3 ms·
I don't think you're wrong. You can buy the idea the idea that you are complete and could very well be that way. I personally don't find myself to be that way,
by ss48 4y ago
I don't think you're wrong. You can buy the idea the idea that you are complete and could very well be that way. I personally don't find myself to be that way, and that having this frame of reference is helpful for myself, and that's as far as it goes. For example, in a development project, I get caught up in getting a feature to how I perceived it ought to have been and become dismissive of other's objections or ideas on how it is different or should be implemented differently considering the actual utility of the feature or complication that I didn't recognize. Those are the types of situations where I find I need it. Sometimes, I assume that someone has a perception and work based on that, and don't realize that that perception was incorrect, or even if correct at a time, had changed. Because the world is very dynamic and ever-changing, that's why I feel that I need to spend more time staying aware of what changes and what needs to change about me because I don't do that enough.
In terms of subjectivity, it's subjective to the extent that it's not affecting the outcomes of what you attempt. If you perceive that the results of what you are working on and responding to now are affected by your biases, that's the only time you can practice mindfulness. If other people perceive that, you can evaluate if their opinion holds value. You can only take an action when you sense something is wrong, realize something could be realistically better regarding how something is being handled now, or have an epiphany by happenstance. Much of the effort spent in meditations and the likes is the idea that by maintaining a certain level of fitness at an activity or state of mind, when a situation presents itself, you will be ready and able to handle it more reasonably. In reality, this means that much of that effort will not be of use in few cases. Whether that is worth it is again subjective.
> In such case - there is no a single objective reason for the meditation industry to exist for me or any person who didn’t buy into that original assumption.
It exists objectively for the same reason that the education industry exists. Not everyone has the same characteristics or capacity to solve problems they face and reason through situations by themselves in the best possible way. Much of the knowledge we need can be obtained online or reading a book, or in gaining experience and developing intuitions on how to approach and experiment with things, but many people can't do this, or need assistance to do this better or develop the mentality to do this in a way they find better. Industries don't exist for individuals; they exist to accomplish things for a group of people that find something is lacking, regardless of whether they are right or wrong about why they need that.
- aristofun 4y agoGood points. > It exists objectively for the same reason that the education industry exists. But if I’m right above - there is a subtle but crucial difference. Education has (at least tries to have) some objective, applied and reproducible element to it. While meditation is reduced to religion by its nature. It doesn’t make it any less valuable for society etc. But it means we need to call things by their names and stop pretending it’s something else. Like Sam Harris and others do.
- ss48 4y agoI'm not as familiar with Sam Harris, but the impression that I have is that he's treating and conveying mindfulness and meditation as a science that is measurable and comparable from person to person, which I do not think it is. It is "scientific" (to these people) in the sense that someone is trying to extract the essence of something that is subjective and attempting to quantify it or find reason from it, when in fact, there is no more to be found than the original subject matter and/or it is baseless with reality or what is well-understood. I think many have tried to substitute it with religion as if it is better and grounded in science, when it about the same in quality in many regards. Definitions and names are tricky things. The names we give to things the first time around usually will encompass multiple concepts. As we try to separate each of these concepts, we try to assign new names but in discussion (in the case it's in good faith) conflate them with the older names of things because not everyone can stay current to the most recent names, and they may understand the concept you are trying to isolate in conjunction with something they consider it a part of. Relativity used to be general relativity, and now can also refer to special relativity, efficient in some ways and confusing in others. Then there's the question of how much can be objectified and reproduced, and whether that effort is worthwhile compared to embracing a concept in its entirety with its truths and lies because it is more realistic compared to what can be built from what you managed to discover and build from exclusively. We use Newtonian Mechanics despite its inaccuracies instead of quantum mechanics for designing buildings because it is close enough at the scale of what we intend to solve. I consider mindfulness, meditation, and in some cases religion to be similar, in the sense that they seem to approach you at the scale of being a person or at the scale of your humanity full of subjectivity in need of a subjective solution or explanation, instead of a machine to be worked on piece by piece. No matter how much objectivity is possible, individualized application is going to have subjectivity or uncertainty. How far to go one way or the other, and how relevant that would actually be to the situation at hand, is always questionable.