Yes, our system react by fighting against everything external, as long as it’s harmful or unaligned with us. And the baseline of struggle is not zero, whenever life gets too peaceful, we get bored, or invest problems and games. But you can change this by internalizing eastern philosophies. You can even kill your ego if you want.
But I think that this struggle of ours is “living”. I might have misunderstood, but it seemed to me that statements like “There’s something wrong with the universe” is what people say when they’re dissatisfied with the struggles of life, if not just ‘life’.
I don’t think it’s bad to struggle or be unhappy, and I think that renunciation of this is likely a kind of illness or profound exhaustion. And this is a bit of a tangent, but all engagement with philosophy might be a form of illness. Perhaps it’s pathology to think logically about life and to reflect on it, rather than just being engaged in the moment. People like us probably have a bad balance between system 1 and system 2 thinking, and thinking in an objective manner like this kind of dominates and destroys the aesthetic, subjective and sensual parts of life.
Anyway, you can choose to struggle or not to struggle, to be or not to be. Both ways of living have their advantage, neither is more correct than the other (but from a biological perspective, one of them looks like an illness). So I’m not siding with either, I just think it’s in error to try having both at the same time, and I think that the “problem” people are trying to solve in the first place is a psychologial one rather than a logical one. They’re unhappy not with struggle itself, but the struggle that they’re facing lacks personal value to them, so they rightly question it. “He who has a why can bear almost any how”, but we can’t find proper reasons externally nor by thinking logically, they’ll feel empty if they don’t reasonate with us.
You can make enlightenment your goal, but I think that’s similiar to looking for the “exit” button of a video-game. There’s more fun things you can do if you give the game a chance. And I think you can make anything your goal, there’s no wrong or correct goal. The mere feeling of progress and advancement in life feels great, even if it’s progress towards enlightenment. I think it’s this feeling that people are actually after. Even in the pursuit of knowledge, there’s the feeling of growth. According to Nietzsche, what we aim for is an increase in power, and I don’t think that he is wrong.
I think that everything which exists “fundementally” is ourselves, and that human nature and biology is thus our axiom, our “truth”. The rest of the conclusions and truths here can only be drawn from the assumptions that we make. So “Attachment is the root of suffering” and “suffering is bad” leads to “enlightenment and the escape from samsara is good”. These relate to eachother, it’s only locally true. I don’t think any truth exists except this kind. I believe that truth is something finite, a relation between things, and not some underlying law of the universe. At least, I think there’s no need to bring in such a concept here.
I suppose that what I consider wrong is merely what’s impossible. Whenever this takes place, I think that there’s a hidden contradiction somewhere.
“Isn’t it like creating the game, and then just pretending you didn’t, but follow the rules you made without questioning them enough to reach a point where you can create the game yourself?” I think that this is what we ultimately end up doing. But the only real alternatives to this that I can see is avoiding the game entirely, or to be aware that we’re creating the game. But if you know that you’re the creator, it’s hard to believe that the game is “real”.
You can choose what’s natural, or you can choose to go against it. I don’t even think a reason is required, for at this point, “why not?” becomes just as valid of a question as “why?”. When something goes wrong, I think there’s a friction between you and the world around you, or between you and another part of yourself. And you can define yourself by what’s distinct in you, even though you’re part of the world and thus not an isolated, separate entity. Being different is not a danger as long as you have enough “power”, whatever that might mean (perhaps that you internal coherence is not destroyed or disturbed by outside forces). If so, then weakness can be defined as the degree to which outside things influence us without us wanting them to.
And I did say that we can make the game ourselves, but I don’t think that this is true to a higher degree than perspectivism and our ability to evaluate and categorize things. We can’t change the laws of physics, and changing ourselves is difficult as we generally resist change. And if I were to say that life was wrong because I felt that way, it would probably be a feeling like understimulation or overstimulation, that the outside world relates to me in a uncomfortable manner. Or perhaps I had made up a “rule” in my mind, and then felt that the universe went against this rule, that things didn’t go “how they should”. I think that morality is a set of such rules. We say that the universe is wrong for breaking our rules, we don’t seem to think that our rules are wrong, but perhaps this level of egoism and ignorance is what makes us healthy human beings. (One should not confuse what’s true with what’s best, it seems to me that life needs error and imperfection in order to exist at all)
I like your idea that we should “direct the latent energy towards something productive”. I think this is more or less what’s creation is about, and that creation is more ‘divine’ than complaining about what currently is.
I don’t think we can go much higher in terms of abstraction levels without abstracting away that which we talk about. If you get rid of free will, or the idea that we are different from that around us, then nothing can really be said at all. On the days that my brain works well and I’m more intelligent than now, I get the feeling that talking about these things is pointless. Perhaps we only talk about what we don’t understand fully, as that which we already understand seems uninteresting and trivial.
Anyway, I have something important to say now: Be careful about not wanting to ignore anything. You can’t incorporate too many things at once. It would likely be like trying to make a piece of music which is every genre all at once. Or trying to reconcile 10 different philosophical system at once. Or making an environment in which any species could live. Do you see how all of these are worse than any specialized instance? How you’re merely exchanging depth for width, and gaining nothing from it? I think what you’re doing is taking the union of things, keeping all parts. But not you’re not keeping the best parts of everything (and ‘best’ is subjective). And you could take the intersection instead, but if the beliefs you are trying to tie together are mutually exclusive, then the intersection is empty. Taking the average would also be reductive, and it would not necessarily give you the best solution.
You must become an individual person, something specific. You cannot become everyone all at once. “Everything” and “Nothing” are both useless. You said yourself that we need a “better fit”, so we must be looking for something specific rather than something which is too general. Also, it’s fun to think on this level of abstraction, but I’m a specific human being so this level of correctness and impersonality should not be a person ideal for me, otherwise it would lead me to destroy myself. What I can use from philosophy and biology is to allow myself to be human, and convince myself that it’s okay, that life is game to be played, and that all the “bad” things which exist are necessary in order to make the best game possible. Most philosophizing is probably a personal fight against self-doubt in the first place.
I think that self-doubt and such issue stem from common wisdom and philosophies which aim to reduce dangers and negative consequences in our everyday lives, but which goes overboard when the population doesn’t thrive well, so that we eventually become afraid of ourselves, the outside world, and of taking any action at all. As long as one is healthy, I think it’s possible to just create according to ones own preferences, and not bring about too much damage. We could teach them our findings, but I know people who would only be harmed from reading messages like this, so I usually only share these things with average people if they’re suffering from their current beliefs.
Apologizes for the directionless nature of my reply, and possibly for repeating myself?
Hello again, Thanks for your reply, and I’m happy to agree with the general direction of what you wrote, and add some odd points of mine as well.
There is one very positive thing I see in being able to hold these thoughts, concepts and ideas. In many instances, like the ones we are discussing here in this post, there is no correct answer for everyone, or even you. But, if you can hold the various views, paradoxes and abstract ideas in your mind, you can still choose a lot of useful and enriching tentative positions to give rise to a more creative, healthy inner climate, with more acceptance and flexibility.
I don’t think we can go much higher in terms of abstraction levels without abstracting away that which we talk about. If you get rid of free will, or the idea that we are different from that around us, then nothing can really be said at all.
Perhaps we only talk about what we don’t understand fully, as that which we already understand seems uninteresting and trivial.
My view on this is a bit different. I can absolutely go beyond this level of abstraction. And I also see a point in it, but maybe it isn’t so important to everyone, and I don’t see it as so valuable to delve into here either. This level is sufficiently strong to deal with most ‘weird’ occurring thoughts, concepts and ideas, without being unnecessarily tripped up.
Now, to address your concerns, it might be better to use an “Unpopular” model like MBTI. To simplify, I try to improve all Cognitive Functions; and to apply them to life, learning not only the preferred way for each Function to deal with an issue—but also to discern when my most used tool simply isn’t the best for the task at hand. From the way you express concern, and focus on ‘living’, I assume you do this as well.
So, it is important for me to delve into this—but similarly it is very important to me to work on supination in my foot, delve into a specific emotional part, to name some of the things I care about.
I wouldn’t say talking about the meaning of life is anymore ‘important’ than those—it is just that that particular function in me, my Ne, is far more developed. And so I want to increase the balance through developing the functions that are weaker, not only in comparison to itself, but to the complexity level of my Ne. But of course, as of now, that is my most used tool, and even though I have others I use, that is still the closest to how I would say ‘I am’ - but that is changing as well.
Going further here is beside the point I believe, but to make that clear to anyone reading this:
It is quite dangerous to be ‘creative’ and boundary-pushing without certain skills. Like anything, you don’t do deep diving without proper knowledge and training—and so delving into things, like we have illustrated here, takes much skill, much training and to actually use the correct cognitive ‘tool’ for the job.
There are various ways to deal with the Question I posted, but I see it more as each of them tackling one piece of the problem. Ideally, I would prefer to have more access in myself to the various tools, and to see how each can improve a specific part of a struggle/problem. Because noticing that focusing on my supination is much more efficient in feeling balance, harmony or progress, than sorting out things in the Ne part of my mind, isn’t ‘obvious’ to me.
I greatly thank you for the exchange, and if you have a finishing comment, go ahead. If you want to continue talking about things, I think DM is the right way to go.
Yes, it seems that there’s no one correct answer or Truth. Humans just have a tendency to unify things and to search for something to rely on. Those who don’t trust themselves will look for something external which seems to back them up, like some politics, philosophy, religion or science which can help them believe in their own values. Even outside of science we seem to look for some one great unity, branding it “Love”, “God”, “Dao”, “Unifying theory”, etc. The assumptions that we make about the very nature of the universe and of truth seem to be mere tendencies in human perception.
And you’re correct, learning more is not necessarily bad, one will expand ones tool-box. But too much learning and most people will drown in unorganized knowledge. Another bad outcome is too much unification and need for consistency, for if you desperately try to solve all these paradoxes you get the empty set as a result. Two common outcomes seem to be spiritual weirdos and nihilistic logicians.
I do the same, yes. When I became more mature, I didn’t destroy my immature part, I just became capable of being both. As you may be able to tell, I enjoy immaturity more than most. But I think this approach is still insufficient. Learning everything relevant in our daily lives might be a sort of error, since we’re overfitting ourselves to one culture, one set of social norms, one small sample of social relationships, and so on. But on the other hand, why not? If we align with a larger set of training data, I think it’s likely to end up with a worse local result. You might be aware of this danger already, I just encounter a lot of people who deal with general issues at the level of society, as an escape from their person lives, or because their interests in life aren’t aligned with themselves as individuals in society.
Perhaps I’ve spend too much time warning against certain things, instead of imparting useful knowledge. But in my own road of self-development, I’ve passed through these paradigms, and ended up with a local focus. It’s not at the cost of the higher perspective at all, since internal improvement seems to radiate outwards. I see an almost limitless amount of potential here, and believe that the “outside” approach might be mistaken, by which I mean that the core reasons for scientific and philosophical engagement is rooted in the personal. My way is not universal, of course. I think my approach is partly because the scientific side doesn’t grab my attention enough, I need passion, faith, hope and other emotional aspects in order to engage with sufficient depth for neurogenesis and other changes to occur.
There may be a loss of harmony with specialization, but I find that living and being properly fired up requires deep engagement, and that one domain is sufficient. Not becoming great, but becoming a great [Something]. That increasing ones scope of thinking might be a cause of getting older, meant as losing ones youthful energy and confidence as it’s gradually divided over a larger and larger area. That said, the right psychological “contradictions” will bring about excellent results. A man who has integrated both the masculine and the feminine will have the advantages of both. If you engage in many different subjects in depth, that seems to me a sort of ADHD or general need for cognition, if not habit or the consumption of “insight porn”. But I’ll assume that you’ve already taken such worries into account.
I’d love to continue in DMs, but I might just ramble with a loose association to the topic at hand unless I have something to anchor me. And my personal interests won’t necessarily overlap with yours, so if the conversation so far has been too distant from what you’ve been looking for, it might not be beneficial for you to continue in DMs. I’ll let you decide, I’m quite easygoing
Thank you!
Yes, our system react by fighting against everything external, as long as it’s harmful or unaligned with us.
And the baseline of struggle is not zero, whenever life gets too peaceful, we get bored, or invest problems and games.
But you can change this by internalizing eastern philosophies. You can even kill your ego if you want.
But I think that this struggle of ours is “living”. I might have misunderstood, but it seemed to me that statements like “There’s something wrong with the universe” is what people say when they’re dissatisfied with the struggles of life, if not just ‘life’.
I don’t think it’s bad to struggle or be unhappy, and I think that renunciation of this is likely a kind of illness or profound exhaustion.
And this is a bit of a tangent, but all engagement with philosophy might be a form of illness. Perhaps it’s pathology to think logically about life and to reflect on it, rather than just being engaged in the moment. People like us probably have a bad balance between system 1 and system 2 thinking, and thinking in an objective manner like this kind of dominates and destroys the aesthetic, subjective and sensual parts of life.
Anyway, you can choose to struggle or not to struggle, to be or not to be. Both ways of living have their advantage, neither is more correct than the other (but from a biological perspective, one of them looks like an illness). So I’m not siding with either, I just think it’s in error to try having both at the same time, and I think that the “problem” people are trying to solve in the first place is a psychologial one rather than a logical one. They’re unhappy not with struggle itself, but the struggle that they’re facing lacks personal value to them, so they rightly question it. “He who has a why can bear almost any how”, but we can’t find proper reasons externally nor by thinking logically, they’ll feel empty if they don’t reasonate with us.
You can make enlightenment your goal, but I think that’s similiar to looking for the “exit” button of a video-game. There’s more fun things you can do if you give the game a chance. And I think you can make anything your goal, there’s no wrong or correct goal. The mere feeling of progress and advancement in life feels great, even if it’s progress towards enlightenment. I think it’s this feeling that people are actually after. Even in the pursuit of knowledge, there’s the feeling of growth. According to Nietzsche, what we aim for is an increase in power, and I don’t think that he is wrong.
I think that everything which exists “fundementally” is ourselves, and that human nature and biology is thus our axiom, our “truth”. The rest of the conclusions and truths here can only be drawn from the assumptions that we make. So “Attachment is the root of suffering” and “suffering is bad” leads to “enlightenment and the escape from samsara is good”. These relate to eachother, it’s only locally true. I don’t think any truth exists except this kind. I believe that truth is something finite, a relation between things, and not some underlying law of the universe. At least, I think there’s no need to bring in such a concept here.
I suppose that what I consider wrong is merely what’s impossible. Whenever this takes place, I think that there’s a hidden contradiction somewhere.
“Isn’t it like creating the game, and then just pretending you didn’t, but follow the rules you made without questioning them enough to reach a point where you can create the game yourself?” I think that this is what we ultimately end up doing. But the only real alternatives to this that I can see is avoiding the game entirely, or to be aware that we’re creating the game. But if you know that you’re the creator, it’s hard to believe that the game is “real”.
You can choose what’s natural, or you can choose to go against it. I don’t even think a reason is required, for at this point, “why not?” becomes just as valid of a question as “why?”.
When something goes wrong, I think there’s a friction between you and the world around you, or between you and another part of yourself. And you can define yourself by what’s distinct in you, even though you’re part of the world and thus not an isolated, separate entity. Being different is not a danger as long as you have enough “power”, whatever that might mean (perhaps that you internal coherence is not destroyed or disturbed by outside forces). If so, then weakness can be defined as the degree to which outside things influence us without us wanting them to.
And I did say that we can make the game ourselves, but I don’t think that this is true to a higher degree than perspectivism and our ability to evaluate and categorize things. We can’t change the laws of physics, and changing ourselves is difficult as we generally resist change.
And if I were to say that life was wrong because I felt that way, it would probably be a feeling like understimulation or overstimulation, that the outside world relates to me in a uncomfortable manner. Or perhaps I had made up a “rule” in my mind, and then felt that the universe went against this rule, that things didn’t go “how they should”. I think that morality is a set of such rules. We say that the universe is wrong for breaking our rules, we don’t seem to think that our rules are wrong, but perhaps this level of egoism and ignorance is what makes us healthy human beings. (One should not confuse what’s true with what’s best, it seems to me that life needs error and imperfection in order to exist at all)
I like your idea that we should “direct the latent energy towards something productive”. I think this is more or less what’s creation is about, and that creation is more ‘divine’ than complaining about what currently is.
I don’t think we can go much higher in terms of abstraction levels without abstracting away that which we talk about. If you get rid of free will, or the idea that we are different from that around us, then nothing can really be said at all. On the days that my brain works well and I’m more intelligent than now, I get the feeling that talking about these things is pointless. Perhaps we only talk about what we don’t understand fully, as that which we already understand seems uninteresting and trivial.
Anyway, I have something important to say now: Be careful about not wanting to ignore anything. You can’t incorporate too many things at once. It would likely be like trying to make a piece of music which is every genre all at once. Or trying to reconcile 10 different philosophical system at once. Or making an environment in which any species could live. Do you see how all of these are worse than any specialized instance? How you’re merely exchanging depth for width, and gaining nothing from it? I think what you’re doing is taking the union of things, keeping all parts. But not you’re not keeping the best parts of everything (and ‘best’ is subjective). And you could take the intersection instead, but if the beliefs you are trying to tie together are mutually exclusive, then the intersection is empty. Taking the average would also be reductive, and it would not necessarily give you the best solution.
You must become an individual person, something specific. You cannot become everyone all at once. “Everything” and “Nothing” are both useless. You said yourself that we need a “better fit”, so we must be looking for something specific rather than something which is too general. Also, it’s fun to think on this level of abstraction, but I’m a specific human being so this level of correctness and impersonality should not be a person ideal for me, otherwise it would lead me to destroy myself. What I can use from philosophy and biology is to allow myself to be human, and convince myself that it’s okay, that life is game to be played, and that all the “bad” things which exist are necessary in order to make the best game possible. Most philosophizing is probably a personal fight against self-doubt in the first place.
I think that self-doubt and such issue stem from common wisdom and philosophies which aim to reduce dangers and negative consequences in our everyday lives, but which goes overboard when the population doesn’t thrive well, so that we eventually become afraid of ourselves, the outside world, and of taking any action at all.
As long as one is healthy, I think it’s possible to just create according to ones own preferences, and not bring about too much damage. We could teach them our findings, but I know people who would only be harmed from reading messages like this, so I usually only share these things with average people if they’re suffering from their current beliefs.
Apologizes for the directionless nature of my reply, and possibly for repeating myself?
Hello again,
Thanks for your reply, and I’m happy to agree with the general direction of what you wrote, and add some odd points of mine as well.
There is one very positive thing I see in being able to hold these thoughts, concepts and ideas. In many instances, like the ones we are discussing here in this post, there is no correct answer for everyone, or even you. But, if you can hold the various views, paradoxes and abstract ideas in your mind, you can still choose a lot of useful and enriching tentative positions to give rise to a more creative, healthy inner climate, with more acceptance and flexibility.
My view on this is a bit different. I can absolutely go beyond this level of abstraction. And I also see a point in it, but maybe it isn’t so important to everyone, and I don’t see it as so valuable to delve into here either. This level is sufficiently strong to deal with most ‘weird’ occurring thoughts, concepts and ideas, without being unnecessarily tripped up.
Now, to address your concerns, it might be better to use an “Unpopular” model like MBTI. To simplify, I try to improve all Cognitive Functions; and to apply them to life, learning not only the preferred way for each Function to deal with an issue—but also to discern when my most used tool simply isn’t the best for the task at hand.
From the way you express concern, and focus on ‘living’, I assume you do this as well.
So, it is important for me to delve into this—but similarly it is very important to me to work on supination in my foot, delve into a specific emotional part, to name some of the things I care about.
I wouldn’t say talking about the meaning of life is anymore ‘important’ than those—it is just that that particular function in me, my Ne, is far more developed. And so I want to increase the balance through developing the functions that are weaker, not only in comparison to itself, but to the complexity level of my Ne. But of course, as of now, that is my most used tool, and even though I have others I use, that is still the closest to how I would say ‘I am’ - but that is changing as well.
Going further here is beside the point I believe, but to make that clear to anyone reading this:
It is quite dangerous to be ‘creative’ and boundary-pushing without certain skills. Like anything, you don’t do deep diving without proper knowledge and training—and so delving into things, like we have illustrated here, takes much skill, much training and to actually use the correct cognitive ‘tool’ for the job.
There are various ways to deal with the Question I posted, but I see it more as each of them tackling one piece of the problem. Ideally, I would prefer to have more access in myself to the various tools, and to see how each can improve a specific part of a struggle/problem. Because noticing that focusing on my supination is much more efficient in feeling balance, harmony or progress, than sorting out things in the Ne part of my mind, isn’t ‘obvious’ to me.
I greatly thank you for the exchange, and if you have a finishing comment, go ahead. If you want to continue talking about things, I think DM is the right way to go.
Gratefully,
Caerulea-Lawrence
Likewise, thanks for replying!
Yes, it seems that there’s no one correct answer or Truth. Humans just have a tendency to unify things and to search for something to rely on. Those who don’t trust themselves will look for something external which seems to back them up, like some politics, philosophy, religion or science which can help them believe in their own values. Even outside of science we seem to look for some one great unity, branding it “Love”, “God”, “Dao”, “Unifying theory”, etc.
The assumptions that we make about the very nature of the universe and of truth seem to be mere tendencies in human perception.
And you’re correct, learning more is not necessarily bad, one will expand ones tool-box. But too much learning and most people will drown in unorganized knowledge. Another bad outcome is too much unification and need for consistency, for if you desperately try to solve all these paradoxes you get the empty set as a result. Two common outcomes seem to be spiritual weirdos and nihilistic logicians.
I do the same, yes. When I became more mature, I didn’t destroy my immature part, I just became capable of being both. As you may be able to tell, I enjoy immaturity more than most.
But I think this approach is still insufficient. Learning everything relevant in our daily lives might be a sort of error, since we’re overfitting ourselves to one culture, one set of social norms, one small sample of social relationships, and so on. But on the other hand, why not? If we align with a larger set of training data, I think it’s likely to end up with a worse local result. You might be aware of this danger already, I just encounter a lot of people who deal with general issues at the level of society, as an escape from their person lives, or because their interests in life aren’t aligned with themselves as individuals in society.
Perhaps I’ve spend too much time warning against certain things, instead of imparting useful knowledge. But in my own road of self-development, I’ve passed through these paradigms, and ended up with a local focus. It’s not at the cost of the higher perspective at all, since internal improvement seems to radiate outwards.
I see an almost limitless amount of potential here, and believe that the “outside” approach might be mistaken, by which I mean that the core reasons for scientific and philosophical engagement is rooted in the personal. My way is not universal, of course. I think my approach is partly because the scientific side doesn’t grab my attention enough, I need passion, faith, hope and other emotional aspects in order to engage with sufficient depth for neurogenesis and other changes to occur.
There may be a loss of harmony with specialization, but I find that living and being properly fired up requires deep engagement, and that one domain is sufficient. Not becoming great, but becoming a great [Something]. That increasing ones scope of thinking might be a cause of getting older, meant as losing ones youthful energy and confidence as it’s gradually divided over a larger and larger area. That said, the right psychological “contradictions” will bring about excellent results. A man who has integrated both the masculine and the feminine will have the advantages of both.
If you engage in many different subjects in depth, that seems to me a sort of ADHD or general need for cognition, if not habit or the consumption of “insight porn”. But I’ll assume that you’ve already taken such worries into account.
I’d love to continue in DMs, but I might just ramble with a loose association to the topic at hand unless I have something to anchor me. And my personal interests won’t necessarily overlap with yours, so if the conversation so far has been too distant from what you’ve been looking for, it might not be beneficial for you to continue in DMs. I’ll let you decide, I’m quite easygoing