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Relatedly, the idea that the notion of a 'self' is an illusion is similarly liberating. It takes work to remind yourself (our vocabulary doesn't help!) that thi

Relatedly, the idea that the notion of a 'self' is an illusion is similarly liberating. It takes work to remind yourself (our vocabulary doesn't help!) that this is the case, just as it takes work to remind yourself that your vision is blinded in the area where your optic nerve pokes through your eye. But there it is. Plenty has been written about this, dating back centuries. The best distillation of it I found is in "Losing Ourselves" by Jay Garfield[0] Both of these realizations have impressed upon me the importance of living in the moment. Of being there for others who are in need. Of trying to make the experience we all share here a bit better. Because that's all we have - the here and now. [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59576734-losing-ourselves https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59576734-losing-ourselve...

EGreg 4y ago
I don't really understand this concept. I had my cofounder quote Alan Watts to me with that same thing. An illusion implies that someone is being fooled. Who is that someone, if there is no self? Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? Personally, it seems to me that our concepts of morality and existence are just a bunch of wordplay, and the reason some question sounds "mystical" is because we omit a clause. For example, rather than saying "A should B" you should say "If A wants C to happen, then A should B". And that can be much more easily defined. Otherwise, "objective morality" makes as much sense as "objective sense of humor". Can a joke be "objectively funny" if almost no one laughs at it?
- maroonblazer 4y ago
  > Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? I'm not sure how the above follows from the illusion of 'self'. Despite the self being an illusion, we're still persons, and thus distinct from rocks, and everything else, including other persons. The illusion is that there's a subject at the center of experience. I.e., we don't sense that we're identical to experience, we feel that we're having an experience. That there's some locus of control, independent of the rest of our body, including our brain, that's steering the ship. That's the illusion.
- sph 4y ago
  > Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? No, but our consciousness is an illusion. What separates us from other animals is how hyper-developed our prefrontal cortex is, and the sense of "future" and cause-and-effect. I like to think that consciousness is just a side-effect of this advanced survival system. A bug, if you will. Consciousness is just a weird artefact of a biological system that has gone self-aware. Here's a philosophical nerd snipe: we're aware of our physical limitations (i.e. our eyes can only see a limited range of wavelengths, we have a blind spot, etc.). What are the limitations of our consciousness? Our self-awareness blind spots?
ImHereToVote 4y ago
We need to stop doing things we want to do and start doing other things we want to do.

EGreg 4y ago

I don't really understand this concept. I had my cofounder quote Alan Watts to me with that same thing. An illusion implies that someone is being fooled. Who is that someone, if there is no self? Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? Personally, it seems to me that our concepts of morality and existence are just a bunch of wordplay, and the reason some question sounds "mystical" is because we omit a clause. For example, rather than saying "A should B" you should say "If A wants C to happen, then A should B". And that can be much more easily defined. Otherwise, "objective morality" makes as much sense as "objective sense of humor". Can a joke be "objectively funny" if almost no one laughs at it?

maroonblazer 4y ago
> Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? I'm not sure how the above follows from the illusion of 'self'. Despite the self being an illusion, we're still persons, and thus distinct from rocks, and everything else, including other persons. The illusion is that there's a subject at the center of experience. I.e., we don't sense that we're identical to experience, we feel that we're having an experience. That there's some locus of control, independent of the rest of our body, including our brain, that's steering the ship. That's the illusion.
sph 4y ago
> Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby? No, but our consciousness is an illusion. What separates us from other animals is how hyper-developed our prefrontal cortex is, and the sense of "future" and cause-and-effect. I like to think that consciousness is just a side-effect of this advanced survival system. A bug, if you will. Consciousness is just a weird artefact of a biological system that has gone self-aware. Here's a philosophical nerd snipe: we're aware of our physical limitations (i.e. our eyes can only see a limited range of wavelengths, we have a blind spot, etc.). What are the limitations of our consciousness? Our self-awareness blind spots?

ImHereToVote 4y ago

We need to stop doing things we want to do and start doing other things we want to do.