Is human connection possible?

General Discussion
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I’m just wondering this lately from a lot I’ve read.

Language is limited, we cannot truly know the mind of another person, and we assume we know what other people mean when they say something but we can’t be sure. Knowing all that can we really say we’re connecting with anyone truly or is it just our imagination at work to avoid crippling loneliness.

And more to the not knowing their mind point, all we have is what we see and what they tell us, so in a sense are we connecting with a real person or just some fantasy that we project onto them. When we like someone is it really about them or some image we have of them in our heads?

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Too many fun thoughts here not to take up the challenge.
I don’t mean any of the following flippantly, am trying to be constructive here, let me know if you can do anything with it . . .

Of course we can’t, why are you setting that up as an expectation?

Can you explain the train-of-thought?

Isn’t it true that we aren’t even capable of “truly knowing” our own mind much of the time, with internal conflict being a mainstay of most human lives.

It’s like puzzling over why two entities can never inhabit the same space.
That’s just how it is, since we are confined to one specific real world unfolding. We are not cosmic intelligences, we are advanced evolved biological creatures, living on this singular evolving Earth.

All each of has one biological life to live, within one evolving body, with that body/brain producing all the thoughts and emotions you possess, and will ever experience.

Does that make sense?

Okay so knowing all what specifically?

You’d have to begin this investigation by defining “connection.” Or for that matter “truly.”

Connecting involves an amazing spectrum, from intellectual, to visual, to sexual (which again is a spectrum from a platonic twinkle, to wanting a mutual baby, etc. ), …; to what is that person to me. To what do I want out of the relationship? Not to mention the flow of the situation you’re in.

Besides that stuff, how can we realistically, or honestly, answer those questions when in the course of time, we fall into friendships and relationships, most don’t tactically think it out, the moment and the situation take us, as we’re doing the best we can to keep up with the pace of experiencing. The later our mind does it’s best to interpret what happened.

Seems to me your questions would require reducing complex fluidity, into flash photos to analyze. But doing that turns it into a contrived, false reality, so what’s the point?

Like trying to learn how to ride horses, without ever getting on a horse. It makes no rational sense to me, like, creating unattainable expectations.

What’s wrong with being an individual, that’s all that “alone means”.

Loneliness, what are you talking about, you are part of the herd another human being! Reach out and touch someone.

We are all born into this world naked and alone, and leave this world naked and alone, having traveled from the place of our birth, to the place of our death.

That is a challenge, still personally speaking I know that facing that material-biological reality honestly and with some inner fortitude, it becomes quite manageable, then compelling. But then again, I was very fortunate in family and my exposure to life and a desire for independence and exploring the frontiers of my mind, from an early age . . .

Which is why I can say it is critically important to honestly know yourself, even if it involves pain to get there. Heck might even require burning on the cross of your own sins, but like they say, rebirth is a wonderful thing.

I’ll bet most people possess a bit of self-loathing, but we manage it, tuck it into it’s own corner, deal with it when needed, then feeling free to wraps up that box put it away, remember all we can feel proud of.

Always those gradients and balances, opportunities and potentialities, fluid.

You don’t need to obsess in doubt for the sake of doubt. I don’t think that’s intellectual honesty, it’s self-flagellation.

Life is to live. That is what matters

That’s why I think it’s critically important for a human to appreciate the foundation under their existence - and there’s no way to do that through pure philosophy/theology removed from deeply exploring the evolutionary reality of your inner body and how that impacts everything you do and think.

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Historically, he has not. He throws out words as if they are fully understood even whole asking if we can understand each other at all. I prefer the correspondence theory of reality, but if I start taking about that he’ll hit me with relativism, a valid theory itself but I think it has too many holes and is less useful for navigating reality.

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That’s why I think it’s critically important for a human to appreciate the foundation under their existence - and there’s no way to do that through pure philosophy/theology removed from deeply exploring the evolutionary reality of your inner body and how that impacts everything you do and think.

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I mean I’m getting that much but I’ve been reading a lot of psychoanalysis lately and the idea behind it is that one can know their own mind and how it works and the defenses and things like that. Though to be honest a lot of it reads more like storytelling and not really fact.

Knowing all the ways that we fail to truly connect and knowing there is no direct and unmediated way of doing so.

Forging some sort of bond with some other person, having knowledge that someone shares in and feels as you do.

Well maybe that complex fluidity is just in our heads. Like thinking we are sharing in an experience when that could just be our interpretation being projected out and not what’s really happening at the time.

Well one can be in a crowd and still alone. So far all we have is our senses and our interpretation of what other people feel since we have no direct way of knowing. Even in the most intimate of acts you do with other people what if you’re just deluding yourself into thinking you’re sharing something.

I know the media makes such moments of connection seem obvious but what if it’s just in our heads. We see other people with us, laughing and the like and assume they feel the same, but what if we’re wrong. We think we know other people but do we?

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That isn’t engaging with my comment. I have no idea what “psychoanalysis” reading you’ve done.

It sounds like you are looking for some sort of ideal Knowing of oneself. Of course that seems an impossible dream. But that doesn’t mean we can’t develop a deep understanding of ourselves, becoming familiar with many of the factors that make us who we are.

Of course, I don’t know everything about myself, and life shows me plenty of times I’m mistaken or fool myself, and indeed didn’t know myself as well as I thought. That’s why we seek adventure and experience, to test the mettle. For me, in the end what matters is being honest with oneself. Live and learn from the screw ups and bang ups, as much as from the victories.

You demand the sort of technical understanding and control a dam builder requires. That won’t help you understand your chaotic self and the even more chaotic river of life you’re stuck in. You need the understanding and “control” of kayakers. Feeling the current and finding your line through the bends and rapids, and controlling your flimsy craft.

There are no ideals, it’s pretty much all about close enough, timing and location. I’ve dedicated my entire life, since before kindergarten to figuring out who the heck I was, and can say with honesty, seek and ye shall find. And it’s worth every moment of the struggle.

an aside of sorts . . . . . . .

“There are no ideals” well there I go, talk about contradiction, eh?
Thinking on it right now, I have to admit, my life is build upon a few ideals, ideals I could spell out.

The secret I learned is believing in your ideal, striving for them, and when you fail, okay, get back on that horse and do better next time. You know take it seriously, but we don’t need to be wearing horsehair shirts. Which is my impression of what you like doing to yourself.

Your starting point seems worrying about what everyone else is writing - My philosophy and intellectual starting point was figuring out myself, I also became very interested in Earth and her evolution.

Now I appreciate the importance of a deep biological understand of the human material creature that creates my mind.

Once I figured that out, everything started making much more sense. From our individual evolutionary biological heritage, we can realistically start understanding why we are as we are, our impulses and behaviors and attitudes started making sense and falling into a comprehendible impression, like it never could before.

I have come to see how much of the rest of philosophy/theology is simply another expression of humanity’s utter self-absorption and self-serving nature. Sure its practitioners have created some wonderful and useful understanding, ideas, and endless intellectual entertainment, still in the end haven’t been much help in grappling with our biological reality, always missing the mark, too busy shadow boxing with God, and competing egos.

“Unmediated” what are you expecting?

Think this through, you are an evolved thinking animal in a huge world.

Your only connection to that world is your body/brain, everything, I mean everything that enters your mind, has been meditated all over the place. There’s simply no other way for a physical material world of creatures to operate.

Of course, I don’t connect with my lover’s inner mind. Our bodies connect and create a unique moment, that is owned by both of us, and impossible without both. Whether a single special encounter or something that develops into ever deeper and long lasting connection.

What do you expect of your ideal “direct” experience?
Can you imagine what it would look like, or feel like?

So is the problem that you simply haven’t ever found some other person that resonated with you?
That’s a tough one.
We all need some real human company and touch, even if it’s just holding hands, a voice to listen to and a set of eyes and ears waiting to hear what you have to say.

It’s been said we get out of life what we put into it.

Hmmm.
Take a look at imagery of what’s going on inside your body, at any level, look at some time-lapse videos of city sidewalks, or harbors, city traffic, or nature scenes of every variety.
We have a water based body, and live on a water planet - denying the fluidity of our lives, seems an act of turning your back on the physical world where the answers are. Well, the mysteries are out there too. I’m okay with that, I don’t have the hubris to believe nature owes me an answer to my every whim.

Yes of course. Still you are part of the crowd. :wink:

Okay fair enough, that is all we have. But to say “no direct knowledge” is an over-reach that ignores human biology.

Resonance.

Our bodies project what we are feeling - an attuned body ought to be able to sense those vibes in another person.

Okay, we still we don’t “Know” each other’s minds, and if it’s good, everyone’s “the best lover ever”, at least for that moment. That’s simply how it is. We are simply humans, not divine creations. Why do you make it seem like a deal breaker or nature playing dirty?

inthedarkness you’ve got plenty of reasonable complaints/questions, still you’re after idealism, and that seems hopeless, nothing about us is ideal.

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Here’s an interesting aside I found in my inbox. Worth sharing for sure.

Inthedark, check out this one,

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Please, Inthedarkness, promise us not to use EI as psychological advisers, it is a sure way to suicide.

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Great analogy. IDK plays with words and invents a world where not being omniscient is the same as delusion. He never considers what his ultimate knowing would mean. It would mean there would be no fun in kayaking. You would know every move would result in going exactly where you wanted to go.

For human connection and knowing ourselves, it would be the end of mystery, the end of curiosity, no reason to ask the ultimate question of why we are here. There would still be questions of “how”, but would we care?

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What’s EI? I’m don’t know what you mean by that.

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It’s not really myself I’m worried about so much as connecting with others and from what I read in psychoanalysis it’s an impossible feat because there is always going to be some gap be it language or physical:

“You can see life as essentially meaningless and still find it enjoyable. There’s no inherent contradiction there. You seem to be arguing from the perspective that life has to be depressing unless it has some kind of ‘point’ or reality. Maybe I’m misunderstanding but if so I don’t understand why you think the comment you’re responding to is at odds with the people who say psychoanalysis ends with an acceptance of life’s meaninglessness/unreality/the unbridgeability of connection etc.

To me those things are perfectly compatible with an enjoyable life. I on some level understand the idea that without a ‘point’ nothing would be worth doing, but that only made sense to me when I was so unhappy that nothing gave me any pleasure unless I felt it was in service to a higher goal.”

But what I said above was more about how what if that connection with your bodies isn’t real. Like what if you’re just falling in love with a fantasy image that you’ve projected onto the other person. I can’t imagine what a direct experience would look like, I just assumed I was doing it this whole time…

I don’t know if it’s idealism so much as possibility and being told it’s not possible hurts.

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It’s more wondering if human connection really exists and is even possible and some people I talk to in psychoanalysis say no because there is always some gap.

It’s not really about perfectly knowing the other person so much as whether it’s possible to know anything about them. Everything we know is found out in retrospect and could no longer be true.

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Sure, because you play with words like “true”. Everything we know is provisional, that’s correct. We use empiricism to seek truth, but we don’t know everything, so we can never check our results against a standard of 100% certainty. I was just listening to a video that picks apart Jordan Peterson’s arguments against scientific methods and how he equivocates, just like you. There really is no question that we can’t do what you are asking. What we can do is use empiricism to attempt to make connections. Defined as

“Disciplined method of acquiring knowledge by observing, measuring, and experimenting with the physical world, relying on sensory experience and evidence rather than abstract reasoning or inherited belief.”

CC is pretty hard to satisfy, but note this includes our body/brain connection to the physical world and puts philosophy in its place, below this method. So the answer to your question is simply “no”. And that’s the same answer to “do we really know” for anything. But somehow, we feel connections and we sent a rocket to the moon. That’s because we have these methods that allow us to be certain enough that we are approaching truth.

The reason you can find people who talk about this stuff is that they put the definition of empiricism in the background. They know they are talking about the edges of human understanding. You worry about it every time you are having a conversation. I like thinking about this, but I don’t kiss my wife and say, “I love you, at least as much as my sensory experience can verify that your words and actions match up with your thoughts, and as well as I can measure your reactions that I observe.”

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It seems to me, it would be tough to make genuine connections with others, if you’re not connecting with yourself to begin with.

Partial, momentary, connections, are still connections, even if we can’t freeze them into perpetuity.

Sure. But like with truth, it depends on your framing.

Looked at me from the sun, I’m utterly meaningless.

But, talking to my grandkids on the phone, I’m often surprised at how much I do matter to them. So are you expecting me to blanket dismiss that as the a lie? When it isn’t. How I, we, behave is tremendously important to our loved ones and others within our sphere.

Why no appreciation for such details and aspects?

Where have I done that?

I’ll argue for the importance of appreciating your evolve biological body-brain, with layers of inherent internal knowledge and agendas well beyond your (our) imagining. I’ll argue for the importance of appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
Heck here’s my elevator pitch

Cc:
I am an evolved biological sensing creature, a filament in the pageant of Earth’s evolution.

I am the product of nearly half a billion years of Earth’s uninterrupted generations of research and development and reproduction.

My Body/Brain is the cumulative product of Earth’s evolutionary processes;

My Mind is the cumulative product of my Body/Brain interacting with my world (interior & exterior);

My God(s) along with all of my other thoughts are the product of my Mind.

I appreciate and respect the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide(with its many cascading implications) and believe it’s about the most fundamental observation we can make regarding our human condition and it is worth ruminating on since all else proceeds from there.

I respect and appreciate serious science as our best chance to understand ourselves and the Earth that sustains us. I also believe that the science of our Earth/biology/evolution and deep time offer opportunities for spiritual revelations, challenges and resolutions well beyond what our self-created ego-driven religions can offer."

Indeed.

This is where we go off the rails - I have absolutely no idea what the context that statement is.

I inhabit a space accepts the ultimate meaningless of life, but I’m also a living evolved creature, whose every moment matters to my further survival. Connection isn’t some ultimate coupling - connections are just that, connections, meeting of minds not melding of minds - some connections are tenuous, some stronger, some ephemeral, some lasting. Because connections aren’t like solid brass in your pocket, doesn’t mean they aren’t.

Just because it all evaporates in the end, doesn’t mean this moment isn’t the real thing, watch out, ready or not, here comes the next moment. This is what I strive to be “present” to. {notice I strive, it isn’t about possession, it more about appreciation for the moment, and the doing.

Wait a minute, that’s the first hint I’ve had that you can and do enjoy your life.

They why do you write the way you do.

Can you unwrap that, you are confusing me.

That brings us back to the critical importance of getting to know yourself. And being honest with yourself - that is striving to bravely face your demons, dealing with them, learn and grow, resolving the conflict.

You use the word love, but you do realize that Love means all sorts of things. Passionate erotic sex, the heat of moment, is one brand of love. Two people simply needing and thriving in each other’s close friendship is just as valid a form of love.

And every form of love can be faked, but that doesn’t justify saying love is meaningless. Simply that it’s imperfect like everything else.

It’s all relative to this and that. Ebb and flow.

Doing what?

Again, confused wording.
That the possibility of idealism is merely a mirage?
That hurting is part of life?

If this is unsatisfactory, try rereading Lausten’s above comment - He covers it pretty good.

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Sorry, a misspelling : EI = AI = artificial intelligence

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Ummm, I’m not? None of this is AI.

I guess maybe it’s just how they interpret those edges of understanding.

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The edges are where the empirically verified data is not enough to lead to conclusions that can be used to make predictions and verify those work. That’s how we keep advancing, test, learn, build on the knowledge, repeat. When the experiments start to fail, then your on the edge.

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But it’s all still provisional right? One can never “truly” know I guess, and you just have to deal with that….

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Yes. How could it be otherwise? What made you think we could know more than we do?

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Very cool, now maybe we’re on track.

And a big yes to that provisional. Being 70 I figure my lease on that provisional is running down, but that’s okay, same as it ever was. That’s why I savored life as I lived it, the past comforts my setting sun days. Still I was given this gift of life within the most amazing body-brain type Earth ever gave birth to, that’s something to enjoy and is worth celebrating, appreciating and being grateful for.