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Existence: What the fuck is going on?
#21
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 6:02 am)bennyboy Wrote: I'd say that anyone who approaches philosophy with any other attitude than the OP shows doesn't really get what it means to be a philosopher. Good stuff.

Quite possibly true, but I'll warn that these kinds of existential crisis can lead to one spending one's free time with a revolver in one's mouth. IOW, don't play this kind of hardcore game when you're very vulnerable.

(March 27, 2015 at 6:02 am)bennyboy Wrote: I like the Buddhist response to all this: acceptance. Accept the futility and absurdity of your existence. Call it the impermanent dream it is, and don't demand that it must make sense. It's ironic that thinking and logic have as their goal making sense of the chaos, but that the most logical view is still that existence is nonsensical madness, full of paradox, ambiguity and inconsistency.

Sound much like the Absurdist stance that I identify with.
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#22
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:
(March 27, 2015 at 6:02 am)bennyboy Wrote: I'd say that anyone who approaches philosophy with any other attitude than the OP shows doesn't really get what it means to be a philosopher. Good stuff.

Quite possibly true, but I'll warn that these kinds of existential crisis can lead to one spending one's free time with a revolver in one's mouth. IOW, don't play this kind of hardcore game when you're very vulnerable.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room-- is it wrong for one to spend one's free time in this manner? Is the loss of life really important, or is it an act of philosophical liberty?

The mundane me is horrified by both violence and the premature loss of a fully developed mind. The philosopher in me is much less horrified, because it finds no rational reason why I'm more important than (for example) the maggots who could feast on my body, or why having another existent human is more important than the small forest that will be cleared in order to provide me with a lifetime of paper products.
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#23
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 10:51 pm)bennyboy Wrote:
(March 27, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Quite possibly true, but I'll warn that these kinds of existential crisis can lead to one spending one's free time with a revolver in one's mouth. IOW, don't play this kind of hardcore game when you're very vulnerable.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room-- is it wrong for one to spend one's free time in this manner? Is the loss of life really important, or is it an act of philosophical liberty?

The mundane me is horrified by both violence and the premature loss of a fully developed mind. The philosopher in me is much less horrified, because it finds no rational reason why I'm more important than (for example) the maggots who could feast on my body, or why having another existent human is more important than the small forest that will be cleared in order to provide me with a lifetime of paper products.

I'm not passing judgement on it, having spent too much of my own time in the past planning my own demise.

It's merely a warning against casually staring into the abyss if one is not prepared to see what it holds for you.

To the entirery of the cosmos, yes, our individual existences may hold no more meaning than that, but one would hope that we all have other organisms in our lives who would feel great distress at our choice of shuffling off the mortal coil.
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#24
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
FWIW: William and his brother James were sons of a Swedenborgain Minister.
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#25
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
Ha I could stare at the void all day if I were allowed. It's life that troubles me more.
I can't remember where this verse is from, I think it got removed from canon:

"I don't hang around with mostly men because I'm gay. It's because men are better than women. Better trained, better equipped...better. Just better! I'm not gay."

For context, this is the previous verse:

"Hi Jesus" -robvalue
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#26
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 11:05 pm)Mezmo! Wrote: FWIW: William and his brother James were sons of a Swedenborgain Minister.
I believe I do recall reading that. Btw, his brother's name is Henry and remains a quite well known novelist, though I haven't read any of his stuff. Anyway, you can definitely see William James' sympathetic attitudes towards the mystical experience as he devoted a phenomenal lecture series to it that was shortly afterwards published in 1902 as "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

I have much respect for James' approach to theism though I don't find much appeal in it for myself.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#27
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 8:51 pm)KUSA Wrote: The answer to what we are is not as simple as pointing to the atoms that make us up. Our bodies are recyclers that take in new atoms and discard others. What used to be us 5 years ago is not us now as every atom has been replaced.

So what are we? We are a pattern of thoughts that make up our consciousness. When we die we no longer have a vessel to house our consciousness so it is extinguished.

One day technology will be able to make possible the downloading of our consciousness. People can live eternally in a virtual reality or in a manufactured body.

The problem with this is we will most likely be dead before this immortalizing technology is invented.

I think your concept of what a person is, is flawed. You are not a soul inside a body that can be drained out into another container. You are your brain's processes. Without your brain, you are nothing.

If it were possible to copy your consciousness into something, that copy would not be you; it would be a copy. Even if it were a perfect copy of you, the moment it was created, it would start diverging from what you are, as it would have different experiences than you.

Believing that its continued existence extended your existence would be the same sort of mistake as supposing that an identical twin's continued existence extended your existence. You die when you die, regardless of how much longer your twin lives.

Additionally, not that this will be important to you, if the technology existed to create a copy of you, those creating the copy could likely change bits of the copy at will. Thus, they could make your copy just like you, except make it believe that Muhammad is the true prophet of God, or that Santa Claus is real, or that everything tastes better with Coke, or that Fox News told the truth. And being able to do things like that, people would do things like that. Of course, it will not matter for you, because you will be dead anyway. But it would matter to the copy of you.

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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#28
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
http://youtu.be/4PN5JJDh78I
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#29
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: ... I'll warn that these kinds of existential crisis can lead to one spending one's free time with a revolver in one's mouth. ...


Your post makes me think of two things. First, it makes me think of the words of Seneca on this subject (for more, click on the links to see the entire letters):

  • 4. You may consider that the same thing happens to us: life has carried some men with the greatest rapidity to the harbour, the harbour they were bound to reach even if they tarried on the way, while others it has fretted and harassed. To such a life, as you are aware, one should not always cling. For mere living is not a good, but living well. Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.[3] 5. He will mark in what place, with whom, and how he is to conduct his existence, and what he is about to do. He always reflects concerning the quality, and not the quantity, of his life. As soon as there are many events in his life that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free. And this privilege is his, not only when the crisis is upon him, but as soon as Fortune seems to be playing him false; then he looks about carefully and sees whether he ought, or ought not, to end his life on that account. He holds that it makes no difference to him whether his taking-off be natural or self-inflicted, whether it comes later or earlier. He does not regard it with fear, as if it were a great loss; for no man can lose very much when but a driblet remains. 6. It is not a question of dying earlier or later, but of dying well or ill. And dying well means escape from the danger of living ill.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_lett.../Letter_70

  • 5. Tullius Marcellinus,[4] a man whom you knew very well, who in youth was a quiet soul and became old prematurely, fell ill of a disease which was by no means hopeless; but it was protracted and troublesome, and it demanded much attention; hence he began to think about dying. He called many of his friends together. Each one of them gave Marcellinus advice, – the timid friend urging him to do what he had made up his mind to do; the flattering and wheedling friend giving counsel which he supposed would be more pleasing to Marcellinus when he came to think the matter over; 6. but our Stoic friend, a rare man, and, to praise him in language which he deserves, a man of courage and vigour[5] admonished him best of all, as it seems to me. For he began as follows: "Do not torment yourself, my dear Marcellinus, as if the question which you are weighing were a matter of importance. It is not an important matter to live; all your slaves live, and so do all animals; but it is important to die honourably, sensibly, bravely. Reflect how long you have been doing the same thing: food, sleep, lust, – this is one's daily round. The desire to die may be felt, not only by the sensible man or the brave or unhappy man, but even by the man who is merely surfeited."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_lett.../Letter_77

Particularly:

"Do not torment yourself ... as if the question which you are weighing were a matter of importance. It is not an important matter to live..."

Great stuff.

For those who need it:




And:





The other thing it makes me think of is this:

Existentialism isn't a philosophy; it's just a bad attitude.

I wish I could remember who first said that.

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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#30
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 28, 2015 at 3:31 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: The other thing it makes me think of is this:

Existentialism isn't a philosophy; it's just a bad attitude.

I wish I could remember who first said that.
I can't agree with whoever it was. Philosophy, unless we are concerned with the domain of ethics and politics, pertains to wisdom and wisdom to truth. Does the truth care if it produces in its admirers "good" or "bad" attitudes? And per existentialism, might one's disposition to the world, or that question, depend solely on their physiological constitution (including their own mental state)? To me existentialism is the inevitable consequence of subjects who exist in a world where objects that exist "out there" can only appear as they do "in here" (one's individual perception and conception of them).
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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