Bob, it feels like you don’t really want us to reach an agreement. I’m feeling a sort of resistance from you. It’s not that I need you to agree with me—especially not on the peripherals. It’s just that I’m sensing that when I do agree with you (on essentials common to all persons), you reject that it is in agreement (perhaps because you require all or nothing?). This resistance I am feeling from you reminds me of when a white person appreciates some aspect of another person’s culture, but it is labeled as cultural (mis)appropriation. They aren’t allowed to co-appreciate as a fellow human being, The person(s) from the other culture claim(s) the aspect of their culture to the exclusion of the white person, regardless of the white person’s actual intent, as if the white person is by default insensitive and ought to know better. It feels mean-spirited. It is not conducive to following the inquiry wherever it may lead, or to respecting a diversity of perspectives (as long as those perspectives prioritize truth, goodness & beauty in accordance with self=other, as opposed to in violation of it, which would be neither good, beautiful, nor true).
There are counterpoints I could offer to your comment, but where would it lead? I feel like your emotions (or?) are too resistant to allow for fair engagement. I don’t want to step on your toes just for the sake of stepping on your toes. So at this point I feel it is best that I disengage. Thank you for at least attempting to suss out where we might disagree.
To be honest, I have seldom found you seeking harmony and agreement with me, and I have acknowledged that we agree on certain points, but, as I say, there are main points of disagreement. We have exchanged views, and I believe I have been in the ideological place you are now but left it because I found it too restrictive. Consciousness is, in my experience, far more expansive and all-encompassing than my limited awareness. I have also given examples of life forms without brains who still engage with the world, make decisions, and change directions, and the panentheism I have adopted gives me a plausible reason for a different take on the natural world.
My position comes from a foundational change in my position through nursing, which involved not only confronting aspects of life I had previously been unaware of but also a consequent inner struggle to align my beliefs with my experience. Before, I had been curious and employed a left hemispheric understanding, sorting and categorising, but this encounter brought the more expansive right hemisphere into play and made me “spiritually” aware of the wider meaning of the situation. This is a wording that I have since found in Iain McGilchrist’s books, which is applicable.
Applying identity policies to explain a feeling you have seems to be wild speculation on your part. Humans have “appropriated,” or better, learned from each other over millennia, probably for as long as our species exists. I also see our species undergoing different development phases, historically and during socialisation or maturation. We also seem to move up and down the development scale in varying situations. This means that we are continually considering if we can apply knowledge or experience that we receive from others, albeit perhaps in a different context, depending on our cultural situation and especially our use of language. This was a special feature in my development, applying Anglo-American care systems in a German environment.
I have also run naked and swam with indigenous people in the Far East and was the friend of the Jamaican in my class at the time of racial tension. I’ve employed people regardless of their ethnic background and nursed former Nazis whose mean character came through in the dementia. I am by no means a perfect human being, but I have adapted to situations I found myself in, and from the contacts I still have with former employees, I left a positive impression. Therefore, I can’t see where you get the impression you have – but then again, you don’t know me.
I’m sorry, but just because I don’t follow you down your garden path doesn’t mean I resent your garden. I have no desire to cause harm or pain, and if that is what you mean by mean-spirited, I am sorry you feel that way. Truth, goodness, and beauty are surely visible in my many posts. In fact, I often overdo it (like in the criticism of psychology thread) because I am moved by the beauty and goodness of people, regardless of their background, and feel there is an underlying truth in compassion for the oppressed.
I feel that you realise, as I did in the past, that your repertoire of answers is insufficient and that people like Felix and I have put more thought into our position than you imagined. It made me reconsider in the past, so allow me to suggest that you do the same.
Where you live at? You can come kill me rn in Portland, I bet everything I own you won’t and even if you do, I am the winner in this situation because A. I am not the one stuck behind prison bars for it and B. If you believe the concept that “death” = nothingness after, then you will have set me free, (I don’t believe the nothingness concept is how death works, but for the sake of people who do think that, it would be a setting free)
Socrates drank poison because he knew, he had nothing to lose but a drop in an ocean.
So are you willing to sacrifice your physical societal freedoms to “free” me of my matter manifested one?
I have been in Portland area for the last 12 years. Originally I am from Las Vegas, a way more brutal living environment than Oregon.
No but I agree with Ec that there is no leaving this place, even after death, death is not a means to an end. All death is, is a recycling mechanism in reality, to blank slate the next manifestation of consciousness and energy and or a transfer of consciousness.
In my perception, it’s even possible to have already died multiple times without ever knowing it due to how consciousness works. Due to how many parallel worlds there could be of Earth that we may never know about.
Say there is a parallel you in world B living their life on autopilot. Say you die in world A but do not know you died. Your consciousness transfers instantly in a “near death” or “Deja vu” type experience, you have no way of knowing this due to how consciousness works. Say you die and then you wake up and you’re alive. How would you not know? Because the unconscious and subconscious has no perception of time, transfer of consciousness would seem instant to world B.
Time is a conscious thing.
You do not remember before you’re born right? The trillions of years before you that ultimately lead up to your conscious manifesting? Why? Because in that time you were unconscious > subconscious. Your birth to you would seem instant because of you being birthed conscious (perception of time).
If you argue that time is not a conscious thing, point me to a dog or a table that invented clocks to tell or perceive it.
This could be a poor explanation but it is not exactly “easy” to explain something so complex and possible.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that the brain generates consciousness. There are things that have no brain at all that are at the very least subconscious perhaps even on the precursor to consciousness, like plants and single cell life, I think consciousness evolved from what is unconscious and subconscious, the brain is just the seat or receptor connecting the conscious to those underlying states.
If the brain were that large, time would move differently for them, assuming they are conscious and able to perceive time at all. Similar to how a hand looks to an ant or fly when it’s swatting at them. Also it would depend on their metabolism.
Yes because how do these things that are not considered conscious able to do things they are not conscious of, they have no understanding of context.
How does an entire universe come to the point of manifesting conscious individuals through unconscious mechanisms if it never had any conscious aspects to begin with, but solely physical.
A computer does nothing when it has no program. Consciousness = program, matter = computer.
I define everything as living, just on varying states of conscious existence.
If the brain generates consciousness, how is it that ideas only come to us and not us to them? Why can we not generate ideas on demand if the brain has the power to generate consciousness itself?
Elements react with other elements with no perception of or having a time limit to spawn things of which then evolve into consciousness, yet there is no precursor or outline of consciousness itself in that very manifestation of this path that is evolution?
How does energy know to react to or divide into elements, how do elements know to react with other elements? They have no brains, they aren’t conscious as we are, yet they still perform functions as if they had a pre-programming. This is consciousness, on the very basic level, the unconscious, I see it really as just a long string or staircase of evolution through different phases of unconscious > subconscious > conscious.
And since our own consciousness spawned directly from and on this string, we may look back and understand this “programming” so to speak, which is wisdom. It took trillions of years just to spawn a physical manifestation capable of entertaining the idea of this strings existence with every element, every reaction happening and knowing what to do to get here through trial and error, yet we have the audacity and conceit as humans to state that our brain spawns consciousness and not consciousness spawns us on different levels of mind.
Since we originate on this same string as the unconscious/subconscious, we too are tied to it and may reflect on our own unconscious and subconscious mind. Ideas come to us because everything is on a one string simultaneously while we observe it.
Things don’t just happen though, there’s always an answer. If things just happened, what point is there in studying the context on those.
If elements just happen and this and that just happen, why study it? There is context. They don’t need consciousness to do those things they do, but they do need to sit on the string and are unconscious facets of the world, which we are directly linked to those unconscious facets by having an unconscious layer in our own consciousness.
Yes and I do not arrive at an idea, the idea comes to me.
Thought, comes to us and if we have as much power as you say we do which would be generated by consciousness being created by the brain, we would have the ability to turn off our monkey mind when we wish. We do not control consciousness, it is a facet of reality that is external to us yet also resides in us.
Ever met an artist trying to force an idea via brainstorming? A lot of times it can’t be forced, this is literally where art comes from. “Can’t force good art”.
Ever had an idea come to you out of no where that is absolute appalling? Why do we have no control of that if the brain generates consciousness?
See that is where human ego falters. The universe does not revolve around us and exist for us to study it, it existed trillions of years without conscious existence to study it. Yet it still has programming, things still have functions. Those functions are the very layer of consciousness that resulted in our being conscious here, able to study it at all in the first place.
the purpose we assign to being conscious is yes to study it and to experience, but things do not exist solely to be studied by us, they exist regardless yet still have functions. There are layers of mind in humans for a reason and that reason is because at the very base of all, consciousness on its most tiny and least complex level, exists, which is the unconscious layer, where “ideas” can appear to us from while we are directly attached to the same string that this functioning happened/happens on.
The very base of everything, is tied to us via this string and its evolutionary layers of mind.
Our thoughts and judgements are derived from a culmination of our experiences x knowledge… we tap into that knowledge-base when the/a need-to arises, so it isn’t an instant endeavour… unlike chemical reactions of non-sentient life.
And where does a knowledge base exist that we may tap into at will if there is no pre-cursor of consciousness available, no programming, no functioning of specific variables causing reactions?
This is why I view it as a string we are both on and everything manifests from and in continuance. Because this string of evolution is the very knowledge base we may “tap into” yet it isn’t really us tapping into it so much as it presents itself to us, because we’re here and conscious in result of it, aren’t we?
A cell is alive, has no brain, yet it knows what to do automatically, this is an subconscious facet of the body and world which evolved its programming being on this string of which consciousness also spawned and is directly related to said manifesting conscious… I don’t view this as coincidence or “it just happens”.
Everything is alive in my eyes. Just on different states of consciousness. Everything reacts and moves, that is living in my eyes.
How can life as people typically define it spawn without life? Creation mimics creator, yes?
