6 ms·

> In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies. and yet...

by nlh 7y ago

pas 7y ago
the rat race (material comfort) is addictive. money works wonders. and it's easy to get stuck in a local minimum. (mortgage, kids/family need a lot of resources)
- throwaway94857 7y ago
  Competition is as innate to animal life as is breathing. It's naive to think we can simply ignore our drive to compete with one another, as naive as thinking we can ignore hunger thirst or sexual desire.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    And yet we can reject our nature.
    - alt219 7y ago
      To some degree or another, and some better than others.
    - throwaway94857 7y ago
      Some try, fewer truly succeed. It's one thing to reject your nature, it's quite another to not live in some lingering dissonance as a result.
    - arkh 7y ago
      To what end? If we accept the heat death of the universe and the fact nothing can go faster than light everything is bound to disappear. Trying to better Earth based life is useless. Then why bother trying to attain something higher? Just maximize your own pleasure until your conscience disappear. Suicide by psychedelic use is the only "hypersane" response.
      - mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Not everyone comes to this conclusion, one line of reasoning is: because there shouldn’t be a meaningless universe in the first place, it must actually have meaning.
        htek 7y ago
        The belief that the universe must have a purpose is a trap. It leads you down a particular line of reasoning that ends with you believing in a creator god (or gods), or that the universe itself is divine. You would likely also reason that you have a purpose in the universe that dictates your actions (adherence to religious dogma or doctrine). All of this is baseless and rationalized without objective evidence. Your only certain "purpose" in life is that which you, yourself make.
        mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Yes, and everyone is free to make their purpose and choose that the universe does have meaning...
        dsego 7y ago
        What is the purpose of this meaning for me, for my life right now? If not, than I shall not care about it. The universe can go f* itself.
      - JackFr 7y ago
        “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.” - Camus
      - JackFr 7y ago
        The unvoiced assumption here is that the universe is fundamentally knowable through rational materialism. Among the many things we've learned from science is that there are real phenomena that we cannot perceive. We use microscopes, telescopes, x-ray machines and other sensors of all kinds which create simulacra of the real phenomena which we can perceive. Extend the analogy to our brains -- consider that there are literally thoughts we cannot think. Our brains tells us there are no thoughts we can't think, but our brains may be liars. Is there a way for our brains to grasp the literally incomprehensible?
    - rowanG077 7y ago
      I mean I can reject my nature and stop breathing. That is until I pass out and start breathing automatically. I can reject my nature and stop eating and drinking but that has swift death associated with it. We can try and reject our nature but it seems eminently naive to me.
      - me_me_me 7y ago
        And yet somehow you can resist an urge to kill unknown weak stranger and taking their possession. (that's what our ancestor did, but somehow its not normal anymore).
        rowanG077 7y ago
        What's your proof that this in in humanities nature? Not all actions we took during history are in humanities nature. It seems more likely to me that humans were forced to do stuff like that due to other things in our nature like needing to eat and drink.
        dsego 7y ago
        By the demiurge?
        rowanG077 7y ago
        This comment makes no sense to me.
        dsego 7y ago
        Gnosticism, look it up.
        rowanG077 7y ago
        Yes I know what it is. I simply don't understand what that has to do with my original comment.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
I think that many people realize the emptiness of the things most of us strive for. Far fewer of us stop chasing the emptiness very much. As Steve Taylor said, "Off like lemmings at the gun/I know better, still I run." Me, I can see that this stuff is empty, at least some of the time. I can even stop chasing it, for a few hours or days at a time. I can't seem to do it for long, though.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  I think this is the dividing line - the willingness to actually completely stop chasing the void, and to instead build your own nexus of meaning. It’s a leap - we have very deeply woven memetic patterns that seem absolutely real to us. As others say, plenty, “including Disney movies”, “see” this world-beyond-the-world - but they see it askance, through a glass darkly, with the chattels and symbols of the artifice world wrought throughout. Fear holds shut the doors of perception, because to even deeply consider, never mind act upon, the idea that we live in a consensual hallucination, presents the illusion of being capable of devaluing one’s entire existence, and therefore one’s identity. Status becomes meaningless, the system of the world looks like a sad plastic toy being fought over by children, surrounded by immeasurable bounty they cannot or will not perceive. The thing is, the yawning chasm of gnosis is only six inches deep, but it appears unfathomable. Once you’ve really made the leap, it’s easy enough to live by the convictions it presents. I think Philip K Dick is the prophet of the ultra-sane. He saw the artifice, described it as “the black iron prison”, and spent the remainder of his days desperately trying to find his way through the thicket, but overshot, and plumbed the fringes of madness and a kind of razor-edged hypersanity. Sadly, he, like many of his characters, used the assistance of chemicals to pierce the veil, and he, like they, was undone by them. Psychedelics are a path, but they’re like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, and usually break something else. You get there, but all too often you lose an important thread somewhere on the way. So, if you keep going back to the void, you’re still bound. Take the step. Stop wanting. Start being. Watch the world and laugh - it’s quite a brilliant bit of absurdist performance art. Doing so does devalue your existence up to the point of inversion, but the thing is, your value system also shifts so dramatically that it does not matter. If anything, looking back at the past is more akin to recalling an entertaining time spent in the playground, and is by no means valueless - just valueless as a mercantile/social exchange. A final aside: I think many find their way across the Styx as a result of trauma - feeling that the world has in one way or another wronged or rejected you often provides the instigation and fortitude to turn one’s back on it to reconsider - before emerging to engage with it once more on absolutely different terms. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many terminal patients are blissfully peaceful, happy people, despite their own impending mortality - knowing you have no future is an incredibly liberating experience, and allows you to live Here and Now. It’s just such a shame that it takes pain and death to shake the scales from eyes that so easily could have been free sooner. I was one of the very lucky ones - I was going to die for several years - but I didn’t. I wept, I wailed, I mourned, I accepted, I lived for the small things, the dew on an ant, the bobbing of a bird in flight, the spray of salt off the sea, the myriad specks in the sky that speak of countless worlds and a dispassionate universe. I have not once even considered reentering the chattel world - this way of being brings me joy and contentment, and allows me to share that with others. I am small. I am finite in time and space. I am dust. This is good. This is beautiful. Final final aside: Huxley’s Island explores quite a bit of this, actually, and it’s a great read either way.
oldsklgdfth 7y ago
"On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness." - David Foster Wallace

> In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies. and yet...

by nlh 7y ago

> In reality, all those "realizations" are so mainstream that they show up in Disney movies. and yet...

pas 7y ago

the rat race (material comfort) is addictive. money works wonders. and it's easy to get stuck in a local minimum. (mortgage, kids/family need a lot of resources)

throwaway94857 7y ago
Competition is as innate to animal life as is breathing. It's naive to think we can simply ignore our drive to compete with one another, as naive as thinking we can ignore hunger thirst or sexual desire.
- JackFr 7y ago
  And yet we can reject our nature.
  - alt219 7y ago
    To some degree or another, and some better than others.
  - throwaway94857 7y ago
    Some try, fewer truly succeed. It's one thing to reject your nature, it's quite another to not live in some lingering dissonance as a result.
  - arkh 7y ago
    To what end? If we accept the heat death of the universe and the fact nothing can go faster than light everything is bound to disappear. Trying to better Earth based life is useless. Then why bother trying to attain something higher? Just maximize your own pleasure until your conscience disappear. Suicide by psychedelic use is the only "hypersane" response.
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      Not everyone comes to this conclusion, one line of reasoning is: because there shouldn’t be a meaningless universe in the first place, it must actually have meaning.
      - htek 7y ago
        The belief that the universe must have a purpose is a trap. It leads you down a particular line of reasoning that ends with you believing in a creator god (or gods), or that the universe itself is divine. You would likely also reason that you have a purpose in the universe that dictates your actions (adherence to religious dogma or doctrine). All of this is baseless and rationalized without objective evidence. Your only certain "purpose" in life is that which you, yourself make.
        mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Yes, and everyone is free to make their purpose and choose that the universe does have meaning...
      - dsego 7y ago
        What is the purpose of this meaning for me, for my life right now? If not, than I shall not care about it. The universe can go f* itself.
    - JackFr 7y ago
      “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.” - Camus
    - JackFr 7y ago
      The unvoiced assumption here is that the universe is fundamentally knowable through rational materialism. Among the many things we've learned from science is that there are real phenomena that we cannot perceive. We use microscopes, telescopes, x-ray machines and other sensors of all kinds which create simulacra of the real phenomena which we can perceive. Extend the analogy to our brains -- consider that there are literally thoughts we cannot think. Our brains tells us there are no thoughts we can't think, but our brains may be liars. Is there a way for our brains to grasp the literally incomprehensible?
  - rowanG077 7y ago
    I mean I can reject my nature and stop breathing. That is until I pass out and start breathing automatically. I can reject my nature and stop eating and drinking but that has swift death associated with it. We can try and reject our nature but it seems eminently naive to me.
    - me_me_me 7y ago
      And yet somehow you can resist an urge to kill unknown weak stranger and taking their possession. (that's what our ancestor did, but somehow its not normal anymore).
      - rowanG077 7y ago
        What's your proof that this in in humanities nature? Not all actions we took during history are in humanities nature. It seems more likely to me that humans were forced to do stuff like that due to other things in our nature like needing to eat and drink.
        dsego 7y ago
        By the demiurge?
        rowanG077 7y ago
        This comment makes no sense to me.
        dsego 7y ago
        Gnosticism, look it up.
        rowanG077 7y ago
        Yes I know what it is. I simply don't understand what that has to do with my original comment.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

I think that many people realize the emptiness of the things most of us strive for. Far fewer of us stop chasing the emptiness very much. As Steve Taylor said, "Off like lemmings at the gun/I know better, still I run." Me, I can see that this stuff is empty, at least some of the time. I can even stop chasing it, for a few hours or days at a time. I can't seem to do it for long, though.

madaxe_again 7y ago
I think this is the dividing line - the willingness to actually completely stop chasing the void, and to instead build your own nexus of meaning. It’s a leap - we have very deeply woven memetic patterns that seem absolutely real to us. As others say, plenty, “including Disney movies”, “see” this world-beyond-the-world - but they see it askance, through a glass darkly, with the chattels and symbols of the artifice world wrought throughout. Fear holds shut the doors of perception, because to even deeply consider, never mind act upon, the idea that we live in a consensual hallucination, presents the illusion of being capable of devaluing one’s entire existence, and therefore one’s identity. Status becomes meaningless, the system of the world looks like a sad plastic toy being fought over by children, surrounded by immeasurable bounty they cannot or will not perceive. The thing is, the yawning chasm of gnosis is only six inches deep, but it appears unfathomable. Once you’ve really made the leap, it’s easy enough to live by the convictions it presents. I think Philip K Dick is the prophet of the ultra-sane. He saw the artifice, described it as “the black iron prison”, and spent the remainder of his days desperately trying to find his way through the thicket, but overshot, and plumbed the fringes of madness and a kind of razor-edged hypersanity. Sadly, he, like many of his characters, used the assistance of chemicals to pierce the veil, and he, like they, was undone by them. Psychedelics are a path, but they’re like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, and usually break something else. You get there, but all too often you lose an important thread somewhere on the way. So, if you keep going back to the void, you’re still bound. Take the step. Stop wanting. Start being. Watch the world and laugh - it’s quite a brilliant bit of absurdist performance art. Doing so does devalue your existence up to the point of inversion, but the thing is, your value system also shifts so dramatically that it does not matter. If anything, looking back at the past is more akin to recalling an entertaining time spent in the playground, and is by no means valueless - just valueless as a mercantile/social exchange. A final aside: I think many find their way across the Styx as a result of trauma - feeling that the world has in one way or another wronged or rejected you often provides the instigation and fortitude to turn one’s back on it to reconsider - before emerging to engage with it once more on absolutely different terms. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that many terminal patients are blissfully peaceful, happy people, despite their own impending mortality - knowing you have no future is an incredibly liberating experience, and allows you to live Here and Now. It’s just such a shame that it takes pain and death to shake the scales from eyes that so easily could have been free sooner. I was one of the very lucky ones - I was going to die for several years - but I didn’t. I wept, I wailed, I mourned, I accepted, I lived for the small things, the dew on an ant, the bobbing of a bird in flight, the spray of salt off the sea, the myriad specks in the sky that speak of countless worlds and a dispassionate universe. I have not once even considered reentering the chattel world - this way of being brings me joy and contentment, and allows me to share that with others. I am small. I am finite in time and space. I am dust. This is good. This is beautiful. Final final aside: Huxley’s Island explores quite a bit of this, actually, and it’s a great read either way.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago

"On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness." - David Foster Wallace