Idea of "Other"
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Concept Description

This category overlaps with   Appearance and Reality   Epistemology   Idea of Time   Language   Souls

The concept of the "other world", including the "spiritual world" is central to the human mind, intellect or imagination. It is a world occupied by things of the mind such as God, mathematics, morality, and other residents. It is intimately linked with concepts represented by the primordial Greek Gods Chronos (time) and Ananke (necessity or cause and effect). The idea of a controllable (Ananke) future (Chronos) gives rise to morality, (i.e. action now to produce better or worse futures). Morality is often applied to communities as wholes (e.g. nations, races, or Cubs fans).

Chronos and Anake are both sources of human imagination, from which the "other" world flows. We hate nature because it portends death, so we invent immortality, the primary delusion of the "other"; then God, Heaven, Hell, Samsara, and Morality. Morality is usually linked to desire for an improved future (Chronos), by right action now (Ananke). Living a moral life provides Meaning the other of God's characteristics (Meaning, Morality, Mortality).

We use Language to communicate about the "other". Mathematics provides the least ambiguous description to bridge the gap between minds and many say the best way to predict the future by physical laws reduced to mathematics. Did we "discover" the laws and math or "invent" them? I suggest the latter. The physical laws and math came from the same source as God, the human imagination. We "image" things that are NOT as targets for thing that are, 'what is'. Imagination is perhaps merely a plaything for others to find uses. But someone will always find "use" for the playthings to improve the future.

An improved future is perhaps a better bomb to kill enemies that don't accept our moral system and therefore and not human, therefore killable without violating the principle "do not kill". Perhaps an improved future is when everyone to join the movement to good values: i.e. when no racism, no sexism, no genderism exists anywhere in the world; when we all recognize the inherent dignity of all humans (and perhaps mammals); when we finally learn to love everyone. (Eric Hoffer had it right on this one)

Besides God, math is the ultimate generalization and refers to nothing in particular. That is why math cannot predict the next leaf to fall from a tree, but only say, "probably many leaves (perhaps an estimated number) will fall by this date every year." Some imaginary Gods can predict the next leaf to fall, the omniscient ones.

We can't know God, i.e. what "is", so we invent language, including math and science, to convince ourself we "can". And, boy, we do invent stories that know the gods want. Gods also demonstrate avoidance of death, to be pursued in "Reality" by science and math (STEM). (there are current calls to listen to "science" to keep us "safe" during the pandemic of 2020, as if science" has anything to do with safety, that's a political issue)
Of course, ghosts and other spirits of the dead live in this world of human imagination.

So what is real? What "can" we know? I'll let Lao Tzu answer, he gave a good one 2500 years ago. What have we learned, if not society doesn't listen to sages?

"Existence is beyond the power of words to define,
Terms may be used But none of them are absolute"

       Brynner