A recent thought experiment put forth on one of the AN message boards somewhat prompted me to add another entry. While I have been lax as of late, not because I have had nothing to say, but lack of original type material has kept me from really adding anything.
For purposes of this entry, I will play along with the thought experiment. " IF all pain and suffering could be removed from existence would it make a difference within the context of my own philosophy ?". First reaction of course, was the obvious one of boredom and stagnation, along with speculation that people would be killing one another for pleasure very shortly.
There is a classic Twilight Zone (no fan of that old show at all ). Where a bank robbing thug dies and finds himself in a world where he always wins at gambling, always has the finest women, always has the best of everything that life has to offer. Even has a butler than can manufacture his every need and want on a second. Brand new car, brand new casino, pool tables, the works. Finally, in desperation, he asks the mysterious butler if he can rob a bank . The butler says certainly and even arranges the getaway car AND the shootout. But the man finds this irritating and says that he wants to get caught and go to jail. Finally, he exclaims that he does not belong in Heaven as this is just a waste of time."SEND ME TO THE OTHER PLACE !". The butler, so pleasant at first, shouts : "HEAVEN ? HEAVEN ? THIS IS the other place" and then breaks out into maniacal laughter.A take that Hell would be the ability to get what you want. Pollyannas have used things like this to justify the continuation of existence, to say that there without pain there is no pleasure etc. I happen to disagree and view this as a coping mechanism to enable the delusion there is purpose in life.
But the person putting forth this notion speculated , what if even boredom could be removed ? While this is a mere thought experiment that can not provide any sort of falsifiable conjecture, (if such a world existed then one would in all likelihood have to also lack imagination and the ability to ponder over things for the hypothetical Utopia in question.) I would have to say if science could one day achieve such a mind altering ability,sentience would still be useless. If problems of hunger, disease, war and pestilence were removed, life and sentience would still not serve an ultimate purpose. Even if the removal of the fear of death and the removal of all other factors could be taken away (which at this point, I would see the human race as little more than the Eloi of the H.G. Wells novel) think of the exceedingly depressing picture this would present. Millions upon millions of years of people lackadaisically wandering around in the Garden of Eden to no end. I see no reason why absence of misery would automatically equal a world of pleasure anyway. But this is based on the observations of the human animal over the last few thousand years of programming which I do not see changing in any way. One personal way that this could be accomplished would be to remove the self-conscious awareness of our own mortality and the curse of consciousness. Which would still make the world a useless place. I think the observations of the cruelty of nature within the rest of the animal kingdom would be a sufficient demonstration as to why this sort of Utopia would not be viable for existence or sentience. But that is just my take on the matter.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Lord Jim and the Problem of Free Will
I have not been as active on this blog as of late as I would like to be (life and all other nonsense taking up too much time). But a particular passage in John Gray's Straw Dogs caught my attention and it was well worth taking the time on my day off to compose a blog about it. It is located in the second chapter of Straw Dogs called The Deception. While Gray is meticulously picking apart the various methods of philosophy that have given human beings the irrational belief that they are somehow "above" or "special" in regards to the animal kingdom; he begins to dissect such things as consciousness and free will.
While I am not going to cover all the scientific aspects and other reasons that free will can not exist, I did find part of his analysis to be particularly intriguing and rather revealing to me. (Of course, I am not as philosophically versed as some readers of this blog may be). Gray mentions a work by Joseph Conrad called : Lord Smith. Lord Smith is a character that has always dreamed of travel and seeing exotic places. He believes that this can be achieved by becoming a seaman and soon joins up with a crew. He is soon disillusioned by the fact that most of the places that he desired to see are not what he expected, but remains with the crew. Long story short, a crucial point in the telling of this tale; is when a ship carrying a pilgrim of Muslims to Mecca is plunged into disaster. The captain, and a few other officers, jump into a life boat as does the main character. Leaving the hapless passengers to fate (ironically enough, the disaster is averted and the passengers are safely brought to harbor). The passage that Gray touches on is where the main character states, after watching the other crew members jumping into the life boat.
"I had jumped". He clicked to himself and averted his gaze. "It seems".
This one occurrence in of itself alters his life forever. The safe passage of the people on board, leads to the character facing an ultimate scandal against his honor alone and leaves him destitute. Later on, after years of perpetual travel, he becomes Lord Jim among an indigenous people and dedicates himself to protecting them from all harm. But outside events and his own actions, ultimately leads to his own death. When he approaches their chief, after a pirate invasion that lead to the death of his best friend and the chief's son, the chief promptly shoots him dead.
Now, while this seems to be far off of the topic of free will, Gray's analysis begins with the decision (or rather the indecision) that made this character jump into the lifeboat to begin with. This one split second moment is what torments the character throughout his life and leads him to the desire to protect the tribe that ultimately kills him in the end. Which brings about the question. If the character "seems" to have jumped into that lifeboat, was he or was he not operating from his own actions ? If not, then every event from that moment on (which was a subconscious attempt of contrition about it) was not a product of his will. If he DID choose the lifeboat (I jumped or so it seems) the events that unfolded afterword that lead him to his ultimate death were beyond his control. Either way, he ultimately had no control over the public disgrace, the survivors of the passage, or becoming involved with the primitive people as each decision would have been based on the prior events that influenced him, even the events that lead him to become a seaman in the first place.
As Gray points out, much of the book alternates between the characters position as an observer and an actor. He is unable to decide what he has done and he is longing for something that will end his uncertainty over a split second decision that ultimately changed his whole life forever.
Jim can not ever fully know why he jumped, as a result, he is now rendered incapable of ever "starting over" or "having a clean slate". The most poignant passage is noted :
"As to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained singularly unenlightened. I was no longer able to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and evil.[..] and I felt sad. A clean slate did he say ? As if the initial word of each of our lives were not graven in imperishable characters on the face of a rock".
When one takes an even closer look at this overall, one can almost see that our hapless main character never had a choice in anything from the beginning. Had it not been for his strong desire to visit other places, the drive for the sea, he would never have been aboard the passenger ship to be in a position to have jumped into that lifeboat to begin with. In fact, while the character is puzzled by why he was motivated to jump, it is not really covered that all of the events previously transpired lead up to that moment. Even the fact that his early travels left him disillusioned but "choosing" to stay a seaman anyway demonstrates that once he was faced with that moment, he had no choice but to do what he did.
Gray further challenges the notions that our actions are expressive of our decisions when the reality of it is quite different. He backs this up with the field of neuroscience and its work to demonstrate that much of the decisions are already made before we even begin to act.
Only recently was it brought to my attention that there was a major difference between determinism and fatalism (of which more learned people than I can offer here).
This part of the chapter (again, interestingly enough and aptly titled : The Deception) begins by challenging the "humanistic" ideal that consciousness gives us some sort of anthropocentric proof that we are "better" than the animal counterparts. Indeed, he mentions that both the plant and the animal kingdoms exhibits consciousness and self awareness. In fact, it could be noted that the one human trait of self-awareness is probably a downfall to humanity and existence in general. It lends to delusional ideas of choices when in fact, none are present. Before addressing the narrative of Lord Jim, Gray states :
"We can only be free agents if only we are the authors of our own acts. But we ourselves are products of chance and necessity. We can not choose to be what and where we are born.[..] free will is merely a trick of some perspective"
Works Cited :
Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim. New York. Copyright 1968. Web. August 23, 2014.
Gray, John. Straw Dogs Granta Publications. London England. Copyright 2002. Web/PDF. August 23, 2014.
While I am not going to cover all the scientific aspects and other reasons that free will can not exist, I did find part of his analysis to be particularly intriguing and rather revealing to me. (Of course, I am not as philosophically versed as some readers of this blog may be). Gray mentions a work by Joseph Conrad called : Lord Smith. Lord Smith is a character that has always dreamed of travel and seeing exotic places. He believes that this can be achieved by becoming a seaman and soon joins up with a crew. He is soon disillusioned by the fact that most of the places that he desired to see are not what he expected, but remains with the crew. Long story short, a crucial point in the telling of this tale; is when a ship carrying a pilgrim of Muslims to Mecca is plunged into disaster. The captain, and a few other officers, jump into a life boat as does the main character. Leaving the hapless passengers to fate (ironically enough, the disaster is averted and the passengers are safely brought to harbor). The passage that Gray touches on is where the main character states, after watching the other crew members jumping into the life boat.
"I had jumped". He clicked to himself and averted his gaze. "It seems".
This one occurrence in of itself alters his life forever. The safe passage of the people on board, leads to the character facing an ultimate scandal against his honor alone and leaves him destitute. Later on, after years of perpetual travel, he becomes Lord Jim among an indigenous people and dedicates himself to protecting them from all harm. But outside events and his own actions, ultimately leads to his own death. When he approaches their chief, after a pirate invasion that lead to the death of his best friend and the chief's son, the chief promptly shoots him dead.
Now, while this seems to be far off of the topic of free will, Gray's analysis begins with the decision (or rather the indecision) that made this character jump into the lifeboat to begin with. This one split second moment is what torments the character throughout his life and leads him to the desire to protect the tribe that ultimately kills him in the end. Which brings about the question. If the character "seems" to have jumped into that lifeboat, was he or was he not operating from his own actions ? If not, then every event from that moment on (which was a subconscious attempt of contrition about it) was not a product of his will. If he DID choose the lifeboat (I jumped or so it seems) the events that unfolded afterword that lead him to his ultimate death were beyond his control. Either way, he ultimately had no control over the public disgrace, the survivors of the passage, or becoming involved with the primitive people as each decision would have been based on the prior events that influenced him, even the events that lead him to become a seaman in the first place.
As Gray points out, much of the book alternates between the characters position as an observer and an actor. He is unable to decide what he has done and he is longing for something that will end his uncertainty over a split second decision that ultimately changed his whole life forever.
Jim can not ever fully know why he jumped, as a result, he is now rendered incapable of ever "starting over" or "having a clean slate". The most poignant passage is noted :
"As to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained singularly unenlightened. I was no longer able to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and evil.[..] and I felt sad. A clean slate did he say ? As if the initial word of each of our lives were not graven in imperishable characters on the face of a rock".
When one takes an even closer look at this overall, one can almost see that our hapless main character never had a choice in anything from the beginning. Had it not been for his strong desire to visit other places, the drive for the sea, he would never have been aboard the passenger ship to be in a position to have jumped into that lifeboat to begin with. In fact, while the character is puzzled by why he was motivated to jump, it is not really covered that all of the events previously transpired lead up to that moment. Even the fact that his early travels left him disillusioned but "choosing" to stay a seaman anyway demonstrates that once he was faced with that moment, he had no choice but to do what he did.
Gray further challenges the notions that our actions are expressive of our decisions when the reality of it is quite different. He backs this up with the field of neuroscience and its work to demonstrate that much of the decisions are already made before we even begin to act.
Only recently was it brought to my attention that there was a major difference between determinism and fatalism (of which more learned people than I can offer here).
This part of the chapter (again, interestingly enough and aptly titled : The Deception) begins by challenging the "humanistic" ideal that consciousness gives us some sort of anthropocentric proof that we are "better" than the animal counterparts. Indeed, he mentions that both the plant and the animal kingdoms exhibits consciousness and self awareness. In fact, it could be noted that the one human trait of self-awareness is probably a downfall to humanity and existence in general. It lends to delusional ideas of choices when in fact, none are present. Before addressing the narrative of Lord Jim, Gray states :
"We can only be free agents if only we are the authors of our own acts. But we ourselves are products of chance and necessity. We can not choose to be what and where we are born.[..] free will is merely a trick of some perspective"
Works Cited :
Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim. New York. Copyright 1968. Web. August 23, 2014.
Gray, John. Straw Dogs Granta Publications. London England. Copyright 2002. Web/PDF. August 23, 2014.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
Every Parent's Nightmare
This was one that I was working on in the form of a blog and put in video format as well.
Rebutting the whole "If you do not like life kill yourself" argument.
I was originally going to try and transcribe this video, but am finding myself short on time, so I thought I would go ahead and post it here. In fact, I may post several more in the future, for the benefit of those who have not seen them on You tube. I have not had the time to write more as of late. But am trying to get back into the swing of things :
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Better to die young
I was having this thought the other day (sometimes sleep deprivation and insomnia actually give me new ideas) when people will say : "OH ! THEY WERE SO YOUNG" when someone young dies and this thought popped into my head simultaneously while I was walking down the street and happened to see this real old woman struggling to walk and briefly imagined what she must have looked like when she was young. Which further made me think about the fact that the older I get, all I will have to look forward to is failing health, senility, loss of limbs, and fragile bones. Which lead me to the conclusion that it is much better to die young. Of course, it is much better to have never been born at all. But if I had it to do all over again, it would have been great if around the time I was say, sixteen and having fun, to have just been run over by a car or had a drug overdose. I can honestly say that not much has happened since then that has made a damned thing worthwhile. If anything, all I can do is look back and see how it has just been one miserable ordeal right after the other. If one dies young, they are spared the misery of all of that. I think one should rejoice if they hear that someone died at 19 or 20, committed suicide at fifteen, or such. They never got to find out just how fucked up the world really is. I happened to be cleaning out my attic the other day, and stumbled across a chest full of old photographs of relatives that I have never known as they had all died before I was born. There I was, looking at a pictures of young and vibrant people in the 1920s and 30s. Most of them died old, decrepit, senile and in nursing homes, or in hospitals, robbed of all their senses. I actually think that someone dying young is a lucky one.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
"It Comes From Within"
I had alluded to the fact that I am reading Becker's Denial of Death in my last blog post, and that it had given me several ideas. I do not have the exact quotes that were the primary influence for this entry, but there was a reference about man' knowledge, perceptions and feelings all come from an outside and external force. In other words, we perceive the world through our senses, we formulate perceptions through our experiences, we draw conclusions from circumstances. Which leads me to the trend that everyone has heard for years. How many times have we heard the little witty platitudes of : "You can not buy happiness" "Happiness comes from within" "The answers are inside of you if you search" etc. etc. etc. But there is a major problem with this. It implies that we simply can choose how we feel despite all of our external circumstances. That we can literally make the biological mechanisms in the brain, naturally produce some feeling of contentment without any basis for what we may have happening around us. I would have to totally disagree with that.
There is a Schopenhauer quote (it seems that I do not have it written down in my notes, or at least I can not find it within the stacks that I keep firsthand) that (paraphrasing here) says words along the effect of : "If there was value in existence then simply existing would be enough". That is not close to his exact words, but you get the idea of what I am talking about. Indeed, can one have any sort of inner feeling that does not have some direct correlation to the outside world, be it drawing on a pleasant memory, thinking of a ideal setting, trying to enjoy the interior comforts of a place, listening to a song or walking ?
We have already seen the latest advancements in science that hints that dualism is dead, and if your someone like me that believes that we are simply emergent properties of biological evolution, cognizant animals, and there is no mystical soul that exists outside of the chemicals and neurons in our brains, then one would logically have to be lead to the conclusion that there is not some "answer" that can be unlocked in the mind that allows one to transcend reality. The naysayers of my opinion on this want to claim that we still know very little of the human brain and then they usually lead me on some wild merry-go round speculation where they think that eventually everyone will be psychic, telekinetic, and floating through some stellar realm.
So what does all of this talk have to do with these silly platitudes of "making this the best day ever" "looking within to find all of these answers" and "you can not buy happiness?" Thus far, from what I have been reading in Becker's book, and my own anecdotal observations and experiences. This type of thinking gives people the illusory feeling that they have some semblance of control over their everyday lives. If one could literally choose what one could feel, and if one could simply ignore all of the materialistic things that is necessary for survival, then one has POWER. And if one has power, one can temporarily push back the one thing that lurks in our minds all of the time. That one thing is just how helpless we really are in the face of reality. We are thinking animals that can form abstract concepts, speculate about meaning, seek aesthetically pleasing images, which gives our species and egocentric feeling of grandiosity in the face of the Universe. But underneath all of this wonder and all of this joy, the idea that we are going to one day be a handful of dust in the distant future is too much to bear. "THIS CAN'T BE ALL FOR NOTHING ! I CAN'T HAVE SURVIVED THIS MUCH TO JUST DIE ! " probably drives us more than we would like to imagine. The stark terror that we are not in control of our own lives. One can pretend that "money does not buy happiness" but one can not survive without it. If one has to choose between spending the last bit of money that they have on keeping a roof over their head or sleeping in a gutter somewhere I do not think that there is much choice there. One can pretend when they are surrounded by friends, or sitting in the comforts of their own home that they have the security that they need, but underneath is the lurking realization that it will one day all be gone and the dread that indeed, it will all be for nothing. One can pretend that by simply enjoying "what you have" and "being contented" that it can somehow shield us from the world. But these mind tricks do not prevent one from being gunned down at a gas station because of a robbery that they inadvertently walked into. It can not stop the earthquakes, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, old age, cancer, multiple sclerosis, strokes and all of the other things that are actually far beyond the power of anyone to control. We are truly helpless in the face of existence. However, if we truly meditate on "doing the right thing""finding happiness by being ourselves" "looking within" and all the others, one can convince themselves that they have control over their own lives, that they have some sort of destiny. And while this is a good temporary fix in a lot of situations, the potential for it to be detrimental is there, otherwise I would not be addressing it.We can compartmentalize the terrible mistakes of bringing new life here, we can compartmentalize and ignore all of the obvious signs that there is something very problematic about our own existence, and we can justify all sorts of behavior with that delusion notion of "everything is just like it is supposed to be if I choose it".
There are people who suffer from chemical imbalances, disorders or who are downright depressed with very good reasons to be so. What happens to them ? They are told that they are flawed, ungrateful for the gift of life, on the self-pity pot, feeling sorry for themselves, called cowards for their behavior, mocked, scorned, hated and driven further and further towards the placebos while simultaneously being condemned to continually lie to themselves. There really is nothing "within" that can really alter our own states of being. We live in an external world that dictates our lives to us more than we would probably like to admit. With such notions, how could anyone really think that bringing another life into this world, procreating a child, starting a family, or just breeding could possibly be a good thing at all ?
There is a Schopenhauer quote (it seems that I do not have it written down in my notes, or at least I can not find it within the stacks that I keep firsthand) that (paraphrasing here) says words along the effect of : "If there was value in existence then simply existing would be enough". That is not close to his exact words, but you get the idea of what I am talking about. Indeed, can one have any sort of inner feeling that does not have some direct correlation to the outside world, be it drawing on a pleasant memory, thinking of a ideal setting, trying to enjoy the interior comforts of a place, listening to a song or walking ?
We have already seen the latest advancements in science that hints that dualism is dead, and if your someone like me that believes that we are simply emergent properties of biological evolution, cognizant animals, and there is no mystical soul that exists outside of the chemicals and neurons in our brains, then one would logically have to be lead to the conclusion that there is not some "answer" that can be unlocked in the mind that allows one to transcend reality. The naysayers of my opinion on this want to claim that we still know very little of the human brain and then they usually lead me on some wild merry-go round speculation where they think that eventually everyone will be psychic, telekinetic, and floating through some stellar realm.
So what does all of this talk have to do with these silly platitudes of "making this the best day ever" "looking within to find all of these answers" and "you can not buy happiness?" Thus far, from what I have been reading in Becker's book, and my own anecdotal observations and experiences. This type of thinking gives people the illusory feeling that they have some semblance of control over their everyday lives. If one could literally choose what one could feel, and if one could simply ignore all of the materialistic things that is necessary for survival, then one has POWER. And if one has power, one can temporarily push back the one thing that lurks in our minds all of the time. That one thing is just how helpless we really are in the face of reality. We are thinking animals that can form abstract concepts, speculate about meaning, seek aesthetically pleasing images, which gives our species and egocentric feeling of grandiosity in the face of the Universe. But underneath all of this wonder and all of this joy, the idea that we are going to one day be a handful of dust in the distant future is too much to bear. "THIS CAN'T BE ALL FOR NOTHING ! I CAN'T HAVE SURVIVED THIS MUCH TO JUST DIE ! " probably drives us more than we would like to imagine. The stark terror that we are not in control of our own lives. One can pretend that "money does not buy happiness" but one can not survive without it. If one has to choose between spending the last bit of money that they have on keeping a roof over their head or sleeping in a gutter somewhere I do not think that there is much choice there. One can pretend when they are surrounded by friends, or sitting in the comforts of their own home that they have the security that they need, but underneath is the lurking realization that it will one day all be gone and the dread that indeed, it will all be for nothing. One can pretend that by simply enjoying "what you have" and "being contented" that it can somehow shield us from the world. But these mind tricks do not prevent one from being gunned down at a gas station because of a robbery that they inadvertently walked into. It can not stop the earthquakes, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, old age, cancer, multiple sclerosis, strokes and all of the other things that are actually far beyond the power of anyone to control. We are truly helpless in the face of existence. However, if we truly meditate on "doing the right thing""finding happiness by being ourselves" "looking within" and all the others, one can convince themselves that they have control over their own lives, that they have some sort of destiny. And while this is a good temporary fix in a lot of situations, the potential for it to be detrimental is there, otherwise I would not be addressing it.We can compartmentalize the terrible mistakes of bringing new life here, we can compartmentalize and ignore all of the obvious signs that there is something very problematic about our own existence, and we can justify all sorts of behavior with that delusion notion of "everything is just like it is supposed to be if I choose it".
There are people who suffer from chemical imbalances, disorders or who are downright depressed with very good reasons to be so. What happens to them ? They are told that they are flawed, ungrateful for the gift of life, on the self-pity pot, feeling sorry for themselves, called cowards for their behavior, mocked, scorned, hated and driven further and further towards the placebos while simultaneously being condemned to continually lie to themselves. There really is nothing "within" that can really alter our own states of being. We live in an external world that dictates our lives to us more than we would probably like to admit. With such notions, how could anyone really think that bringing another life into this world, procreating a child, starting a family, or just breeding could possibly be a good thing at all ?
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