From: dcantor1@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: mine again
Organization: Clark University
Date: 14 DEC 92 18:48:47 GMT

Forward again.
Stopping to think, something I do so rarely.  I have decided that the Do as 
you would have done principle needs some work.  So I am again trying to define 
my universe to those who wish to read it.  
I will begin in a good place.  How can I be understood?
In a class I recently finished at Clark, the professor made it very clear that 
all understandings are personal.  That I can never know that I am understood 
by another, for that matter I can not even know that I understand myself.  
This makes the attempt to explain or converse on my universe rather futile.  
So I am going to state that I can not be understood.  Yet I am going to ask 
you to continue reading and try any way.
Why should I try and do something that may be impossible?
Simple it may be, I am not sure that it is.  The doubt of possiblity allows me 
the comforting belief that somewhere, somehow, I may be understood.  So I try. 
And because it may be you that understands I ask you to try.

Next issue,  What am I trying to do, what is my motive?
I am trying to understand.  I would like to understand everything.

All questions have a certain system of guides, that I will call parameters.  
These parameters clarify those answers or responses that are acceptable with 
the exercise. Example. Exercise: Playing a game. The parameters are the 
rules.  As long as you follow the rules you are playing the game. If the rules 
are changed the game is changed.  If you break a rule you are also no longer 
playing the game. 
All questions are games.  When an answer to a question is given the parameters 
decide the validity of the answer.  If the parameters are misunderstood.  The 
question can not be answered.  It is important to know the parameters of all 
questions.
I attempt to make all answers valid within the greatest 
number of parameters.  I have been taught that all data can be manipulated. 
Since it is data that we use to defend are answers, then all questions can be 
answered in nearly any way.  Parameters eliminate answers.  The more specific 
the parameters the fewer the answers.  
If I am to understand everything, than I must have very general or very 
specific parameters.  The parameters I use will define what I understand.  The 
parameters will also define what is everything.  
I believe parameters to be dangerous.  They eliminate possibilities.  It is 
only when there a great number of possibilities that the survival can be 
ensured.  If all questions can be answer yes or no, positive or negative, then 
there would be only life or death.  Everything else would be meaningless.    

Within the above there is a lot of philosophies.  So I am going to stop here.  
if I write the thousands or so pages neccesary no one would read to the end so 
I will stop here.  Maybe I have already gone on too long.  I apoligize for my 
bad grammar, my poor syntax, my faliure to follow the rules of rhetoric, 
philosophy or what ever rules I may have broken. I am just trying to speak my 
ideas in the simplest and most understandable manner I know. Use what you 
know, and what you believe you know, not only the words I choose to understand 
what I write. 

Prose is poetry Text is utterance.  Words are metaphors.  

sleep well, live well, and be well.  If you so choose.

David Cantor, DCANTOR1@vax.clark.edu

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.politics.homosexuality