taking things seriously...

[doodle]

What are we made of then?

Who cares what we're made of.  We are not them and they are not us.  Can you personally direct your subatomic molecules?

Who am "I".  If I wanted to find out who "I" am in a physical sense wouldnt I just start cutting myself into little bits? As I continue to chop away I would eventually realize that there is nothing that I can find that is "I".... Isn't that so? I would just get to the level of subatomic particles.

From a purely scientific standpoint the atoms that comprise my body are not "I" either because they all came from my environment, from the food that I ate. So if the Atoms are not "I" then we suddenly have to jump into a spiritual plane...right?

[Pointedstick]

Who am "I".  If I wanted to find out who "I" am in a physical sense wouldnt I just start cutting myself into little bits? As I continue to chop away I would eventually realize that there is nothing that I can find that is "I".... Isn't that so? I would just get to the level of subatomic particles.

From a purely scientific standpoint the atoms that comprise my body are not "I" either because they all came from my environment, from the food that I ate. So if the Atoms are not "I" then we suddenly have to jump into a spiritual plane...right?

*Ahem*

High intelligence allows you to solve many problems very quickly and easily, but also introduces new ones. You can tie yourself up in knots over philosophy while other people are contentedly pursuing their (perhaps illusory) goals.

[doodle]

Who am "I".  If I wanted to find out who "I" am in a physical sense wouldnt I just start cutting myself into little bits? As I continue to chop away I would eventually realize that there is nothing that I can find that is "I".... Isn't that so? I would just get to the level of subatomic particles.

From a purely scientific standpoint the atoms that comprise my body are not "I" either because they all came from my environment, from the food that I ate. So if the Atoms are not "I" then we suddenly have to jump into a spiritual plane...right?

*Ahem*

High intelligence allows you to solve many problems very quickly and easily, but also introduces new ones. You can tie yourself up in knots over philosophy while other people are contentedly pursuing their (perhaps illusory) goals.

I would side with Socrates on this one in that I somewhat feel that the un examined life is not worth living. To ask man to stop questioning in my opinion is to cage and confine his very nature. It is because of philosophy and questioning that we don't still believe that thunder and lightening are brought forth by the hand of Zeus.

In fact, your admonition not to wrap yourself up with philosophical questions is a philosophical argument in and of itself. So try as you might you can't escape it :-)

[Libertarian666]

Austrian physicists (not economists ) say the notion of "physical reality" is an illusion:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... to-reality

[Pointedstick]

I would side with Socrates on this one in that I somewhat feel that the un examined life is not worth living. To ask man to stop questioning in my opinion is to cage and confine his very nature. It is because of philosophy and questioning that we don't still believe that thunder and lightening are brought forth by the hand of Zeus.

In fact, your admonition not to wrap yourself up with philosophical questions is a philosophical argument in and of itself. So try as you might you can't escape it :-)

If I didn't have some interest in philosophy, I wouldn't be participating in this discussion, but once you start arguing that you don't exist, that's where it starts seeming less like a philosophy discussion and more like a way to weasel out admitting you're wrong, or that you don't have the answer to the question posed to you, or that you do know but it wouldn't support your previous arguments.

[doodle]

To each his own though on this topic. To some, questioning authority and accepted practice and belief brings nothing but trouble and misery. I can understand this. What is that Quaker song....tis a joy to be simple, tis a joy to be plain......something like that.

To others, convention can be chafing and they derive joy from digging and questioning. They desire to explore different views on life and to question their beliefs. This can be destabilizing but also exciting to see things from different perspectives.

Which is right and wrong? Well, different stroke for different folks....it's an entirely subjective question. However, I would point out that an enlightened person would not see a duality between right and wrong and would argue that they are but just two sides of the same coin. :-)

[doodle]

Austrian physicists (not economists ) say the notion of "physical reality" is an illusion:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... to-reality

Yes, physics is kind of up against a wall right now.

I would side with Socrates on this one in that I somewhat feel that the un examined life is not worth living. To ask man to stop questioning in my opinion is to cage and confine his very nature. It is because of philosophy and questioning that we don't still believe that thunder and lightening are brought forth by the hand of Zeus.

In fact, your admonition not to wrap yourself up with philosophical questions is a philosophical argument in and of itself. So try as you might you can't escape it :-)

If I didn't have some interest in philosophy, I wouldn't be participating in this discussion, but once you start arguing that you don't exist, that's where it starts seeming less like a philosophy discussion and more like a way to weasel out of trying to admit you're wrong, or that you don't have the answer to the question posed to you, or that you do know but it wouldn't support your previous arguments.

I was responding to MGs assertion that we are carnal physical creatures. I don't think that assertion is self evident. What are we is a pretty interesting question. Some like Buckminster Fuller would say that we are actually a verb or a process and not a noun or subject. We are a repeating pattern like a wave in the ocean. What is a wave or a whirlpool if not just a pattern in the water? If we are just patterns, then are "we" really independent physical creatures?

This notion of existence is more tricky I think than you are giving credit to. Descartes in fact spent most of his philosophical career trying to prove whether we actually exist or not.

[Benko]

"Isn't that what I was arguing?  An "enlightened" being is not awake anymore so than the sleep-walkers." 

By defiition, enlightened beings are awake.  The problem is that there are many many fakes for the relatively few real ones (see Half Way up the Mountain ). 

"How does sitting around waxing poetic and mentally masturbating about the connectedness of the universe have anything to do with being "wide awake"? 

Talking about such matters has nothing  to do with being awake.  There are many enlightened beings who are not teachers (and like the guy in the Razors Edge will not say much about such matters).  You might not notice anything special about these people.  Nor would they claim they are anything special.  The Razors Edge has as it's main character one such person (well he is "only" a seeker for most of the book, and only awake at the end, but he is still far more awake than you or I for most of the book). 

Spritual Teachers are another class entirely.  Again, there are many who proclaim to be teachers who are not real, or who stopped short (or way short) of the point the character in Razor's Edge eventually reaches.  These are the one's on ego trips or power trips or sex trips, etc (again see halfway up the mountain).  Then there are the real spiritual teachers.  These are people who try to help other people wake up.  In doing this they have to point out e.g. that people are not the body mind they take them selves to be.  So while there are false "gurus" spounting what sounds like spiritual gobledegook, there are also real enlightened teachers saying things that don't make sense to you, because they are saying things that are true and speaking to spritiual seekers.  Remember Wrinkle in Time (Flatland) most of us are like the 2D beings i.e. flatlanders trying to understand 3D.

I have been "reading" i.e. opening at ramdom and reading passages from a book called I am That for a coupla decades.  I "understand"* many things that I had no clue over for many years as I've started to take baby steps in the right direction.

*Understand is a tricky word and the mind can't understand anything really important.  Clever people like you, or most on the board, or me still too often are very attached to thoughts and their mind.  Your mind can help you with investment strategy,  but if you want to enjoy a sunset, a meal, or a woman, or life in general, thoughts and our mind are in the way.  We are asleep because there is a sunset, or food or woman right in front of us and we cannot see what is literally righyt in front of us because we are enslaved and preoccupied  by our thoughts/mind.

[MediumTex]

This actually is a deep philosophical question you bring up....namely can you truly be happy living in an illusion? Is living in an illusion any different from being hooked up to one of those Matrix like machines? Do deception and illusion provide a firm foundation for a happy life?

No offense, but your argument above sounds similar to that of the Athenians who put Socrates to death for corrupting the youth and disturbing the order through his constant questioning of established beliefs.

Perhaps I should have personalized what I said a bit more.  FOR ME, I have found it useful to put the brakes on shattering illusions mostly because I am very good at it and have gotten carried away with it at times.  In the past, I did it because I thought people needed to have their illusions shattered so that we could all move forward toward the light of "truth" without excessive filtering through the lens of obsolete illusions.

After living for a while longer, though, I have seen that in many cases illusions only appear to be crutches when they are, in fact, structural support beams and removing them often does far more damage than you would think.

I guess maybe I am saying that I have taken more of an anthropologist's perspective to the way I move through the world.  I am now more interested in understanding why people are the way they are and how their belief systems create coherent worldviews than I am in breaking windows of irrationality that I think need to be broken.  I figure if a window really needs to be broken someone else will break it soon enough anyway.

[MachineGhost]

It doesn't matter if physical reality is an illusion.  We exist in it.  We must play the game, otherwise why in the living hell were you born into the illusion in the first place?  Doh!  "Gurus" are those who check out of the game so I have nothing but contempt for them.  I'm not saying the game is the rat race obsession for material posssesions; that's merely a Western philosophy hardly shared by the majority of the planet (like le lazy French -- sorry couldn't resist).  But being a lazy bum sitting in the lotus position or sitting in a circle singing KUMBAYA is missing the point as well.

I'm with Socrates on this one.  The unexamined life is not worth living but I thought that was from Aristotle.

[MachineGhost]

I guess maybe I am saying that I have taken more of an anthropologist's perspective to the way I move through the world.  I am now more interested in understanding why people are the way they are and how their belief systems create coherent worldviews than I am in breaking windows of irrationality that I think need to be broken.  I figure if a window really needs to be broken someone else will break it soon enough anyway.

That's called selling out.   Everyone seems to do it sooner or later.  I'm still fighting the good fight!

In the meantime, I declare I am an enlightened being and none of you may dare challenge me! 

[MachineGhost]

*Understand is a tricky word and the mind can't understand anything really important.  Clever people like you, or most on the board, or me still too often are very attached to thoughts and their mind.  Your mind can help you with investment strategy,  but if you want to enjoy a sunset, a meal, or a woman, or life in general, thoughts and our mind are in the way.  We are asleep because there is a sunset, or food or woman right in front of us and we cannot see what is literally righyt in front of us because we are enslaved and preoccupied  by our thoughts/mind.

How do you reconcile that with the infinite amount of stupidity in sleepwalking human beings?  If they are sleepwalking, they must be devolved down to the instinctual lizard brain not the rational brain where thoughts and the mind takes dominance.  What proof do you have against my assertation?

[doodle]

It doesn't matter if physical reality is an illusion.  We exist in it.  We must play the game, otherwise why in the living hell were you born into the illusion in the first place?  Doh!  "Gurus" are those who check out of the game so I have nothing but contempt for them.  I'm not saying the game is the rat race obsession for material posssesions; that's merely a Western philosophy hardly shared by the majority of the planet (like le lazy French -- sorry couldn't resist).  But being a lazy bum sitting in the lotus position or sitting in a circle singing KUMBAYA is missing the point as well.

I'm with Socrates on this one.  The unexamined life is not worth living but I thought that was from Aristotle.

Socrates never wrote anything down. Everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato. Aristotle was in turn a student of Plato. I believe the phrase is attributed to Socrates, but it could have been uttered by any of the three as Im sure they all felt the same.

It doesn't matter if physical reality is an illusion.  We exist in it.  We must play the game, otherwise why in the living hell were you born into the illusion in the first place?  Doh!  "Gurus" are those who check out of the game so I have nothing but contempt for them.

If you ask me to play a game, and I refuse...is that a reason to have contempt for me? Maybe Im just not interested in your game and I want to play my own. I thought the word "must" was one that a libertarian anarchist shunned. Why "must" I do anything?

I also wouldnt say that enlightened beings just sit around in a lotus posture doing nothing. First off, I think they would argue that you arent doing anything either. You might think you are accomplishing great important things, but all your running and striving is just like a hamster on a wheel. You arent going anywhere. Second, I think that the enlightened person would say that they are doing something, they are "being" which is something that most of us have forgotten how to do because we are so absorbed in our mindstreams and thoughts. We have conceptualized the world into words and thoughts when reality cannot be explained or described by these. There is a reason that quantum physicists have started to look towards eastern spiritual traditions for ideas on how to move forward from the present impasse. There is a lot of wisdom there.

[doodle]

MG,

A good introduction to a lot of these spiritual themes might be to check out some of the American transcendental writers and thinkers...Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, or even Walt Whitman (who I am about to start reading)  I think you would really identify and agree with a lot of what this movement represents. It blends Eastern philosophical ideas and makes them palatable to a western audience. They speak highly of self reliance and individualism. They encourage men to think for themselves outside of the rules set by society.

[MediumTex]

I guess maybe I am saying that I have taken more of an anthropologist's perspective to the way I move through the world.  I am now more interested in understanding why people are the way they are and how their belief systems create coherent worldviews than I am in breaking windows of irrationality that I think need to be broken.  I figure if a window really needs to be broken someone else will break it soon enough anyway.

That's called selling out.   Everyone seems to do it sooner or later.  I'm still fighting the good fight!

That reminds me of the excellent Tool song Hooker With a Penis:

I met a boy, wearing Vans, 501s, and a
Dope, Beastie T, nipple rings,
New tattoos that claimed that he
Was OGT,
Back from '92,
On the first EP.

And in between
Sips of Coke
He told me
That he thought we
Were sellin' out,
Layin' down,
Suckin' up
To the man.

Well now I've got some
Advice for you, little buddy.
Before you point your finger
You should know that
I'm the man.

And if I'm the man,
Then you're the man, and
He's the man as well so you can
Point that fuckin' finger up your ass.

All you know about me is what I've sold you,
Dumb fuck.
I sold out long before you ever even heard my name.

I sold my soul to make a record,
Dip shit,
And then you bought one.

Well now I've got some
Advice for you, little buddy.
Before you point your finger
You should know that
I'm the man.

If I'm the fuckin' man
Then you're the fuckin' man as well
So you can
Point that fuckin' finger up your ass.

All you know about me is what I've sold you,
Dumb fuck.
I sold out long before you ever heard my name.

I sold my soul to make a record,
Dip shit,
And then you bought one.

All you read and
Wear or see and
Hear on TV
Is a product
Begging for your
Fatass dirty
Dollar.

Shut up and buy, buy, buy
Buy my new record
Send more money
Fuck you, buddy
Fuck you, buddy
Fuck you, buddy
Fuck you, buddy.

Below is a good performance of the song from last year's tour.  They opened the show with this song.

http://youtu.be/i_gk9chATRo

[Greg]

I liked the comments in this article more than anything else and was speaking about how we valued life and other things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/healt ... .html?_r=0

[Benko]

once you start arguing that you don't exist,

Let me clarify;  it is certainly not that we don't exist.  The question is what are we?  Are you your body?  Are you your mind?  We are something far greater and it gets very difficult to talk about (because reality cannot be expressed in words). We are not the bodymind that we take ourselves to be, but that is not the same as saying that we don't exist.  At one level, the rent has to be paid, but at another level, perhaps the analogy of a raindrop in a river might be somewhere in the ballpark as to what our true nature really is.  But that description is not going to help anyone make their life better.

At the risk of being redundant:  if you want to enjoy e.g. a sunset, a great piece of cake, or the company of a woman, thoughts of what you should have done at work, worries and fears about whatever, etc are not helpful to you, and get in the way.  The mind can be a very helpful servant when you need it, but for most it is the master and we are slaves.  The way out is to see thoughts for what they are and learn to ignore them when irrelevant (doable over time WITH CERTAIN PRACTICES AND THE DESIRE TO DO SO)

Philosophy is mental masturbation i.e. you are only feeding the thought machine which will not make your life better.  Doing things that fast the mind e.g. spending time in nature, music without words, etc. (along with meditation, etc) can help you get some space from your thoughts and then you can (over time) begin to enjoy the sunset without (or with less) intrustion from thoughts.  Being present to life, enjoying life more  and really being present to what is happening to you are some of the benefits that people start to experience.

[doodle]

I liked the comments in this article more than anything else and was speaking about how we valued life and other things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/healt ... .html?_r=0

Seems like most of the suicides that the comments talk about are linked to unemployment and an overall feeling of worthlessness. This rhymes somewhat with the idea of worker alienation that Marx talks about and that many consider to be one of his most relevant ideas today:

Alienation (Entfremdung) is the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his and her humanity. The theoretic basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define his relationship with other people; and to own the things and use the value of the goods and services, produced with his labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximal amount of surplus value, in the course of business competition among industrialists.

[doodle]

once you start arguing that you don't exist,

Let me clarify;  it is certainly not that we don't exist.  The question is what are we?  Are you your body?  Are you your mind?  We are something far greater and it gets very difficult to talk about (because reality cannot be expressed in words). We are not the bodymind that we take ourselves to be, but that is not the same as saying that we don't exist.  At one level, the rent has to be paid, but at another level, perhaps the analogy of a raindrop in a river might be somewhere in the ballpark as to what our true nature really is.  But that description is not going to help anyone make their life better.

At the risk of being redundant:  if you want to enjoy e.g. a sunset, a great piece of cake, or the company of a woman, thoughts of what you should have done at work, worries and fears about whatever, etc are not helpful to you, and get in the way.  The mind can be a very helpful servant when you need it, but for most it is the master and we are slaves.  The way out is to see thoughts for what they are and learn to ignore them when irrelevant (doable over time WITH CERTAIN PRACTICES AND THE DESIRE TO DO SO)

Philosophy is mental masturbation i.e. you are only feeding the thought machine which will not make your life better.  Doing things that fast the mind e.g. spending time in nature, music without words, etc. (along with meditation, etc) can help you get some space from your thoughts and then you can (over time) begin to enjoy the sunset without (or with less) intrustion from thoughts.  Being present to life, enjoying life more  and really being present to what is happening to you are some of the benefits that people start to experience.

Reminds me of Lao Tzu's absurdist statement: "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" :-)