I’m going to make a few statements. Some people will agree with them, some will not. Some will only agree with a few. I ask you that you only answer this thread if you agree with the basic premisses of all the statements. Please, I repeat, only answer this thread if you agree with the statements, otherwise there will be unnecessary arguments instead of healthy discussion. I really can’t stress this enough. Please respect my request.
Ok so,
Death is inevitable.
Free will is a illusion.
Altruism is an illusion.
The self is an illusion. ( I still haven’t figured out exactly what we are, conscious machines ? )
Time seems to be an illusion…?
Love is just a mental state composed by chemical reactions. At the end of the day it’s a squirt inside your brain similar to the squirt in the brain of someone who gets pleasure from say, killing a person, or buying a new pair of designer jeans. It’s also merely the expression of an evolutionary mechanism that allows for us, the machines to make copies of ourselves.
And then we have determinism, everything is product of variables that came into play at the big bang and therefor everything is already determined and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. People are just the the result of said variables so there’s really no merit in being “insert positive characteristic/trait here” and you’re not a bad person if you are “insert negative characteristic/trait here”, and because of that the justice system is a joke
What is the silver lining?
I tend to agree with that but if there’s no self, who’s feeling pleasure?
Also for you to feel pleasure, don’t you have to momentarily forget most of things I mentioned?
“If the innermost essence of being is will to power, if pleasure is every increase of power, displeasure every feeling of not being able to resist and dominate; may we not then posit pleasure and displeasure as cardinal facts? Is will possible without these two oscillations of Yes and No? But who feels pleasure?.. But who wants power?.. Absurd question, if the essence is itself power-will and consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching units…” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 693, entire.)
I do not think pleasure and displeasure are mutually exclusive. I think there’s pleasure even in forcing yourself to face the things you mentioned. One can hurt oneself and at the same time enjoy the pleasure of cruelty.
The silver lining is that you have life, a self, love, altruism, goodness, free-will, not to mention relationships, experiences, pleasure, etcetera.
So what if they’re an illusion?
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Nietzsche,
“I suddenly woke up in the midst of this dream, but only to the consciousness that I am dreaming and that I must go on dreaming lest I perish—as a sleepwalker must go on dreaming lest he fall.”
For me its appearance is different for everyone. It comes into being or existence when we begin to realize that we are free and autonomous beings with the capacity to change our perspectives and our beliefs, transforming our thinking/consciousness, thereby giving rise to more balance and harmony in our lives.
It was always there just waiting for the eye’s perception to change. The silver liningl is what holds it ALL together.
Well then, you can only speak for yourself there. Ultimately, I myself am free…do I always ‘feel’ so free, of course not, but inherently we all have the capacity to ‘be’ free - depending on how important it is for us to be. … to have that perception. …and to act on it, create or to re-create it…freedom is sort of like courage - we cannot have courage unless we feel fear - so as with freedom, we cannot have it unless something is acted upon. We are free though our actions may not appear to feel so free.
I never actually said that our will is free…sometimes it requires a great deal of sacrifice on our part, sacrifice of our very selves - and i do see a self - how can I not - to not see a self is to me the illusion and one must certainly wonder at why they would harbor such an illusion that there is no self, though it is a self that is always changing at every moment - it is not set in stone.
The fact that we are capable of sacrificing self in the name of our personal freedom or that of others - ‘ultimately’ points to free will, at least to me it does.
Does illusion = unreal? Does illusion = undesirable, bad, wanting, inadequate, lacking? Is there a “not an illusion” against which we juxtapose ourselves “as illusion” and come up deficient? Why?
A rainbow is an illusion, but it is still beautiful, meaningful, appears as real before our eyes. If we experience it as if it were real, if it affects us in a real way is it not then, for us, real (a real experience)?
How do you know what is “real” other than by what has effects upon you?
I can’t quite pin down if you think we have free will or if you’re just playing with semantics. if it’s the former you shouldn’t have replied to this thread. If it’s the latter, well there’s really no comment needed.
I don’t want to derail the thread, but just out of interest - why is healthy discussion only possible with people who agree with you on all of the points that are depressing you? Might arguments not be healthier?
The things I mentioned in my op are obvious in my opinion. However there’s people who disagree with it. And that’s fine. But I’m not interested in debating the things themselves, only the aftermath of realizing those things and the implications of doing so. Please respect my request.
I don’t recognize the word ‘should’. Right there, our free will becomes undermined. I’m not playing with semantics either – it isn’t a simple thing understanding free will. Life is not so black and white as it appears to be to many people.
So far as we know, it is inevitable…though I suppose there are those scientists who are attempting to make it less so. The aftermath of knowing this would depend on the individual him/her – self. For some, it is the ‘faithful’ companion which allows us to see the beauty which may be Life, that life has a purpose and meaning behind it, though we each must find what that is for ourselves. At times we fail – we get so caught up in stuff that is so unimportant while forgetting the meaningful. We forget that the very thing which we fear – death – causes us to lose sight of only that which we have in each moment – Life. Death is that which when looked at can cause perfect harmony within our lives.
At times it may appear that free will is an illusion because we have not looked deeper into it. I do not see free will as an illusion. It is not so simple as that. The world is really not in black and white. What I do see though is that the more self-awareness, consciousness which we have, the freer our will becomes.
here are times when we do not act ‘freely’ because we have evolved with instincts and emotions. The person who is swayed by a mob, becoming part of a herd, is not so self-aware of his instincts. A person who has reflected on them learns how to ‘transcend’ his instincts (or at times learns how to make them work in his favor) and is therefore able to ‘act freely’ - has the will to turn away from the mob, from the herd.
There is also the case of one who will run into an ocean to save a drowning child. This may be an instinctive act -that of preserving the species, especially the young, but it may also be an altruistic one, based on how one values human life…even to the point of risking one’s own life. Does an act of necessity necessarily presuppose lack of free will? No. It depends on how aware one is in the moment and how self-aware and reflective one is. A strong sense of responsibility towards the life of a child that has been well thought out is the determining factor in the willful, free act.
Granted, there are cases where altruism may be an illusion - as in the case of those who are not motivated strictly by doing good for good’s sake but for appearance’s sake only. And again, for those who lack the self-awareness for the reasons which they do certain altruistic good acts. Sometimes it is simply fear itself or a need to be needed or affirmed over and over again. The altruism of bats may not be, strictly speaking, atruistic, but instinctive in order to preserve the species or the life of another bat. But in human beings, there may be altruism as there are humans who fully know what they are about and act upon that, no matter what. That is altruism, in my book.
Personally I do not feel that the self is an illusion. There are times perhaps when we all seem to fade within our own eyes, we become a bit or more nihilistic, questioning who and what we are. That might be an attempt to balance our ego with the reality of self. In a sense, we might say that self is an illusion, but that is only the false self that at times we want to show to the world, the masks that we choose to wear. When we are able to let go of those things we would want to be, and see ourselves in reality, then illusion fades and the real self ‘is’ or becomes. But it’s not the ‘self’ which we necessarily ‘think’ we are as the self which experiences itself through being…only being…even though ‘doing’ also flows through this self. It flows always…it isn’t able to be grasped like something material. I don’t know if any of this is making sense - they are just my musings.
I’m not quite sure how to respond to this. Is something which is a human construct necessarily an illusion? If we think of it as an illusion, how will we direct our lives? For me, perhaps, time is only an illusion when it is not used wisely and in harmony with our own lives. When we sit quietly in ‘being’ - time then - well, what, does it become an illusion then or just something which we flow through? Just because something cannot be grasped within our hands doesn’t make it an illusion. What makes it the illusion is how we relate to it or perhaps how important we make of time in the wrong way, if that makes sense.
Well, that statement may be made by someone who is afraid of committment or by someone who is not willing to dig deeper for an explanation. The universe has been trying to define love forever. Love or the feeling of what some call love is a chemical reaction sure - but it is also, when that reaction has been transcended, or is in perfect harmony with our consciousness and self-awareness, an act of free will. A man wants a woman or a woman wants a man - and so they think that the act of sex is love. The real act of love is in transcending that natural instinctive need, for the good of the other, if that is what is called for. Real love is more than simple chemical reactions…it’s a self-awareness decision to act responsibly toward another person, despite the hold of the brain chemistry upon it.
Some things have already been determined through evolution and our life histories. Of course they have. But we are not determined or pre-determined if we realize that we have the capacity and the power within us to change our actions and our perspectives. …so very much depends on our perspectives. And the fact that we have evolved into intelligent and conscious human beings capable of reflection and changing our minds and acting of our own accord, and realizing that we are not victims of fate - because fate is nothing more than not having acted, not having taken the responsibility for ourselves, at least insofar as we are able to. Fate is an excuse towards our own powerless, which does NOT have to be, as long as we have the freedom or the free will to become autonomous and self-aware selves. Granted, we are influenced by our surrounds and those arounds us, but we are only so much predetermined, especially if we come to realize that we are capable of transcending or going beyond our instincts and emotions.
Again, these are just my musings. A discussion of free will or any of the above is the same as a discussion on truth - we can only get as close to it as there are different thoughts/perceptions to be shared and a willingness to see that there is an opposite side of everything and not only that, but that the well is so deep we can never reach the bottom. But truth does lie there and we can taste its flavor and smell it but only if we are willing to dive right in.
