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"When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of

• petrogradphilos 7y ago
  It’s correct to regard trees, but not people, as products of their environment. Trees don’t make choices. People do.
  • felixgallo 7y ago
    Then I advise you to read what you’ve posted on an obituary thread and change.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • blinkingled 7y ago
    People's choices also are in some way a product of their environment (heritage, parents, neighborhood and so on) and their suchness/nature, both of which they can't do much about - aren't they? Besides, judging them is hardly useful - they're what they are and society has already got the consequences part covered so what's judgment adding here?
    • kgwxd 7y ago
      Isn't expecting society to take care of the consequences part just delegating judgment?
      • blinkingled 7y ago
        Idle mental judgement vs formal societal one with physical consequences.
        • MiracleUser 7y ago
          but we only have formal societal judgements because we people made idle judgements and then talked about them with each other and formalized it - no?
          • blinkingled 7y ago
            Do we need to keep making personal judgements to keep the social ones going? Was it really a bunch of people idly judging that really lead to the formal ones to be defined? IOW sure if objective judgement is needed towards some utility - making formal/societal ones - do it. The point like with every 'don't' is not to say don't judge no matter - point is don't generally judge unless it is fair/useful/targeted towards general betterment.
            • MiracleUser 7y ago
              I think there is inherent value to openly judging people, and there is nothing inherently wrong with having and expressing "negative" emotion. IMO where we are actually failing as a society is in our acceptance of /being judged/. And I do not mean acceptance in the way where you must feel positive about it - my point is exactly the opposite; openly judge them right back. If two people judge each other harshly and also are accepting of each other then they may still carry on with seizing opportunities to help each other rather than creating distance and trying to forget each other exists. Over time, the confrontation is a catalyst for evolving our behavior with each other but only if we are all accepting of being judged If I am truly honest, I think it is ironic to preach for people to not do something (like judge) as a means of supporting an acceptance of people's behaviors. I feel like there is an underlying assumption to your stance that judgement and harsh language is inherently bad. You can both accept someone the way they are and judge them for it.. and I personally believe it is /required/ to accept them the way they are in order to provide a more "objective" judgement. edit: to answer your question, yes i believe idle judgements are the grassroots to future formalized societal rules. formalism is a well studied idea in philosophy and is ultimately a self sustaining illusion built upon informal phenomenon. In other words, you cannot create a formal system to govern subjective behavior without informal subjective behavior laying the groundwork first.
  • shamnreturns2 7y ago
    Maybe the point is that most people are also products of their environment (culture, family, etc).
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • ghevshoo 7y ago
    An exercise I learned from Sam Harris that finally started to convince me that free will is an illusion goes as follows: 1. Choose a movie title 2. Now do it again with your eyes closed and try to figure out precisely how you chose the movie title. 3. Keep doing it. After a while you realize that stuff just “appears” to us. The same holds true for more than just movie titles. How exactly that process works, or why it appears like as if we have free will is an interesting subject.
    • nemo 7y ago
      You really think you didn't choose to engage in and persist in that exercise? You don't think you had any choice in considering the arguments and whether to accept/reject them? I honestly understand why determinism sounds like a compelling theory, but it's not just experience that defies it. I see no compelling reason to argue for determinism if you sincerely believe in it.
      • Emphere 7y ago
        Ok, let's go one level deeper. How do you decide which argument makes sense to you? For example, say you choose 'X' or 'Y' because of criterion 'A'. Why criterion 'A'? What makes you think that that's a suitable criterion in this situation? Repeat ad infinitum."It's obvious", you say in frustration at the end. But is it really? There's a reason we are nowhere near AGI... Anyway, try defining free will precisely. You'll find that it's an extremely incoherent concept (within our current model of causality) . Try posting your definition and I'll be happy to poke holes in it. There's a reason that the free will vs determinism debate hasn't gone anywhere for thousands of years. Perhaps we need a new way of thinking about causality.
        • nemo 7y ago
          The fact that we use intuition in choice and not some formal rational system seems orthogonal to whether we're making choices or only experience an illusion of choice. Legally determinism is rejected out of hand, interpersonally we assume that individuals bear responsibility for their choices, it's only in some abstruse metaphysical sense that determinism means anything, and there it's largely meaningless.
  • carapace 7y ago
    I've come to believe that humans are only really responsible for their behaviour when present, and then their behaviour is compassionate and kind. Most people, most of the time, are more-or-less running on automatic, like meat-robots. In other words, if they are asleep they're blameless and if they are awake they're harmless. I'm not claiming it's true, I'm just saying that it's helped me to be more forgiving and easy-going.
    • deesep 7y ago
      >I've come to believe that humans are only really responsible for their behavior when present. True. Being present means you observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking and the body acting. It means you bring yourself into focus, becoming aware of your own existence, watching the motives and the results of your actions, and Studying the person you have built around yourself, inadvertence. I became less judgmental, and calmer since i began learning to 'query' and question my motives. These days I don't do it as often as I used to, but i am much less on auto-pilot.
  • dakom 7y ago
    This comment should not be downvoted. We have yet to explain all the inner workings of the brain nor the exact mechanism that drives human behavior. Some future discovery will, perhaps, make our current understanding look downright stupid and primeval in retrospect. Let's state the obvious: humans _choose_ to modify themselves and their surroundings in a way trees do not, and it offers us the ability to move away from the light if we want. Failure to recognize this apparent difference stunts any drive to investigate further and it's insulting to both humans and trees. On a level of empathy, I get it. We need compassion for eachother and predicaments that are often not of our choosing. Fine. Let's at least say that in some ways people are like trees and in other ways they are not. Ultimately that's not a very deep insight and rings very much like the kind of thing teenagers say while stoned. However - I mean no disrespect to Richard or Ram or however he wanted to be called. The man did incredible work toward helping his fellow humans and for this reason alone he deserves great respect. I'm sad for his loss and I hope I can do even a portion of the good he did during his life.
  • eric_cc 7y ago
    > Trees don’t make choices. People do. There are philosophies that believe otherwise.
• mmcgaha 7y ago
  I get the concept of appreciating people for what they are, but I don't know what to do with this knowledge. Maybe I can apply it to an eccentric neighbor, but how would I apply it to an unproductive employee, lying partner, or self-destructive friend. Thinking more about this, the forest is like a busy sidewalk full of people, but the people in our lives are more like the beautiful tree in the back yard that we take care of.
  • nerdponx 7y ago
    If a tree is harmful (poison?) or dangerous (about to fall and crush you?) you either cut it down or stay away from it and warn others to stay away from it.
  • cainxinth 7y ago
    I think that quote is describing the fundamental attribution error: "the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations." When you see someone cut you off in traffic, you might instantly assume they are just a born jerk that doesn't care about others, but maybe they are rushing to the hospital.
  • crazygringo 7y ago
    In practice, you deal with the unproductive employee, lying partner, etc. the same way you always have. You still need to protect your own interests and not let people take advantage of you. But it means you don't let it affect you emotionally in the same way. While most people have a kind of internal monologue that goes "why are these people so bad, why is the world wronging me, I didn't do anything to deserve this, why does life suck so bad sometimes, it's all these people's fault" you instead learn to just accept that the world has these people and not to waste emotional angst on them. You deal with them as necessary and then move on internally without anger, hatred, etc.
    • tonystubblebine 7y ago
      I used to lose my shit at underpeforming co-workers all the time and then a more experienced guy pulled me aside and gave me a quote that was intended to do the same thing as Ram Dass's tree quote: "Nobody comes to work to do a bad job." What I realized that judging other people narrowed my vision so that I couldn't see any options. All I could see was that they were bad people who were going to hurt the project. When I could hold off on personalizing other people's performance then I could start to spot other reasons and sometimes even figure out constructive solutions. Maybe the other person is not delivering the code I need because they were given competing priorities. So, yeah, as you say, you still have to deal with these situations. I just found that I could see many more options for how to deal once I stopped being so judgmental.
• frogpelt 7y ago
  That's neat. But trees don't cut you off in traffic or steal your packages off your porch or murder your aunt or cuss you out or talk too much or tell lies, etc. etc. etc. They also don't make you soup, buy a birthday card, bring you flowers, hold the door for you, give you a hug, say I love you. So, people aren't trees.
  • zzzeek 7y ago
    trees will fall on you and kill you. so just like people, trees will hurt you. trees will recycle carbon into oxygen, provide cover from the sun and rain, and strengthen the soil. so just like people, trees will help you.
• habitue 7y ago
  I like this quote, but it's good to remember why judgement exists. Judgement exists because it puts pressure on people to conform. You disapprove of their actions, and you let them know either explicitly, or implicitly through your behavior towards them. We all exert pressure on each other to conform to expectations. In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want. I'm saying something pretty banal really, everybody knows this. Ram Dass's quote here is emphasizing that you can be overly judgemental. You can be stuck in an endless rumination cycle where you stew over the failings of people around you. If you're in this mode of thinking, it's good to take a step back and think of humans like trees. But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental
  • zzzeek 7y ago
    > But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental Being judgmental will do absolutely nothing to stop those people from taking advantage of you. only if you change your behavior can you change the situation. Looking at your situation fully and completely without fear and reactivity, that will save you. Judging all those people who are "doing this" to you, will do nothing but make you miserable. It is of course our nature to be judgmental but the work of Ramm Dass was to separate out those judgements to arrive at a state where you are truly not judging people. Has nothing to do with seeing what it is they do. an earthquake could level your town, and you see exactly what it is this earthquake did, and it was horrible. but you don't "judge" the earthquake, it just is. that's ultimately the state of all people too.
    • stjohnswarts 7y ago
      This is where I feel Reason comes in. While emotions are important, facts are always more important. Judging people is good if it's to further your own self interest otherwise it's a complete waste of mental energy. "Judging others" is a fact of life and has to be done, what shouldn't be done is doing it unnecessarily, especially when other people have no affect on your life. For example judging people over sexual/religious choice reasons is most often a waste of energy and shows your own unfair biases and character failures and just a projection of lack of self-esteem.
• ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Ram Dass just made me feel really bad about my hobby of Tree Shaping. https://images.app.goo.gl/J5wzRAKuMjjZ8Lsv5 https://images.app.goo.gl/J5wzRAKuMjjZ8Lsv5
  • eric_cc 7y ago
    > Tree Shaping. Tree mutilation