What is an Idea? (part three)
In our ongoing exploration of the meaning of “idea,” we see that skill in linguistic manipulation often means that our philosophy is correct by agreement among ourselves while others have unproved ideas. This is a cultivated talent of all good debaters. While we have principles, they have ideas (notions or opinions). Meanwhile, our group, (whatever that is), country, or community thinks about what is truly important and create principles of varying actual logical sense. There is a story called, “The Lord of the Flies”, about lost boys living on an island with no adults, no education, fending for themselves. They invented strange rules, principles, and attitudes as well as an ability to punish others for seemingly innocuous reasons. It causes me to think about different cultural values. For example, I saw a documentary about the Inuit and their shamanic culture, which has a tremendous number of rules. I cannot remember the details but it would be as if I was going to take a cooki...