Philosophically speaking, who or what is “the World?”?

What is the world?

Who are the world's inhabitants?

A point that one must realize.

~~~~~

~~~~~

The world is a stage...

here there is singing and dancing...

here there is such drama...

we are all actors upon this stage...

The world is a marketplace...

where all types of goods are made available...

this marketplace will provide whatever one desires...

Here there are gatherings, here there are games...

but tomorrow these will desert us...

oh, no one has understood that...

This would is a stage...

who will realize what will happen tomorrow...

without understanding this...

without understanding that One treasure...

which has no end, which has no change...

which can't be seen without opening...

their heart so completely...

and observing through, That, this most mysterious treasure...

and seeing that these men have been actors born upon this stage...

The actors upon this stage...

must understand that treasure...

which is deeply mixed with Love...

they do not realize or understand their birth or their death...

oh, the sections belonging to birth and death...

one must analyze both so completely...

~~~~~

~~~~~

This is but a small part of the story.

One can only hope that it is of some benefit, regarding your question.

Peace be always with you.

Salaams,

It seems like "the World" is just everything that makes up surroundings, influences, mind...everything that is known and has an effect on someone. I don't quite understand what your book was trying to point out, though. The World, in those terms, does change and evolve over long periods of time. Look at ow society's developed. Last century, segregation between the races was determined as the "right" thing to do. At the time, everyone born during that time would have been influenced by "the World" in such a way so that they,for the most part, also believed that segregation was the right way to go. "The World" changed, however, with a couple 'mutations,' such as Martin Luther King Jr. These 'mutations,' similarly to some biological mutations, ended up changing the course of history for the better by spreading influence throughout the world and being successful enough to influence enough minds; and thus, "the World" changed, causing today's society to change along with it.

It doesn't seem that big or important a question to me...but I probably have all sorts of different ways of thinking than you do, seeing as how I come from a different area, a different family, maybe even a different time scheme...a different World.

From your description, it seems that you have come across the essence of the idea that the world and everything in it is just an idea held by consciousness. (Nice work!) All our descriptions of the world are stories, as concepts, which arise one at a time and then pass away without actually affecting anything, precisely as in a dream. These ideas cannot change one thing "in the world" because they are entirely in consciousness. Every sage in every century has said the same thing with the language and the metaphors of their time. They have used such language and concepts and stories necessary to actually remove absolutely all other concepts and stories which the person has, so that only true understanding remains. It is as if a thorn is used to remove another thorn from the foot, then both thorns are thrown away. The question:"What is the world" becomes the question: "What am I if the world is only in my concepts? Who or what understands this?" This is The Last question. It is also the first question.

You are saying..."It makes it clear how one sided our relationship with the world really is!" and "Seeking revenge upon “the world” is futile because there is no way to identify this “invisible enemy.”" What you are suggesting is that the world has a personality just like a human, but is cold and uncaring. Do you really mean to anthropomorphize something that is only just another insentient idea or a concept? If the world has any personality, it is only like a story-projection which we attach to a dream. The conditions do not exist for the world to be cold, warm or anything else. It is all impersonal phenomena with the characteristics of the story we have about it as it's entire substance. This seems "cold" to some, but it may be known as absolute freedom from the stories of the mind which terrorize us day and night. If a person is religious or spiritual, then what is left after removing the thorn of story/identity/concept is the undeniable knowledge that we are God. There is no conflict with the roots of any religion when this is known. There are only the objections of those who do not know and who are still telling themselves the same implausible stories they have always been told. Does anything come to mind? Your book sounds right on about this.

Yes, absolutely, the answer to your last questions is the beginning of the end of perpetual misery. "Is “the world” people? Is “the world” ideas? Is “the world” cause and effect? Who or what is the world?" There are many doors into the understanding that will release us from perpetual misery. All of them require that we give up personal identity with our story and our anthropomorphic notions of both the world and ourselves. We are only what is aware of the phenomena which has been named "world". There is no name for that awareness because naming it would be to step on another thorn. I find that St Francis of Assisi said it pretty well: "What we are looking for is what is looking." This thorn of a story from St Francis may be taken in an entirely scientific way as well. It is a grown-up understanding. The work is to find out for yourself who has this understanding - the same "you" that is in the dream. Many people investigated this and you are on the right track it seems. Please don't go back to sleep now! The "world" needs you - awake!

Best wishes!

The world today is totally different to the world between the lives of Jesus and Darwin, thus things can be different and the world does change. Consider the world in the time of Jesus, hardly anyone had a formal education unlike now when it is compulsory. Today in many countries, the full potential of each individual mind is encouraged, and advancements in technology displays the results.

In the world of people, we must surely recognise that no matter what we believe, it mainly comes to us from outside ourselves. Our very thoughts are the product of the society in which we live, the language which expresses our thoughts is a social construct to which we cannot add one iota without it being meaningfully accepted and adopted outside ourselves. Our ideas are spurred on by discoveries in the outside world in which we have played no part. Pioneers most of us are not, since it takes a Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare, Darwin or an Einstein to make major changes in the way we think, and these are few and far between. The world does seem to have all the answers, but there are no absolute truths, and every so often someone thinks a unique thought taking us closer to the truth, an idea that catches on. The world continues to change because change is inevitable.

I agree with the book to a certain extent, but not with everything. I think the world is the human beings that compose it, and these different members are from the past, present, and future. While we do take out our anger on each other, even on ourselves, many of us have learned not to because these behaviors have already been observed and learned from.

These different members that compose the world have different philosophies and different experiences. Some of them are pessimists, idealists, realists, optimists...Some have a combination of traits and project them into their writing. One must be very careful in becoming too persuaded by any of these ideas, especially if they drag you down or contribute to a negative outlook on life. The fact that these ideas are understable, readable, logical and even intelligent doesn't mean that they are true, if only in the context they were written.

The world doesn't always "dictate rules and sets expectations" for the individual, for example. If that were so, then how is it that so many of us break those rules and do not fulfill its expectations? What are those rules and expectations anyway?

Our human condition is what makes some of us experiment a world that seems mindless, souless, but that is not true for me at least because I know that the individuals that compose it experience both joy and pain, fear and courage, hatred and love, etc. None of these emotions are perpetual, and the more awareness one has of these emotions and what causes them, the better we become at controlling them.

In philosophy, the World is everything that makes up reality. While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century and has been the subject of continuous debate. The question of what the world is has by no means been settled.

Parmenides

The traditional interpretation of Parmenides' work is that he argued that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world (as described in doxa) is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is 'One Being' (as described in aletheia): an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.

Plato

In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato distingues between forms and ideas and imagines two distinct worlds : the sensible world and the intelligible world.

Hegel

In Hegel's philosophy of history, the expression Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht (World History is a tribunal that judges the World) is used to assert the view that History is what judges men, their actions and their opinions. Science is born from the desire to transform the World in relation to Man ; its final end is technical application.

Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Representation is the central work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the world behind the representation; the Kantian thing-in-itself. He believed, therefore, that we could gain knowledge about the thing-in-itself, something Kant said was impossible, since the rest of the relationship between representation and thing-in-itself could be understood by analogy to the relationship between human will and human body.

Wittgenstein

Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case," wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1922. This definition would serve as the basis of logical positivism, with its assumption that there is exactly one world, consisting of the totality of facts, regardless of the interpretations that individual people may make of them.

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world".The world, for Heidegger, was that into which we are "thrown" willy-nilly and with which we, as beings-in-the-world, must come to terms. His conception of "the world-hood of the world" was most notably elaborated in his 1927 work Being and Time.

Other

Some philosophers, often inspired by David Lewis, argue that metaphysical concepts such as possibility, probability and necessity are best analyzed by comparing the world to a range of possible worlds; a view commonly known as modal realism.

It all sounds very philosophical to ask "who/what is the world" when you take Satan out of the picture.

To take him (the cause of it all) out of the world and still pursue to find the cause is like taking the single red marble out of a bowl of a million black marbles, discarding it as -not the red marble you're looking for- (the cause) and continuing to search for the red marble in the 999,999 black remaining marbles.

Where could the red marble be? Its intriguing that I cannot find it! Perhaps its a metaphor?

And thus the questioning process ends up in the “philosophy” section where the WORLDS “top intellectuals” throw their “wisdom” around much like disgruntled apes their feces.

“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.”

The Bible says that Satan is the God of this world.

Now ignorance would say something along the lines of "Satanism is not even close, nor has it ever been close to being the dominant religion".

Satan's goal is simple he wants to be "LIKE THE MOST HIGH".

He wants to be God.

Here is where it gets interesting:

There are many verses in the Bible that cross link Christ, God, the Word and Truth together as one:

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Jesus is God verses: http://www.bugman123.com/Bible/JesusIsGod.html

Therefore:

The Word (the Bible) is God

Jesus is God -Jesus is the Word

Jesus is the Truth – God is the Truth – The Word is the Truth.

Now back to Satan:

Satan said: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”

For Satan to TRULY be LIKE God, he would have to establish himself a status BASED on TRUTH since GOD is truth.

But anything Satan has ever done (at least according to the available record), has always been BASED ON LIES.

After all he is the “father of all deception” and it is because of this that he above verse continues to say

15Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Satan has established himself of lies; he is the father of deception. Everything the world worships and idolizes today that is Godless is the work of Satan.

I know this sounds like he “rock n roll music is of the devil!” speech, but prove me wrong. I've tried and I can't, because its the truth.

Wow, that is SO scary, isn't it? And you can't deny that such is how it is. We are each, as individuals, outnumbered, out-smarted, out-sized, and totally helpless. I cannot control my own health. I have to try to find food, shelter, all of that necessary stuff. And I cannot do it alone; I must cooperate with other people. That is why the theory of individual, selfish capitalism is false. No one could ever survive, on the basis of complete competition versus the rest of the world. Otherwise, it's depressingly hopeless.

The world includes all of Nature.

So you are part of it.

You can't set yourself over against it.

Doing so is the first part of a journey of folly and vanity that goes like this -- Your were specially created by God the author of the universe and then sent into this world to be on trial as a way of deciding if you should go to heaven and be with God your special creator again. If you find and hold to faith in Jesus Christ your redeemer, you can go to heaven and sit at God's right hand for all of eternity after you die. If not, bad things could happen to you.

This lunatic tale has been handed down by book and legend for a bit over 2000 years.

It starts with You being in one place and Nature (the world) being in another (and ends there too).

Around the time of Galileo, a man who had his own problems with the Church, a tradition of thought began called modern science. The ancient Greeks had science, but that was ancient science (about half observational and about half speculative/philosophical).

Modern science is 100% based on experimental evidence and direct observations taken.

Anyhow, in modern science there is only:

One set of places

One set of substances

One set of laws

Therefore in that thought system it's impossible for you to place yourself over against nature as if you would be in one place and Nature would be in another.

You didn't come into this world, you came out of it, and you're going back in.

Dylan said -- To them who think death's honesty won't come upon them naturally, life sometimes must get lonely.

Amor Fati -- love your fate -- love nature -- love the Unity of the Universe.

When compared to the fanciful tale told by the Christians it is on all counts more beautiful and more worthy of your love, dedication, and belief.

I'm signing this one:

Gao Bwo Fu (Juin Tze)

Firstly, I must state that I disagree with some of the beliefs of the book you've read. The relationship with the world is not completely one sided, even to the individual. Individuals and people must be separated when discussing about their place in "the world". People are an entity created from the collective of many individuals. Individuals are separate entities without being grouped together. The separation of the two is crucial for this argument. I am going to be discussing the individual's role in the world and not the group's.

When we are born we are basically a blank slate with many innate tendencies. Our genetics (and some say our soul as well) pull us toward a certain path. We learn by understanding the sensory information we receive, and we do this through copying. We look at the people around us for understanding and use their perceptions as our own. If they sit in chairs then we know we should. If they eat soup with a spoon then so do we. We look at this information, analyze it, and determine if we should copy it or not. For example, if we see a person stab themselves with a fork, we inherently know to stay away from pain and can store this information as something not to do.

This learning process does not end in childhood and continues through all of life. In childhood, the leaders of your learning are your parents, but what about adulthood? What determines which ways we steer, what opinions we gain, what values we defend? Well, some people may believe that this is all determined by themselves, but this is not true. Our opinions, beliefs, values, morals, and even desires are directed by "the world".

Now we get to your question. Who or what is "the world?"

The world is inheritable collective consciences of groups of people. Basically, when people are in a group that group represents a collective person. For example, if you and your friend argued about how good or bad a movie was you form a collective opinion. However, because it is only between you and your friend, your opinion has more sway. As the number of people increases, the less sway you have as it approaches zero. It is basically a limit.Your sway is basically zero in large groups of people.

Now we approach your second question: What is this mindless soulless enemy that has condemned us all to chaos for as long as we inhabit the earth? The collective conscience is not an really an enemy. Because of its soulless nature, its intentions are neither good nor bad. It just "is". The previous example is quite simple, but when taken with more values you can see how it becomes complex.

Let's broaden the scope of this example to ridiculous proportions. Let's say that you and your friend are the only people to see the film. You tell your children how terrible it is while your friend tells hers how great it is. Your children now have great reason to believe the film is terrible while your friend's have good reason to believe the opposite. Now let's fast-forward 10,000 years. Your descendants, which are now a country, see this movie as an example of how not to make movies. For as long as they, and there ancestors can remember everything about this film is known as bad. However, another country, your friend's descendants, have made all of there movies based on this one. It is considered the base of all films. Now let's say a filmmaker from your friend's country moves to yours. Are they condemned to never be considered a good filmmaker? Sadly, this is 99.9% likely. "The world" in this example "knows" that any filmmaker who uses any techniques from this film that it is automatically bad. Everyone "knows" this, and it is inherent in culture. In fact, it seems as if it is inherent in genetics. There is nothing in your country that says a filmmaker like this can succeed, and if any filmmaker desires success he/she must not make a film anything like said film.

Although the example was about films, this applies to everything. In fact, it applies little to complex items such as films and applies more to little things such as waving at a neighbor. These little insignificant things that form tiny nit-picky opinions are the basis for the collective conscience. However, "the world" is more than the collective conscience it is the collective "consciences" (with an 's'). It contains all group opinions not just one groups opinion. Think about Republicans and Democrats, these are two parties, but with so many opinions people could have, why are these two parties so popular? Why do so many people believe the same things? It all goes back to the way people learn and collective conscience. At some point people had opinions that built upon each other and formed each party. A child does not learn ideas on his own, but from sensory information he is given. He just can't make up republicanism on his own. Once he comes to his opinions, he cannot act on them because he isn't alone. He must bend to the rules of others, so that he can survive. Simple