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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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‘A Very Fine Wine’
There was a time,
In life I tried,
Every nectar sweet and crystal dipped wine,
And herbs afire did drift their scents,
I found them most delightful,
And thought they opened up my mind,
Then life and death came down to me,
To brush at me and nuzzle softly,
In shuddering throes so sweet and cold,
The knife edge rattled me as I grew old,
Strange death to me was worrisome,
Tried as I did not lose my grip,
I said farewell then just in case,
"Goodbye dear world you dear sweet gal,"
I knew I'd miss her most of all,
The surgeon's knife was beckoning,
Kissed all farewell,
To wake the punch-drunk sailing man,
But barroom days were over then,
Escaping now the moldering grave,
And swearing off was nothing then,
The air so sweet,
The night so cold,
I gazed at worlds afar and knew my place,
In Galileo's looking glass and just in case,
I wrapped my cloak and warmed myself,
This world my chalice and my vase,
The universe was still a place,
As comforting as love's embrace,
But coldly she's mysterious,
For angered hearts won't solace find,
In so immense and vast a place.
-bushman
07/02/2015
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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In this thread and others here on ST (and in most of our day to day living as PSP reminds us) we attempt to establish and defend our character, the personalities we want to be. This approach to our lives may be in error.
Being here and now is impossible if one is concerned and focused on personality and character. Both of those things may be complete fictions and constructions. Instead, many masters have argued, relax into your roles that you have found yourself in: husband, wife, brother, teacher, engineer, climber. If you look closely you didn't really choose these roles. You found yourself in them. Myriad of forces, events, & a conspiracy of others brought you to your time, family, position, culture, and place.
Fulfilling and expressing yourself in your roles shifts orientation. Gone are disturbing issues of guilt, embarrassment, goals, intentions, plans, doubts, worry, and so forth. Doing tends to recede, and being comes to the fore. One can relax in the Tao.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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. . . If you look closely you didn't really choose these roles. You found yourself in them. Myriad of forces, events, & a conspiracy of others brought you to your time, family, position, culture, and place (ML)
Does free will exist? Even if it does, what you say has some truth to it. However, it appears you go beyond this point and plead an incapacity to make any decisions about the "roles" you find yourself playing. I can think of several instances in which the choices I made changed my life dramatically, and although those choices were not entirely my own, they were substantially my own.
Doing tends to recede, and being comes to the fore. One can relax in the Tao (ML)
Having grown up in the Deep South, I have fleeting mental images of myself, at my advanced age, sitting on the porch of a southern mansion, rocking gently and sipping a mint julip, watching the little children run giggling after early evening fireflies . . .
Your take is a bit too oriental for me.
;>)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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we attempt to establish and defend our character
We could once again blame the long evolutionary history of selection for traits which promote survival and reproduction.
Being here and now is impossible if one is concerned and focused on personality and character. Both of those things may be complete fictions and constructions.
But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilization, and out of a half-visualized succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.
Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.
Swann's Way
Marcel Proust
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jgill: . . . I can think of several instances in which the choices I made changed my life dramatically, . . . .
Would you believe or think that you could have made another decision, and if you do believe that, how do you believe it?
It’s not like one could run two different timelines and shift a “juncture” one way or another. Is there such a thing as a timeline? If there is no such thing as a timeline, then what is THIS? THIS must be a spontaneous unity that is absent of any substantiality. (What the hell is that?)
I am a strict observationist. All I know is what I experience. Imagining that anything could be different than what it is would arguably imply another reality altogether (ala, Bell’s Theorem). What is, is what is. (This is more than a tautology; it’s an obvious recognition with infinitely far reaching implications.)
Allowing everyone in the universe to make his or her own decision implies a universe without precision. Is that something you can conceptualize? If it is, then you’ve blown the lid off of reason. What are you describing, in toto?
I find it’s helpful to take the universe as given and not lament or imagine that it could be any different.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Is there such a thing as a timeline? If there is no such thing as a timeline, then what is THIS? THIS must be a spontaneous unity that is absent of any substantiality. (What the hell is that?) (ML)
An unwarranted assumption that there is no such thing as a timeline.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jgill,
It’s not an assumption. It’s a question and a request for reasoning.
If you know what constitutes a timeline (other than memories, which appear to occur in the now only), then please tell me what it is. Observationally, I’m saying I don’t see timelines, and that would seem to allow me to entertain the idea that timelines are ephemeral. If you think they are substantial, like gravity let’s say, then show one.
We appear to be very imaginative here in this and other threads on ST. We talk all the time about things we can’t apparently validate or verify. We guise that as “scientific theorizing,” and that’s fine with me as far as talking goes, which is what I’m doing here. I’m imagining, and I’m asking for nothing dissimilar to what many have required of Largo (let’s say) about emptiness. “Show me the money” are what people have been saying time and time again.
So, could you show me a timeline? Could you show me two side-by-side, one where a decision point went one way, and the other the very same events prior to, but where the decision point went the other way? If, let’s say, you could not, then what is the basis for believing anyone has free will? What justifies the belief in it?
Could it also be “an unwarranted assumption?”
How would one justify one “unwarranted assumption” over another “unwarranted assumption?”
;->
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jstan
climber
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M/L
You are consciously choosing to wander without mileposts. You don't want answers.
Consider reducing your word count by half.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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So far I can see two timelines. One is cosmological based on the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe and the other is in terms of the life spans of living beings on this planet. Mostly I think about my own life span but I am also aware of those of friends and relatives, pets, the occasional plant species and the evolution of life on this planet in general.
As for free will, every effort at therapy and self help, as well as an ethical life, is based on it. Every addict who ever succeeded in leaving their addiction behind exercised enormous amounts of free will as did every person with a deprived or dysfunctional childhood they overcame, every person who decided they weren't going to break the law or lie anymore etc. etc.
Perhaps one of the problems with modern secular life is that the timeline involving judgement and consequences for one's choices in life has more or less disappeared along with the belief in an afterlife? If so, what will replace it - self serving nihilism? I know fructose and others say you can live an ethical life as a secular person, but once the generation of those raised in traditional religions, including those like fructose who have rebelled against them are gone, what will remain? Perhaps the intellectuals of our time, particularly in the social scienes and humanities, should be applying their free will to trying to figure this out?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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as for a call to reason, the phrase:
"...other than memories, which appear to occur in the now only..."
seems to throw reasoning out the door... perhaps you might refresh your's with a rereading of the definition of "memory"...
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Thanks for posting - I love to hear your thoughts! (as much as I can manage :-)
If the world were populated by people who see it as it is, and not as it should be, how would civilization progress? Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The value of our beliefs is not in their truth value, but in the advantage that they confer to us in the form of "progress." Given the choice between a disadvantageous true belief (seeing the world as it is) and an advantageous false belief (seeing the world as it should be) our human belief creation processes point us towards the advantageous belief. I think that's just how we humans work.
But in order for our beliefs to be advantageous, we need to believe that they're true. If we don't believe that our beliefs are true, they don't motivate us to advantageous behaviors. There's a fundamental tension between the reason we establish our beliefs and the way that we evaluate our beliefs. Yes ultimately given complete information, I think that true beliefs are the most advantageous, but we don't live in ultimately.
Lots of advantages to be had in our beliefs, not least of which are supporting our survival instinct, fostering effective social cooperation, maintaining our psychological integrity. Yes definitely free will is an advantageous belief as it motivates us to exercise the full range of our abilities.
My friend posted on Facebook, in response to the ruling on gay marriage,"is it just me, or does everyone look better (healthier, happier, more attractive) covered in the rainbow hue?", even though she (and we all) are explicitly aware of the fact that they aren't happier/healthier - they remain exactly the same as they were before their photo was covered by the rainbow hue. But in some crazy seemingly irrational way, I think that her willingness to hold that false belief is part of what makes her a good human, and not just a bad computer :-)
So sure, let's believe stuff. Let's try to believe only true beliefs, like we try to flap our wings and fly, and pray that we don't hit the ground.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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:-)
Sorry if I've overstated my beliefs. I'll try to keep my posting to a minimum :-)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Here, check this guy out...
What do you make of his belief creation process?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlf7W_z3b8U&feature=youtu.be
Maajid Nawaz... At the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Among his many important ideas or insights, he's pushing the public to begin making the important distinction between Islam and Islamism (also between Muslim and Islamist). It seems to be taking hold. The inertia of ignorance is strong however.
PS
To suggest you keep your posting to a min was not the intended message.
Post away, my friend.
I'm also into the belief-behavior link. Search "beliefs matter" - going back years, you'll see my name next to most of them.
Haha, blast from the past...
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1072460&tn=0
Plus, I tend to agree to a point. Beliefs don't need to have truth value in order to have survival value. (or functioning and flourishing value.) With the emergence of evolution, evolutionary studies, evolutionary religious studies, this principle along with related principles are becoming ever more worked out (figured out) and ever more clear.
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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"Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics. Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination," the announcer says. "Marx is claiming it was offside."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Rmuir,
I like that one, too. +1
Jstan,
What do you mean?
Ed,
If all I needed was a dictionary to know or understand things, then I wouldn’t need any thing else.
To anyone: What and where are memories?
Jan:
What do you make of arguments that past and current conditions (karma, if you will) lead people to unhealthy (read, unethical, socially dysfunctional, illegal) behaviors? To what extent are those conditions and causes influential or causative? Why don’t we simply apply “an eye for an eye” when it comes to social assessments? Why do we allow for extenuating circumstances? What do you make of neuroscience findings that indicate decisions are made before they are known? In old Clint Eastwood movies, there was a sense that people that were brought up poorly were not responsible (but Eastwood’s character will still apply justice equally). What do you make of differences between laws of equality versus laws of equity? (I assume you know Carol Gilligan’s work.)
Look, I understand how certain social practices (ethics, the law, culture) become embedded and imprinted on psyche, but would you admit that social practices are expedient rather than based on any reasoning and empirical findings?
Did you see Foucault’s works? His archeological studies (in philosophic and contextualized cultural senses) suggested the emergence of “our definitions” of insanity, health-medicine, and other fundamental social institutions are not exactly “enlightened” from a rational scientific view. His final writing and research on “power” are especially unkind to legitimized authority.
So where do we end up: “free will,” . . . a little bit?
Too much thinking of either-or. There seem to be infinite possibilities in every thing. It’s not either-or. And, either-or, and even neither not and not-not are only three choices. In some instances, even a category given is completely irrelevant because it portrays only false choices.
“How often do you beat your wife?”
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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There seem to be infinite possibilities in every thing. It’s not either-or. And, either-or, and even neither not and not-not are only three choices (ML)
Are you as confused as it seems? Please read no more M. Foucault (who was a disgusting person no matter what you might think of his writings) , rather L. Foucault of the eponymous pendulum.
A multiple universe model might entail reality splitting at every instant into uncountable many possibilities - beyond the human mind's ability to comprehend. But probability, heavily influenced by cause and effect, would play a significant role in predicting a particular pattern over a "timeline".
Want to see a good timeline? record an NFL game and watch it.
If we don't believe that our beliefs are true, they don't motivate us to advantageous . . . (rb)
I can't recall having a "belief" I doubted was true. It would not be a belief.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Jgill agreed. For me the idea ( belief :-) helps me understand other people's false beliefs that help support a more core advantageous belief. For me, too, I don't mean belief necessarily as a conscious thing. That we can't think of one that doesn't fit the description - survivor bias? :-)
HFCS thanks! I have enough difficulties managing my own belief creation processes, as you can see :-)
I just think that a lot of the cognitive dissonance we (and I mean I :-) try to alleviate by endlessly processing questions like this is just the result of the tension or conflict between the puppose of our beliefs (advantage, "progress") and the way that we evaluate them (truth). It's not until we get to the "huh, the earth's not really 2000 years old?" stage that we're able to notice the difference.
But hey, the rest of our beliefs don't work that way! :-)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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MikeL asks:
What and where are memories?
MikeL answers:
All I know is what I experience.
Nifty timeline, Mike!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Well we are inherently beings of conflict and tension.
Conflict between opposing interests, within and without; and tension between opposing forces that are essential to establishing balances and sensitivities** necessary to living.
**(Just as any elect engineer, esp a good one, that is, who's charged with building a sensitive control system of any kind would tell you).
It's how we're made.
.....
In heaven, there is no entropy, no entropic universe. There is no natural selection. There is no inherent conflict and tension in life and living things. How about that?! :)
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