AES 11: Chokhma

Today, our school principle showed us a video. I really don't know the proper context of the video is; it's seemingly like an excerpt from an author named Yuval Noah Harari. Nonetheless, I found it to be quite unremarkable, and overly dramatic because of the topic it brought up. Without further ado, let's get a little heated.

The main theme of the video (and the intention from the looks of it) is it's trying to show us that there are two type of realities which entities in this world categorized into: Fictional and objective. It's a simple concept, really. Fictional reality entities are certain objects that only us human believe that there's a certain value to be found within these objects, for example: money, states, nations, et cetera. These objects don't have any "real" value in reality, because if you walk up to a chimpanzee and offer it $10 for a banana, the chimpanzee will absolutely smack the heck out of you. While these objective entities are just objects that are what they are, like mountain, trees, animals, BANANAS, and so on. Now that we've established that, let's talk about the narrative; how the video delivers the said topic.

Notwithstanding the intrigue of the premise, the video merely tries to reject these concepts for no apparent reason; I found it to be rather odd. I have a belief in a particular Jewish mysticism━specifically the Kabbalah's Tree of Life━which says that there are 11 sephiroth in every human. I'm not gonna go and explain all eleven of them, but I want to take two of the highest sephiroth before the unconscious kether: These sephiroth are called Chokhma and Binah respectively. Like most of the other sephiroth, Chokhma and Binah are two attributes that's constantly against each other; as if one is the North Pole and the other is the South. Chokhma represents something called wisdom, while Binah represents comprehension (it's intuitive understanding or contemplation but I'm going to call it that for convenient sake). Wisdom in Chokhma context is weigh infinite; it has no boundary for the very shape of it is abstract; it's unintelligible. But, y'see, this attribute is also synonymous with faith. Think about it! It is said that Chokhma was born out of emptiness. But how exactly? Well, you just need to solemnly believe that something truly exists, and then *poof* it shows up! (Beginning to see the pattern?) A stalwart faith also comes with the responsibility of being a disagreeable fellow because of what you put faith to, so be very careful in that regard. Binah, on the other hand is just tangible knowledge that you know of; that you understood and comprehended. One is esoteric and the other is intelligible. 

Do you remember when this essay is about a video about two opposing objects? Well let's get back into that and relate these two topics. It is can be said positively that, for convenient sake, in every money (a fictional reality object) there's faith put into it. Yes, we believe that these papers have an inherent value to it. The catch is, you do understand that this value does not come without function━a function that we need, because all human does thing with needs. Even two seemingly conflicting aspects are coexisting in this fictional reality object, I wonder why! I'm going to quote the following from the video; "Today, the very survival of rivers and trees and lions and elephants depend on the decisions and wishes of fictional entities that exist only in our own imagination." To this, I say, are you well? Because this sounds so nihilistic, as if you've worked retail in your whole life and one day you just decide, "I don't like concepts!" Everything exists for a reason; we humans collectively agreed that we need these things for our society to work, otherwise we won't! Rather than rejecting these concepts that actually benefit us, we need to reject those who are consciously preying and exploiting upon it. I forgot the rest of what I'm going to say and I don't have any novel conclusion, so uhh:

We don't believe in lies without a reason.

(epic transition outro)