Nihilism Question

[DesertShark]

Why does nihilism make people depressed/sad/etc.?

Life has no meaning, meaning only exists when critters who can create meaning, create it and share it with other critters who can understand them. Life exists without meaning, it existed without meaning before critters who created meaning existed, and life will exist after all the critters who create meaning are gone. Life just is, living/being just is. I don't see the problem with that or why it makes people upset. I think that's the most important, beautiful thing about life. I find comfort and happiness knowing that 'meaning' is created and doesn't exist on its own. No good or bad, right or wrong.

I guess this is slightly different then this understanding: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nih and I wouldn't go as far to say any of these things:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution/[/URL]]Nihilism is the view that there are there are no composite objects (i.e., objects with proper parts); there are only mereologoical simples (i.e., objects with no proper parts). The nihilist thus denies the existence of statues, ships, humans, and all other macroscopic material objects. (that was taken from the second paragraph under 4. Eliminativism.)
Perhaps what I'm thinking of isn't nihilism?

If you want to get into the moral aspect of things (which I really don't because I don't see the point), I've read some Nietzsche (re-reading some now) and Dostoevsky and I guess I just don't see the connection between or the necessity of even bringing the idea of a supernatural power existing or not existing into the mix. I'm not religious/spiritual in anyway and I never think about a supernatural power existing (I'm not around many believers or if I am, its never brought up) or not existing, so the thoughts on how this effects morality never come up. [I bring it up here because people on the board tend to be drawn to discuss it, regardless of their beliefs, personally I'd avoid the talk altogether, even acknowledging these kinds of ideas gives them a little bit of power.]

[black magick hustla]

why are you afraid of them. they are just men. they are just dust

[Wolf Larson]

Why does nihilism make people depressed/sad/etc.?


Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard saw nihilism as an affliction to be overcome. Not a frame of mind to bask in. Kierkegaard found solace or overcame nihilism with Christianity while Nietzsche lost his mind. I'm not promoting Christianity as a way to find meaning, Nietzsche thought you find meaning in being true to yourself. To your goals, to your morality. Reject the slave/christian morality and live life as you see fit. This is why people from Ayn Rand to Hitler have warped Nietzsche in order to excuse all manner of disgusting behavior.

Nietzsche, [his christian counterpart] Kierkedaard, Schopenhauer nor Stirner were advocating psychopathy in the face of meaninglessness. Only fascists and capitalists like to interpret nihilism as such. There's also different branches of nihilism. Sartre was being a sort of existentialist nihilist when he said "there is no difference between sitting in a dark room drunk and alone or leading the people to glory". This sort of Big Lebowski attitude has plagued mordern man. You are supposedly "free in any situation", said Sartre. That is 100% bullshit. But nihilism has been key in marginalizing religion. I've lost interst in philosophy these days so I don't care. That's Ironic. What was your question? ;)

[DesertShark]

why are you afraid of them. they are just men. they are just dust
?

[DesertShark]

What was your question? ;)
Why does nihilism make people sad, depressed, and/or drive them insane? Why is it something that has to be overcome?

[Meridian]

Why does nihilism make people sad, depressed, and/or drive them insane? Why is it something that has to be overcome?
Because nihilism is some times described as a state of being sad, depressed and/or insane.

Nihilism is meaningless, by its own virtue. I wouldn't be too interested in it, it is literally a dead end.

[black magick hustla]

Because nihilism is some times described as a state of being sad, depressed and/or insane.

Nihilism is meaningless, by its own virtue. I wouldn't be too interested in it, it is literally a dead end.

when nietzche spoke about nihilism he did not spoke about "philosophical nihilism". rather, a state of moral mediocrity and generalized apathy i think, which is not nonsensical at all. Its not a philosophical argument, inasmuch as it is a sociological one (due to the death of god, which is a sociological argument to).

[DesertShark]

So I still don't understand exactly why it makes people depressed but I do know how to explain my understanding better.

Camus is not an existentialist thinker because he thinks of things in a pre-Christian (pagan, if you will, I think he used that term) sense, while existentialist thinkers see things in a post-Christian world. I'm with Camus on this, I think in a pre-Christian world. But! The reason I bring this up is because this is why Nietzsche drove himself insane and thought that the death of god was the worst thing ever. Because he was thinking in a post-Christian world. In a post-Christian world, the death of god IS the worst thing and its not something one can "just get over" as Camus would say.



Because nihilism is some times described as a state of being sad, depressed and/or insane.

Nihilism is meaningless, by its own virtue. I wouldn't be too interested in it, it is literally a dead end.
I don't think that's right. I've never heard of nihilism being described that way, I've only heard of people stuck in nihilism feeling that way and those are very different things.

I have an understanding of nihilism, and it like everything else is in fact meaningless. I don't think its a dead end because I think it gets at something at the root of society today, people truly think the death of god would be the end of morality and the earth would fall apart because the very essence of our culture is so tied to these beliefs; and that is something important to keep in mind when wanting a revolution that would do away with religion.

My question has nothing to do with my understanding of nihilism or what it is, it has to do with why it fucks some people up. I don't understand that.

[Die Rote Fahne]

"Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos." - Walter, The Big Lebowski

[DesertShark]

"Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos." - Walter, The Big Lebowski
"Fair!? WHO'S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE!" -Walter, The Big Lebowski

[Meridian]

I don't think that's right. I've never heard of nihilism being described that way, I've only heard of people stuck in nihilism feeling that way and those are very different things.

I have an understanding of nihilism, and it like everything else is in fact meaningless. I don't think its a dead end because I think it gets at something at the root of society today, people truly think the death of god would be the end of morality and the earth would fall apart because the very essence of our culture is so tied to these beliefs; and that is something important to keep in mind when wanting a revolution that would do away with religion.

My question has nothing to do with my understanding of nihilism or what it is, it has to do with why it fucks some people up. I don't understand that.
As said, I think you have things confused. The only thing about nihilism that would make people fucked up would be that it is completely nonsense.

As stated, people are drawn to nihilism out of various reasons, but many of those people I think you'd find fit reasonably well into your idea of "fucked up". So, you have things backwards.

[Incendiarism]

Because the N stands for "No dude, get off my couch."

[Cowboy Killer]

I don't see any absolute meaning to life and I don't believe in absolute or objective right and wrong. There is only what we say is right and wrong and the only meaning there is to anything is what we give it. I came to this conclusion on my own without any external input and it was pretty scary going through this thought process and it kinda did make me loose my mind and become so disillusioned (maybe even insane) that I became a rasta (I'm white) and was pretty depressed until I accepted that, that's the way things are.

I think instead of morals we should just have agreements based on common desires that most of us as human beings have. For example None of us want to be killed so we should agree not to kill each other. So if A tries to kill B A is breaking the agreement and nobody should have a problem with A killing B in self defense. Just like we all want food,clothing and shelter so nobody should put a price on it to prevent anybody in any way from attaining those things.

[JoyDivision]

Life has no meaning, meaning only exists when critters who can create meaning, create it and share it with other critters who can understand them. Life exists without meaning, it existed without meaning before critters who created meaning existed, and life will exist after all the critters who create meaning are gone. Life just is, living/being just is. I don't see the problem with that or why it makes people upset. I think that's the most important, beautiful thing about life. I find comfort and happiness knowing that 'meaning' is created and doesn't exist on its own. No good or bad, right or wrong.Yes, life is the locus of meaning, it is what creates meaning, but it also what creates the category of meaninglessness.

There are three distinct terms being used in discussions like this. Meaningful, meaninglessness as opposed to meaningful, and meaningless as in the category of meaningful and it's opposite don't apply - ameaning.

I sometimes wonder if nihilism is just one big confusion between "meaninglessness as opposed to meaningful", and "meaningless as in has nothing to do with meaning".

Allow me an example to point out the difference. If life doesn't exist then everything is meaningless, not because it lacks meaning, but because meaning doesn't exist and neither does it's opposite. There is no opportunity for meaning. There is only ameaning.

This is opposed to say, a human seeing what used to be considered an omen and exclaiming "no, that's not an omen, that was a meaningless event". In this use of meaningless, that event could have been meaningful, it just happened not to be - it is attributed meaninglessness by the locus of meaning the human.


If someone says everything is meaningless, they are equivocating between ameaning and meaninglessness. They mean ameaning, but equivocate into meaninglessness.

[MarxSchmarx]

Why does nihilism make people sad, depressed, and/or drive them insane? Why is it something that has to be overcome?

This is a psychological (and hence empirical) question. Since you ask, my guess is that it is because we are conditioned since early childhood to believe that whatever has a purpose is in some sense good, e.g., a rivet in an engine is good and necessary because it does XYZ, or even a videogame console is good because it provides pleasure etc.... Or it may have evolutionary-psychology origins, as in doing what advances your fitness is rewarded and so the brain seeks to maximize fitness in some sense. In any event, there seems to be a distinct behavioral preference towards 'purposefulness'. The dissonance between nihilism and these mental reactions is probably why so many people find nihilism bothersome.

[punisa]

Why does nihilism make people sad, depressed, and/or drive them insane? Why is it something that has to be overcome?

It indeed makes a lot of people depprsed, hence why so many don't even want to discuss it.
But then again, what is wrong with being depressed? It's not nothing but an emotion, a chemical brain product, same as fear, same as love.
Is it a "negative" emotion? Maybe, but one should enjoy it neverthless.

Ups, seems like I stumbled upon a small "meaning of life" right there - feel free to feel :lol:
And why is there such a tradition of imagining meaning of life as something grand? Why wouldn't it be numerous small things?

Nihilism feels good in a way that you can put a dead end definition on life and quit worring about it.
Then again, it is also useless and unprovable.

[No Class]

Not all nihilists are depressed about the fact that there is no meaning in life and all that. I'm a nihilist, but the idea that I'm here for nothing doesn't bother me. In fact it's comforting to me, because it means that I don't really have anything I'm supposed to be doing. I can just do whatever. There's no right and wrong. I can just do whatever the fuck I want. No rules, no gods, no masters, no morals.

[Meridian]

Not all nihilists are depressed about the fact that there is no meaning in life and all that. I'm a nihilist, but the idea that I'm here for nothing doesn't bother me. In fact it's comforting to me, because it means that I don't really have anything I'm supposed to be doing. I can just do whatever. There's no right and wrong. I can just do whatever the fuck I want. No rules, no gods, no masters, no morals.
I'm sorry, but that sounds extremely silly.

How can you just do "whatever the fuck" you want? That sounds, at least, like a misconception. And no morals? Then why are you here on RevLeft?

It sounds like you actually are here for something; to be a douche.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

You could arguably suggest that many of the philosophers studying nihilism were depressed. They embraced a philosophy out of that depression rather than became depressed out of that philosophy.

Philosophically speaking, there isn't much evidence for nihilism. A reductionist might try and claim that it's the most simplest explanation, but that's a rather difficult position to support. Nihilism about the "meaning" of "life" as a top-down relation isn't a particularly soul-shattering revelation anymore. And nihilism about the meaning of "your life" is a failure to embrace your own soul and/or a reflection of a mental disorder, in all likelihood.

Nihilism was often simply a response to people who thought meaning was something we went out into the forest and found. A sort of "top down" relation where it was thrust upon us. Arguably, that is how it works, but a conceptualization of meaning that focuses on human agency is preferable.

And surprisingly enough, Meridian, I'd say most of the people on RevLeft aren't particularly big on morality. They just like communism because it's in their class interests. And if they win the lottery, they'll become a capitalist. I think people confuse morality with how social phenomenon operate. Morality doesn't mean "what people think they ought to do." It means what they "ought to do" regardless of whether it supports their interests or not.

[Meridian]

And surprisingly enough, Meridian, I'd say most of the people on RevLeft aren't particularly big on morality. They just like communism because it's in their class interests. And if they win the lottery, they'll become a capitalist. I think people confuse morality with how social phenomenon operate. Morality doesn't mean "what people think they ought to do." It means what they "ought to do" regardless of whether it supports their interests or not.
Couldn't you say that acting in one's class interest is moral? Acting in one's individual interest, on the other hand, seems less moral to me.

[sponsoredwalk]

If you're a true nihilist why aren't you sitting in front of a wall watching paint dry?

There is just as much meaning in that exercise as there is in being in the throes of passion during love - none.

It's just a mode of identity to call yourself a "nihilist". A coat of honour to show the world. The very fact of arguing the point - from the point of view of a nihilist - contradicts your very argument.

I'd advise a long philosophical & thoughtful reflection if you're really going to consider the validity of nihilism or if you would claim to be one.

There's a huge difference between rejecting the idea of an absolute morality & a nihilistic viewpoint. There's also a big difference between humanity creating a personal morality & the idea of morality as just a human invention. Dostoyevsky's atheist doesn't set the gold standard for us all ;)

Noclass, you can do whatever the fuck you want anyway. Go and do what you really want to do, nobody is stopping you unless you intent to harm others or put others down. You can personally choose to understand why people would want to stop you from doing bad things to others (maybe even agree with them) or you can go and do that stuff anyway. Our society might not foster that idea, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Anyway, I agree with a few of the comments on here, nihilism doesn't exist and the only thing that would drive a "nihilist" crazy is the fucking stupidity of the very idea :D You'll waste your life thinking of how empty and devoid of meaning life is, inadvertently create meaning anyway

- others will see you and feel so happy they didn't waste their life watching the paint on that particular wall dry :lol:

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Couldn't you say that acting in one's class interest is moral? Acting in one's individual interest, on the other hand, seems less moral to me.

Don't the bourgeois have class interests, though? I think they are acting unethically to do so, but I may be wrong there.

[Meridian]

Don't the bourgeois have class interests, though? I think they are acting unethically to do so, but I may be wrong there.
Good point. But it seems to me that, for the bourgeois, acting in one's own interest and acting in one's class interest (increase amount of 'oppression' for capital gain) often amounts to the same thing. Which seems connected to the idea of "individualism" that capitalists often uphold.

[No Class]

I'm sorry, but that sounds extremely silly.

How can you just do "whatever the fuck" you want? That sounds, at least, like a misconception. And no morals? Then why are you here on RevLeft?

It sounds like you actually are here for something; to be a douche.

I can do anything within physical limits, obviously.

I wasn't aware that I had to follow some moral code in order to be an anarchist, or does this forum have nothing to do with anarchy? Government =/= personal philosophy.

Also, just because I'm a nihilist doesn't mean I'm going to wallow in misery. I accepted that there's no meaning in life or a reason to live, and I'm fine with that. Better than trying to live a perfect life to make sure I don't go to hell and get tortured. :/

[Meridian]

I can do anything within physical limits, obviously.

I wasn't aware that I had to follow some moral code in order to be an anarchist, or does this forum have nothing to do with anarchy? Government =/= personal philosophy.
Of course, you can do whatever you want.

And yes, you may follow whatever 'philosophy' you want.

[A.R.Amistad]

Why does nihilism make people depressed/sad/etc.?

Life has no meaning, meaning only exists when critters who can create meaning, create it and share it with other critters who can understand them. Life exists without meaning, it existed without meaning before critters who created meaning existed, and life will exist after all the critters who create meaning are gone. Life just is, living/being just is. I don't see the problem with that or why it makes people upset. I think that's the most important, beautiful thing about life. I find comfort and happiness knowing that 'meaning' is created and doesn't exist on its own. No good or bad, right or wrong.

I guess this is slightly different then this understanding: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nih (http://www.anonym.to/?http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nih) and I wouldn't go as far to say any of these things:Quote:
Originally Posted by [URL
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution/[/URL]]Nihilism is the view that there are there are no composite objects (i.e., objects with proper parts); there are only mereologoical simples (i.e., objects with no proper parts). The nihilist thus denies the existence of statues, ships, humans, and all other macroscopic material objects.
(that was taken from the second paragraph under 4. Eliminativism.)
Perhaps what I'm thinking of isn't nihilism?

If you want to get into the moral aspect of things (which I really don't because I don't see the point), I've read some Nietzsche (re-reading some now) and Dostoevsky and I guess I just don't see the connection between or the necessity of even bringing the idea of a supernatural power existing or not existing into the mix. I'm not religious/spiritual in anyway and I never think about a supernatural power existing (I'm not around many believers or if I am, its never brought up) or not existing, so the thoughts on how this effects morality never come up. [I bring it up here because people on the board tend to be drawn to discuss it, regardless of their beliefs, personally I'd avoid the talk altogether, even acknowledging these kinds of ideas gives them a little bit of power.]

Hm, what you are describing sounds more like existentialism to me thaan it does nihilism. There is a fundamental difference between the two. Nihilism and existentialism both agree that life is meaningless. Thats like a launching pad for the two, but where existentialism is a rocket that can take off from the launching pad, the nihilist remains on it, denying the sky above. In philisophical terms, existentialism says that meaning can be created, but there is no objective truth on whic meaning is based. Nihilism says that we are doomed to live in a meaningless world, and it is impossible for the living to create meaning in the meaningless world. This is where leftists get wary of nihilism (as they should, I find nihilism to be nothing more than silly Germans throwing ferrets on people in bathtubs and threatening to "cut off their Johnson"). Marxists would, and/or should, appreciate existentialism because it opens up a wide realm of possibility for humanity and liberates mankind from the false notions of human nature and divine intervention. Nihilism just condemns anyone trying to give meaning in life, and as I've seen it put on another forum


Nihilism is the absence of basis for values and meaning: life is empty and meaningless, and there's nothing you can do about it. "Might as well party and look after #1" is the typical solution.


You can see why a revolutionary would have a hard time accepting this philosophy. There is no meaning, and we can't create meaning, so screw morality, ethics, and your fellow man and do what you want to make yourself happy. It is here that I find the inconsistency of Neitzche. His idea of "Ubermenchen" says that the individual is best when they overcome their basic existance (overcome themselves, see my profile lol) and create a meaning that supercedes their existance. But so many people categorize Neitzche as a nihilist with a Dionyses complex that one should just do as they please, screw the consequences on society and themselves. In terms of revolutionary socialism, or whatever you adhere to, one could say that the existentialist sees the individual as being able to rise to a higher level of being in a meaningless world and do things such as achieve a stateless and classless society. A nihilist would say that it makes no difference and you shouldn't waste your time on such "meaningless" things. This is the essence of at least my anti-Nihilism and pro Existential Dialectical Materialism. :thumbup1:

[The New Consciousness]

Why does nihilism make people depressed/sad/etc.?

As Tagore once wrote, 'life is so cold without tinsel'. Culture and all other constructs which seek to give meaning to life are essentially that: tinsel. Human beings find it incredibly difficult to renounce this. They fear they will lose their identity, their sense of self, their whole comforting (yet utterly miserable) lives. I can't fathom this myself. To be without culture, to be like Nietzsche's Ubermensch, in my opinion is the best way to live, the most peaceful, the most creative, the most revolutionary and the most exciting. I discarded my tinsel years ago.

Life has no meaning, meaning only exists when critters who can create meaning, create it and share it with other critters who can understand them.

Quite.

Life exists without meaning, it existed without meaning before critters who created meaning existed, and life will exist after all the critters who create meaning are gone. Life just is, living/being just is. I don't see the problem with that or why it makes people upset. I think that's the most important, beautiful thing about life. I find comfort and happiness knowing that 'meaning' is created and doesn't exist on its own. No good or bad, right or wrong.

So do I. It is most liberating. Acts simply are. They are neither good nor bad.With that perspective there is immense freedom. Through non-judgment we take a quantum leap out of our petty conditioning.

If you want to get into the moral aspect of things (which I really don't because I don't see the point), I've read some Nietzsche (re-reading some now) and Dostoevsky and I guess I just don't see the connection between or the necessity of even bringing the idea of a supernatural power existing or not existing into the mix. I'm not religious/spiritual in anyway and I never think about a supernatural power existing (I'm not around many believers or if I am, its never brought up) or not existing, so the thoughts on how this effects morality never come up. [I bring it up here because people on the board tend to be drawn to discuss it, regardless of their beliefs, personally I'd avoid the talk altogether, even acknowledging these kinds of ideas gives them a little bit of power.]

[The New Consciousness]

If you want to get into the moral aspect of things (which I really don't because I don't see the point), I've read some Nietzsche (re-reading some now) and Dostoevsky and I guess I just don't see the connection between or the necessity of even bringing the idea of a supernatural power existing or not existing into the mix. I'm not religious/spiritual in anyway and I never think about a supernatural power existing (I'm not around many believers or if I am, its never brought up) or not existing, so the thoughts on how this effects morality never come up. [I bring it up here because people on the board tend to be drawn to discuss it, regardless of their beliefs, personally I'd avoid the talk altogether, even acknowledging these kinds of ideas gives them a little bit of power.]

Morality is just a conditioned cultural view of the world. There is no morality. Things just are.

People can't accept that. They need to feel there's some kind of greater meaning to life, not just the randomness of cause and effect.

I find meaningless life most enjoyable.

[A.R.Amistad]

As Tagore once wrote, 'life is so cold without tinsel'. Culture and all other constructs which seek to give meaning to life are essentially that: tinsel. Human beings find it incredibly difficult to renounce this. They fear they will lose their identity, their sense of self, their whole comforting (yet utterly miserable) lives. I can't fathom this myself. To be without culture, to be like Nietzsche's Ubermensch, in my opinion is the best way to live, the most peaceful, the most creative, the most revolutionary and the most exciting. I discarded my tinsel years ago.


To be authentic, one does not have to discard "tinsels" such as culture. To be authentic one simply has to be able to not let those tinsels define them. To be an authentic participator in culture, one must actually participate in culture. Its the difference between being a "fan" and being independent. Say you have a preferred musical culture that you like. (In my case it is metal) I find great enjoyment in the metal scene. I love the music, the lifestyle, the atmosphere, the other people involved in it, the history, etc. How do I enjoy this and not lose my authenticity? How to I keep the metal scene from defining me. By defining myself in the metal scene, not with it. One could start a metal garage band (which I don't do because musical instruments stress me out) or you could get into some semi-professional music criticism. (thats what I do to be authentic ;)) Then there is the fan mentality. Fans claim that a band, a sports team or something outside of them defines them, yet they do nothing but cheer. That is inauthenticity.

One does not have to reject the crowd entirely to be authentic. One can participate in society and still be authentic, but one must actually participate in it, not be a passive follower. In fact, I find it to be the most authentic when an individual decides to use their autheniticity to build something outside of themselves (lets say, a revolutionary party, for example). Trying to be fundamentally different from everything that is subjective around does not necessarily make you authentic in this meaningless universe.

[The New Consciousness]

Everyone is authentic. An authentic product of their own conditioning. Even those who try to discern it in themselves.

I would advise to avoid such terms.

[A.R.Amistad]

Everyone is authentic. An authentic product of their own conditioning. Even those who try to discern it in themselves.

I would advise to avoid such terms.

I understand that what I am saying here can be misconstrued as elitism, and if it is taken purely in the Neitzcheian way it is so. But I agree more with Kierkegaard on the differences between authenticity and inauthenticity when he asserts that authentic people are not superior to 'inauthentic' people. A completely authentic person could be so and contribute nothing to society. An authentic person, lets say a devout and following Catholic (Liberation Theology) who is not "authentic," who lets the writings of the Bible and the teachings of the Church give meaning to their lives, joins a revolutionary party, helps build it, gains much for the poor and helps the eploited classes come to power. Which person seems "greater?" There is no superiority inherent in people who choose to be authentic or inauthentic. I think we existentialists say that those who are authentic are capable of leading much more fullfilling lives than those who aren't, but since not everything is rational, its possible that that could not be the case. All in all I hold to that yes, we are all born free, but many of us try not to be.

[The New Consciousness]

You are living in a whirlwind of concepts and abstractions. Just be.

[A.R.Amistad]

I think maybe we can agree (and here I would be going back on what I was saying) that there are no inauthentic people, only inauthentic ideas. Any idea that needs exploittion of the majority, or that seeks to oppress, is inauthentic.

[The New Consciousness]

You have just revealed your latent morality! If we are to end exploitation all such judgements must end. To the exploiters it is totally justified. How are they to be reconciled to your lofty morality? Failing that you may feel justified in extermination or other such extremes.

Exploitation is. My own conditioning abhors it but that doesn't make it necessarily bad. It is a phase in the development of mankind (a peculiarly persistent one). We can only hope for a mass abhorrence of it. At the moment however most exploiters feel justified in it, judging by the prevalence of anti-Marxist neo-Liberal doctrines which neglect social issues purely in favour of the unequivocal power of 'supply and demand' that mythical nexus.

Either that or they're masking their own guilt with convenient excuses.

It's not about authenticity. Everything is a manifestation of the great unknown will of the universe (if there even is a will), even the moral frameworks that seek, erroneously, to attain to a total understanding of it. To be aware is the closest to truth our limited minds can possibly approximate. Awareness is the negation of conditioned judgments and terms such as 'authentic' which is simply a categorisation of the world based on skewed accumulated knowledge.

There is no doer, no thinker, no judge, just the flux of this. The conjugations I, you and he have misled us all and are responsible for the tragedy of exploitation and other such sins. Sin, afterall, is to be asleep.

[A.R.Amistad]

You have just revealed your latent morality! If we are to end exploitation all such judgements must end. To the exploiters it is totally justified. How are they to be reconciled to your lofty morality? Failing that you may feel justified in extermination or other such extremes.

Yes, I have revealed my morality. I do have morality. I just don't derive my morality from anything outside of myself. I create my own morality based on the reality and facticity I live in. I don't regard my morality as a universal truth. it only a way by which I create meaning, and I know that it is subjective.


Exploitation is.

No its not. Here you are asserting a universal truth.


My own conditioning abhors it but that doesn't make it necessarily bad.

Oppression and exploitation is 'bad' (in our morality that we create) not only for the oppressed and exploited, it is bad for the exploiters and oppressed as well. That's where the slave-master dialectic comes in. (BTW, dialectics is not a universal truth, just a way of creating order from the chaos) The master cannot be a master without slaves, and is therefore dependent on his slaves for his meaning. Slave and master are really slaves to each other, and neither can reach their highest potential as individuals in this way. Sure, I am again creating a morality. So what, I am creating a meaning in life. That's what I do. I am becoming.


It is a phase in the development of mankind (a peculiarly persistent one). We can only hope for a mass abhorrence of it. At the moment however most exploiters feel justified in it, judging by the prevalence of anti-Marxist neo-Liberal doctrines which neglect social issues purely in favour of the unequivocal power of 'supply and demand' that mythical nexus.

I think you are either ignoring or underestimating facticity. There is a human condition. Recognizing that life is meaningless doesn't mean rejecting facticity or the human condition. It just takes more than one individual to change it, but it can be changed nonetheless.



It's not about authenticity. Everything is a manifestation of the great unknown will of the universe (if there even is a will),

The universe has no will, it does not care one way or another. All the more reason why we should.


There is no doer, no thinker, no judge, just the flux of this. The conjugations I, you and he have misled us all and are responsible for the tragedy of exploitation and other such sins. Sin, afterall, is to be asleep.

I guess that this is the fundamental difference between Nihilism and Existentialism. Nihilism sees the universe as meaningless and impossible to give meaning to. Existentialists see the meaninglessness of the universe as a blank canvas where we authentic individuals can create our own meaning.

[The New Consciousness]

Existentialists see the meaninglessness of the universe as a blank canvas where we authentic individuals can create our own meaning.

There are no individuals. Prove to me the existance of an active individual agent of free will. You cannot. There is only the unfolding of conditioning, totally integrated into the larger movement of what is.

[A.R.Amistad]

There are no individuals.

We are all individuals. Prove to me one non-individual. You cannot. Even the most dogmatic follower of something outside of themselves is an individual.

You also seem to contradict yourself:


Everyone is authentic. An authentic product of their own conditioning. Even those who try to discern it in themselves.


Here you seem to be saying that we are all individuals, just like I was saying. Yet now you seem to be saying that there are no individuals. You went from saying that we are all authentic (which I have come to agree with) to saying that we are all inauthentic.


There is only the unfolding of conditioning, totally integrated into the larger movement of what is.

Unfolding? I think Rosa will agree with me that this smacks of Hegelian mysticism. What are we unfolding to? What is this great goal that the universe is slowly revealing itself to be? My understanding was that tere was no such goal or truth.

[The New Consciousness]

We are all individuals. Prove to me one non-individual. You cannot. Even the most dogmatic follower of something outside of themselves is an individual.

I asked you to prove the individual first, but you haven't. But I will oblige you in the contrary.

The individual exists in the sense of an individual pattern of conditioning following a particular course of assimilation. The individual you talk of, armed with free will and creativity, doesn't exist because conditioning is totally predetermined. So there are no individuals. There is no 'I' 'you' or 'he', just different conditionings unfolding, not in a divine sense but in the sense of developing through a protracted process of assimilation.

Here you seem to be saying that we are all individuals, just like I was saying. Yet now you seem to be saying that there are no individuals. You went from saying that we are all authentic (which I have come to agree with) to saying that we are all inauthentic.

Individual in the sense of the individual product of a certain conditioning. Not an agent of volition. There is no individual will separate or discontinuous to the overall unknowable (and probably nonexistent) will of the universe, the haphazard 'will' of cause and effect. Forgive my ambiguous language.

Unfolding? I think Rosa will agree with me that this smacks of Hegelian mysticism. What are we unfolding to? What is this great goal that the universe is slowly revealing itself to be? My understanding was that tere was no such goal or truth.

Who knows. You're probably right. I don't think there is. There's just the infinity of cause and effect. I'm not looking for a meaning or a will but I'm not discarding one either. I very much doubt there is one though.

[A.R.Amistad]

I asked you to prove the individual first, but you haven't. But I will oblige you in the contrary.Chris McCandless, the non-fictional protagonist in the book "Into the Wild," is a good example of an "individual." Is he really much different from any other person, when it comes down to the fundamentals of his conditioning? No. McCandless was greatly disillusioned with capitalist society, the humdrum of family life, the Materialism of western culture, the disregard of nature on the part of the modern world, etc. All of these things were preexisting conditions that influenced McCandless' decisions. But in the end, it was McCandless, not society or any other predetermined entity, that decided to go and live off of the wilderness. McCandless had free will, but like all people, he made his free willed decisions based on circumstance, being and facticity. So no, McCandless is not a particularly unique person in the sense that he cut himself off from society. Just because he choose to disassociate with society, he was still heavily influenced by the society he had been born into. But his personal decisions were his own, so he still had free will.

I'm not saying that to avoid capitalism one should hide in the woods. I think revolutions are the best way to change facticity, and it is really great when individuals choose to be revolutionary and create a better society rather than choose to begrudgingly accept it or try to run away from it.


Who knows. You're probably right. I don't think there is. There's just the infinity of cause and effect. I'm not looking for a meaning or a will but I'm not discarding one either. I very much doubt there is one though.I am not an agnostic. I do not believe at all that the universe as any sort of plan or will. The universe is just a meaningless jumble of matter tat we have the capability of giving meaning to.

[A.R.Amistad]

Acts simply are. They are neither good nor bad.With that perspective there is immense freedom. Through non-judgment we take a quantum leap out of our petty conditioning.


This makes little sense to me. Actions simply are? Fair enough, but define action. If you define the action of killing another human being and the molecular reaction that takes place when you put a Mentos in a Diet Coke, well, what can you say? There is a material reason why the mentos reacts with the carbon in the Diet Coke. But why did person A kill person B? That simply is? By saying that it sounds determinist, that the action of murder is predetermined and that there is some universal force that will always compel people to kill other people. I agree that looking at a murder existentially, it has no meaning outside of what us human beings give it. For exaample, when someone says "why do the good die young?" There is no real answer to that question because there are no inherently "good" people and there is no universal reason why anyone dies. Actions may be, but it sounds like you are crossing the line from actions to meaning, like you are saying that the meaning in actions simply "are." I don't think this is true. Meaning is forged within ourselves. Meaning isn't. It is what we make of it.

[Meridian]

This is going nowhere, except into even more obfuscation, unless you look at the fact you keep wanting to define terms outside the functional area of those terms. What "individual" refers to can not be proven to exist outside of the context where it gives communicative meaning to use the term. However, "individual" is a word that functions pretty well in an ordinary discourse, say, for example in "look at that individual over there!", it has a distinct meaning. If you say things like "the individual does not exist", you say something non-sensical. It is like saying "the king in chess died last night" (credit to Rosa for something similar to that example, I think).

You two keep discussing "acts", "freedom", "will", "meaning", etc., as if these were objects. Nouns do not have to be objects, that we can describe so and so (in a metaphysical manner, since these then would have to be "abstract concepts" or some such); just remember that they are terms used for communicative purposes.

[A.R.Amistad]

You two keep discussing "acts", "freedom", "will", "meaning", etc., as if these were objects. Nouns do not have to be objects, that we can describe so and so (in a metaphysical manner, since these then would have to be "abstract concepts" or some such); just remember that they are terms used for communicative purposes.

Exactly my point. You can't condense things like "acts," "freedom," "will" and "meaning" into sub-atomic structures. They are just communicative expressions of life in a chaotic and meaningless universe, and in and of themselves these communications have no meaning outside of what the one communicating (or better yet acting upon them) creates as meaning.

Back to the point about Nihilism. The universe may be meaningless, but it is not impossible to give meaning to it.

[The New Consciousness]

So no, McCandless is not a particularly unique person in the sense that he cut himself off from society. Just because he choose to disassociate with society, he was still heavily influenced by the society he had been born into. But his personal decisions were his own, so he still had free will.

Personal decisions are inherited from conditioning. That is not evidence for free will. He was obliged to do what he did by his conditioned view of the world. He had no say in the matter. If he had been aware he would have seen this.

This makes little sense to me. Actions simply are? Fair enough, but define action. If you define the action of killing another human being and the molecular reaction that takes place when you put a Mentos in a Diet Coke, well, what can you say?

They are both just events.

There is a material reason why the mentos reacts with the carbon in the Diet Coke. But why did person A kill person B? That simply is? By saying that it sounds determinist, that the action of murder is predetermined and that there is some universal force that will always compel people to kill other people.

Depends on their conditioning. So yes.

I agree that looking at a murder existentially, it has no meaning outside of what us human beings give it. For exaample, when someone says "why do the good die young?" There is no real answer to that question because there are no inherently "good" people and there is no universal reason why anyone dies. Actions may be, but it sounds like you are crossing the line from actions to meaning, like you are saying that the meaning in actions simply "are." I don't think this is true. Meaning is forged within ourselves. Meaning isn't. It is what we make of it.

The act on its own has no label attached to it, it simply is. Until of course we taint it with our own conditioned view of things. Then it becomes either a good thing or a bad thing for us. As people have different conditionings then there will never be harmony between people. There will be dissatisfaction, disagreement, and ultimately, conflict. Through awareness and non-judgement this silliness can be brought to a halt.

However, "individual" is a word that functions pretty well in an ordinary discourse, say, for example in "look at that individual over there!", it has a distinct meaning.

Yes, as the product of a certain type of conditioning.

If you say things like "the individual does not exist", you say something non-sensical. It is like saying "the king in chess died last night" (credit to Rosa for something similar to that example, I think).

The individual, in the way it has been bandied about as denoting an agent of free will, does not exist. There is no-one separate from the totality. If you want to say there is free will then you may aswell be arguing for duality as they are one and the same and duality is a total absurdity.

You two keep discussing "acts", "freedom", "will", "meaning", etc., as if these were objects. Nouns do not have to be objects, that we can describe so and so (in a metaphysical manner, since these then would have to be "abstract concepts" or some such); just remember that they are terms used for communicative purposes

Of course language is always ambiguous. Ultimately what I'm talking about can only be experienced directly. I have been inviting people to try this for over a year now, no-one has, simply because they are so bent on trying to 'win' the argument. Instead of actually thinking about it all they think about is their witty riposte. Due to this they will never realise themselves.

[A.R.Amistad]

Personal decisions are inherited from conditioning. That is not evidence for free will. He was obliged to do what he did by his conditioned view of the world. He had no say in the matter. If he had been aware he would have seen this.

Again, I am not denying that there are inescapable conditions that influence our decisions and the meaning that we give things. But how can you discount free will this way? McCandless was born into capitalism. McCandless came to hate capitalism. McCandless decided the best thing to do was to run away from it in the wilderness. I hate capitalism. I was born into it. I am not hiding in the woods. So how are prexisting conditions determining how human behavior plays out?


we taint it with our own conditioned view of things. Then it becomes either a good thing or a bad thing for us. As people have different conditionings then there will never be harmony between people. There will be dissatisfaction, disagreement, and ultimately, conflict. Through awareness and non-judgement this silliness can be brought to a halt.

Is that what we want? Should we just stop giving meaning to things and just deny everything around us? Do we want history to freeze? Generally, people want their lives to have meaning, not necessarily to be happy. Neitzche had a nice quote: "People don't want to be happy; only the Englishman wants to be happy. People desire meaning." The universe is meaningless, but its not impossible to give meaning to it. I for one am not afraid to give meaning to things.


There is no-one separate from the totality.

Totality is chaos. There is no order to totality aside from the order that we assert upon it.

[spiltteeth]

Why does nihilism make people depressed/sad/etc.?

Life has no meaning, meaning only exists when critters who can create meaning, create it and share it with other critters who can understand them. Life exists without meaning, it existed without meaning before critters who created meaning existed, and life will exist after all the critters who create meaning are gone. Life just is, living/being just is. I don't see the problem with that or why it makes people upset. I think that's the most important, beautiful thing about life. I find comfort and happiness knowing that 'meaning' is created and doesn't exist on its own. No good or bad, right or wrong.

I guess this is slightly different then this understanding: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nih and I wouldn't go as far to say any of these things: (that was taken from the second paragraph under 4. Eliminativism.)
Perhaps what I'm thinking of isn't nihilism?

If you want to get into the moral aspect of things (which I really don't because I don't see the point), I've read some Nietzsche (re-reading some now) and Dostoevsky and I guess I just don't see the connection between or the necessity of even bringing the idea of a supernatural power existing or not existing into the mix. I'm not religious/spiritual in anyway and I never think about a supernatural power existing (I'm not around many believers or if I am, its never brought up) or not existing, so the thoughts on how this effects morality never come up. [I bring it up here because people on the board tend to be drawn to discuss it, regardless of their beliefs, personally I'd avoid the talk altogether, even acknowledging these kinds of ideas gives them a little bit of power.]

I'll quote a few people who have thought deeply and had the bravery to really understand what it means for their to be no objective meaning in the universe.
I think most people are too cowardly to fully face what an objectively meaningless universe means.

Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote that we must build our lives upon
"the firm foundation of unyielding despair."


That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; . . . that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

According to Ernst Bloch, the only way modern man lives in the face of death is by subconsciously borrowing the belief in immortality that his forefathers held to.
By borrowing the remnants of a belief in immortality, writes Bloch,
"modern man does not feel the chasm that unceasingly surrounds him and that will certainly engulf him at last. Through these remnants, he saves his sense of self-identity. Through them the impression arises that man is not perishing, but only that one day the world has the whim no longer to appear to him."
"This quite shallow courage feasts on a borrowed credit card. It lives from earlier hopes and the support that they once had provided."

Remember Nietzsche's story of the madman who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace, lantern in hand, crying, "I seek God! I seek God!" Since many of those standing about did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. "Did God get lost?" they taunted him. "Or is he hiding? Or maybe he has gone on a voyage or emigrated!" Then the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes


'Whither is God?' he cried, 'I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? . . . God is dead. . . . And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comrort ourselves?

The crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment. At last he dashed his lantern to the ground. "I have come too early," he said. "This tremendous event is still on its way—it has not yet reached the ears of man."
Men did not yet truly comprehend the consequences of what they had done in killing God. Most still won't face the ramifications.

Or Hocking :


"Human life is mounted upon a subhuman pedestal and must shift for itself alone in the heart of a silent and mindless universe.''

Finally,

"The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust" (Eccles 3:19-20)

[The New Consciousness]

Again, I am not denying that there are inescapable conditions that influence our decisions and the meaning that we give things. But how can you discount free will this way? McCandless was born into capitalism. McCandless came to hate capitalism. McCandless decided the best thing to do was to run away from it in the wilderness. I hate capitalism. I was born into it. I am not hiding in the woods. So how are prexisting conditions determining how human behavior plays out?

Go ask your therapist, but there is a reason. No two humans have the same conditioning. We all vary immensely. But to deny causation is pure folly. There are no such things as pure, discontinuous actions. If you want to say we have free will then you are asserting just that. This is duality. You are saying there is an individual separate from the rest of the universe exercising, discontinuously, his will. It just isn't possible. There are no dualities. Everything is one integrated whole. The individual is purely a thread in the larger tapestry that is life. It is an illusion. There is no free will. Try and make a totally creative decision. You can't. You will always be reacting to something.

Is that what we want? Should we just stop giving meaning to things and just deny everything around us?

A typically shallow interpretation of nonduality. Non-judgment isn't fatalism. It is a very peaceful yet highly dynamic way of life. It is not denying the world but accepting the world. It is a total communion with what is, as opposed to the kind of limited fetishim which most people indulge in and which normally creates incessant misery.

Do we want history to freeze? Generally, people want their lives to have meaning, not necessarily to be happy.

The search for meaning is confused with the search for happiness. That's the problem. All human endeavour is a journey towards completion. The folly is that we are already complete, integrated and part of the nondual whole. It is the dream of separation, or 'maya' in Hinduism. It is the root of all suffering.

Neitzche had a nice quote: "People don't want to be happy; only the Englishman wants to be happy. People desire meaning." The universe is meaningless, but its not impossible to give meaning to it. I for one am not afraid to give meaning to things.

The absurdity is that meaningless life is the most creative, enjoyable and free. The seeker will always know suffering, because the necessary condition of his seeking is that he must feel incomplete. Actually the seeking itself creates an illusion of incompleteness or separation. The fact is that prior to the search we are already totally and blissfully complete, integrated into the simple reality of this. As Francis of Assisi said: the search ends where it begins. It is the necessity for meaning that creates all the trouble.

Totality is chaos. There is no order to totality aside from the order that we assert upon it.

I don't deny it, but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

[A.R.Amistad]

Go ask your therapist, but there is a reason. No two humans have the same conditioning. We all vary immensely. But to deny causation is pure folly. There are no such things as pure, discontinuous actions. If you want to say we have free will then you are asserting just that. This is duality. You are saying there is an individual separate from the rest of the universe exercising, discontinuously, his will. It just isn't possible. There are no dualities. Everything is one integrated whole. The individual is purely a thread in the larger tapestry that is life. It is an illusion. There is no free will. Try and make a totally creative decision. You can't. You will always be reacting to something.


A reaction is a choice, no matter if it is a desired choice. So what if its a reaction, so what if it is not 'creative.' No one said that complete creativity was a product of free will. Our most basic choice that we make every day is to remain alive. No, we didn't choose to come into existence, but we continue to perpetuate. We are constantly walking on the edge of a sharp knife, and we can choose suicide anytime. Definitely not advocating it at all. But it just shows that we have free will whether we like it or not. If a robber puts a gun to your head and you choose to give him the money he demands, you are making a choice. The choice is a consequence of the gun in your face, but the choice is yours in the end. After all, you could choose death. Sartre said "we are doomed to be free" because he came to that realization in WWII. In France, you were either a Nazi Collaborator or a Partisan. Being a partisan or resisting the Nazi regime often meant death, or at least torture and prison. Many choose collaboration not because they liked the Nazis, but because they wanted to go on living. The Nazi invasion was out of their immediate control, but as Sartre saw it, they could have chosen death instead. You cannot deny that history has produced many martyrs. Our facticity doesn't matter in the end. It is important in our decision making, even crucial, but we make the decision for ourselves by ourselves. We are doomed to be free, for after all, we always have the choice of death available.


A typically shallow interpretation of nonduality. Non-judgment isn't fatalism. It is a very peaceful yet highly dynamic way of life. It is not denying the world but accepting the world. It is a total communion with what is, as opposed to the kind of limited fetishim which most people indulge in and which normally creates incessant misery.

I'm not saying that in despair, its just that you keep saying that everything "is" without considering the possibility, and even inevitability, of becoming, of giving meaning.


The search for meaning is confused with the search for happiness. That's the problem. All human endeavour is a journey towards completion. The folly is that we are already complete, integrated and part of the nondual whole. It is the dream of separation, or 'maya' in Hinduism. It is the root of all suffering.


So our essence is already determined??:laugh:

[Lenina Rosenweg]

TNC, as I understand it you are coming from a position of an intuitive feeling of materialist monism, "everything is one". Ourselves, our acts, environment, etc., at some level, are all part of the Cosmic Pudding. From this you deduce that "everything is self sufficient unto itself", "its all good". I understand this and have some sympathy for this position but I think it can be easily misunderstood and misused.

Much of the human self is determined by our class, upbringing, environment, etc.On another level there's the Buddhist concept of "dependent origination", every cause is linked with every other.

This can easily lead to quietism. "The universe is cool the way it is.." Feudal cultures such as medievil Japan, Tibet, the Brahmins in India, Medievil Europe had refined systems of spirituality. They were also horribly oppressive places for the common people.

I don't think a recognition of our interconnectedness would negate free will or human agency. People are different from animals in having agency and purpose, irrespective of how this may be influenced by our environment. "The worst of carpenters is better than the best of bees". There is a qualitative difference.

Roquentin making the decision to write a book in Nausea is a way of giving himself and the universe meaning.

[The New Consciousness]

A reaction is a choice, no matter if it is a desired choice.

Where does the desire come from? Was that chosen? The desire makes the choice, not you. There is no choos-er, only conditioning choosing according to its predispositions and fancy.

Our most basic choice that we make every day is to remain alive. No, we didn't choose to come into existence, but we continue to perpetuate. We are constantly walking on the edge of a sharp knife, and we can choose suicide anytime.

Decisions are not made that way. Decisions are predetermined by desires and urges. These are totally inherited and not chosen. So how can we really choose? Surely the desires and urges choose for us?

If a robber puts a gun to your head and you choose to give him the money he demands, you are making a choice. The choice is a consequence of the gun in your face, but the choice is yours in the end.

It is a consequence of your conditioning + the gun. There is no individual in that equation!

After all, you could choose death. Sartre said "we are doomed to be free" because he came to that realization in WWII. In France, you were either a Nazi Collaborator or a Partisan. Being a partisan or resisting the Nazi regime often meant death, or at least torture and prison. Many choose collaboration not because they liked the Nazis, but because they wanted to go on living. The Nazi invasion was out of their immediate control, but as Sartre saw it, they could have chosen death instead.

Their choice depended totally on how they felt about it. Did they consciously choosing those feelings? Seek the genesis of feelings, urges and desires before you assume we have free will. All those are the legacy of conditioning, beyond our control.

You cannot deny that history has produced many martyrs. Our facticity doesn't matter in the end. It is important in our decision making, even crucial, but we make the decision for ourselves by ourselves. We are doomed to be free, for after all, we always have the choice of death available.

Ditto the above.

I'm not saying that in despair, its just that you keep saying that everything "is" without considering the possibility, and even inevitability, of becoming, of giving meaning.

Because even the stories of meaning are part of this.

So our essence is already determined?

Of course.

---

I think it can be easily misunderstood and misused.

Absolutely. It's often confused with fatalism.

This can easily lead to quietism. "The universe is cool the way it is.." Feudal cultures such as medievil Japan, Tibet, the Brahmins in India, Medievil Europe had refined systems of spirituality. They were also horribly oppressive places for the common people.

Spirituality is simply understanding one's nature. The creation of systems is totally contrary to that simplicity. These religions weren't designed to propagate truth but to consolidate power, like all religion. It is the cosmic sanctification of earthly power. The simplicity of nonduality has been lost in these cunning shrouds of human manipulation and power politics. The aware mind sees the childishness of all these divisions and hierarchies and seeks to do away with them, not use them as levers for power.

I don't think a recognition of our interconnectedness would negate free will or human agency. People are different from animals in having agency and purpose, irrespective of how this may be influenced by our environment. "The worst of carpenters is better than the best of bees". There is a qualitative difference.

Essentially it is exactly the same as the behaviour of animals, only more subtle. It is the eternal hunt for pleasure and flight from fear.

Roquentin making the decision to write a book in Nausea is a way of giving himself and the universe meaning.

Roquetin was fleeing from the dissatisfaction of his life.

[Meridian]

Where does the desire come from? Was that chosen? The desire makes the choice, not you. There is no choos-er, only conditioning choosing according to its predispositions and fancy.
'Desire' can not make choices; this is based on misuse of language.



Decisions are not made that way. Decisions are predetermined by desires and urges. These are totally inherited and not chosen. So how can we really choose? Surely the desires and urges choose for us?
Again, 'desires' and 'urges' can not choose for anyone since these terms can not choose anything; this is based on misuse of language.



It is a consequence of your conditioning + the gun. There is no individual in that equation!
That's not an equation, and the idea is non-sensical since you appear to be oblivious to what people actually mean by "choice". Of course the context plays a role in what choices people make, a huge role, but that doesn't stop us from calling them "choices". And it, by no means, will stop us from referring to people as "individuals".



Their choice depended totally on how they felt about it. Did they consciously choosing those feelings? Seek the genesis of feelings, urges and desires before you assume we have free will. All those are the legacy of conditioning, beyond our control.
It is true that feelings often affect our choices. But nothing metaphysical derives from that.

[A.R.Amistad]

Where does the desire come from? Was that chosen? The desire makes the choice, not you. There is no choos-er, only conditioning choosing according to its predispositions and fancy.
I agree wholly with Meridian on this point. How do desires determine our choices? I desire to fly, so why am I not flying? I desire to not do my homework, but I do it anyway. We can't always get what we want.


Decisions are not made that way. Decisions are predetermined by desires and urges. These are totally inherited and not chosen. So how can we really choose? Surely the desires and urges choose for us?

And what godly creature gave us these supposedly immutable desires? Choices are made by the individual and the individual alone, otherwise it is not a choice it is a consequence. Again, Sartre made another good observations about people and their instincts: "there are no cowards, only nervous constitutions." Someone could be born with a condition of psychological paranoia. That doesn't mean they can't achieve brave actions and make their essence brave. They only become a coward when they submit to their primal instincts and stop seeking to create a meaning beyond it. If every decision we made were based only on our instincts and desires, we would never have been able to create civilizations, build skyscrapers, create philosophical schools, figure out the Pythagorean Theorem, build weapons, invent the printing press, write literature, preform music, etc. etc. If we were as you described, we would not be human beings. We would be Sea Anemones.


It is a consequence of your conditioning + the gun. There is no individual in that equation!The condition is a life or death situation. The individual can choose life or death.


Their choice depended totally on how they felt about it.Feelings, in the emotional sense, are choices.


Did they consciously choosing those feelings?We don't have to be conscious of our decisions, hence the majority of people lie to themselves about such falsities as "God" or "Human Nature." Not every choice we make is a desirable one.


Seek the genesis of feelings, urges and desires before you assume we have free will. All those are the legacy of conditioning, beyond our control.
So everything we do in our lives has already been determined by genetics? :laugh:

In response to whether essence was already determined


Of course.^Pure religion. Theres nothing that separates this type of thinking and the thought that "God has a plan for everyone." (No offense intended to our religious comrades)

[Lenina Rosenweg]

People can and do break out of their conditioning. Marx could have lived his life as a liberal German professor, Lenin could have been a lawyer or a gentleman farmer, Trotsky a literary critic or an engineer, Mao a gentleman farmer. These people broke from their conditioning.People create themselves, we are the products of the choices we make.

Its true that we take our universe with us when making a decision or commitment, of course."Wherever you go, there you are".Its easy to confuse levels though.Humans are the only animals capable of civilization, at least as we know it.I can look at a Picasso a,Paul Klee , or a sunset and derive an aesthetic pleasure from this, animals cannot.

Animals operate on instincts and drives."Must build nest", "must burrow hole", "must get food", etc.Obviously humans are motivated by pleasure and avoidance of pain as well. What gives us pleasure though is at a vastly higher level than that of most animals.We can be motivated by compassion for others, aesthetic appreciation, quest for symbolic immortality, guilt, ethics and morality. Animals cannot be motivated by these things. (One could make an arguement that some cetaceans and maybe chimps/bonobos are an exception but they can't produce anything we would call civilization.)
Dogs have emotions. A dog cannot feel guilt or shame (for example). A human can experience these feelings and is capable of taking purposive action based on this.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

TNC,
I think I understand where you're coming from, I think you may be confusing levels though. If the universe is non-dualistic and deterministic, humans having no free will, well, how does anything get done? How can one explain evolution except though a complex system of contingency? The only other explanation for evolution is "Intelligent Design" and I'm sure you don't believe this.

On another level, what motivates people to do things? The more I learn about psychology, the more I am convinced that people are healthier in so far as they take control of their lives. This can be indiividually or though collective action, i'e. socialism.People who do not choose to try to take control of their lives or of society, are unhappy.(I emphasize "try" because under capitalism noone has control, its the attempt which gives meaning)

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice/I will choose free will".

Have you read "Heaven and Hell" by Aldous Huxley? A deterministic world is the Hell Huxley described. Its the world of Kafka,of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, of Huis Clos, of a bad acid trip. It is a nightmare.A vast, horrendous, mechanistic universe from which there can be no escape.

How do you break out of this? How do you step out of it?

Is it possible to take the non-dualistic universe and look at it from the other side? There is a vast Cosmic It but our purposive action is the Cosmic It.

[A.R.Amistad]

Lenina Rosenweg

On another level, what motivates people to do things? The more I learn about psychology, the more I am convinced that people are healthier in so far as they take control of their lives. This can be indiividually or though collective action, i'e. socialism.People who do not choose to try to take control of their lives or of society, are unhappy.(I emphasize "try" because under capitalism noone has control, its the attempt which gives meaning)

Bingo! All I have to say is way to go Marx, Sartre and Kierkegaard and booo Ayn Rand! Rand and her followers have a silly little saying about individuality that goes something like this:

Objectivist Idiots

I will never live for someone else, and I would never ask anyone to live for me

There are a lot of problems and contradictions with this mindset, but lets stay on topic here. Beyond just being a purely selfish and ignorant interpretation of individuality, it is a false one forged out of despair. According to Kierkegaard, their are two types of despair, weak despair and denialist despair. Rand and her calibre fall under those people who are in denial, and denial is inauthenticity, i.e., denying your individuality. To be an individual, to be "extraordinary," one must be able to recognize the conditions they live in: covering up even the subjective truth is denial. One must be able to recognize that which is out of their immediate control, how humans interpret the universe (science, etc.) and other things in order to live authentically. To live authentically, to live as an individual, one must recognize the chaotic order outside of themselves before they continue on their existential journey. Kierkegaard thought that regonition of God and the Devil were necessary, but as an atheist and materialist, I think recognizing things like science, society, etc. are what are truly necessary to understand. As Ayn Rand would have it, we would be living like Sea Anemones like I said. States, ie, the systematic organized violence kept by the ruling class, is an involuntary part of our live, something we have no choice other than death to face. But all governments, ie, any voluntary grouping of people (anything from a family unit to an anarchist society) are an integral part of pretty much all our lives unless we are hermits living in a cave. By living in a society, you already are living for others in addition to yourself because, unconsciously or not, you voluntrily choose to participate in society. The state is only a by-product of class tension, as Lenin has highlighted so well. How does this fit in? We'll to be an "individual," one must not try to become a hermetic and selfish being. Quite the contrary, by doing so you are denying your individuality and are therefore inauthentic (something I think people like Rand claim to dread)

So by being an individual, by achieving the highest potential of your existence, you must make a difference outside of yourself. So yes, what you are saying is very true. By being a revolutionary, by choosing to participate in a mass movement, you are not "following the crowd" as the Randists would like you to think. If you are genuine in your commitment to a mass movement, you are truly being authentic. Read Camu's The Renegade, its a great read for revolutionaries to realise the individuality that is celebrated in mass, revolutionary movements, such as the proletarian revolution.

[The New Consciousness]

'Desire' can not make choices; this is based on misuse of language.

The desire arises and from there arises the choice to either fulfil or deny the desire. So it springs entirely from the desire. Without the desire, would there be any choices? The desires, the urges, the predispositions - these all create the choices. The most powerful fragment (decision) then wins, depending entirely on how biased the conditioning is in its favour. In all of this where is the individual? Is it not just a mental stream, totally automatic, organic almost, with a life of its own, beyond anyone's control? You have divided up the world into observer and observed. For you the world is a world of categories and fragments. There is you and then your thoughts which you seemingly manipulate, exercising some kind of individual, independent will, yes? What if I were to tell you that the 'you' you assume to be your identity is actually just a construct of thought, included within the thought itself which creates the illusion of choice?

That's not an equation, and the idea is non-sensical since you appear to be oblivious to what people actually mean by "choice". Of course the context plays a role in what choices people make, a huge role, but that doesn't stop us from calling them "choices". And it, by no means, will stop us from referring to people as "individuals".

Prove to me that an individual exists beyond thought, conditioning et cetera. Please.

---
I agree wholly with Meridian on this point. How do desires determine our choices? I desire to fly, so why am I not flying? I desire to not do my homework, but I do it anyway. We can't always get what we want.

The basic desire is the desire for pleasure out of which all other urges and desires flower. The desire not to do your homework is overruled by another desire which either seeks success in academic study or approval or the avoidance of pain, perhaps in the form of criticism from others and all the rest of it. There is a story here. Your life is a perpetual oscillation between pleasure and pain. It is all automatic. You don't need to actively think about this: it is there, it is organic. This is the legacy of your conditioning, which took place without any involvement on your behalf. In your mind are fragments vying for control, all with different ideas on how to approximate pleasure. Some will inevitably triumph, others will fail. It all depends on the conditioning and which ones it favours. There is no choosing, there is simply the taint of bias which can be expressed in this way: 'I want pleasure and I don't want pain'. This is what has determined your whole life. It is what will oblige you to respond to my post with some kind of convoluted intellectual argument to satisfy your sense of intellectual superiority. Any action which is not guided towards pleasure or away from pain can only be born out of awareness. Otherwise it is conditioned.

If you fail to see this you are not being rigorous. Try it. Go into it. Don't take everything for granted. You have been deluded by the illusion of ego.

And what godly creature gave us these supposedly immutable desires?

The flight from pain to pleasure is just a survival instinct, I think.

Choices are made by the individual and the individual alone, otherwise it is not a choice it is a consequence.

I never said I believed in the word choice. It is always a consequence. Unless it has no precedent.

Again, Sartre made another good observations about people and their instincts: "there are no cowards, only nervous constitutions."

Absolutely. Coward implies free will. A choice to run away. There can be no choices though, only a predisposition stronger than others which eventually triumphs. In the case of a 'coward' a nervous constitution. Quite right.

Someone could be born with a condition of psychological paranoia. That doesn't mean they can't achieve brave actions and make their essence brave.

Whether they do will depend entirely on the kind of pleasure anticipation they receive from achieving such brave actions. Look at the motivations. Why do people commit acts of bravery? A feeling of compassion, a desire for glory, a love of danger and hazardous situations. The buck doesn't stop simply at 'being brave', there is always a motivation behind there, lurking in the shadows, almost imperceptible but always there. And it inevitably stems from the great question 'what is good for me?'. Even compassion is self-rewarding.

They only become a coward when they submit to their primal instincts and stop seeking to create a meaning beyond it.

If the pleasure anticipation of being a coward is greater than other alternatives. It all depends on pleasure and pain anticipations.

If every decision we made were based only on our instincts and desires, we would never have been able to create civilizations, build skyscrapers, create philosophical schools, figure out the Pythagorean Theorem, build weapons, invent the printing press, write literature, preform music, etc. etc. If we were as you described, we would not be human beings. We would be Sea Anemones.

That's a gross assumption. Why were civilisations created? Early societies undoubtedly formed because it created more pleasure for those involved. The fetishism of philosophy stems from man's innate sensation of dissatisfaction, another flight from pain. Weapons? A perfect example of a desire for pleasure clothed in the garment of victory, superiority and watching one's enemies suffer. Literature - most artists are tortured beings who take themselves and their work far too seriously - everything is about recognition, the satisfaction of being great at something, bla bla bla.

However when one is truly aware of this mechanism of pleasure and pain and when one sees its total folly because as pure consciousness there is no need to play that childish game, life itself then becomes joy, something to marvel at. There's none of this pressure from the twin poles of pleasure and pain. There is simply what is happening, in all its uniqueness. Suffering disappears. This is nirvana.

Pure religion. Theres nothing that separates this type of thinking and the thought that "God has a plan for everyone." (No offense intended to our religious comrades)

I never said anything about God. You assumed some kind of deity probably because you can't accept the reality of material dialectics. We are tied into the world of cause and effect. In our survival mindset it is a constant ping-pong flight between pleasure and pain. That's human existence. Until someone realises this and then it all stops. The basic survival instincts are all still there but none of this crazy mental gratification occurs. It is seen as superfluous.

---

People can and do break out of their conditioning. Marx could have lived his life as a liberal German professor, Lenin could have been a lawyer or a gentleman farmer, Trotsky a literary critic or an engineer, Mao a gentleman farmer. These people broke from their conditioning.People create themselves, we are the products of the choices we make.

Whey did they make those choices? You are being lazy. Look at the genesis of these choices...were they chosen? That's the great question. Did Marx choose to choose to be satisfied by choosing to reject the easy lifestyle that could have been his? Or was that just there and he reacted to it? Did certain circumstances, events in his life create that urge to which he reacted straight away? Perhaps his early life as a German Jew in Trier and consequent sense of alienation coupled with an early interest in philosophy made him dissatisfied with the kind of 'shallow' life a German bourgeois would necessarily experience? It all comes from pleasure and pain. It was Marx's pleasure to become a communist. No other reason. Now where did that pleasure come from? Did he conceive it miraculously before he was born in a kind of vacuum? No. It was the end-product of an assimilation process (memory).

Its true that we take our universe with us when making a decision or commitment, of course."Wherever you go, there you are".Its easy to confuse levels though.Humans are the only animals capable of civilization, at least as we know it.I can look at a Picasso a,Paul Klee , or a sunset and derive an aesthetic pleasure from this, animals cannot.

It is more complex, more convoluted, probably because we have larger brains so there are more links in the chain, but it is still the same old, base instinct which is the flight from pain towards vaulted pleasure, in other words the whole heaven and hell duality.

If you don't see this then you are living in a dualistic world. This is called maya. You can wake up to it through self-inquiry. But somehow I think you'd rather stay in your dreamworld. No offence, it's just most people prefer their tragicomedies to the truth.

Animals operate on instincts and drives."Must build nest", "must burrow hole", "must get food", etc.Obviously humans are motivated by pleasure and avoidance of pain as well. What gives us pleasure though is at a vastly higher level than that of most animals.We can be motivated by compassion for others, aesthetic appreciation, quest for symbolic immortality, guilt, ethics and morality. Animals cannot be motivated by these things. (One could make an arguement that some cetaceans and maybe chimps/bonobos are an exception but they can't produce anything we would call
civilization.)

You even admit it, we are motivated by pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Exactly! So can't you see the problem here? The whole problem of the 'individual' and 'free will' and all this wishful thinking? It is a dream. There are two poles: pleasure and pain. Human existence is a ball bouncing between them. All 'decisions' are influenced by that nexus. There is no-one there making the decision. It is a mental mechanism. Not a person. The way it unfolds in different situations and people is the legacy of life situation and subsequent conditioning which varies immensely, obviously. But it is totally automatic. It doesn't need anyone's effort to keep it rolling. It is on autopilot. You, which is simply consciousness or awareness, has become trapped in it and has confused it as your point of reference. That's all.

If the universe is non-dualistic and deterministic, humans having no free will, well, how does anything get done?

It's cause and effect that's all. Cause and effect + memory creates the illusion of time and development and 'things getting done'. But memory is just another part of cause and effect!

On another level, what motivates people to do things? The more I learn about psychology, the more I am convinced that people are healthier in so far as they take control of their lives. This can be indiividually or though collective action, i'e. socialism.People who do not choose to try to take control of their lives or of society, are unhappy.(I emphasize "try" because under capitalism noone has control, its the attempt which gives meaning)

Yeah another pleasure seeking expedition. The sense of security which control confers! It is the classic human problem: the quest for order in a chaotic, indifferent, meaningless universe - hence the creation of God. Actually real order comes about when this whole crazy idea is seen through as totally stupid and meaningless, when the mind's point of reference in the pleasure and pain thought nexus (ego) disappears. Afterall, there is no point of reference in experience (which is all we are - experience).

Have you read "Heaven and Hell" by Aldous Huxley? A deterministic world is the Hell Huxley described. Its the world of Kafka,of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, of Huis Clos, of a bad acid trip. It is a nightmare.A vast, horrendous, mechanistic universe from which there can be no escape.

It's only hell if you look for some kind of order. It only becomes hell when it is compared with a desire for something different. Accepting it totally as it is it becomes heavenly. That is then unconditional love. Do you follow or does this sound totally wacko?

How do you break out of this? How do you step out of it?

You can't, for you ARE it.

[Meridian]

The desire arises and from there arises the choice to either fulfil or deny the desire. So it springs entirely from the desire. Without the desire, would there be any choices? The desires, the urges, the predispositions - these all create the choices. The most powerful fragment (decision) then wins, depending entirely on how biased the conditioning is in its favour. In all of this where is the individual?
Okay, if we are to pretend that your platonic conception of 'desire' and 'choice' is correct; What do you mean by "where is the individual"? No one is claiming that "individual" refers to a physical object, though it often does when one for example says "look at that funny individual next to the Volkswagen". In that case, "next to the Volkswagen" is the answer to your question; and only these are the sort of answers that may correctly answer your question.


Is it not just a mental stream, totally automatic, organic almost, with a life of its own, beyond anyone's control? You have divided up the world into observer and observed. For you the world is a world of categories and fragments. There is you and then your thoughts which you seemingly manipulate, exercising some kind of individual, independent will, yes? What if I were to tell you that the 'you' you assume to be your identity is actually just a construct of thought, included within the thought itself which creates the illusion of choice?
First off; I don't believe in the metaphysical ideas you attributed to me. Second, we do usually say that people have independent thoughts, but of course that takes into account a degree of context dependence. For example; conscious thought is language used silently, so thoughts are dependent on language (which is where Descartes failed miserably). You are saying that "the 'you' you assume to be your identity is actually just a construct of thought", if you by "thought" here mean language then yes, of course. It is by language you may communicate with me at all, and it is through it we have our 'understanding' of the world, so to speak. So, that we have the popular terms "you", "I", "identity", etc., means that these are meaningful terms in some context.

But nothing metaphysical derives from that.

Prove to me that an individual exists beyond thought, conditioning et cetera. Please.I can not prove that something like that does exist, just as little as you can prove that it does not exist. You say 'beyond thought', but what we are talking about here is 'beyond language'. "Individual" is a meaningful term. In normal use, it is not a metaphysical entity. The term is meaningful and useful, unlike the metaphysics applied to it by certain philosophers. It is impossible to use language to define something 'outside of language', outside of the meaningful way to use the term in question, it leads only to non-sense. In other words, I am not making a metaphysical claim that the 'individual' exists or not, I am saying that it's only a word, and to apply metaphysics to it at all ("it does exist"/"it does not exist") is simply non-sense.

[A.R.Amistad]

The desire arises and from there arises the choice to either fulfil or deny the desire. So it springs entirely from the desire. Without the desire, would there be any choices? The desires, the urges, the predispositions - these all create the choices. The most powerful fragment (decision) then wins, depending entirely on how biased the conditioning is in its favour. In all of this where is the individual? Is it not just a mental stream, totally automatic, organic almost, with a life of its own, beyond anyone's control? You have divided up the world into observer and observed. For you the world is a world of categories and fragments. There is you and then your thoughts which you seemingly manipulate, exercising some kind of individual, independent will, yes? What if I were to tell you that the 'you' you assume to be your identity is actually just a construct of thought, included within the thought itself which creates the illusion of choice?


I will concede one thing. Human beings are addicted to creating meaning out of a meaningless universe. That is something that makes us individual. But the search for meaning is still not our essence. Some humans are born with diseases and deformities that prevent them from advanced thinking or even use of their physical attributes, to the point where they have no knowledge of meaning. This is very rare and improbable, but it is still not our essence. By choosing to perpetuate our life, we make surviving our essence. But in modern society, with the advancement of surplus value, etc. most of us don't just think about surviving. We create meaning beyond our basic survival, and the more we do that the more extraordinary we become.



Prove to me that an individual exists beyond thought, conditioning et cetera. Please.

Actually, you contradict yourself here. An individual in the sense that we are talking about is totally subjective. You are talking about that which is objective.

Also, someone in a coma is a good example.


The desire not to do your homework is overruled by another desire which either seeks success in academic study or approval or the avoidance of pain, perhaps in the form of criticism from others and all the rest of it. There is a story here. Your life is a perpetual oscillation between pleasure and pain. It is all automatic. You don't need to actively think about this: it is there, it is organic. This is the legacy of your conditioning, which took place without any involvement on your behalf. In your mind are fragments vying for control, all with different ideas on how to approximate pleasure. Some will inevitably triumph, others will fail. It all depends on the conditioning and which ones it favours. There is no choosing, there is simply the taint of bias which can be expressed in this way: 'I want pleasure and I don't want pain'. This is what has determined your whole life. It is what will oblige you to respond to my post with some kind of convoluted intellectual argument to satisfy your sense of intellectual superiority. Any action which is not guided towards pleasure or away from pain can only be born out of awareness. Otherwise it is conditioned.

If you fail to see this you are not being rigorous. Try it. Go into it. Don't take everything for granted. You have been deluded by the illusion of ego.

Lets go back to the homework example. It is part of the meaning of my life that I myself created (i.e. choose) and seek to fulfill through my labor. My labor is material. The results (high education, economic success, social acceptance) are subjective consequences. If I really did not care about my life at all, if I really didn't care if I were happy or not, I could just kill myself. This is absurd and irrational, but humans aren't rational creatures. There is no underlying force that compels me to lead a fulfilling life or to desire happiness. The matter that makes up my body will react in certain ways, such as by making me scream in pain if I touch something hot, but these are consequences of objective matter, not choices. Again, as Nietzsche said in response to the Enlightenment thinkers "Man does not want to be happy. Only the Englishman wants to be happy." The only thing that we desire is meaning. We need material sustenance to create meaning, but we only sustain ourselves to sustain some sort of our own meaning.



The flight from pain to pleasure is just a survival instinct, I think.

Yes, as I said before, this is a material reaction, not an emotion. People who are suicidal or insecure cut themselves and still feel pain. If what you are saying were true, cutters would not be a problem in society.



Whether they do will depend entirely on the kind of pleasure anticipation they receive from achieving such brave actions. Look at the motivations. Why do people commit acts of bravery? A feeling of compassion, a desire for glory, a love of danger and hazardous situations. The buck doesn't stop simply at 'being brave', there is always a motivation behind there, lurking in the shadows, almost imperceptible but always there. And it inevitably stems from the great question 'what is good for me?'. Even compassion is self-rewarding.

You are assuming that we inherently desire pleasure. That is a grave mistake on your part.



Whey did they make those choices? You are being lazy. Look at the genesis of these choices...were they chosen? That's the great question. Did Marx choose to choose to be satisfied by choosing to reject the easy lifestyle that could have been his? Or was that just there and he reacted to it? Did certain circumstances, events in his life create that urge to which he reacted straight away? Perhaps his early life as a German Jew in Trier and consequent sense of alienation coupled with an early interest in philosophy made him dissatisfied with the kind of 'shallow' life a German bourgeois would necessarily experience? It all comes from pleasure and pain. It was Marx's pleasure to become a communist. No other reason. Now where did that pleasure come from? Did he conceive it miraculously before he was born in a kind of vacuum? No. It was the end-product of an assimilation process (memory).

The reasons don't matter. All that matters is that they made the choice. Not every choice we make is a desirable one. According to ideas, we would never have things like suicide, depression, sadness, worry, guilt, etc.


I never said anything about God. You assumed some kind of deity probably because you can't accept the reality of material dialectics. We are tied into the world of cause and effect. In our survival mindset it is a constant ping-pong flight between pleasure and pain. That's human existence. Until someone realises this and then it all stops. The basic survival instincts are all still there but none of this crazy mental gratification occurs. It is seen as superfluous.


You are treating science in an unscientific way. Dialectical Materialism is a scientific explanation of things. I don't reject Dialectical Materialism any more than I do gravity or Newton's Laws of Motion (which I don't) but you make the mistake of believing that, in and of itself, science can give meaning to life. Science is just one of the ways we create order out of the chaos, and it is important for us to know and recognize to become individuals. Lets take the theory of evolution, which is very much influenced by Dialectical Materialism. You can recognize that we come from a common ancestor, that species evolve, etc. Does this have meaning? Not outside of the meaning that you give it. It may be objectively so, but the meaning you give it is totally subjective.

[The New Consciousness]

Quote:
Originally Posted by TNC
The desire arises and from there arises the choice to either fulfil or deny the desire. So it springs entirely from the desire. Without the desire, would there be any choices? The desires, the urges, the predispositions - these all create the choices. The most powerful fragment (decision) then wins, depending entirely on how biased the conditioning is in its favour. In all of this where is the individual?
Okay, if we are to pretend that your platonic conception of 'desire' and 'choice' is correct; What do you mean by "where is the individual"? No one is claiming that "individual" refers to a physical object, though it often does when one for example says "look at that funny individual next to the Volkswagen". In that case, "next to the Volkswagen" is the answer to your question; and only these are the sort of answers that may correctly answer your question.
Okay, if we are to pretend that your platonic conception of 'desire' and 'choice' is correct; What do you mean by "where is the individual"? No one is claiming that "individual" refers to a physical object, though it often does when one for example says "look at that funny individual next to the Volkswagen". In that case, "next to the Volkswagen" is the answer to your question; and only these are the sort of answers that may correctly answer your question.

I am talking about your notion of an individual, this independent agent of free will, separate from the rest of the world. Prove to me please the existence of such an entity.

Second, we do usually say that people have independent thoughts, but of course that takes into account a degree of context dependence. For example; conscious thought is language used silently, so thoughts are dependent on language (which is where Descartes failed miserably). You are saying that "the 'you' you assume to be your identity is actually just a construct of thought", if you by "thought" here mean language then yes, of course. It is by language you may communicate with me at all, and it is through it we have our 'understanding' of the world, so to speak. So, that we have the popular terms "you", "I", "identity", etc., means that these are meaningful terms in some context.

Thought, language, whatever. It is the categorisation, interpretation and labelling of a subjective world for objective, communal uses. It is the creation of fragments. It serves a practical purpose but it is not truth. In direct experience there is no fragmentation, there are no individuals and there are no points of reference.

I can not prove that something like that does exist, just as little as you can prove that it does not exist.

I have already. Direct experience confirms it too.

You say 'beyond thought', but what we are talking about here is 'beyond language'. "Individual" is a meaningful term. In normal use, it is not a metaphysical entity. The term is meaningful and useful, unlike the metaphysics applied to it by certain philosophers. It is impossible to use language to define something 'outside of language', outside of the meaningful way to use the term in question, it leads only to non-sense. In other words, I am not making a metaphysical claim that the 'individual' exists or not, I am saying that it's only a word, and to apply metaphysics to it at all ("it does exist"/"it does not exist") is simply non-sense.

If you support the notion of free will and decision making then you are claiming, metaphysically, if you will, that the individual exists. I am using the word individual as another label for this delusion to show you that this is a false premise.

[A.R.Amistad]

Then define your terms^ I never said that the agent of free will is separate from the material world, I was simply referring to how we give meaning to it and the actions and behaviors we display. I don't deny that humans are connected wit the material world. Humans are, after all, nothing but matter

[The New Consciousness]

Free will automatically implies separation/fragmentation from the rest of the world. How else can you have independent volition? If you argue for free will then you are arguing for duality. That's all. I've just been trying to show you the falseness of this idea. This idea is the cause of all suffering. It is this delusion that is responsible for all the tragedies of human history.

[A.R.Amistad]

How about I define my terms then:
Wiki quote on existential freedom

The existentialist concept of freedom is often misunderstood as a sort of liberum arbitrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_arbitrium) where almost anything is possible and where values are inconsequential to choice and action. This interpretation of the concept is often related to the insistence on the absurdity of the world and the assumption that there exist no relevant or absolutely good or bad values. However, that there are no values to be found in the world in-itself does not mean that there are no values: We are usually brought up with certain values, and even though we cannot justify them ultimately, they will be "our" values.
In Kierkegaard's Judge Vilhelm's account in Either/Or (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Either/Or), making choices without allowing one's values to confer differing values to the alternatives, is, in fact, choosing not to make a choice — to flip a coin, as it were, and to leave everything to chance. This is considered to be a refusal to live in the consequence of one's freedom; an inauthentic existence. As such, existentialist freedom isn't situated in some kind of abstract space where everything is possible: since people are free, and since they already exist in the world, it is implied that their freedom is only in this world, and that it, too, is restricted by it.
What is not implied in this account of existential freedom, however, is that one's values are immutable; a consideration of one's values may cause one to reconsider and change them. A consequence of this fact is that one is not only responsible for one's actions, but also for the values one holds. This entails that a reference to common values doesn't excuse the individual's actions: Even though these are the values of the society the individual is part of, they are also his own in the sense that she/he could choose them to be different at any time. Thus, the focus on freedom in existentialism is related to the limits of the responsibility one bears as a result of one's freedom: the relationship between freedom and responsibility is one of interdependency, and a clarification of freedom also clarifies that for which one is responsible.


The New Consciousness

That's all. I've just been trying to show you the falseness of this idea. This idea is the cause of all suffering. It is this delusion that is responsible for all the tragedies of human history.

I think its the other way around, hence the atrocities of religion and social darwinism.

[Meridian]

I am talking about your notion of an individual, this independent agent of free will, separate from the rest of the world. Prove to me please the existence of such an entity.
Unfortunately you missed the point. There is no 'my notion of an individual'. There is only the term, "individual". Any philosopher attempting to 'extract' from the term meaning outside of where it is actually useful (in everyday life and communication) will fail, because he/she will then simply use the term in wrong ways.

Thus, I have no illusions of an entity called "individual", separate from the rest of the world. No one can postulate such metaphysical ideas through normal language use. However, both denying and asserting the existence of 'the individual' as such is simply non-sensical (since the 'predicament' at hand is derived at from use of non-sensical language). However, there is nothing non-sensical about saying "you're quite an interesting individual", for example.


Thought, language, whatever. It is the categorisation, interpretation and labelling of a subjective world for objective, communal uses. It is the creation of fragments. It serves a practical purpose but it is not truth. In direct experience there is no fragmentation, there are no individuals and there are no points of reference.If language is your enemy, I should point out to you that you are using it now. And, if language does not contain or allow what you call 'truth', then you can never know what truth is. All your thinking requires language, so for whatever you may actually realize there is no 'direct experience' in the metaphysical sense you use this term now. Nothing you may think of that is outside of language.

Furthermore, if it was as you say, that 'categorisation' is the grand problem of mankind and may not contain truth, then;
1) Does not that make your communicative/linguistic efforts here futile or even dangerous?
2) Why should we bother listening to you if nothing of what you say could possibly be true?


If you support the notion of free will and decision making then you are claiming, metaphysically, if you will, that the individual exists. I am using the word individual as another label for this delusion to show you that this is a false premise.I support the use of these terms as they exist in ordinary language, and the use of ordinary language by workers wherever they have the languages that includes them. I support the use of these terms whenever they are connected to a functional use. The individual exists only when used non-metaphysically, like in, for example, "the individual you talked about is waiting outside". However, whenever metaphysical statements about 'the individual', and 'free will' are uttered, the sense is lost. So, I equally disagree with such assertions, as "humans have a free will", because they, too, are non-sensical.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Of course we live our lives in a contextual relationship with our environment. We are in a dialectical relationship with everything around us. Marx said something to the effect that "Man makes his own history, but only with the history that he has". This does not negate free will.

The computer I'm on right now reacts to bit code-strings of 1s and 0s. It his no interest or conscious awareness of this process whatsoever. People are not machines.Of course people are motivated by pleasure but I would agree that meaning is far more important. Meaning of course implies context. we are out environment.

Marx's life certainly wasn't pleasant. Much of it was lived in extreme poverty. Several of his children died very young. Leon Trotsky literally became the victim of his own historical circumstances. Most of his family was murdered. He was hounded out of country after country, trapped on a "planet without a visa". Eventually he himself was brutally murdered. These were not pleasant lives. They were lives with meaning and I'd say gave much of importance to the human race. In the end, that is what's important.

One could argue that meaning provides pleasure, in a way.That could be true but the search for meaning itself puts this into an entirely different context. The behaviorists got themselves tied up in knots over this. Any psychology which sees the human mind as a reactive stimulus response machine ultimately runs into a dead end.Humans have the ability to be creative, to react in to events in novel ways.Humor, a joke, is an interesting form of creativity. Its not based on stimulus-response.And yes..I am trying to think of some pun, but nothing comes to mind.

I've studied (and undergone) "Control Therapy" a type of client centered therapy developed by William Glasser. The basic idea that people control their lives though the choices they make. I have a few problems w/it-its too individualistic, like most bourgeoise psychology, but it is on to something. People make choices.

One may say "Capitalism sucks. I'm working long hours in a dead end shit job with no prospects. I'll drink myself into oblivion, anesthetize myself with every drug I can find, and watch mindless crap on TV". That's the search for pleasure. Large numbers of people do this.

One could say "Capitalism sucks. I'm working long hours in a dead end shit job with no prospects. I'll organize. I'll try to reform the union local. I'll get involved in anti-war work, lgbt activism, immigrant rights work.I'll try to develop myself, read as much as I can to understand the world and my situation". That is looking for meaning and implies choice.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

If there is no free will, how does one explain art? Any art form;painting, poetry, music, implies creativity. Of course the brush strokes a painter uses, the words a poet chooses are influenced by culture, past associations, maybe even brain structure. There's always a context, freedom implies structure.Determinism does not explain the main thing any art ultimately is all about-a sense of play. Not pleasure but the joy of creatively redesigning meaning from within a given boundary.

[A.R.Amistad]

I'm still wondering what this great, mystical, underlying essence is that controls every action that we do :laugh:

[The New Consciousness]

Unfortunately you missed the point. There is no 'my notion of an individual'. There is only the term, "individual". Any philosopher attempting to 'extract' from the term meaning outside of where it is actually useful (in everyday life and communication) will fail, because he/she will then simply use the term in wrong ways.

You are quite right, it is just a term. It's useful for practical reasons but that's it.

However, when I say there are no individuals I am simply trying to show you that there is no such thing as an independent individual will separate from the rest of the universe. You were talking about choices. I'm saying that no-one makes the choice. I am trying to challenge this prevailing assumption of 'I', the central locus of all experience, separate from the rest of the world is the cause of all suffering and conflict.

Thus, I have no illusions of an entity called "individual", separate from the rest of the world. No one can postulate such metaphysical ideas through normal language use.

Why not? I think it is fairly evident from observation of our own struggles and others. Look at the cause of all suffering and you will find the illusion of separation. It is this feeling of being incomplete that drives all dissatisfaction and suffering. When you are a fragment, you are in conflict with the world. When you are the world there is no longer any conflict. In direct experience, there is no locality. Distances, positions, divisions - these are all assumptions. In direct experience, when one is attaining totally to one's experience and perception of the world, it is quite evident that there is only oneness, seamless and indivisible. In such moments you will find that there is no suffering, curiously. Some call this 'meditation' or 'self-inquiry'.

However, both denying and asserting the existence of 'the individual' as such is simply non-sensical (since the 'predicament' at hand is derived at from use of non-sensical language). However, there is nothing non-sensical about saying "you're quite an interesting individual", for example.

On the contrary I think it is highly instructional. I think you are dismissing this rather pedantically to be honest. I would love to hear your opinion on the matter but it seems you would rather squabble over the deficiency of language. Fair enough, but then if language is non-sensical for discussing these important issues then why on earth have you been contributing to this obvious farce of a discussion?

If language is your enemy, I should point out to you that you are using it now. And, if language does not contain or allow what you call 'truth', then you can never know what truth is. All your thinking requires language, so for whatever you may actually realize there is no 'direct experience' in the metaphysical sense you use this term now. Nothing you may think of that is outside of language.

I am not saying 'language is my enemy'. Language can point back to that which is true. But language, and thus thought, can never comprehend oneness. Only your direct experience can. Words can direct you back to it. The powerful self-inquiry 'Who am I?' makes consciousness aware of itself. This is the essence of samadhi or enlightenment. That's what I have been trying to do.

Furthermore, if it was as you say, that 'categorisation' is the grand problem of mankind and may not contain truth, then;
1) Does not that make your communicative/linguistic efforts here futile or even dangerous?
2) Why should we bother listening to you if nothing of what you say could possibly be true?

1) Of course, language is always dangerous. It can easily be twisted and misunderstood, as many 'great men's' words have been by their confused disciples (particularly in the case of Christianity, that is supposing Jesus was actually enlightened). But, if used effectively, can point one back to the source. It has worked in many cases, in my own experience when reading Eastern texts for example. But whether it's effective is all down to chance. But why not try?

2) Why not? Follow my pointers: attend to your direct experience, try and find out where 'you' supposedly are. Ask yourself sincerely 'Who am I?', if you are at all interested in finding truth. You might discover something interesting...


Words are not as you say non-sensical. All words point back to the ultimate truth. If that is seen they can point you towards freedom.

I support the use of these terms as they exist in ordinary language, and the use of ordinary language by workers wherever they have the languages that includes them. I support the use of these terms whenever they are connected to a functional use. The individual exists only when used non-metaphysically, like in, for example, "the individual you talked about is waiting outside". However, whenever metaphysical statements about 'the individual', and 'free will' are uttered, the sense is lost. So, I equally disagree with such assertions, as "humans have a free will", because they, too, are
non-sensical.

I thought you were advocating free will before...perhaps I have confused you with someone else. Your main point about language however is true. Language cannot, in itself, impart truth, but it can point you in the right direction, potentially. That's what I have been endeavouring to achieve here. So far it seems I have failed! Not that I care! :) I have enjoyed this interplay of ideas immensely.

---

meaning is far more important

The quest for meaning is a more subtle kind of locust-eating. The desire for 'something more' in one's life creates the dissatisfaction which then propels it forward. When it is seen that the desire for meaning is what is creating the dissatisfaction and not vice-versa, the desire is dropped and total peace and self-knowledge reign. This is enlightenment. As Francis of Assisi purportedly said: 'the search ends where it begins'. This is it. Direct experience. Nothing is ever beyond direct experience. There is only ever the present moment. You can spend your whole life thinking about death and the afterlife and the universe and why we are here and miss out on the simple fact that this is it.

Marx's life certainly wasn't pleasant. Much of it was lived in extreme poverty. Several of his children died very young. Leon Trotsky literally became the victim of his own historical circumstances. Most of his family was murdered. He was hounded out of country after country, trapped on a "planet without a visa". Eventually he himself was brutally murdered. These were not pleasant lives. They were lives with meaning and I'd say gave much of importance to the human race. In the end, that is what's important.

This quest for meaning is a source of man's misery. While there is this delusion of there being something missing from life and this hunger for answers, there will never be peace. The search goes outward and loses itself in a myriad forms and objects. Normally it entails the exploitation/massacre of others for a 'great' idea, as many revolutions have testified to. Yet the answer was always here and now, where the search departs. This is it. That is the 'great truth' all the philosophers hunger for. Once that is discovered - then what? Well it really doesn't matter. But at least you won't be so terribly motivated by the vicissitudes of your conditioning and your pleasure/pain urges. Whatever you do will be tempered by the simple wisdom of awareness. If you want to improve conditions you will do it, but without that frightening fervour of a zealot to one's own deity of meaning - the kind of fervour that costs lives and creates endless suffering. Marx and Trotsky may have had miserable lives but it was the price they voluntarily paid for their perceived higher reward: a meaningful existence. They could have found that just as easily by actually seeking truth within, in direct experience.

Humans have the ability to be creative, to react in to events in novel ways.Humor, a joke, is an interesting form of creativity. Its not based on stimulus-response.And yes..I am trying to think of some pun, but nothing comes to mind.

What is creativity? Unless it is discontinuous, can it be actually considered creative? Isn't it just a modification of something else? Even if it is discontinuous, like some of these so called 'spontaneous quantum events' - is that creative? Or is that just an event?

When there's some kind of motive, is it truly creative? Or is it just serving an agenda of some sort? In which case it's not creative - it's just the unfolding of a conditioning. If that means the creation of something beautiful - then fine. Beethoven in his torment wrote the 9th - a wondrous symphony. Van Gogh, struggling with suicide, painted wondrous pictures of nature. They were striving for the sublime - another quest for meaning. But just because these works of art are beautiful doesn't mean they are really creative. Beautiful things can still emerge from the mundane struggle for pleasure (even when garbed with the divine clothing of meaning).

One may say "Capitalism sucks. I'm working long hours in a dead end shit job with no prospects. I'll drink myself into oblivion, anesthetize myself with every drug I can find, and watch mindless crap on TV". That's the search for pleasure. Large numbers of people do this.

One could say "Capitalism sucks. I'm working long hours in a dead end shit job with no prospects. I'll organize. I'll try to reform the union local. I'll get involved in anti-war work, lgbt activism, immigrant rights work.I'll try to develop myself, read as much as I can to understand the world and my situation". That is looking for meaning and implies choice.

But both are essentially the same - a search for pleasure, the outcomes of different conditionings based on the same programming (hunt for pleasure or meaning which is just the same as pleasure). But what I'm trying to get at is that there is no-one making the choice. The choice is the consequence of conditioning and other situational factors.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I think I understand where TNC is coming from.

I debated w/myself whether to post this. Okay, here goes...

Some years ago I had my first acid trip. I was with a friend. My friend was very knowledgable about Eastern religions-Buddhism, Taoism, Krishnamurti, Ram Das, etc. This worldview was new to me.

I was moderately hungry. I was walking up a staircase with my friend. I was dosing, my friend was not. My friend said, "Do you feel you, the staircase, your stomach growling, and everything else, are all part of the same thing?"

"No, what the hell are you talking about?," I replied. Ten minutes later my friend repeated his question. Then it hit me.
"Yeah..I see it!" Myself, the staircase, my stomach growling, and everything else were all part of the same thing. They weren't part of the same thing, they WERE the same thing.Its a state of mind which is extremely difficult to describe. An oceanic feeling, a feeling of oneness w/everything.

I meditate, at least occasionally. I don't have enough discipline to continue on a regular basis.At times, looking at a nature object, a rock or seashell, I can intuitively feel the "suchness", the "isness", as Meister Ekhart would say, "die Istigeit". This is a radical non-dualism. Everything that is, is a Unified Field. Words and concepts cannot describe it because they imply separation.Time and all other barriers are illusions. There's just the Eternal Now. Its often an interesting, bittersweet feeling.

It's impossible to conceptualize this from without . As Meridian and others have said, it just won't make any sense. You might says its tautological.

I don't know what neurophysiology currently indicates about this state of mind. It seems to be triggered by a permanent change in the brain's serotonin level, among other things.

NPR and my local PBS (US version of the BBC) had interviews with a woman who has moderate brain damage. This has triggered the same experience for her. She claims to have a feeling of oneness, peacefulness, etc. At times I've felt I'm on the brink of "flipping over" into this state myself.

I don't know how significant or important this is. It might be vitally important for humanity, or it might be a fun and interesting way to fuck around with one's brain chemistry, I don't know.One might say its a hallucination, but then awareness itself is mediated by chemistry.

I still think TNC is confusing levels. Our mind acts as a filter. If we couldn't make discrete differentiations in the Cosmic Muffin, we couldn't survive. From an oceanic sense (if this is a correct approximation of the universe)time and all separation is an illusion, but the levels most people operate on most of the time, time and other barriers most certainly are real. The same is true of choice and creativity. On the Cosmic Muffin level it may be an illusion, but in the world of maya, where we must operate, creativity and human agency most certainly exist.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

You deny creativity but admit thee can be beauty in meaning. Beethoven's 9nth, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Bernini's Ecstacy of St Theresa, Van Gogh, any film by Tarkovsky, an episode of "The Office" (US or British version),the list is endless...these are not the products of creativity?

How do you define creativity?

[The New Consciousness]

in the world of maya, where we must operate, creativity and human agency most certainly exist.

Absolutely. When consciousness is lost in maya it believes maya to be reality. With a simple self-inquiry however, consciousness can becomes self-aware. This is peace. This is a technique that is easily learned and extremely beneficial to the practicioner.

To begin with, the self-inquiry arises as part of the world of maya, as a desire for pleasure, the highest pleasure: enlightenment. With time however the self-inquiry may itself be consumed into consciousness and no longer necessary.

The first stage however is a radical breakthrough and in my opinion essential for anyone who wants to live a truly 'meaningful' life. Whether or not oneness becomes a felt reality at all times is a possibility, but not necessary.

The feeling of oneness - as you felt it, i.e. a temporary sensation of nonlocality, is not consciousness, it is a state of being. The vital thing to understand is that consciousness is there through all states of being. Awareness never changes though its objects may vary. The mistake is to look for a special state of being. All states of beings confirm one's nature as awareness. Like I said: all words point to awareness.

You deny creativity but admit thee can be beauty in meaning. Beethoven's 9nth, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Bernini's Ecstacy of St Theresa, Van Gogh, any film by Tarkovsky, an episode of "The Office" (US or British version),the list is endless...these are not the products of creativity?

How do you define creativity?

To create, as most people understand the verb, means to bring something into existence. It implies a split. A singular entity exercising a creative will. It must therefore be discontinuous, totally new, radical in fact. But how can it be? Unless some freak random 'quantum event' (if they even exist) occurs, but even then can anyone claim responsibility for such a thing? And then of course, anything emerging out of the pleasure/pain nexus will be the result of a particular conditioning and thus will not be truly creative in this sense of the word, instead a modification or a 'reinterpretation'. In fact the meaning of the word's ancestor, the Latin 'creare', actually means to beget, the noun meaning 'offspring', which is clearly continuous and not separate from cause and effect.

To say someone is a 'creative individual' or has 'created something' is misleading. In actual fact the 'creation' emerges out of conditioning which is a self-perpetuating process. The feeling of agency one may have when 'creating' something, like a piece of art, is due to the allure of thought. There is no thinker separate from thought, only thought, seamlessly flowing and reacting to itself and its environment. In that chain of reactions there is present the sensation of self, thinker, actor, but it is in fact an illusion. Our true identity can only be found as the consciousness which witnesses this phenomenon of thought. This is evident in direct experience.

[The New Consciousness]

It's funny how all our conclusions and theories and assumptions are drawn from thought, which is but a single aspect of our subjective reality. If we were to be truly scientific in our philosophical inquiries, don't you agree that it would be far more revealing (and enlightening!) to base our investigations on our actual experience, which encompasses thought and everything else for that matter!

[blackwave]

Perhaps it's knowing that all the struggle and suffering of the world throughout history has no reason behind it. Is that not depressing?

[A.R.Amistad]

Perhaps it's knowing that all the struggle and suffering of the world throughout history has no reason behind it. Is that not depressing?

Its not that simple

[blackwave]

Its not that simple

Expand...

[Meridian]

Perhaps it's knowing that all the struggle and suffering of the world throughout history has no reason behind it. Is that not depressing?
This doesn't make any sense. What reason should that be, 'behind' it? Do you mean causes for struggles? If so, everyone who has ever taken part in any struggle will disagree with you. And the same for suffering; you are not a marxist if you deny that there are concrete reasons for suffering to exist.

Who would claim anything beyond that?

[blackwave]

No, I wasn't talking about specific instances of suffering lacking cause, but rather of the arbitreriness and goallessness of existence ultimately bestowing a similar arbitreriness and goallessness on all suffering. In practice I am not a nihilist, by the way, just a depressive.

[A.R.Amistad]

Expand...

I agree with you that Nihilism is not something that should be pursued, but what I think you are taking issue with here is the idea of the meaninglessness of existence. Nihilists claim that it is impossible to give meaning to things, and therefore reject any attempt to try to explain things (example, a nihilist would reject science as able to give an explanation to gravity not because the nihilist believes that gravity doesn't exist, but because the nihilist thinks essentially there are many ways of explaining gravity, and that none of them are correct because it can't be explained.) I hold that in and of itself, all existence and life is meaningless. I hold that meaning is important to our lives, but we need to stop searching for meaning and start creating it. I myself don't reject objective reality at all (personally, I think doing so is inauthentic) but I realize that the "search" for meaning outside of ourselves is futile. Sorry if I didnt answer you correctly or adequately, its been awhile since Ive been on this thread.