I'm stuck

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

That’s it. I can’t rationalize anymore. Philosophy impaired my thinking. I know so many ideas that i can’t just make one sensible simple system. Whenever i see or feel something, i try to explain it to myself. Why did that happen, why in this way, why at all. Where’s this world/universe is going. What is progress. Why there’s progress at all. Matter is energy and evertyhing what’s happening is just transformation of energy. But why this system is so difficult to understand. I can’t believe the rule behind it is so difficult. I feel it should be something simple, so simple and brilliant it should explain everything but then despair tells me that i’m never going to find out it. I’m stuck whenever i try to think about it. There are too many similarities in this world. Ever thought how acts bumping ball and electromagnetic waves? Why almost always there’s two poles and they try to become a neutral balance. What is consciousness? How can i put everything in one logical and simple system. What is logic at all? Why logic is like how we know it.

I’m stuck. I can’t find the answer, i look at things differently than others. I try to rationalize what i see/feel but it just gets me nowhere. It’s really depressing, it feel empty inside.

2

You’re not alone dude. I believe it’s a typical human thing that we reflect upon these things. I’m willing to make the generalization that there is something about mankind that makes us desperate for a deeper meaning, and that’s why we use stuff like religion and/or science to give our existence a purpose.

It’s all pretty arbitrary really. There’s always a good reason for why we believe in the things we do, but in the end it doesn’t really matter what your schtick is for the purpose of explaining our existence.

I come to think of this brilliant quote from the simpsons: “Have you tried any of the other religions Ned? There all pretty much the same…”

My question is, would it kill you NOT to know everything?

3

I think rationality is meeting it’s borders. You can’t know and understand everything. Maybe some kind of more intuitive thinking will take over. This thinking isn’t looking for eternal answers on questions, but makes a personal opinion on what is.

4

So you realized you have as much purpose on this planet as a turtle, and that nothing really is. So take advantage of your knowledge and enjoy life, take pride in laughing at the people who think they know everything. I try to.

5

I think that you are attempting to systemize everything, and in your despair at failure, are lashing out at Knowledge itself. Language and etc seem to be eating you alive. You want to define something called “Progress” but you shirk from acknowledging the inherent complexity in understanding anything. So I wonder if you are doing something that I have the habit of doing, namely, eliminating all the trappings of “Progress” -to take your example- and hitting a brick wall when you realize that a thing is its trappings. Or maybe you disagree? C.S. Lewis purported that a good many of our dilemnas were nonsense questions, such as “Is a triangle mile?” This isn’t to say that all your questions are ridiculous, just that, perhaps, you have become embroiled in your own complexity and not that of the world around you.

6

I made a mistake by useing a word “progress”. It should have been “[nature’s] course of action” or something like that. So it’s some kind of progress. We can’t tell if it’s good or bad because i don’t even think it should be valued using human system of values. But progress does exist, you don’t have to prove that, you can see that the world is changing constantly, you can’t deny it. The question is who the hell are we and what are we doing (i.e. meaning of life). We might be a failure in big picture of evolution. It seems we’re going nowhere and our existence is pointless, our minds are too narrow to understand the meaning either. So our whole civilization might be just a simple failure in the evolution of the universe. It’s like Universe is trying to find out meaning of its own existence. We’re trying to find out meaning of life and we’re part of the Universe (we are matter), but we fail. But let’s say we’re the highest possible level of life in the Nature. That’s quite simple to believe it because we’re only animals that are aware of our own existence. But if so then Universe is stuck in its quest for meaning. Then there’s no meaning, because meaning doesn’t exist - it’s unreachable thus idea of “meaning” is irrational.

Faith that there actually is meaning of our existence leads to irrational thinking and we tend to create complex systems and rules like religion,morality, society norms that cannot be applied to reality, because there’s only chaos. Applying rules to chaos is absurd. There are, of course, a few simple rules (for example, how subatomic particles act) but they’re only cause or principle of chaos. We know that Nature (Universe) is one big chaos.

To put everything in one place, world is chaos; rules, laws and versions of meaning cannot apply to chaos; we’re part of chaos so we are meaningless, we have no destination; our life is nonsense but we can enjoy it; we can simplify everything and say that meaning of our life is “to enjoy it”. What else? Nothing. Nihilism helps to cure this illness of quest for meaning.

7

It’s not about ‘us’ or ‘we’. It’s all about yourself. I also tried to find the answer to the big questions, but now I know it’s only my own concern, just like everyone has his own meaning (whatever that may be) There is no ultimate answer applying for everyone. The answer lies in the person itself, and not in somebody else his mind.

8

This is why the extistentialists have such appeal to me. something you should just experience. don’t rationalize passion, live it. Don’t rationalize away all your desires, inclinations and urges, live them.

It is okay to reason and rationalize but to do so absolutely ruins life. Life is about living, too much reason is anti-life

9

Hello Helpless,
What if everything in our world could be accurately predicted and explained by a trivially simple idea or algorithm?

Goodbye to philosophy and science.
Goodbye to wonderment and curiosity.
Goodbye to excitement and adventure.
Goodbye to hope and trust.

To explain something is to show that it is not surprising. What would a world without surprises feel like? If everything were known to us a priori, would we still love? What would we find beautiful in a world without surprises; where the unexpected is nonexistent; where we already know the punch-line to every joke? The French novelist, Stendhal, wrote:

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”

I want to know everything because I know that I can never know everything. If I were in danger of knowing everything then I’d run screaming, away from philosophy and science.

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” Samual Johnson

Indeed, one singular beauty of this world that I inhabit is that it’s not simply a world that I inhabit; it’s also a world that I create. In the words of John Searle:

“No set of statements of fact by themselves entails any statement of value.”

The world supplies the data; I supply the values.

Best wishes,
Michael

E Lucevan Le Stelle

And the stars shone, and the earth unstoppered
its perfumes, the garden gate scrinched
open, footsteps lisped along the path
and they were hers, and she was mine.

And my hand shook the more slowly
I unwrapped and dawdlier I kissed her,
and her aromas rose, and the hours fled,
which is the way with hours.

And I’ve unveiled myself of any hope,
and death’s steps rasp along the path,
and, like any star, I have nothing
to burn but the life I love.

William Mattews, Search Party; Collected Poems

10

Here’s how to shake the philosophy blues.

It’s so simple, you’re going to kick yourself. But before you do, take a long, long bike ride/run/excersise. It works every time. :wink:

11

What is the sound of one hand clapping?
:wink:
DALE

12

:expressionless:

I define clapping as making sounds by striking the palms of two hands against each other (blah blah blah reason).

“What is the sound of one hand striking the palms of two hands against eachother?” It’s an invalid question :laughing:

Now get outside

13

Yeah you are right it is a logically invalid question, but it does have a purpose. The story behind it is that there was this student monk bloke who wanted to know how to be enlightened so he asked the other wise teacher monk bloke what to do. The teacher posed a question “what the sound of one hand clapping?” well, the student monk bloke tried and tried to answer the question and came up with all kinds of answers, to each the wise teacher would tell him “no.” So eventually the student ended up getting very very frustrated. (ie, relating to the original post) so eventually the student said to the master “i give up” and the wise teacher says “now you hear the sound of one hand clapping”.

So there we are, everything is clear now!!! not! I think the point is that some things are not logical, don’t spend forever trying to answer them, relax and let go and maybe then you’ll stand a chance of “getting it”. The truth is SO simple that you don’t even need to think to know it… you need to “un-think”.

Right Im off for a run round the block :laughing:

DALE

14

Someone listened :astonished:

I wasn’t expecting that :wink:

15

I had a problem a lot like this a few years ago. Then I did LSD for the first (and so far only) time, with my best friend and some other friends of hers, who were already experienced at it, and as my trip was ending, this is what I wrote:

"This must be known: It’s a leap of faith, but I’ll get around that somehow, find my way all the way around but up and over just by a Planck’s measure: for now it must be known that I Am this Animal.

“I am the beast that loves, the brute that reasons. I am the triumph of logical contradiction, and for this reason I can justifiably be cagey. Reason is an entirley fallible invention of this animal I am, and to keep a decent perspective I must take a rest from reason, now and then, and perhaps more often now than then, and trust my senses, and enjoy this life, and let it be enough to know that I am this animal.”

This was far from the end of my philosophizing, but it was an important stop a long the way. Since I wrote it I haven’t been tearing myself apart over things. This was a decision to let go, and while that decision can be frightening from where you are, what it did was allow my mind to expand. And my mind has expanded, a great deal, and will continue to do so, as long as I let it. Clinging to a rationalistic point of view and trying to reconstruct reality through your own ideas will only imprison you in a terribly small mental world and suffocate your imagination, because reality isn’t in your ideas; it just is, and is you and everything else all at once, and you are not a closed system, and trying to act like one will just close you off from the world that can really give your life the meaning that you seek for it.

16

:astonished: Man that is screwed. I feel sorry for you.

Devoting your life to philosophy, a practically useless, although interestin excersize. :frowning:

“because reality isn’t in your ideas; it just is,”
I’ve never noticed that before :unamused: