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That you think your subjective view and perspective should be held by all is irrational.
I am saying people should have an objective view on life. Most people don't even question their innate and cultural biases let alone overcome them.
Life is fundamentally flawed. It's about having perpetual need and satisfying need. Need that is only temporarily fulfilled. Need is suffering and to satisfy need demands much work.
Look at nature, animals killing animals to survive and reproduce. Animals tearing up another animals to satisfy their needs. Do you think evolution "cares" about suffering?
Look at the absurdity of this game, what is the reason to be optimistic about this?
I am saying people should have an objective view on life. Most people don't even question their innate and cultural biases let alone overcome them.
I don't buy this either. Frankly, it's the typical mantra of a young person who thinks s/he's got it all figured out and everybody else is just a drone. In reality we have no idea who questions what and why. You only think nobody does because somebody told you so.
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Life is fundamentally flawed. It's about having perpetual need and satisfying need. Need that is only temporarily fulfilled. Need is suffering and to satisfy need demands much work.
You are too attached to your own suffering.
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Look at nature, animals killing animals to survive and reproduce. Animals tearing up another animals to satisfy their needs. Do you think evolution "cares" about suffering?
Of course not. Why should it? If you care about it then you can easily be a vegetarian.
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Look at the absurdity of this game, what is the reason to be optimistic about this?
Well, sadly for some I think the optimism is inherent. It's biochemical. Some people see a glass half empty, others a glass half full. I find the game to be absurd, but also wonderful, blissful. A few years ago my twin died in my arms. He hung on for so long. It took all night. It was like being in a different plane that was old, dark, dirty, guttural, and raw. At the core of life, as you note above, is death. Yet, my brother clung to life for as long as he could. I saw in those hours how precious this short time we have is. Even in death, it's so amazing. I'm ok with suffering. I'm ok with empathy and compassion as well. As a 20+ year vegetarian I feel it. It's some of the best qualities in being human. Why you would cast that aside I do not know.
I'm good, but I want to lead a natural life. That means I'm unwilling to do anything "drastic" to prolong my youth and life as well as anything to shorten it.
One thing I'll never understand is how people (Don, Miss Hepburn) can make casual comments about their belief in an afterlife/reincarnation. Kind of as an afterthought: "oh, by the way, I won't really die anyway when I die, so it's all good." Rationally, whether you believe in some sort of eternal life or a series of future lives or whatever, concern for quality of life in that "realm" should be a seriously pressing concern. But it's really not, for just about anyone I've encountered or observed who holds such beliefs. When I was religious, as I was for the first 17 years of my life, I used to think about heaven/hell all the time...perhaps my two greatest strengths as a child were mathematical ability and imagination, so taking those two traits together, I was all too aware (as a toddler, for what it's worth) that "eternity" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 75-80 years, and therefore my childhood self was massively concerned about what the afterlife was like. So I'd spend a lot of time imagining, sometimes at ease while doing so, sometimes not.
As an adult atheist/materialist (the latter term is worth mentioning, seeing as I've witnessed a select few atheists who manage to do the intellectual contortions needed to also believe in an afterlife), I stand by my former fixation. If you believe in an afterlife, I have no idea how that belief (and related beliefs about what actions will get you to what destination etc) doesn't dominate your daily thought process. It's inconsistent for it not to.
mordant, I've said this (or something similar to this, anyway) before, but I'd recommend every single one of your posts if I could.
As for the question in the original post...I don't even know. I'm a million different people from one day to the next, to quote a certain hit song from the nineties (who incidentally had legal issues over "sampled" instrumentation used in that song, so it's only fitting that I quote the lyrics without direct attribution).
Also, the argument can be made that survival is inherently evil, as it is predicated on consumption of other life forms and competition against/preying upon fellow humans in the effort to secure selfish/tribalist control of scarce resources (directly or indirectly). To go for my second song lyric quote of this post, "The universe is hostile/so impersonal/devour to survive/so it is/so it's always been". So my overall outlook on life is not far removed from Escort Rider's nemesis (unsurprisingly, given my disagreements with Escort Rider in other threads). The major difference is that I usually don't hold the ignorance of people who choose to reproduce against them.
I'm only 27, and I have some obvious talents, so I do want to hang around for a while and see what I can do in certain situations (most of which I've yet to expose myself to). Also, I feel an obligation to persist so as not to devastate my parents and brother, with whom I've always been close. Underlying depression (with periods of crippling depression) will likely never disappear, though
I've read this post twice and am still not clear on what your point is relative to reincarnation. You seem to think that if a person believes in it that every waking moment should somehow be directed toward that end. HUH ??????? Why would I concern myself with something I have no control over, and only have a suspicion that it occurs ?
How do I know if you come back ? No one I have ever met said "Remember me, I was George who died 20 years ago and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere I am again !!!!!! No, I simply feel that there is the POSSIBILITY that our spirit doesn't die with the body. I could be right on with that assumption, or as wacky as a bat for thinking that.
But I'll try to come back and let you know if it ever happens to me.
I think most of us like the way we each personally live and our own outlook on life. Some people like to spend their paycheck for instance, and be in debt. Others are usually not into material things and just enjoy the fascination of discovery - whether something they lean on the job and master it, or whether it's just enjoying the outdoors and weather. Some people are happy politically coercing others to live a life that that individual wants them to live. Others mind their own business and are non-aggressive and enjoy the diversity of people's own lifestyles.
When you say good life, I'm assuming you mean like you have access to basic things like money, shelter, food, family, well I had these things except the family part really. Was very fortunate for such, but I don't want to live long. None of that stuff really matters, silver and gold. There's more to life than material things, I want clarification, most days I'm in doubt and questioning and uncertainty about EVERYTHING. Some days I'm just living the moment, and those days are becoming less and less frequent. Therefore, I would like to die soon as possible.
I've read this post twice and am still not clear on what your point is relative to reincarnation. You seem to think that if a person believes in it that every waking moment should somehow be directed toward that end. HUH ??????? Why would I concern myself with something I have no control over, and only have a suspicion that it occurs ?
How do I know if you come back ? No one I have ever met said "Remember me, I was George who died 20 years ago and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere I am again !!!!!! No, I simply feel that there is the POSSIBILITY that our spirit doesn't die with the body. I could be right on with that assumption, or as wacky as a bat for thinking that.
But I'll try to come back and let you know if it ever happens to me.
Don
Ok. Faint suspicion is different from committed belief, even if some would have us believe otherwise ("you either believe or you don't"). I actually suspect (not believe, but suspect) that modern neuroscience could/would demonstrate the distinction between "suspicions" and "beliefs" (I further suspect that people could be shown to hold conflicting beliefs (not suspicions, but beliefs) in differing situations...for example, around your children you firmly believe in accountability, but around your drinking buddies you believe in relaxed if not non-existent moral codes...the more I myself drink, the more assured I become that experiments regarding neural pathway activation could show this hypothesis to be true (to the extent that anything is "true")). But I still feel like it makes far more sense for someone (anyone, not just you) to analyze one's beliefs more often. Ultimately, either everything matters or nothing matters (equivalent (is it?) to saying we either do have free will or we don't have free will, respectively). I'm firmly in the camp of the latter, but I remain on guard for evidence of the former, however laughable it may seem (and I'd maintain that the fact I do that is more due to my own "failings" given that everything is explainable in a naturalistic framework...but I guess I will always think that some variation of Pascal's Wager has some merit). However, if I believed the former, then...EVERYTHING WOULD MATTER.
To be clear (yeah, right), "nothing matters" can mean any number of things about the temporary meaning of things. It just means that ultimately we die and, to quote Modest Mouse (third lyrical reference today), something's going to steal your carbon. That's it. Therefore, ultimately nothing matters. But in the meantime, it's up to you to determine if you want anything to matter. Except it probably isn't really up to you, given the evidence for no free will. Anyway, that's existentialism, which I respect the spirit of if not certain underlying premises (such as the assumption of free will, with which I disagree...but I think our illusion of free will is rich enough that we can trick ourselves into believing we have it so long as we've "been forced" into the right circumstances that would then lead to us thinking we have it).
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 09-09-2013 at 01:55 AM..
The thing that vexes me and any honest would-be philosopher is that nothing "grand" or "systematic" is ever logically valid. Only in "pure" logic/math can one reason from premise to conclusion or axiom to solution. In real life, this is but an abstraction. To me, that demonstrates that deductive logic is only useful as an instrument for our purposes (in service to science), but obviously quantum physics would answer to a different "logic". Logic emerged from the illogical. Logically, what do you conclude from that (null set, infinity, undefined...don't give me any random conclusion X; that's the unacceptable answer to this here paradox)
I'll quote the Iranian people:
"Only the first 100 years of life are difficult"
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No, I simply feel that there is the POSSIBILITY that our spirit doesn't die with the body. I could be right on with that assumption, or as wacky as a bat for thinking that.
