Is it possible to do good things?
- Thread starter Gul Dukat
- Start date
If every human died then who'd enjoy what's left?If we kill everything on the planet including ourselves what difference does it make? What is your solution to the problem?
You are assuming that we and all our activity are not a part of nature.
On the grand scale of things, every living thing in this solar system will eventually be destroyed when our Sun goes red-giant.
We humans share, with every other life form on this planet a carbon-based chemistry utilising DNA, or RNA. Perhaps our biggest contribution to life on our planet will be to spread it beyond this solar-system. Instead of worrying about one life-form or another, we should concern ourselves with the very unique DNA/Carbon life, which as far as we know is only found here.
Our activity is not a part of nature, though the ability to act is derived from nature.
When the sun goes red-giant it probably won't be because the sun decided it was a good idea to do so.
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
I don't get it. We aren't natural because we make decisions, or because one school of philosophy said so?
Because we make anthropocentric decisions based on some illusory understanding of how things work.
Nature is something that will work without conscious decisions. Nature is in this sense objective. There's a sense of authenticity outside of sheer willful action.
Remember the other thread where we were talking about how some people pay tons of money for modern art paintings, just for the prestige and not because they are legitimately moved that much by the painting? It's like that.
Or when somebody claims to love some kind of music in order to fit in with a scene but they are not natural about it - they probably wouldn't like it if it were not 'cool'. This is evidenced so much by peer pressure, perceived mental disorders, identity crisis, etc. etc. all stemming from a delusional self that wants to mess with things that don't necessarily need messing with.
Why must it be authentic to be nature? I think it's probably just a difference in mental categorization, but IMO by the principle of it, humans are one with nature because we are in and come from nature and exist within the natural world where physics and biology apply just as much to us as to anything.
But humans believe they are in charge of their selves and will disregard their own physics and biology to this end.
Nature must be authentic because it cannot be inauthentic since inauthenticity requires consciousness. Can you trick a stone? Can a stone trick you? Maybe some times you think a shiny stone tricks you but in actuality you were just mistaken about the stone.
[MENTION=3998]niffer[/MENTION]
Also when you were making yourself throw up, wasn't that just from physics? And when you made yourself stop, wasn't that also physics?
Whence comes the ambivalence and pain from this? Physics doesn't fight itself. When you tell a bomb to blow up, the bomb won't tell you it's a bad idea. It won't feel guilty. It will just blow up because nature does what it does flawlessly.
Also when you were making yourself throw up, wasn't that just from physics? And when you made yourself stop, wasn't that also physics?
Whence comes the ambivalence and pain from this? Physics doesn't fight itself. When you tell a bomb to blow up, the bomb won't tell you it's a bad idea. It won't feel guilty. It will just blow up because nature does what it does flawlessly.
We can try to disregard it but it still applies to us lol.
Some animals are pretty clever and able to "trick" each other or people for food or whatever so it doesn't just apply to humans. Plus, this inauthenticity comes from an authenticity of naturalness, or an ability that nature gave us as you said. Conceptually what we are doing may seem to be non-natural but if the source and environmental constraints are both natural then if we are talking about if our human decisions are natural or unnatural in a non philosophical sense and purely in the sense of comparing ourselves as organisms to the rest of the universe, then they are definitely natural.
Decisions and ambivalence and pain all come from physics and stuffs going on in my brain as a result of previous things that happened. Obviously the things that happened to make me react in these ways are complex but it's not like normal physics doesn't keep its place..
As far as we know though, this trickery was not consciously developed, so it isn't actually trickery. Trickery is a human idea.
Things are only unnatural via perspective but perspective is what contributes to suffering. Philosophy is just the invented ladder to get us out of the nonexistent pit that we believe we have thrown ourselves into. Once you get out, you find there was no pit, and no ladder.
Hence karma.
Perhaps..
Not being consciously developed implies that evolution played a hand at the ability, whereas "idea" implies that we assigned a name to the concept. Our abilities both to trick and to assign a concept to it are intertwined with the results of evolution.
Ok.
What?
Sense of good and bad also comes from evolution doesn't it? But we've discarded both of those as an illusion already in the thread?
Yet at the same time, survival also depends on sense, which is also evolved. The tendency to say things are unnatural should also itself be evolved, shouldn't it? So is it thereby natural to say things are unnatural if all things are natural? Is it natural to be contradictory?
Probably. But what do we do about it, and why should we do anything to begin with?
Hopefully my recent message to you will illustrate this.
This is where we have the idea of "human nature," which is often thought to be an oxymoron.
It's not an oxymoron. It's just emergent and changing.
Basically it's like this:
Humans have dislikes and aversions by nature.
Humans by nature have their ideal, and by nature complain about things of nature (sickness, death, violence and so forth)
Humans have a tendency to see nature as a positive or negative, a relationship which we've already determined to not exist. e.g. organic foods are good for you and being sick is bad, which is not necessarily in line with the concept of good and bad not existing (unless you're fully aware of it and do it anyway)
Another prevalent idea is the one that something being subjective in itself also makes it somehow inferior, leading those to rage about objectivity and logic, but objectivity and logic are only subjectively important.
[MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION] Despite our different manner of functionality - can we realistically claim to be so different from anything else on this planet?
ie. Is the fact that we can have a concept of nature the one thing which separates us from it?
ie. Is the fact that we can have a concept of nature the one thing which separates us from it?
Thinking we are separate separates us from it.
Hence the prevalent "I am me and you are other" and to suggest otherwise will often get a disagreement, and people quite regularly poopooing the idea that self is an illusion.