Omnology

Omnology

Samuel Bird

As the change from wondering what should we bring about shifted to producing the maximum amount of what we hedonistically desire, it changed how we went about researching and rationalizing these endeavors. In ancient times, a philosopher was one who loved wisdom generally. They would seek to understand reality a priori, study animals, and mathematics. As the focus became increasingly to produce more, the idea of multiple parties producing a part of a given good gained traction. Increasingly, there were specialists who’s trade was not a thing, but an atomic portion of a thing. As energy didn’t have to be wasted on pesky questions like the pursuit of knowledge, they could produce more. While this ramped up production, it removed people from the wonder, honor, and joy of creation. This in turn turned into worse quality products, but the quantity was in full boom. The consumption of these goods was just as inspiring. For some reason, academia looked at this and thought that was a good idea. Slowly with each graduating class, new fields were born and within them, subfields. The demarcations for such could be surprisingly arbitrary. Specific studies of reality and self were stolen from this philosophy as the love of wisdom and were taken to miopic weaklings. This process increased and culminated in the world I was raised in. You can find a specialist in just about anything you can imagine. There is always some thesis or dissertation with the most specific premise you could imagine. In fact, much of what is produced now is a rehash of previous ideas or taking to seemingly unrelated ideas and relating them long enough to get some funding. While it is clear I am being harsh, this was not without its merit. Great depth was made in each field that allowed for greater insight from that field. However, I am critical about how ideas are exchanged between minds. This leads to an imbalance of an ideas role and import in the world based on the social situation of the people promoting it. 

If there were to be an Aristotle or Liebniz who sought to take in all human knowledge to weigh it out, they could not. Up until St. Augustine, I am told one could read all books in production. Now there are many new books and many new mediums. This steals away the complete cognition of all ideas at hand. It also takes away an analysis of how consistent these ideas are and what values they bring or steal from us. Even in the empirical studies that allege to synthesize from the same monistic reality, they find ideas that are in direct contradiction to each other. A million bright minds are at the helm of the world, and they each pull in their own direction. This lack of a party to see the larger ideas accross time has led to violent social engineering, science that promoted whatever people wanted, and a dogmatism no one will admit to. This is where I come in dangerously and willing to start inventing new words to fix the issue. I am an omnologist. A Greek linguist would perhaps tell me I should name it something else, but he is a nerd. The omnologist is someone who sacrifices depth in any given field for breadth in all fields that seem to relate the minds relationship to world. I could have just named it, but I found it too fascinating not to pioneer it. Of course, omni is all. By all I don’t mean all ideas that can be conceived, but all ideas pertinent to reality and ourselves. History, physics, and every iteration of philosophy would make sense, but I am not suggesting that we would have to learn every belief of the occult or every concept of the astrologers. I would say it wouldn’t hurt to know of them, why people adhere to them, and their role in the world. Academia has long weighed what studies were silly and serious, but I will leave it at that for now. I will say that being an omnologist can give one plenty of headaches, but it quenches even the most drought-impacted of curiosities. The series of factors to balance and weigh is brutal, but the personal rewards of having ideas to call upon is empowering. How does one be or become and omnologist? To start, they need to have a background in philosophy. The love of wisdom and the methods of working with concepts will proceed all the following. After that, you start reading and talking. At first, you are doing a foray into the ideas at hand. This will give you the roughest work idea of the terrain that you will be looking at. After you know the general layout, start evaluating what resources would be the best look at a general field. After you do that for each field, consider what parts they are comprised of. You then keep doing this process until the depth is not harmed by the breadth and intake of new material. After that, you build and maintain the fullness of the map. While there will always be people with specific parts of the map that are more specific, you have the largest map of that clarity. Now, when there is an event that is unseeable to oddly specific academics whose eyes are shoved into microscopes, you will be able to see it. The more I study, the more I see patterns and what those patterns are made of. The series of bizarre events that come from nowhere for other fields seem incredibly likely based on the facts at hand. An economist’s model for the future does not include the new technology in the scientist’s laboratory. This is not to say I have surety, but I have an inductive guess and I have an idea of how likely it is. Of course, nothing ever happens until it does. By this, I am referring to the problem of induction. Outside of prophecies, the breadth of the system will allow a better idea of how atomic parts fit into them. I am always amazed and horrified by people who commit their lives to a dilemma of phenomenon that has a low ratio of how often it transpires and how detrimental it is. You may note that I have just referred to knowledge already in the system and that I have past papers about going outside of what is known. An omnologist would then need to be living deliberately. This is more in terms of his engagement, but he would additionally need to be intentionally extracting epistemic nuggets from that experience. It is not uncommon that a study will find something that I could have told you from my experience. Of course, philosophers need to be skeptical of common sense, but if all your experience says one thing and one convoluted study refers to another, don’t throw your experience out too quickly. Studies as concepts and social institutions vary greatly. In the last week, I read three different articles about researchers faking data to fit with what they wanted to find. What about all those we didn’t catch? By your experience, I mean the most basic facts of your existence. How does reality relate to you and what can you assume based on that? What do all your relationships have in common? What values have you found that people subjectively share? You may say this is a small data set, but it is at least the study you have the most direct connection and knowledge of how it was done. This will also allow you to not just know the breadth of knowledge, but also its limit. 

I am not primarily an omnologist, however I do love it. You have likely considered such a passionate pursuit yourself and to such I reccomend. However, like all great goals, I failed. I did the the most wonderfully human thing I could and found the highest value I could. I then gave all I could to it, and found I was so incredibly limited as to not even approximate success. I could remedy this by having what I think ought to be as closely related to what is, but once the goal post is set, I still fail. We can't control our fortune, but we can control our exposure period to information. While a given study would damage the average knowledge of an omnologist, it would still only be as skewed as far as that study is weighed on their map. What we have access to know is a fact of reality, but how I strive to access it is a question of my deliberation. The second is then where I am weighed. Up until now, I have been been epistemically naive. I am under no illusion that the series of information I am on even tends to have an affirmative truth value. I am not even sure that I am doing so right, though the system seems to make sense to me. While other studies look at the content, like Esse Maxim, an Omnologist looks at the context or form of that information. This is a much more humble assertion. I am nothing more than someone structuring the ideas at hand while positing a few. However, I have noticed the humbler an ideas is, the better it holds up. This structure of information is not a fact of the world, but of the mind. It is then not subject to being false in terms of the world. Like Esse Maxim is a structure for thought rather than the thought in the structure, it can’t be “wrong” in the sense that reality is contrary. This gets to the problem with journeys I think about often. You can only figure out where you want to go after you have already gone done the road the wrong direction for sometime. That is, unless your luck is better than mine and you started of in a direction that was sufficient, but I would just assume you weren’t reading the signs right. The more cognizant were are of specific facts, there more we might find we see it changing what we desire. The idea of tortured philosopher comes from people learning that what they wanted wasn’t conistent, but this is where their mistake is. They don’t then ask what it is they should then want based on those facts that stole their initial dream away. Philosophy stole my blissful naivety away. If I was willing to look, new ideas could be found to replace the old one. If an omnologist is then tossed to and fro for what they seek, how then can are we succeed? By the assertion that it is the engagement and deliberation that is the metric, the omnologist can’t fail from external facts. Outside of their utility, I define deliberation and engagement as the end. When this idea came to me, I collapsed to the ground and started crying. I have more thoughts to consider on the matter and ideas that need built more, but what I can say for now is that we are fighting uphill, stealing knowledge from the taloned grip of the world. However, I take honor in that fight. I comfort myself with this same thought. I wonder if anyone will ever read these words I write and pour my tired soul into. When I hear that someone reads a given philosopher, it tells me something about them. I wonder what it will say about you if you told someone that you read my stuff. Would they find you patient, slow, or pretentious? Outside of roylaties from book sales, there is a reason I write. However, I still write when many of my articles are read by no one other than myself. While I write for you, I don’t need my sucess to validate what I do. I know how sloppy my writing is and how messy my ideas can be, but yet I write. I don’t write to be heard, but because it is a part of my deliberation and engagement that I do. This then is the work of the omnologist. To think for no greater reason than that one is.