It's not Easy, Being Green-ness

I say “green”.  You hear me say green.  You know what I mean.  I watch you pick up the green crayon, so now I know that you knew what I meant.

What just happened?  Discounting pure serendipity, we proved that we are able to communicate and that we have a shared understanding of what the word “green” means. 

Philosophy takes this ball and runs with it all the way to the philosophical goal line.  Philosophy assumes that this proves that we have the same notion of the philosophical ideal of “green-ness”.    Even better, philosophers will say that green-ness needs to exist to give meaning to what we see as just plain “green”.

This need to create green-ness lies at the intersection of our deep-seeded desire to connect with each other and our fear of connection.

Except for Mr. Spock on Star Trek, nobody has ever truly known the mind of another.  The most we can hope for is a highly refined mutual understanding within the limitations of language or art. Our minds are, by our nature, isolated.

The good news is that we are not our minds.  Our minds are just one aspect of ourselves.  The truth is, that we can hold hands.  We can help carry things.  We can laugh at jokes and we can cry in hospital rooms.  The flaw in philosophy is to think that these experiences are not ideal enoug.h

Thank goodness that this notion of perfection is imaginary because I can only imagine that it’s not easy being “green-ness”.