“Just because the moon and the sun looks the same size from where you stand does not mean that they are of the same size.”
This “thing-in-itself” and “thing-as-they-appear” is not so new and has been quite thoroughly explored by Kant and then further “improved” by Schopenhauer, as he would have liked to believe. Anyways, it will be a very long post if we delve into this topic, even if we are just to discuss about Kant’s idea of thing-in-itself versus Schopenhauer’s so-called critique. It suffice here to say that in Kant’s idea, the “thing-in-itself” is transcendental and cannot be known while Schopenhauer thought that the “Will” is the “thing-in-itself” which is not separate from the things that appear to be (phenomena).
Anyways, nowadays I lean towards what is said in the Heart Sutra, that everything is empty of itself, i.e. there is no distinction between things in itself and things that they appear to be (which one feels like what Schopenhauer is saying although not exactly but this is no surprise as he is very much into Oriental philosophy).
Well, let’s get back to the subject of this post. Actually what I wanted to say here is really simple, i.e. it is important to be aware and realize our own point of view because just because we happen to be standing here and looking at something and interpreting them as they are, this does not mean that other people standing somewhere else cannot have a different interpretation. At the end, they are both talking about the same object but just describing them from their own perspective, their own point of view.
This is really basic and very simple to understand but inevitably, somehow this gets lost somewhere and mankind lose their rational mind and unreasonable emotion gets in the way. It is of course impossible to “take away” emotions which I personally believe is impossible. An emotionless rationality makes no sense because mankind is an emotional animal and to take away that aspect by pure force of logic does not stand against the test of time. But what I am really saying is to regulate such emotion and use the rational mind, together with a regulated emotional state and make sensible and reasonable decisions.
Emotion without reason is as deadly as reason without emotion.