The point of life/living

General Discussion
542

Because I don’t think he has.
Because he keeps trying, so I’ll keep trying.
Why are you doing this?

No I mean, his words scare me, sounds like he wants to off himself.

If I said I understood him, that would mean I understand and accept his hopelessness. That’s scary as f, because I’m not like other people, I understand suicide is a viable option for some who have had enough and simply need to shut it all down.
It’s a tragic resignation, the ultimate last resort.
Still, in the end we all have to save ourselves, or not.

I keep prodding because I know there’s more he can uncover (or see, or learn, if you will), and because he keeps crying out for something to click. If the infinite regression takes one into hopelessness, realizing the circularity of our lives, can be of great benefit.

Also I hate it when you twist my word with deliberate obtuseness.

Here’s the complete quote:

It’s the fact that everything you think is a complex interaction with physical reality and other minds. That’s the key thought to latch onto there is, INTERACTION!

Has nothing to do with infinite regressions, it has to do with being present to, and aware of the moment!

That is not specific enough, it’s a broad brush stroke.
There’s more for him to discover within the wracking of his brain.
Or not.
But so long as he’s reaching out I’m going to try to reach out.

Seriously, You think psychic energy doesn’t bounce back and isn’t part of a constant interaction?

Are you rejecting the basic notion of Karma

“In Buddhism, karma refers to the principle of cause and effect. The result of an action — which can be verbal, mental, or physical — is determined not only by the act but also by the intention.”

Here again having a deep appreciate of the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape would help you out of your own confusion.

I never said there are laws of physics that dictate what we are aware of!
You are putting words in my mouth.

What I was saying is that, in the end, you are responsible for what you are PRESENT to.

Where did I make that claim?

We are a product of our upbringing and a world full of factors beyond our awareness and control - as we grow older and learn more, take more control for ourselves, we become capable of making our own choices, but those choices are always made from within that “product” (body/brain/mind) and how it continues interacting with what our dynamic unforgiving world is tossing at us .

While there aren’t any “simple laws” there are some fundamental rules, like the emotion and tone of your words to other - it’s not tough to figure out that if you go into a situation aggressive and angry that the situation will escalate into aggressive angry and possibly melt down. If you go into a situation, . . .

Well let me share an amazing story I heard long ago from the person to whom it happened and whom I choose to believe. It even tangentially touches on what empathy is all about.

This sweetie young lady was hitchhiking and got into a car. Pulling away from the curb, she realized she’d made a big mistake and that a predator had picked her up and she really feared he had bad intentions in mind for her.

But, she’s stuck with him as he’s speeding away with her in his car.

What’s she to do?

This amazingly solid gal, switched to a scared panicked vulnerable girl escaping some bad guy who was after her, and she started and kept on heaping effusive gratitude toward the drooling driver - oh thank god, thank you for being my savior!, I was so scare!, and thank you for rescuing me!, you saved me!, etc., etc…

What happened?

All of a sudden this guy who was looking at her like she was a juicy piece of meat,
was hit with this bit of raw humanity and trust and gratitude,
that he emotionally turns into her protector,
driving her to where she wanted to go and dropped her off. (me, I can imagine how he suddenly felt like a “real man” stepping up and doing the right thing and having a lady look at him like a hero. Instead of a lonely angry confused horny slob thinking of revenge and satisfaction.)

That’s some heavy exchange of energy - even if it’s mainly psychic energy being exchanged.

But, he’s not describing it well enough.
I think he can do better.
I also think describing it better would be a great benefit to him.
Thus, so long as he responds to me I’ll continue trying to respond to him as constructively as I can.

Thank you

I know you think you are acting constructively with your cross snipping, I’m not so sure. Though it does offer me more opportunities to strive to better define what’s confusing you about how you read/hear my words, so as they say: It’s all good. :v:

Have a pleasant thanksgiving day recovery.

543

Listening to Inthedarkness reminds me of Ives’ “The Unanswered Question”

544

Because you don’t talk about suicide like that with someone who has discussed suicide. Too late now, we’ve already done it. We’ve put up the hotline a few times and he’s said he called them and it doesn’t work. He has said he won’t do it but he still wants to have something to calm his mind.

Understanding doesn’t mean you accept his logic or conclusions. It means you understand his feelings. No one has the ultimate answers to why we are here and that’s what is troubling him. He’s made that clear over and over. If you don’t understand that, then maybe you should read all 542 posts again.

Don’t twist my partial quoting into something that it’s not. I read your whole post a couple times.

To in thedarkness it does. He’s said it many times. Interactions and awareness all lead to the ultimate question of meaning, which the universe does not provide. That’s what he says.

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:542, topic:11076”]
You think psychic energy
[/quote
I don’t think “psychic energy” is a thing. I think this forum has gone far down the woo-woo track and may never come back.

yes. Especially in the this that you or anyone can know what the “basic notion of Karma” is and use it like it’s as simple as saying the sky is blue.

You used the word “dictate”. I might have added “laws of physics”, but my basic meaning is basically the same.

That is the main theme of the Vervaeke course I finished this year. It’s not possible to be aware of everything happening in every moment and make a full analysis of what we should be present to and the consequences of all of the possible choices. We rely on instinct, on culture, on our flawed sense perceptions. Oddly enough, this idea of personal responsibility is what our current legal system is based on, and it comes from some ancient place, not our current understanding of neuroscience.

here:

You didn’t say the laws are simple, but it’s implied. Again, he keeps stating how comments like this are wrong. If you are going to engage in this conversation, read up on it. He says that “things don’t make you feel”, and he includes people in that. He has some sense that there’s something missing in that statement, but he can’t work it out. We’ve discussed people and influences and he’s rejected that, because, “things don’t make you feel”.

That’s enough for now.

545

But to ask the universe to project meaning is a “reach too far”.
I believe psychology confirms that our brains themselves can provide meaning, based on the premise of “food for thought”.

Interesting that Buddhism advocates the emptying of the mind, instead of filling it.

Copilot:
Does not require completely emptying the mind
Buddhist meditation does not require completely emptying the mind1. Instead, it aims to train the mind not to follow distractions12. The goal is to make the mind stable and free of dependencies1.

546

Not arguing the point right now. Only pointing out that it is what inthedarkness says. Or at least, that’s what I hear.

547

:+1:
Going off on a tangent here,

Coming back from another walk with Maddy I was dancing with the thought we people, on an individual level we need to be needed.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone enunciate that thought
or discuss what kind of role it has in one’s own sense of wellbeing.

For instance, I wouldn’t have remained near as fit as I have, if not for the past five years of baby’s coming into my life and me helping caretake, meaning lots of physical activity lifting, carrying and if one is involved as I am, that evolves into crawling into tiny space, under tables, general roughhousing, getting climbed on and such, (one doesn’t become a baby whisper by sitting on the coach :wink: )

My body interacting with their energy and needs, responded.

When the first one started growing into a toddler I was really worried about by lower back and wrists and arms being able to keep up. Dealing with pain and such worried about the inevitable getting worse. Like the Dr. likes saying: sure mind over matter is very cool, but matter still matters. I was getting old my body was going down hill.

Five years on I have three of them getting bigger with every visit, (not to mention the little echo of me born this past summer) and I’m still lifting and carrying them - but the body got the message and responded by doing what it had to do, even as the years add on.

My conscious mind has responded, by pacing, remaining ergonomically aware in how I’m moving, striving to eat and sleep and think well and all those bodily housekeeping chores that also matter to who one is.

See that? Besides the body taking care of itself, there was also the meta-physical aspect of interacting, the touching, the eyes, the activities, the being needed and constant interactions (during our times together), it gave my body an emotional/spiritual boost and I’m sure Sapolsky can describe the actually cascade of chemical and physical functions that manifested this intangible interaction within my physical body.

Having a reason to live matters.

One of the greatest tragedy of this age is too many humans have too little that matters to them.

548

Apparently this “need to nurture” can befound throughout nature.

549

:man_in_lotus_position:

OOooommmm

:v: :wink:

550

Survival drive is hard to beat. So is hope.

As far as I know humans are the only ones who question why we keep going. Other living things just do it.

Physical workouts haven’t helped, distractions don’t work, the therapists I’ve had so far don’t understand what I’m trying to say and I have to repeat myself over and over again. If I could have saved myself it would have happened already, but I can’t.

I literally have a whole thread on it on emotions that got locked. It’s still bugging me because of what Gary said and I have the lessons on there directly quoted.

That whole part about “things don’t make you feel” has me messed up about emotions and what to make of anything anymore.

Everything I’ve said has been said, I don’t know how else I can put it.

I just want it to stop, because I can’t solve it by myself.

551

Probably this one. Not sure

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552

Exactly. Where does that come from?
Look no further than your biological body interacting with life.

Okay. But that’s not what my analogy was about.

Well yeah, I’m hearing you, and that is why your emptiness scares me (for your sake).
Though you seem to find some strength in it, so you know stuff I don’t.

That’s rough.
Perhaps a lesson is you need take responsibility for your own feelings?

Okay, there, we feel a certain degree of empathy with you (that doesn’t claim we understand or feel what you are feeling, to means we can be aware there’s a lot of pain going on, that’s it)
which is why we keep sharing our two cents worth, as you share these struggles.

553

Then it is no longer called empathy, the ability to place oneself into another’s shoes.
The emotion we experience is called “sympathy”.

554

Yeah, okay, I’m sure we could nitpick the semantics and degrees to no end.
Seems to me an interplay on all sorts of levels of awareness, all in flux, and so on.

empathy ~ sympathy, tomayto ~ tomahto. :v:

555

This one.

https://forum.centerforinquiry.org/t/do-we-control-our-emotions/10660/288

Why does that even matter?

Then it’s not really getting to the point of what I’m talking about.

I obviously don’t find strength in it, I persist in spite of it for reasons unknown to me, if there even are any.

Read previous replies on that I’ve already made.

556

Why does what matter?
Appreciating the biological origins of body and your thoughts (consciousness) and your connections to this Earth?

Well? Why does it matter so much to humans to know their biological mother and father?

I hear your big issue is that nothing means anything to you.
Sometimes it even comes across as you not even believing in yourself.

Who knows?
Though, I have known people who seem to embrace their misery like some badge of honor. Although there’s also usually a biological component to the torture they put themselves and their loved one’s through.

To know oneself, is to be set free from a good deal of the human misery we humans inflict upon ourselves - it offers an orientation, a benchmark even helps to set one’s bearings.

What misery?
That emptiness you are dealing with.

Oh gosh you have made so many replies.

I am saying it is a lesson of life you should start taking seriously.
That didn’t imply you can do it.
It means you understanding on a rational level that it’s a sort of prerequisite - which turns it into a goal to be achieved.

Or are you saying your lack of emotional connection, extends to not being able to make rational connections?
What about not striving towards a goals? Is that also part of the syndrome?
I can’t believe it because you spend so effort in striving to communicate with us, however frustrating for all of us.

You keep saying you can’t, but we see you trying, so stop telling yourself you can’t.
Okay let me rephrase that, so why do you keep telling yourself you are so incapable?

So, okay, perhaps you can’t accomplish that, now.

Still that doesn’t make it any less true, or important a lesson to learn and try to embody.

Or any less worthy of some effort on your part.

I get the feeling you keep shoehorning yourself into something, rather than striving to escape the crysilis,

557

:zipper_mouth_face:

:face_with_monocle:

558

Well, maybe that isn’t important in the big scheme of things. The big question that is seen in the earliest scribblings of humans is “why are we here”. It’s only recently that we figured out the “how are we here” question and changed our perspective. So, millions of years of evolution did not prepare us for that. Richard Carrier addresses this all the time, and connects his earlier work in every post he does, so the fact that this one came recently is not just some lucky coincidence. He likes to use big words, but to get where he’s going, it’s necessary. This time, it’s a big concept, “Tropes”.

Basically, it means a group or set, like “green things”. It’s how our minds work, so the simple idea gets complicated:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes/#TropIssuPhilMind

Why am I going over all of this? Carrier applies this concept to where theism goes wrong, because that’s his thing. It also applies to all of us. Here’s his blog.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/31660

You can skip down to “The Other Weird Argument from Trope Theory“ heading. Here’s my summary:

Spacetime is the thing at the end of the infinite regress, it doesn’t need something else to exist. It has no morality or purpose but everything else exists because of it, so in a sense, it is “all knowing”. Minds happen within it, not because spacetime wants them, instead they are a result of randomness and time. Minds are limited because they are the result of many other things being created that result in them, and minds do have desires and imaginations. They imagine that wherever they came from that must have intention for us to have those desires. This inspired creating civilizations based on searching for that source, fighting over who found it, and more recently fighting because they know it can’t be found.

In the tropes link, the example given is very similar to the “baseball at the face” question posted in this thread. It notes, “In general, it means that mental properties are not causally relevant, however much they seem to be.” This idea, which is a philosophical one so it’s not a basic truth, gets twisted into pop psychology, spawning online businesses that tell people that “the thing doesn’t make you feel”, sending people down a path that never ends and has infinite options for responses to real world problems, so they seem to provide answers by questioning everything, and charge people a fee to keep going in circles.

The circle is real, that our minds produce a thought about the existence of an ultimate source of morality, or reason, or truth, or meaning, but that does not make any of those things real, then minds are capable of reason and it can lead to a high probability of truth, and answers to many of the “why” questions that it posited to itself, but what they can’t do is make us feel any better about the answers we get, so we produce more thoughts about existence. We either find acceptance, or some sort of comfort with not knowing, or in the constant search for more answers, or we choose ways to alter our minds and avoid the pain of the conclusions. Any of the options are the result of having imperfect and limited minds that evolved to have these thoughts. We get 70 to 100 years to sort out the billions year old universe. It doesn’t matter how many people have got it wrong, we still feel good when we think we’ve done it.

559

I ask why does it matter and all you gave me was just a bunch more whys that then tail into my original point about why does that matter?

That’s too vague to be useful information. What does that even mean to “know one’s self”? Why do we just assume it’s freedom from misery? Plenty of people claim to have known themselves and promptly offed themselves, I even knew a guy like that from a different forum.

What lesson exactly? You’re not getting at the problem I’m talking about, you’re going everywhere except the target.

Missing the issue at hand.

If I were capable of doing it myself I wouldn’t be here asking others, it’s that simple.

You haven’t really stated what any of that IS, even then that’s not the problem here.

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561

that is vague, but, knowing some history here on this forum, and even reading within this thread, I’m pretty sure it means to understand what it is to be human. That also might sound vague, but it’s not that hard. It’s a second order of reasoning that many, maybe even most, people don’t bother with. I see people taking an easy answer and an easy path that usually ends up with new problems in the long run because the easy path is a short term fix. To put a fine point on it, choosing beer and football over reading a book.

The not as easy, slightly longer path, is to examine the evidence. You’ve looked for evidence of meaning in the long series of “why” questions and found none. Have you looked for beauty or morality? They aren’t there on the surface. They require a couple of steps, as in, if I want to not be harmed by people around me, then I shouldn’t harm people around me. If I don’t want some random person I’ve never met to harm me, I need to get more people to understand this idea of mutual non-harm. There is evidence that treating others well results in more people treating each other well.

The beginning point is often the very basic idea of being happy. Or even simpler, survival, but that one always seems like it could include killing off anything that bothers me, so I like happiness as a starting point. You came here a year ago with questions about a website called “Pathway to Happiness”, so I can safely assume that’s what you want.

562

Maybe a tangent, but a fun one. A couple clicks through the Carrier blog and there’s this

Plantinga ridiculously calls this the Mozart Argument. I wonder what he thinks of rap. Or death metal. He thinks “heavy metal” is “miserable and disgusting” and “could as well have been what we took to be beautiful.” Apparently it escaped him to notice that…um, evidently, we did evolve to take heavy metal to be beautiful. That’s why it exists as an art form. And why Mozart is regarded by others as so “miserable and disgusting” that it literally operates as an effective repellent. Plantinga’s subjective preference for Mozart is an entirely idiosyncratic happenstance of his cultural contacts and life experience. It is not a “cosmic universal truth.” It’s a human construct. Although it is based on common evolved principles related to social bonding—such as the ability to detect and enjoy rhythm and harmony, which are fundamental to human communication and ritual. Ever wonder why parrots are one of the few other species that can appreciate music?

Once again, someone forgot to tell Plantinga, who is still living in the Middle Ages, that we already have a developing science of the evolution of human aesthetics. Including the one domain he mentions, music. Other domains are likewise well-studied (e.g. for smell, taste, even drugs; for vision, see my survey in Sense and Goodness without God VI, pp. 349-66; and for an updated survey of the whole science of human aesthetics, see The Artful Species). Plantinga doesn’t seem aware of even one jot or tittle of it. Science illiteracy, once again, is a defining feature of his failure as a philosopher.

It happens to be directed at Plantiga, from the “soul vs naturalism” video, but it could be anyone who thinks there is something inherently beautiful in Mozart. I’m not a Mozart fan but there is evidence, scientifically gathered, that all humans detect and enjoy rhythms and react negatively to dissonant chords. The link to using classical music as a repellant is the funny part. I did that in a pizza restaurant I worked in, when it was closing time and we wanted the kids to leave. Young people’s clothing stores in malls do the opposite by playing heavy metal, to keep the parents out.

This is science. This is the missing ingredient that people often don’t even consider. They think happiness is obtained by following gurus or in books that have titles that claim will help them. Therapists have less than perfect records so they get thrown into the mix as if it’s an even choice between therapy or religion (including modern gurus) but when did a therapy war bring down an entire civilization, enslave millions, choose leaders based on bloodlines, or oppress the people who work the land? If you want to know how to change your mind, look at the science, follow the evidence.