A simple theory of human operation
Humans are social animals, and our survival is dependent on social arrangements. From the earliest days of human history, we have formed groups and communities to protect ourselves from the harsh elements, to hunt and gather food, and to care for each other. The philosopher Aristotle once said that "man is by nature a social animal," and this idea has been echoed by many other thinkers throughout history.
However, unlike other animals, humans have the ability to separate our behaviors from our survival needs. We can choose not to work because we don't like it, we can choose to commit suicide, or we can engage in a range of other behaviors that have nothing to do with our basic survival needs. This unique characteristic of human cognition has been the subject of much discussion among philosophers and academics.
Despite our general fear of pain and seeking of pleasure, we still must write narratives of motivation. Our behaviors are not fixed for these end goals but are tied to the conceptualizing-human mind in social relations to others. Every single day, every minute even, we have to "buy into" motivating ourselves with narratives. This creates a tension between our individual desires and the social fictions that we create to maintain our way of life.
Additionally, humans generally fear pain, displeasure, and the angst of boredom, while seeking pleasures to distract from this angst. Aesthetic and non-physical pleasures become a built-in mechanism to deal with this fear. However, this also creates a need for fictions to explain why we must do anything, which is a tragic break in nature, as philosopher Peter Zapffe argued.
Zapffe believed that the human mind was too sophisticated for its own good, creating a sense of existential dread that can only be managed through various forms of denial. For Zapffe, this denial was a necessary part of the human condition, but it also created a sense of tragedy because it involved creating fictions to explain why we must do anything.
In order to deal with this tension, humans have created various systems of belief and value that provide us with a sense of purpose and meaning. These systems can take the form of religions, political ideologies, or even simple cultural practices. By buying into these systems, we are able to maintain a sense of coherence and continuity in our lives.
However, the fact remains that these systems are ultimately fictions that we have created to explain why we must do anything. This creates a sense of unease for some, as they struggle to find meaning in a world where everything seems ultimately arbitrary.
Summarizing all of this, human cognition is governed by conceptualization-language and social relations via this conceptualizing mechanism, and this creates tension in how we survive as compared with other animals. Despite our general fear of pain and seeking of pleasure, we still must write narratives of motivation to maintain our way of life. This is a tragic break in nature, as Zapffe clearly laid out. While we have created various systems of belief and value to provide us with a sense of purpose and meaning, the fact remains that these systems are ultimately fictions that we have created to explain why we must do anything.
However, unlike other animals, humans have the ability to separate our behaviors from our survival needs. We can choose not to work because we don't like it, we can choose to commit suicide, or we can engage in a range of other behaviors that have nothing to do with our basic survival needs. This unique characteristic of human cognition has been the subject of much discussion among philosophers and academics.
Despite our general fear of pain and seeking of pleasure, we still must write narratives of motivation. Our behaviors are not fixed for these end goals but are tied to the conceptualizing-human mind in social relations to others. Every single day, every minute even, we have to "buy into" motivating ourselves with narratives. This creates a tension between our individual desires and the social fictions that we create to maintain our way of life.
Additionally, humans generally fear pain, displeasure, and the angst of boredom, while seeking pleasures to distract from this angst. Aesthetic and non-physical pleasures become a built-in mechanism to deal with this fear. However, this also creates a need for fictions to explain why we must do anything, which is a tragic break in nature, as philosopher Peter Zapffe argued.
Zapffe believed that the human mind was too sophisticated for its own good, creating a sense of existential dread that can only be managed through various forms of denial. For Zapffe, this denial was a necessary part of the human condition, but it also created a sense of tragedy because it involved creating fictions to explain why we must do anything.
In order to deal with this tension, humans have created various systems of belief and value that provide us with a sense of purpose and meaning. These systems can take the form of religions, political ideologies, or even simple cultural practices. By buying into these systems, we are able to maintain a sense of coherence and continuity in our lives.
However, the fact remains that these systems are ultimately fictions that we have created to explain why we must do anything. This creates a sense of unease for some, as they struggle to find meaning in a world where everything seems ultimately arbitrary.
Summarizing all of this, human cognition is governed by conceptualization-language and social relations via this conceptualizing mechanism, and this creates tension in how we survive as compared with other animals. Despite our general fear of pain and seeking of pleasure, we still must write narratives of motivation to maintain our way of life. This is a tragic break in nature, as Zapffe clearly laid out. While we have created various systems of belief and value to provide us with a sense of purpose and meaning, the fact remains that these systems are ultimately fictions that we have created to explain why we must do anything.
Comments (96)
Excellent topic for discussion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think we are thrown into existing, by parents that did as one does or the condom broke. Once the baby arrives, you can't help (unless you are wired funny) but love the little fucker. So the bring it up, knowing perhaps that life is a joke or whatever, but what are you going to do about it ? Friend of mine tried to express the ecstasy of becoming a father. We've lost touch. He's got three now, a hard working man with the picket fence and kids he always wanted, even a wife who stays home.
To me it's more like people find some role (hero myth, ideology) that feels right enough and keep getting out of bed every morning, largely to avoid losing a job, a lover, a home. We cling to what keeps us safe and comfortable. This is to be expected. Moloch demands it ! Those whose source code doesn't have them building a nice little web end up replicating less or not at all.
Is "these systems are ultimately fictions" itself a fiction ? Even the most negative ideology may help the species or the tribe as a whole contribute to the heat death. Antinatalism is the hand of god. It is the thought of genocidal violence taken to the last extreme. It is will-to-power. Does it not cry out after all for the coming of heat death ?
How does one escape metanarratives? A certain kind of 'strong pomo' tends to threaten itself with cancellation. My theory is that we are wired or programmed to perform some version of 'the hero with a thousand faces.' But what the hero myth of the person with the theory of the hero myth ? Self-knowledge, right ? I know and confess that I'm caught in this game of playing the hero, and that's how I play the hero. Does this relate at all to your own thesis and the position it puts you in ? If you inspire agreement and build community, does that not put another brick on the tower for Moloch ?
So my theory, along with Zapffe's, is more about our essential "break" with nature. We use narratives/fictions to create reasons which give us motivations. That's how a conceptualizing animal with recursive language capacity parses and synthesizes the world- one in which social arrangements are paramount. These personal fictions (partially drawing from meta-fictions of the culture) then must network with each other to get stuff done. Me agreeing to these conditions and parameters (what it means to "work" and constantly motivating to complete this "work", is an example here), is based on "reasons" that I have created for why I am going to continue to do something. I may not even like what I do. In fact, I may hate it. However, I can decide to continue on anyways, because the "reason" (fiction/narrative) is that 'I must do this so that I can make money. Money is this thing to buy the products and services of other people's labor'. However, every one of those conceptualizations and all of that narrative is indeed made up from cultural cues that I have (chosen to?) internalize. There is nothing inherently compelling about "continuing to work to make money". It is something I can freely choose to buy into everyday.
No other animal has such baroque mechanisms of "being-in-the-world" (for lack of better terminology). If a dog is hungry, it eats, it begs, it scrounges, it fights for its food. There is no meta-narrative to this. That's just a truism. The same for even higher order animals, even ones with rudimentary "language-like" capacities (dolphins, chimps, etc.). As Zapffe notes, this detachment from "being", represents a permanent (and tragic!) break with the rest of nature. It is why we are exiled from the Garden of Eden ("being"). We are always but a virtual self of a self, but never being a self.
:chin: :cool:
Stay away from this guy. Throw yourself into adventure.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes !
I agree with you that we are fundamentally split or alienated from ourselves, exiled from a Garden we were never in. If we had it at all, it was as an infant whose cry could summon mother, just as God summoned the world with only his voice.
It probably helps us replicate, our angry, restless, lusty curiosity. We hunt for impossible completion. As Becker and Sartre and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Hobbes say in their own way, we are a futile passion to be god, a will to life, a will to justice, a will to order, a will to power, a will to assimilate. Call it the will to some everblurry X.
What I'm getting at is that some people can pride themselves on a strange selfhonesty. Contemplating the notion of a hero program might make one cynical, but it's just an aspect of know thyself, right ? In the same way, a person might be honest about the (hopefully relatively) dormant sadism and greed in themselves. This means integrating some uncomfortable truths, living at peace with the fact that we are both beasts and angels, that the enemy, finally seen, turns out to be us. Evil is not externalized but harmonized. Nothing human is alien to me.
Zapffe was a climber !
This reminds me of Sartre's idea of freedom. Radical responsibility. It has its beauty.
Our fear of death and homeless is a 'superstition' you might say. The 'saint' can starve homeless under the bridge. No one interferes. Those who lack the fear of death in 'the impostume of peace' are likely to genetically and memetically recede into the background. Such a pattern does not assert itself, work to get itself replicated. It nibbles on the margins along obscure paraphilias.
Freedom-responsibility is a beautiful ideal. Do people really choose ?
I think this is an artificial distinction. Animals can also behave in ways that don't directly impact basic survival needs. They play, wander around exploring, and spend a lot of time napping. They hang out with their families. I'm not saying animals are the same as humans, but you are exaggerating the differences.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't think this is right either. Human motivations include more than just pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. Calling artistic, recreational, and other non-instrumental activities "built-in mechanism to deal with fear," may be true for you, but they aren't for most of us. You and I have had this discussion before. Your vision of human nature is darker and less hopeful than mine is.
It is possible to act without intervention by narratives. Much of the point of Taoism is learning how to act spontaneously in line with our true natures. It is called "acting without acting." It is understood as the true source of human motivation. Narratives interfere with this rather than supporting it. Narratives don't generally promote action, they are more able to put the brakes on, to stop us from doing what our natural inclinations indicate. A lot of narratives are also post hoc additions put on to explain to ourselves why we did what we already did.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'll say it again. I don't think this is true, or at least not necessarily true. It's "seems to me" psychology/philosophy and I don't think it represents how people actually feel or behave.
This is startlingly condescending. I think it shows your lack of respect for people who, apparently unlike you, find satisfaction in daily life, family, work, and other aspects of our humanity.
Quoting green flag
Such pompous arrogance.
We've been through this before. You tend to conflate what animals do and what humans do, and I don't even want to bother pointing out the difference in an animal that can use recursive linguistics to tell stories about itself and then buy into those stories, versus what animals do. But I guess I just. did. right. here. So please read that, and then re-read that to get my gist.
Quoting T Clark
I just don't find this Taoist stuff compelling. In fact, if it was natural, we wouldn't need Toaism or anything related. We would simply BE. But we aren't. And so there in fact IS something in the way of that. I am saying that contrary to what dichotomy fiction you are purporting on me, the animals are living Tao. Humans are never doing so, and are always trying to get there. Hence TaoISM.
Quoting T Clark
You keep saying that, but here you are using language, having a narrative of being angry and upset. Think about it.
I think we probably agree it won't be very fruitful for you and me to spend a lot of time bashing things we already know we disagree on back and forth.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I thought it might not be a good idea to bring Taoism into this, knowing it is not a well understood or accepted way of knowing things. I was right, although I do think it provides a good reflection of human nature. Again, I think your sour way of seeing human nature and behavior undermines the credibility of your views.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not angry or upset at all. I went back and reread my post. It was polite, respectful, and responsive. I tried to make sure I left out any provocative language. I've always tried to treat your ideas with respect, even though I strongly disagree with them. It's true, all verbal and written communication is narrative, but communication is not motivation, which was the primary substance of your OP.
Motivation, as in why you continue to do something you might not otherwise want to do. The thing is, you are going to claim you have never done something you never wanted to do. Is that right? You are going to claim that no average human has ever had a thought of "I would rather not do this task right now, but I will because of X". Is that right?
Well there is a substratum of some determinism there as acknowledged in my OP. Here I said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Of course I've done things I didn't want to do. Jobs that need to be done are not necessarily enjoyable. All worthwhile activities include aspects that are unpleasant. I don't see that as unfair or unreasonable. It's just how the world works.
Take it easy, O defender of the common man. I too work for the general weal. I will give thee tools for to maximize the removal of coal and its transformation into rosycheeked youths.
I ought to be patient with you, because you are talking to a projection. Seriously, though, your theatrics are misdirected. I'm glad for my friend and his happiness. We just lost touch. Such is life. It's just how the world works.
I don't owe you this clarification. It's a belatedly tolerant response to your indulgent misreading.
Exactly, and you are LITERALLY displaying the point I am making in real time.
I'll admit to being theatrical and indulgent if you'll admit to being condescending and pompous.
That's not true. Your OP was about how people use narratives to provide motivation. What does that have to do with me saying:
Quoting T Clark
Why is "it's just how the world works" connected with you doing a job you would not want to do, but doing it despite not wanting to do it?
I've done a lot of worthwhile and enjoyable work in my life. All of it included aspects I didn't enjoy. If you like to cook, you have to wash the dishes. If you want to design the cleanup of a contaminated property, you have to figure out the budget and get the client to agree with it. This is where you and I always run into a wall. It's not unfair that life includes a bit of pain and unpleasantness.
So you are changing the subject. I am not talking about fairness right now.
Why do you do the dishes even if you don't like it?
Because it's part of a job I do enjoy and I can't complete that without doing the part I don't enjoy.
How do you know that? Is that a concept you learned or are you born knowing about how to clean dishes and its association with cooking foods?
Sorry. That's enough. I'm all done.
Pogo's words reverberate through time. I once pulled a skiff through murky waters up to my chest in the Okefenokee much like Humphrey Bogart in "African Queen". That same week someone had lost control while water skiing not far away and had died, having fallen into a nest of water moccasins.
Quoting green flag
Practicing what he preached?
Ahh, glad you are coming at this with good faith and seeing where this goes.
Anyways, the point is that you have a narrative of why you clean the dishes. You have just taken the narrative for granted to the point that to you, it seems the answer was written on high from Moses as to why you must do them.
If you want X, you must keep doing this task, is the narrative. That is the extra human layer other animals don't deal with!
Further all sorts of practical information is plopped on top of them, without the qualities of the belief systems you are talking about. IOW we are given knowledge of 'how things work' and 'where things are' and these add nuance and individual characteristics and more inspiration for individual ways of expressing curiosity (wanting to learn about things, people, the world, ourselves) and social urges.
I realize there is no immaculate separation between practical information and the kinds of belief systems you mention, but before any belief system is understood by a child they have tremendous motivation and the complexity of the ways these motivations can be expressed increase with practical knowledge accumulation, each step in the mastery of movement and communication and exposure to different facets of the world, including people. other creatures, things and enrivonments.Quoting schopenhauer1Humans have these things regardless. They don't need a theism or set of morals or idealogy to have a sense of purpose and meaning. Given that we are always exposed to belief systems it may be hard to tease out what causes what, but a look at children can see that one has little need of any -ism to leap out of bed, demand things, express curiosity in a wide variety of ways and deliberately engage with others.
An awareness of death may well then draw people to belief systems that assuage anxiety, but we already have tremendous motivations - not unlike all our social mammal siblings and cousins.
I already told you that I need a narrative to communicate the situation to you, but I don't need one to motivate myself, which was the point of your OP.
Now I'm really done. No, seriously, I really mean it. For sure this time. La, la, la, la, la. I'm not listening. I'm going to turn my computer off now.
Aim for? I don't know about that pre-lingual. We do things and learn from them sure. Aiming for is a bit of a stretch. We have targets for our desires I guess, if that is an aim. The toddler wants X, and risks Y to get X and learns of Z obstacle. Aim seems like a self-knowledge that is not quite present prior to conceptualization.
Quoting Bylaw
This is narrative. Though positive ones I guess. I was discussing ways we use narrative to overcome things we don't want to do.
Quoting Bylaw
Perhaps there, it is more like animals pre-conceptualization. For example, learning to walk is somewhat by environment, not completely innate but doesn't take any self-talk to do it of course.
Quoting Bylaw
Again, I am not talking about an ideology like a religion necessarily, but cultural beliefs that confer a motivating force. The belief that for example, "Work brings money. Money brings necessities for living in a certain cultural way. This knowledge means I must keep working even if I don't really want to." This is not something any other X animal generally goes through. The animal doesn't have complex conceptualization with recursive language capacity, letalone concepts like, "I don't like this, but I will do it anyways".
Ah yes, I believe that's Socrates, no? You are sticking your fingers in your ears to not engage.. This is magnificent philosophy discourse.
I can live without the word aim, but there sure are motivations. I suppose I was thinking quasi literally that the child will aim his or her face towards other faces rather than other objects. There's already values and priorities.Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, much practical knowledge is narrated, though we also imitate and learn by trial and error without narratives, especially as kids. And there will be steps in these processes that in and of themselves we wouldn't want to do, but to find out what's over there we may have to go through the thorny bush.Quoting schopenhauer1Sure. And I am not in any way denying these things exist. And some of these cultural beliefs even or perhaps often go against our primary urges. Curiosity killed the cat and any other memes, teaching practices, parental reactions, etc., that aim at stifling curiosity. Of course some stifling is needed - hey, what happens if I put the fork tines in an outlet? [a real example from my childhood curiosity. I was stunned that my father could figure out what I did after the lights went out without even finding the fork with it's blackened tines. I learned A LOT that afternoonQuoting schopenhauer1
But they certainly will do things they don't like if the motivation is present. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-10-16-me-6537-story.html
Yes. As an adult human, fully formed with the self-aware bit, there comes an extra layer of reasoning that is a break from the rest of nature. That is the premise and I think it is still valid despite your interesting forays into child development. If a dog is hungry, it eats, it begs, it scrounges, it plays tricks, it fights for its food. There is no meta-narrative to this.
Even T Clark's dishwashing has an implicit narrative. He doesn't like doing dishes, but cleaning them will allow for use in the next round of cooking, so you must wash them if you want that. You don't have to though. You can decide to let it pile up. You can be a hoarder, walk out of the house, break all the dishes and buy new ones, etc. But T Clark is probably going to follow a simple enough narrative.
And also drive us to do all sorts of things without immediate pleasure gained.
And I experience this driving me and others along with cultural beliefs as an adult.
And the tremendous frustration cultural beliefs have added when they have gone against motivations not dependent on cultural beliefs. You can feel these primal motivations chafing against the handcuffs. No one had to tell me to be social - though they sure added a lot of narratives about what was appropriate. I was willing to go through pain to get closer to other beings. No one had to give me a cultural belief to get me to explore and find out. And I was willing to go through discomfort and suffering to satisfy curiosity.
This all may seem tangential, but I think those drives undlie much of what we do, often despite cultural beliefs.
And the practical information I got or learned myself, including tacit knowledge about how to move and find out things, this merely extended the range and nuances of my core drives to be social and find out stuff. That knowledge had nothing to do with warding off the fear of death.
Quoting Bylaw
Sure, I agree with that.
Quoting Bylaw
I think I acknowledged all of these underlying desires (both social and "pleasure-based") here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
and then here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So basically I am saying that although there are tendencies to do one thing (based on various things like pleasure, aesthetic pleasure [such as ones gotten from engaging socially, etc.]) there is the ability (and need) to tell stories to convince ourselves of doing things we wouldn't normally want to do in order to get those unpleasant things done. Again, unlike other animals, that simply exist and do what it needs to get things done and survive. We have an extra layer that makes us tragic in our way as it is a break from being into counter-factual being. We can "trick" ourselves, but it would only be in denying our true capacity for self-knowledge, which is that we agree to any of the story for why we do things, ones we don't even "want" or "desire" to continue doing.
Good post - good ideas, well written.
I will admit to that, just to be clear. But I sincerely suspect that much of the thrill and joy of philosophy is in the sense it gives us of being elevated. Consider Plato's Cave myth. Consider conspiracy theory in general. Its allure is (seemingly, partially) that those who embrace it see better than those 'lesser' souls who are still caught up in illusion.
Why would a person seek to be more rational, more educated, if this wasn't understood as an improvement, a development, an enrichment ?
There is too much existence. Schopenhauer might have had the notion here:
Has anyone ever had the feeling of a sort of emptiness or ennui? Science and technology, for the "thinking man" seems to be the things that confer any sort of inherent meaning. But is it not a manifestation of our own discontent? Science is delving into the walls of our confinement, looking at the cracks, and the specs on the wall with closer and closer examination. Mining more and more minutia. It's almost a masturbatory gesture in that it reveals our discontentment. And then, its usefulness in bringing the comforts simply amplify the need for need and its instrumental nature. We must keep reorienting to a value, but what for? Survival, comfort, entertainment, repeat.
Also expansion and conquest, a forward march without a definite destination. To more go and to more go and to more go.
Ecclesiastes.
I don't think Solomon actually wrote it, but it's a nice story. The king who has tasted all pleasure and all knowledge can see through to the void behind it.
All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
https://biblehub.com/kjv/ecclesiastes/9.htm
This is also the advice of 'Solomon.' And Whitman is nice on this:
************************
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
A classic.
Ok Green Flag, I'm going to give you three concepts. I'd like you to string them together:
Science (and technology), minutia-mongering, meaning
More information and application of information for varieties of outputs, and? Any value put on this becomes suspect as a whole range of assumptions is being questioned. Circularities, instrumentality, etc.
How does this not become a circularity of reasoning?:
Humanity mines more information from the world and its own historical information to gain new insights to improve the survival of the species and we are all doing our part to bring about more refining of information to bring about more improvement of survival.
a) How is that ethic itself a justification for itself?
b) Isn't this a value we are imputing and thus making assumptions from the start? Unlike other animals that just survive. We survive because we justify it with reasoning. The hunger we feel, and the sickness we can get, the physical pleasure of taste and sex are about as close to the animal as we get. Beyond that it's all justifying without foundation. We are always putting the cart before the horse. Even survival itself is just a concept reified into some sort of societal motivation to get shit done. We can't escape justification being unfounded.
:up:
Just to be clear, I'm saying that we just already have an 'irrational' or 'unjustifiable' urge to expand...and to find and demand justifications as part of that. We are building a god just now more explicitly than ever: artificial intelligence. This is Nietzsche's overman, even. For Moloch demands a tower. Anything that does not replicate and self-assert and exploit its environment gets shouldered out. Complexity increases. We climb the entropy gradient, the death of the sun.
But we are highly cooperative / communicative, so that the tribe is itself a larger organism. To me the question is how it's even possible for life to question its own value. How did 'Moloch' allow this to happen ? In other words, how did 'game theoretical' pressures not 'filter out' such fantasies in us of own extinction ? Does this connect to the age of empires ? Is antinatalism related to intertribal violence? A generalization and radicalization of genocide ? Is radical questioning in general justified in the long run (statistically), despite dangerous philosophical byproducts, because of related technical innovations ?
How does the 'demon' known as the will-to-live manage to question and sabotage itself ? Or to seem to ?
Just to be clear, I think antinatalism is profound. It questions existence itself. It looks down on this great stage of fools like a god.
Science is about power and glory and wonder, a chip off the old block? Is philosophy not the superscience of being or overmetascience or neometatheology? Minutuiamongering is just a means, a necearriy evil, which may be becoming less necessary. Bots are going to revolutionize this world.
You ever see the image of a donkey with a carrot tied in front of its eyes and mouth ? For humans that carrot is an updating screen. Thrown chasers after projections.
We aren't simply beasts in loops. Our softwhere is getting more and more compact and selfreferential. Is all this still vanity ? Are we orange flowers at the funeral of the sun ?
For me, philosophy isn't about being more rational or educated, it's about being more self-aware. I'm not interested in being more self-aware in order to improve or enrich myself, I'm just curious. Not off-hand curious; real, deep, intense, urgent curious.
:up:
Fair enough. But what is this deep curiosity ? Do you have any thoughts on it ? On its source ? Is it good for the species ? Is it innate in us ?
Also, for me self-aware involves education and enrichment, because I experience myself as inherited softwhere with a meat suit to run around in. (I think the softwhere is embodied 'here', but it's pretty much the same softwhere that's in lots of other people.)
When I think of my curiosity, I get an image of a cat moving around a dark room. Looking behind every object, into every nook. Following sounds and smells. Climbing on top of everything to get a better view. Then lying down for a while before getting back up and doing it all again. It's a drive, something pushing, pulling. Seems like it's probably innate. Babies are curious. Being curious certainly has value - A curious animal is one that is familiar with it's surroundings.
:up:
Yes. I feel that drive. When I find a new thinker, it's like when I was kid and me and my friend would find an abandoned house in the woods. There's just a little bit of fear at the edges of the familiar, which is like the bitterness of dark chocolate.
I imagine this is one of the many things we enjoy because it helps us replicate. It's good for the persistence of the pattern.
Indeed, it's that Zapffe paradox again.
Quoting green flag
No, it's the opposite. It calls into question the whole enterprise, especially the violence, aggression, and unjustified and unquestioned assumptions
Quoting green flag
Antinatalism is a political question. Why are we putting more people and pressing them towards the survival-game-through-technological-innovation-and-maintenance? What's the point? It is a cycle without justification. "I gotta work and contribute" or "I gotta work" and the byproduct is some sort of contribution doesn't matter. But either justification or phrasing- visible or invisible hand, doesn't answer why we want this from (yet more) people.
Quoting green flag
And an animal that must provide justifications for its actions and to hold onto narrative fictions. "I got work to do" is one of those oddly revealing phrases...
It is the ultimate why in the flesh. It compresses all existential dithering into an immediate presentation to the consumer of existence, and asks, "But what for?". It's no longer an abstract question for coffee-shops and leisure but immediate political implications that reflects back to the person themselves as to why they are doing anything on the stage.
I see (let me emphasize) that it's gentle on the surface. It's like euthanasia for those who are not even zygotes yet. Out of disgust for violence, it wants to destroy the possibility of violence. But that means life itself should not exist if it is to be vulnerable. Life is (the implication seems to be) only justified if it's safe and clean and decent. Give us paradise or nothing at all. No compromise. No trust in progress (transhumanism of Pearce, etc.)
How about instead..
It is purported science and technology in themselves provides meaning. And thus, the modern man puts more people into the world, organized by the knowledge classes and organizations that generate and distribute that, but it is just mining minutia into itself. The minutia mines for mining for mining. The search for more laws of nature and technological application doesn't produce any more "meaning" than anything else. It's just figuring out the blueprints and building various projects from it. This in itself is lauded, but its just being pressed into mongering more minutia in ever more projects.
Yes. Who are you to decide for another that non-paradisical existence is thus good in itself or for that person?
Why do germs fill a petri dish if given food ? Have you given Darwin much study or thought ? Evolution is almost tautological once conditions for it arise. Justification is the kind of thing one talking primate offers another for taking the last plum from the icebox.
Quakers didn't procreate, right ? Some humans don't replicated. I haven't. But I'm a freak, a parasite. Or I'm a recessive type who makes memebabies. Hardware is too fragile. I'll flee death by identifying with software, ignoring somehow the coming erasure of the heat death.
What you do make of the heat death ? Won't we be snuffed out anyway ? Is that a comfort ?
I won't let you escape that easily.. Zapffe's paradox...
Quoting green flag
It was the Shakers.
We probably agree that there's an abyss beneath all things human. But lots of people do in fact put on various heroic costumes and lose themselves in the role. I personally like the Shakespeare costume. But Socrates is fun too. Others want to be Bezos or Elon or a hot little influencer selling overpriced makeup.
I think there's a case to be made, that it's a reasonable concern. But it's like wanting world peace. I'd like people to be nicer to animals. I disagree with factory farming. But I really don't think that they (other people at large) give two squirts of the brown stuff for my perspective.
Explain please.
I think you neglect fear of consequences. It's not just the carrot. It's the stick of being homeless, being divorced, being fired. We are thrown into needing stuff and afraid to lose access. Some do off themselves. Even Kant is surprisingly tolerant of a serious suicide attempt (as I found out recently.)
Ah. And certain gnostics too ? I'm very fascinated by groups who swim against the basic cultural programming. Breed and gather coins. Breed and gather coins. Breed and gather coins.
That's 'true' counterculture. The rest is what ? Am I myself a purveyor of exquisite but difficult pleasures for discerning consumers with the proper training ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Messiah
But other animals can't/don't say/think/conceptualize
I need stuff or I die. They just do and survive. And there we are a being who has "reasons".
I reread it quite recently. Can you specify ?
Look at the part about the paradox...
Yes. In us, Darwinian evolution got to take a look at itself. We manage to understand most of our genesis...though a brute fact remains and seemingly must remain.
:smirk:
Oh, yes. I thought you meant something else.
***
What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
***
We are glorious and disgusting and beautiful and obscene. Undecidable terrorwonderspill.
I wonder when we finally get hip to collective ennui...Perhaps the AI will give us time.
Modern projects- science and technology, economic blue, pink, and white collar
Old school projects- farming, hunting, gathering, gardening
It don't matter. Touch metal. Touch grass. Your mind has the thought "touch metal' and "touch grass", thus it is already removed. It's a placebo. Not in the present, but the virtual world representing the present. "I must dig the ditch and plant the seed". "I must push the number and calculate the formula".
Hard to say how AI will change things. If genes and memes play a role, you can expect those who get too bored or sad to replicate to be filtered out. 'Questioning to the very end' 'must' remain marginal. A 'crazy' philosopher like me is a sterile mutation. But much of it was luck. I probably would not have pushed for an abortion, even knowing what I know, because I irrationally love that theoretical unborn child, as 'stupid' in this way as any elephant or dog.
Sartre's vision of the radically free ghost is of the god we are programmed to try to become. Antinatalism especially points out how cruel it is to throw a soul into existence. The impossible goal is to become unthrown, to get back to the garden that never was.
And thus the juxtaposition with the projects (project?) of the enterprise(s). You can't go back, you can only go forward. Going forward is engaging with the systems that be, the "throwneness" of the structures and maintaining them endlessly and repeatedly. To have personal fictions that somehow must align with the structures to survive, comfort-seek, and entertain. Thus, "I have work to do." Can you think of a personal narrative that aligns as perfectly with the existing structures? Talk about distraction, ignoring, anchoring, and sublimating :lol:.
Simply BE. Excellent advice.
Of course, friend. But I've basically been saying the whole time that you and I are mere confectioners, purveyors of Dangerous Thoughts, ye old poison cure special, gets ye high as the shine of the moon, puts ye up above the groundlings as they grind.
Yes, life is irrational and unjustified. I've heard the voice from the whirlwind, same as Job. God is too beautiful and terrible and disgusting for human eyes. It ain't what the nice folk said it was.
Is it better not to be at all ? I don't pretend to know. But it's safe to predict that I can't go on I'll go on.
It's almost tautological. The designs that didn't go mostly blindly forward (by feeding and breeding) just faded away. What would we expect to be left after millions of years ? Durable patterns, 'motivated' (acting in order to) to persist, or the other kind? The kind that mostly felt the horror in all things and eschewed self-assertion and reproduction ?
I'm not saying hooray or boo. I'm just saying that the world seems to be one way rather than another.
You will, we will, because (as The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says), "Anyone who is among the living has hope--even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!"
:up:
It is hard indeed to kill that fucking bird !
But, to be complete, I have known a few people to actually kill themself, one in an extremely dramatic way.
But one we can't follow, by definition of our human operation, hence my OP.
True. Our awareness of our capabilities and options are seemingly more advanced than the basic instincts of other animals. The realm of human thinking - reflected by the complexity of our language - is not likely accesible to other species. Which are more restrained to basic emotions like fear of death, joy of eating and sex and aggression against competitors. Of course we can also do these things. But we have another layer on top of this layer cake of awareness and capability.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes the "missing link" or "original sin" where humans depart from the rest of nature. We don't have the "just do it and don't ask questions" gene despite Nike's motto haha. Put on some shoes and just do it - such is life.
It is both what sets our mind apart but also throws us off in a desperate search for a "why?" - a reason to do anything at all.
This we are obsessed with an origin story. Be it religious or scientific. We want to know what makes us tick. And the best place we reason as the source us the beginning of it all.
Nature lives in a self fulfilling argument. A circular notion. Be born, mature, have sex, propagate your young. Why? Coz existence. This is how existing works.
Humans developed linear argument in contrast to the self satisfying argument, the cycles and frequencies underlying evolution, time and life. We unravelled the circle and took the line as straight from A to B. But that takes away an original reason. A beginning. A first cause. And so we write our narratives and motivations, we work to inspire ourselves to keep progressing ever since.
Well. We can. Some people can go through life uneducated, not curious, never questioning, like other animals do, and they are content/happy.
What drives our demand for reason instead of "simply be" is a need for control. Because control can prevent you from suffering as you can understand, anticipate and mitigate those effects on you.
Also we are in an "arms race" with one another - the weapon? Knowledge. Awareness. And that comes from the doubt that it will be used wisely or benevolently.
So if one is unsure if the smart kid is good or bad, then they had better become smarter themselves. Assume control of the narrative. Eat or face the possibility you may be eaten.
In an ideal world, a paradise, we have a benevolent God. As such a god would take away our inherent need to be smarter or more omniscient than them knowing that they act as a parent, with our best interests at heart.
And that, is the underlying fact that causes religions to come into being. Trust. Trust or a hope or optimism that the universe/mother nature isn't out to get you, out for blood.
Ideology is thus a cornerstone of a peaceful society. Democracy is our answer to balance that we see in nature. Equality. Imbalance always starts with someone behaving as a malevolent God. Arrogant, self interested and lacking empathy or desire to cooperate with others.
We must always use our knowledge to combat immorality not propagate it (propaganda) . Otherwise no one can ever "simply be". Which is a human right (food, water, habitat, medicine, love and entertainment. All of these things are what it is to simply be happy).
I think that's my whole point though. We don't have access to being (I'll just equate it to "The Tao" for now). If we have to "get there" and it "isn't easy", then something is seriously wrong here, hence Zapffe's paradox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Messiah
Exactly.
Quoting Benj96
No no, your end goal "simply be" description there is off. That is not what I meant. Think more like your first paragraph of what the animal's way-of-being is. All of that last paragraph is not that. You are just creating a narrative (of a scientific humanism variation it looks to be).
Yes.. "Personality", "Preference", "Anxiety" seems to fit some basic "causes" that we often provide narratives (reasons) for. And all of these layers.. Reasons > Causes underlying (Personality, preference, anxiety) and their various intermixing of them are part of Zapffe's paradox of our break from the rest of nature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Messiah
It may not be what you meant/are searching for/expecting but that doesn't neccesarily mean the description is "off".
It just means that the premises you hold as a basis for expectation of a certain result didn't lead to the same outcome as the outcome/result I provided.
One of us is likely more correct than the other. But we are inherently biased towards the belief that we are correct and the other is wrong.
All i was arguing for is the use of knowledge for moral means. To combat the abuse of knowledge for immoral means. I don't see how this can be "off" but wait patiently for your rebuttal as to why this is not the case.
It's off the topic of human operation I was proposing in the OP. The "break" I was referring to with the rest of nature. It wasn't necessarily about morality or a justification for A or B.
Look at the back-and-forth I was having with @green flag for more context of what I am looking for.
Am I still in the ball-park here?
If so I maintain what I said earlier. With questioning everything/curiosity (the break from a nature of "simply be")
We have constructed a society off radical reasoning instead.
My conclusions was that with a lack of the "simply be" we invariable replace it with "simply ought to be" - some form of principle for direction.
That principle must be both morally and rationally sound. Because reason without moral alone is not sound, nor is moral without a good foundational reasoning as its basis.
If we can't simply be we must define what we ought to be (an ideal state). And thus we construct ideologies unlike our animal counterparts.
What I was saying is that such an ideology woukd require knowledge (reason) and benevolence (ethics/moral imperative) to be workable, and both motions must satisfy one another, in essence be unioned.
"it's moral to reason and it's reasonable to be moral" thus concepts like "truth" must be the foundation of both reason and morality as it is an integral part of both.
Yes in the ball park.
Quoting Benj96
Ok. With you there...
Quoting Benj96
Ok, so here is where it kind of takes a left turn.
Quoting Benj96
I just don't know what else to say to this. I guess I can start with how much of our lives are motivated by a moral narrative versus other narratives? We are pretty contingent beings, so our narratives can vary, but it seems more-or-less circling around self-interested ideas such as accumulating goods and services for survival, comfort, and entertainment. One huge (and easily identifiable as an internalized meta-fiction) is "I have work to do!" to get work done one would sometimes not care to do. It becomes routine self-referentially justified with "I have work to do!" self-referentially justified with "I have work to do!", etc. etc.
Do you think that giving someone a deficit to overcome is immoral, bad, unjust, not right, etc?
Yes, it's my final name for my final resurrection.
Creating a child violates some of our intuitions of what we owe other people. Yes. But I also think it's disgusting the way we treat animals. And so on and so on.
I think we've evolved a tendency to 'secrete' orienting narratives, and it seems that we need such software to get along in the world.