(How to explain abstraction to a dog… If it doesn’t work, try this on a human)
“Do you know what is a dog?”
“Of course, I know a dog. What a stupid question!?”
“What comes to your mind when you think about a dog?”
“A beautiful labrador, in a green field”, she replied.
“Well… But all dogs are not labrador!?”
“There are of course a lot different dogs. I can not think about all of them at once.”
“Well… So *a* dog does not exist!?”
“Don’t bug my mind, dogs exist. We have one at home.”
“Well, I’m now going out to look for a dog which represents all dogs”
“You are crazy. Dogs don’t elect a representative. They have no Parliament. So how one could represent all dogs from all countries and all species”.
“OK, OK, you got me. Dogs representative is only in the dictionary. I’d like to meet the author of the dictionary, may he has met the dogs’ representative a long time before we were born.”
“You are wasting your time. Let’s go have sex. It’d be more fun.”
I accepted the proposal.
(Philosophical Promenade, by the Oracle of Tado).
Like Nietzsche put it, abstraction gives the illusion of knowledge but stands for simplification of reality with the purpose of control and power.