Miscellaneous Chatter > General Misc.
The Darkness That Comes Before, IRL--anyone else disquieted?
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Meyna ---Mini-rant before bed! I'm not one to comprehend higher-level academic philosophy, or most of the "wank" on Three Pound Brain, but the apparent degree of relevance of the Dunyainic philosophy to the real-world is a bit disconcerting to me.
--- Quote ---'The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?'
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Between all of the Dunyain stuff, Blind Brain Theory, etc., I've gone from believing in free will and the possibility of having unmanipulated thoughts to seeing how easily people are swayed and how difficult it is to think about the reasons why I think the way I do. It's like Inrilatas says:
--- Quote ---'You cannot see the darkness that precedes your thoughts, but unlike most souls you know it exists. You appreciate how rarely you are the author of what you say and do…' He raised his shackled hands for a clap that never came. 'I'm impressed, Mother. You understand this trick the world calls a soul.'
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Without sounding like a pompous person who feels enlightened compared to others, how does one go about life with this "knowledge"? Is it even worth knowing? Should I just pretend the Darkness doesn't exist and continue to "find meaning" like everyone else?
Does anyone else here think about this? Jeez, it's like I'm back in high school and having my first existential crisis :lol:
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: bbaztek ---It's certainly valuable knowledge, and the way Bakker frames it in his theory of consciousness framework is really interesting, but if you fixate on it (like with anything) you'll miss for the forest for the trees. Free will is nebulous. Determinism makes sense and doesn't. The nuts and bolts of consciousness are perhaps the most difficult thing to understand in the universe, because our only instrument to study it is what we are studying. So realize that people are sometimes full of shit, and sometimes not, and just live your life. Absolutes are anathema to an open mind <--- even this statement is an absolute. So what do you do? Chilllll bro
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Callan S. ---Like some sort of spooky wind chime, I would say thoughts such as these are the background music of this forum!
In terms of going about life I think A: the corporate/capitalist investment in manipulation techniques and B: the apparently happy go lucky way people dream about modifying their brains are huge speed bumps (and that's just within the frame of this question - outside that you have wage slaves, starvation, sex slaves, etc, but that's another (valid) topic)
Also it depends on how invested you were in the often passed on notions of free will. Kinda like a topiary, if you grews around that frame, it's hard to remove it without collapsing, sprawled across ground last met as a child (but without the prodigous brain growing powers (or charity of parents) of a young child to face it with).
Ultimately, we live in the first world and despite our common wage slave status, we live fat with peace. Were not used to drawing a line in the sand and holding that ground. So we look at meaning for the sake of meaning, meaning for it's own sake, instead of meaning for the sake of holding literal ground for survival.
I think a tracing of meaning down to literal grounds of survival, is a step. Find what backs meaning, like finding the gold that backs the meaning of money. Not that gold is used to back money anymore (the idea got too popular and it the meaning of money began to be able to sit upon it's own meaning. Err, okay, I digress again!)
Take a tomato from the fridge, take a seed from it, let it dry. Then take some soil in a discarded platic cup and plant it.
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Ajokli ---Welcome to the forum, Meyna
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Duskweaver ---The most disturbing point Bakker makes, IMO, is that there seems logically to be no middle ground between either:
1) having faith in the existence of something beyond what science tells us exists; or
2) admitting the nihilists are right, which means that even the phrase "the nihilists are right" becomes completely meaningless.
The inescapable pull of logic seems to lead either to something that sounds suspiciously like 'God', or to logic's own self-annihilation.
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