Two things:
First, you dont know your experience is the same as others, because you are not them. By this i mean, you use different reasonings, or context, to define, describe, or understand the world around you than they do, so by the understabding of "you", you do not.
Second, you do. Consciousness is an entity in and of itself. It stands separate from context, yet forms the base for all context. We dont experience consciousness, consciousness experiences us.
Why are we here is the same thing as asking why does one pee or poop. Conscioussness is and breeds thought. We drink, or eat, and therefor urinate, and defecate. Rather we are the discharge of consciousness itself.
The purpose is solely a point, or vertex, of consciousness's will and the "reverb" where we think; our own will. The absolute.in.said purpose is to learn how to be consciousness itself without the concept of "i". In other words, we make a purpose, because our sole purpose is to be. Though this purpose is to be unconditional, everyone places a condition for it, and therefor make their own pain.
The meaning of life is propogation of consciousness itself. That's it. Lol
If something cannot be found by search, does it really exist?
I lost my wallet yesterday. Fortunately I found it when I searched for it! Albeit no, I never would have found it if it didn't exist in the first place!
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Death (and living) is all in our heads. It is a creation of our own imagination. So, maybe we just "imagine" that we die?
This makes half sense to me, but I am not sure I really grasp the overarching point.
I have sometimes noticed people getting jammed up by things that didn't follow a single linear narrative, but it seems to me that forming narrative is the core of intelligence. There isn't a field of study anywhere that doesn't depend on some constructed narrative. This article is narrative.
I even kind of get the self-image narrative. I've always been kind of bad at that sort of thing, like when you're supposed to say something about yourself or describe some trajectory or whatever, I can never do it. I remember being a really little kid in school and a teacher was trying to get me to tell the class something about myself, and I was really trying, but every time I thought of something, she'd tell me it was wrong, and she was getting madder and madder at me, thinking I was trying to act up for attention when really all I wanted was the opposite of that. And I'm only a little better at guessing what people are looking for with those kinds of things now, but I'm mostly bullshitting when I do it.
So I do have this notion that I am not really connected much to a personal narrative.
That is a narrative, though. It consists of a series of disconnected events that share a common theme that lead to a conclusion that ironically happens to be directly at odds with the premises.
Are there people who don't have that at all, or is he just talking about a single, cohesive one, rather than narrowly construed, limited purpose narratives?
And is that single, cohesive narrative a normal thing that adults do, perceive everything as part of a single trajectory story?
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
This makes half sense to me, but I am not sure I really grasp the overarching point.
I have sometimes noticed people getting jammed up by things that didn't follow a single linear narrative, but it seems to me that forming narrative is the core of intelligence. There isn't a field of study anywhere that doesn't depend on some constructed narrative. This article is narrative.
I even kind of get the self-image narrative. I've always been kind of bad at that sort of thing, like when you're supposed to say something about yourself or describe some trajectory or whatever, I can never do it. I remember being a really little kid in school and a teacher was trying to get me to tell the class something about myself, and I was really trying, but every time I thought of something, she'd tell me it was wrong, and she was getting madder and madder at me, thinking I was trying to act up for attention when really all I wanted was the opposite of that. And I'm only a little better at guessing what people are looking for with those kinds of things now, but I'm mostly bullshitting when I do it.
So I do have this notion that I am not really connected much to a personal narrative.
That is a narrative, though. It consists of a series of disconnected events that share a common theme that lead to a conclusion that ironically happens to be directly at odds with the premises.
Are there people who don't have that at all, or is he just talking about a single, cohesive one, rather than narrowly construed, limited purpose narratives?
And is that single, cohesive narrative a normal thing that adults do, perceive everything as part of a single trajectory story?
OK. Go!
I would have to say YES but also to qualify it. To the normal person Life is goal directed and there is a continuity. So Life is a story with a beginning, middle. and end.
To me, I find the best stories are the ones which are circular, ending where they began. This may be a rebirth at the end, like the seasons of Nature. I am speculating but this might be the reason Christianity is popular, there is a resurrection and rebirth upon death. Anais Nin is known fir writing circular stories
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The energy of the mind is the essence of life. Aristotle
Last edited by bobsavegan; 09-04-2015 at 02:22 AM.
I'm intrigued by one of the things she says early in the article. She cites a social psychologist named Dan Wegner, who seems to tie it into locus of control. Now, I know about about locus of control because it fascinates me, I did my honors thesis on it and wanted to study it if I had gotten a psych PhD. So naturally I perked up at the mention of it.
I think that point was that people with internal locus of control, those who think they control what happens in their life, are more inclined to create a narrative with themselves as the protagonist. Those with an external locus of control would tend not to do that, seeing as they see their lives as more subject to external forces. But then she doesn't develop that idea and goes off instead on studies of memory.
Someone I met at a party once told me a therapist told him that we write scenes in our lives and then get angry at people for not playing the scenes the way we have constructed them. Not playing the parts we write for them, which I think is some song lyric somewhere. That effected me quite a bit, as I realized how unfair it is. I have made an attempt to resist that impulse.
I would say that if you had asked me years ago I might have been completely narrative, or thought I was, but now I am not. I absolutely used to slot people into my personal story. I don't know when I stopped, but it was probably within the last few years. I have mellowed and, if it's not too immodest to say so, actually become wise, which still shocks me. I no longer think the world, even my world, is all about me or all about my story and I'm at peace with that.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Philosophical miscellanea
ending up being miscellany threads.
Linear Mode
