2021-04-11 at 1:30 PM UTC
aldra
JIDF Controlled Opposition
Determinism implies that a man is simply the sum of his genetic material (nature) and its interaction with external stimuli, ie. the experiences of his life. This means that, generally speaking, the subject will innately tend toward a set path. Regardless of what situations are presented to the subject, the choices they make are informed by their nature and the results of their previous choices, creating a sort of inertia. The only situations that have the potential to defeat this inertia and change the subject's 'path' are extreme in nature, forcing them to abandon previously-held beliefs for example. The more controlled and regulated (in the sense of creating long-term predictability and consistency) a society, the less opportunity there is for these extreme instances, making the subject's 'path' much more practically predictable (in the sense that it would require much less time or computational power) given that one has access to their genetic material and early choices.
Much of the ennui of man comes from the duality of his existence as both individual and part of a collective. Culture aside (in the sense that some cultures value indvidual freedom over collective benefit or vice versa), a man is aware of himself having his own will (which includes his participation in a tribe or society) as well as his being a functional part of the species. In regards to the latter I refer specifically to inheritence - he inherits the traits (genes) and culture (memes) of his parents, and passes them to his offspring. His purpose in this sense is clear - continuation of the species, ideally with a 'good' partner in order to eugenically effect improvement in subsequent generations. His purpose as an individual is less obvious, leading to innumerable religions and ideologies attempting to 'solve the problem'. It seems likely, though, that individual purpose isn't a problem that can be solved - self-awareness and sentience evolved and (genetically) proliferated specifically as survival traits, and are beneficial only to the collective, not the idea of 'individuality' that they spawned. Without any reason for individualism, man's only real purpose is to make more and better men, and this simply means creating as much surviving offspring with a 'good' mate as possible. Anything beyond that, from hedonism to self-improvement to religious adherence, dies with the individual.
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Sudo
Black Hole
[my hereto riemannian peach]
I think the purpose as an individual is self.fulfillment which can be achieved through culture and also drugs and stuff like that. Religion helps answer both concerns.
The purpose of an individual is infinitely harder to deal with than the purpose of the man within the collective. I think that's a purely Asian thing to be tortured by that. Asian or mid life crisis white.
If you have statues of yourself that doesn't die with the individual, as well as people to keep your memory alive. You could lock yourself Inna cave, paint an amazing picture you trade for a chicken sandwich that goes on to hang in the louvre.
Who wrote that?
2021-04-11 at 3:13 PM UTC
self awareness and sentience are mere by products of our need to choose between choices for our survival.
opposable thumbs enabled us to choose, and with the ability to choose comes the need for greater brain power to make choices, which in turn also gave us better hand dexterity and more precise movement, there by complicating the choices we need to make, and so even bigger brains are needed.
and its only a matter of time before we have more computing power than is necessary to make choices for our survival purposes and once we hit that our long and slow decend into decadence and self destruction begins.
2021-04-11 at 3:18 PM UTC
The best way to meditate is hold your palms over your eyes and apply slight pressure, until geometric patterns and images start to appear in the blackness. Then fix your mind on one of the patterns which appear and force your mind to make it stay in place. As you do this, let part of your mind think about whatever comes into it, and try and remember what comes to you.
