sayings by Men

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Short Love Sayings by Men

  • Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. (Robert Frost, 1874-1963)
  • She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won. (George Meredith, 1828-1909)
  • I fear to love you, sweet, because love is the ambassador of loss. (Francis Thompson, 1859-1907)
  • When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. (John Ruskin, 1819-1900)
  • The love of man and woman is as fire to warm, to light, but surely to consume and self-consuming die. (James J. Roche, 1847-1908)
  • Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. (H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956)
  • Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; Tis woman’s whole existence. Lord Byron, 1788-1824; Don Juan)
  • Give all to love; obey thy heart. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882)
  • One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love. (Sophocles, 496 BC-406 BC)
  • Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are. (John Dryden, 1631-1700)
  • When love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616; Love’s Labour’s Lost)
  • Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
  • Love must kiss that mortal’s eyes who hopes to see fair Arcady. No gold can buy you entrance there… (Henry C. Bunner, 1855-1896)
  • It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important. (Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1969)