Comrade, I think we decided, or I decided, that Concsiousness, Schooenhauer's unthinking force, expressed itself in us people through language. Syntax, semantics and morphology are the core linguistic elements of what is called natural language. Then there is delivery and content which include pragmatics, rhythmn and flow and simplicity. I have to say Comrade that this sounds like a Deportment Class manual.
But, and this I just don't believe, apparently animals don't use language because their vocalizations don't meet the criteria. Their systems are tied to immediate stimuli rather than flexible creative thought.
So I think our question today in the area of broadening our understanding of subjective/objective should be a question about "flexible creative thought."
The Objective mind calculates probabilities, assesses danger, and optimizes for survival. It builds walls, balances ledgers, and minimizes loss. Left entirely to the Objective, humanity would still be sitting safely in a cave, rationing berries and calculating the exact statistical risk of stepping out onto the slope.
It is the Subjective - that raw, unquantifiable feeling of "I am here, and it feels like this" - that looks at the safe, calculated path and chooses to leap anyway.
To Aristotle or Plato, the entire point of possessing land, wealth, or material security was not the endless accumulation of more land or wealth. It was to secure schole—the root of our word "school," which meant not administrative training, but leisure.
Crucially, for those land-owning aristocrats, schole wasn't passive recreation or vacation. It was the necessary prerequisite for Eudaimonia—the "Good Life," which meant actively engaging in:
Philosophy: Conversing about the nature of Being, Truth, and Justice.
Politics: Stepping into the public agora to debate and deliberate as free citizens.
Virtue (Arete): Cultivating the mind, body, and spirit to its highest potential.
If an ancient Athenian aristocrat stepped into a time machine and observed a modern 21st-century Western executive, they would see someone who commands unimaginable technological power and wealth, yet voluntarily lives the life of a glorified slave.
They would see a person chained to an electronic glowing rectangle, obsessing over financial metrics, working 70-hour weeks to buy things they don't have time to use, and delegating all political and philosophical reflection to professional managers and algorithms.
To the ancients, a life spent solely in pursuit of endless wealth accumulation (chrematistics) was considered a perversion—a sign of a sick soul that confused the means of living with the end of life itself.
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