james, I'm not sure I really care either way but the option was there to modify your first post before another post shows up rather than post four in a row.
To wring some sense out of this for myself:
I don't like the concept of belief very much. What exactly is it? Something you just decide is true, because... you want to? Or you want it to be?
I am yet to be convinced that anyone espousing any beliefs is doing so from some sort of objective neutral and rational point of decision making, totally uninfluenced by their neuro-physiology. As if we were autonomous subjects rather than creatures with brains infested by memes circulating the socius, getting off on the sensation of will and presence, or the opposite.
I think you were responding generally to the thread (and to be honest, this thread was a reasoned version of what it might had been had we included population samples outside Bakker readership) but I will respond for myself.
I could narrate to you all the ways I've discovered, so far, that others come before me. But when all that is described I would probably suggest that I do
decide a few items to be my beliefs (as opposed to the stuff, which clearly moved and shaped me before I had recognition of the forces at work) and that all my beliefs do for me, personally, is
sometimes motivate me to embody practices, behaviors, that will shape me into the person I am aiming to be in my life.
And then messy life comes back, knocks my intentions out, and then I deal as best I can.
What's more, I'd probably go on to say that at this time, the evidence I've been exposed to suggests that all I'm doing is cultivating novel patterns (schema) of neuroarchitecture in order to change
habitual behaviors. Carving the meat, as it were.
Let's get back to some of the earlier ideas posted here about the empathetic civilization.
Doesn't this kind of assume that empathy would be in favour of life itself. What about an empathy that saw death as the only reprieve? Is it not possible to have a kind of empathy that sees destruction as the only possible mercy? I think maybe this is more realistic than the idea that we are all going to have some moment of reconnection with each other where our self interest aligns with everyone else's.
Any of the people I've met IRL that espouse empathy have a suspicious tendency to do so almost exclusively for events and stories presented to them in the media.
We all have bad examples and are bad examples, sometimes. The best metaphor (metaphor) I can use is karma, the idea that if you do good, good comes back to you. Personally, I think this is actually an acute observation of sociocultural mechanism. I can frown or smile at people as I walk or skate the streets, I can hold doors, I can hold my tongue, etc, etc,
ad nauseam. Or I can be loud and abravise, wear the scary, don't fuck with face, rudely and ruthlessly accomplish everything I want, in every petty moment. From my link in the chain, even these simple behaviors radiate from each of us - in my case, the way I behave further shapes how people view students, young-adults, the poor, as I am visibly each of these things. Not mention how others use there interactions with me as an individual to justify other actions.
I don't actually think I had to explain any of that here. To your point, I can imagine assisted suicide being empathy. I personally would love to get to a place where individuals aren't put in the position (because they are healthy) where they want death to be the only option.
It's not about us or what we do. It's about what is.
...
I am disgusted by this endless search for some sort of inner revelation in which we pull a solution to our pointless lives out of our asses and realize the answer was the good intentions of our limited anthropomorphic perspective after all and it's all gonna be cool now cos we WANT it to be and that HAS to mean SOMETHING!
Is anyone prepared to wonder if that type of thinking, which is post christianity through and through, isn't functioning as a kind of denial mechanism that tries and FAILS to abate a massive depression and exhaustion with the futility and sad symbolic rules of the game we're all currently playing with each other?
I think that this thinking is a product of accepting human sociocultural organization as it stands. Change has to be attempted first before we can use defeat as a reason to quit (and even then I'd counsel otherwise).
I'm not advocating any divine or alien revelations. I'm suggesting that we choose to act differently.
What you are is what is. You're never going to transcend the limits of your flawed human perspective. You're never going to have a godlike 100% objective understanding of existence. Every thought in your head, ever, is a result of processes outside your control. Live with it.
I think we can become relatively less flawed? Certainly, to me it seems, that we can become more capable and skillful in using our brain/body unit.
I know by saying so I am mentally ill/criminal and deserve locked up with SSRI's and tortured with condescension and self help hectoring until I commit suicide and it really makes you like appreciate the beautiful things in life you know? But still, sorry, just for once I'm not going to play ball.
james, this is the place to not play ball. It's welcomed, I think.
And you live in a country that quells dissent with the time-honoured tradition of Insane Asylums. It is unfortunate.
I do doubt that any of us thought that is what should be done with your opinions. I, for one, enjoy your perspective immensely. I simply wish you might tailor it towards action, expression.
For instance, I know a number of people who advocate against Social Services here in Canada for leaving children with dark creatures - people who had themselves been wronged and worked to change the structure of the system. It's not ideal but it is an option and an exercise of our limited agency.