You'll never get to Heaven with that attitude:

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by Hoatzin, Oct 1, 2008.

  1. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    OK, but that's just a question of nomenclature; if I'd said "an afterlife", rather than "the afterlife", that wouldn't jar with it, would it?

    I think, even if it was nothing like life here on Earth, people would still be asking "what happens next?" I mean, if someone told you that you'd have eternal life, would you believe them? Would you be so sure that you'd be able to make good use of it? At what point do you trust that you're immortal now enough to, say, ride a motorbike into a wall, just to check?

    I can imagine that people would be different in the sense of being detached from their body. But I can't imagine that people would be less cynical as a result of going to the/an afterlife.
     
  2. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    I have a feeling you are trying to draw out my own personal beliefs about this lol.

    Anyways, the afterlife implies some sort of eternal existence. The body and mind aren't eternal. So what's left is the soul. I think you are personifying the soul to be honest, and attributing all of these mundane characteristics to it, making it all too human.

    Being bored, being cynical, wondering, those are all expressions of the mind. The idea of an afterlife is to transcend the confines of the body and mind (and possibly even the soul), and to be at peace with your true nature.
     
  3. LanSLIde

    LanSLIde Member

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    I'm insinuating that "here" means not nearly as much as everyone takes it to mean. Time spent 'here' could be very advantageous to the true self, if the true self is realized during life, and the thoughts of the true self are allowed to flow, rather than the thoughts of the shell self.

    If a soul is affected by experiences of the "afterlife", then the afterlife is just that, a life-after-life, which means that it's not the last cycle of existence for the soul. If someone were lobotomized, would their soul still be intact? It really just comes down to your answer to that question.

    More of an inherited, natural response than a conditioned one, along the lines of "instinct". Evolutionary psychology isn't my specialty, but the mental response of 'boredom' to a stimuli is important in how someone's mind develops, from birth and onwards. If it weren't important to have, at least in the past, we wouldn't have it.


    Holodeck would be a fairly good comparison, sure. Maybe to settle your boredom you can go back down as someone else (a crack on reincarnation) :p. I'm sure that no mater how long you're around there's always something to be learned.

    You couldn't quite know for certain that every person you know at this moment isn't as fake as the proposed fake people of heaven. I wonder if someone would feel an obligation towards the fake people if they knew they were fake, though (as in, say, politely engaging in conversation with them). Think about life as a schizophrenic, for instance; they don't consider anything they sense as real in the way we do. If you want to try something hard, try to live as if the world and everyone in it weren't real.
    Isn't it funny how the most celebrated substances of man separate the mind from reality?
    'gree.
     
  4. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    I was always led to believe that the soul is some indivisible part of us that would endure physical and mental collapse. But if it's little more than a spark of life or a piece of data, I don't understand why anyone cares about it.

    I had always assumed that, in an afterlife, you would either have some residual self-image, or have to come up with a new one. I can accept that we could be different than we are now, but I can't see how that's appealing if we're going to be so different as to be unrecognisable, even to ourselves.

    I'd also argue, in a way that I'm sure The Enlightened Ones will find endearingly petty and youthful of me, that if I have to be so radically changed to fit into an eternal paradise, it's not really a paradise at all. Man's attempts to mold people into fitting an existing ideal have historically been met with disapproval, scorn, even violent revolution; why is God exempt?
     
  5. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    Yeah, I don't like this idea that's going around that our lives on this earth add nothing to the soul. I know that some Christians probably truly believe and accept that we are on Earth as a punishment. But why should anyone else believe it? Why would we spend 70+ years becoming the sum total and product of all our experiences on this earth, only to move on to a plane where not only does all that accumulated experience and change count for nothing, not only are we divested of it, but where apparently nothing will ever happen to make us change ever again?

    I don't know, is the answer. But no, I'd question this: why do we presume to imagine the last cycle of existence, with such certainty that we know why this one can't be it? It might be appealing to believe that, once we've gone through all the lives we lead, we'll gain absolute satisfaction before we enter the last one. But I can't think of any other reason to believe it. Where's the impetus to make the most of a life, if you're expecting to at some point end up in one that you don't need to experience?

    I used to want to make that most of this life because I expected no afterlife. I now believe that, afterlife or no, there's no reason not to make the most of it. But for someone who is absolutely sure that they'll live again, where's the sense of urgency?

    I don't know, I'm starting to imagine the afterlife as much like Groundhog Day, reliving your own life from square one, over and over again, until you have the wisdom to live it as you want to, and the perspective to appreciate it.

    Interesting. I wonder what function boredom serves too. What advantage do we gain as a result of not being able to repeat the same function, over and over again, without at least finding a way to perceive it differently?

    It might be that we can live in one moment, one image or one scene from our life. But as a musician, I know that the same thing repeated becomes different by virtue of being repeated. I don't think we could ever be satisfied with anything like this. This is why the idea that we will just be able to tolerate eternal paradise as souls, when we're so incapable of it as we are, confuses me. There'd always be at least some contingent who would want something more than what they've got, no matter what they have got.

    Actually, the hard part for me is living as if they are.

    Drink, TV, video games?

    In the 20th and 21st century, Man has ceased to make purely representational culture. We are now at a point where we can near-perfectly replicate anything we can imagine, on a screen anyway; once we are unlimited, it is interesting to see what we choose to imagine, of what realities we will become architects.

    In this light, eternal paradise seems like such a waste.
     
  6. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    It isn't an attempt to mold you a certain way, it's an attempt to get you to get to a state of self-inquiry and questioning.

    If you went to paradise like you are right now, it would obviously not be paradise, as you have pointed out. Our world is plagued with strife and conflict, but I think it has been this way for so long that instead of questioning why we behave and react to certain things the way we do, we just accept it as the way things are.

    The way you are now, you are not at peace with yourself. What most people don't realize is that 99% of their suffereing originates from within their own selves. This is what needs to be worked on, not the external realm, but the internal one.
     
  7. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    Well, couldn't time here be advantageous to the true self, even if the true self is NOT realized?

    I don't think every soul comes here just to realize itself. We are obviously here for the experience, and that may include many things, enlightenment not necessarly being one of them.

    Maybe a soul incarnates here to be married, to have a child, to be a doctor, and nothing more.
     
  8. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    I think we can attain that in our current state though. And I find it hard to imagine that our universe's god would let us off figuring out how to do that just to get us into paradise.

    I think you misunderstand me. I don't consider conflict inherently bad. I think people like it. I think we have conflict because people like it, or at least prefer it to having to agree all the time.

    I think paradise probably is unattainable. But then, most afterlife myths imagine the afterlife as somewhat meritocratic. People do good things and go to a good place, they do bad things and go to a bad place, right? Now, I'm not sure I believe that; I find it far easier to imagine a single afterlife than two dependent on some divine judgment.

    That's my thinking, anyway. If there is an afterlife, it needn't be like this one, but it needn't be paradise either. As I understand it, an afterlife is simply a life after death; possibly eternal, but by no means perfect. Suppose, instead of that lobotomy, we simply all start again as equals? Divested of the things that caused our strife and conflict in the living world, we might not be in paradise, but we might at least be able to make a decent go at happiness, rather than have that ruled by a million years of history.

    I don't buy this. I know it's very fashionable in the West as an explanation for why we're so unable to gain the satisfaction that we believe we should from a consumerist lifestyle. I also believe that those who sell us that lifestyle would rather we blamed ourselves for what they've done to our culture - atomisation, materialism, deterioration of community, etc. - than point the finger at them.

    We in the West don't suffer much, not really. But elsewhere, people do suffer. Tell a guy whose had his legs blown off in Baghdad that his suffering comes from himself! An extreme example, perhaps. But I hope it illustrates the smokescreen. If we are upset by the conditions of our life, is it because we need to learn to live with it, or because we need to take control of it? Doesn't someone in a culture that has had its sense of cohesion and ownership eroded by crass corporate influences not have anything outside his own head to complain about? Or should he adjust himself until he doesn't feel the problem anymore?

    I don't believe that we're incapable of beat ourselves up over stupid things. I do believe that there is a lot for us to gain from examination of humans. But I'm somewhat with Žižek in believing that self-examination has questionable value. We don't see ourselves the way we are, in any way.
     
  9. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    Or maybe our experience here will serve us in a next life? Even if it's different, how different could it be?

    As a thought: when you want a kid to learn to ride a bike, you give them a trike, then stabilisers, then finally a proper bike. The fact that this life might seem limiting does not mean that what will follow will be radically different; it could be that we simply gain more and more freedom with each life.

    Those who believe in reincarnation presumably believe that the soul does not remember their previous incarnation (otherwise there'd be a lot less debate about it), but that we gain something from each incarnation of which we are not normally conscious.

    With that in mind, we could have lived many, identical lives before this one, subconsciously gaining from each life a little more insight into how to make the world a little better. Of course, this is a very solipsistic idea, and it's more plausible that we'd have lived as different people in those lives.
     
  10. LanSLIde

    LanSLIde Member

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    Yes, I mean more along the lines of acting according to the true self, etc, which could certainly happen without "realizing" it. Everything you do involves the true self, often through the intermediary of the shell self/ego. I'm sure you at least agree that living as the true self would be advantageous to the soul

    I'm not claiming that interaction with others, say, raising your kids, doesn't help anyone; I was going to ask, though, just what the soul would be bringing back with it, as memories surely won't be coming along. Then I realized that such a thought involved thinking of the soul after death as if it were still an individual, even an individual soul. I'm not sure if a soul would be individual after death.
     
  11. Thecookiemonster

    Thecookiemonster Member

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    Man created the idea of heaven and hell. Imagine by John Lennon pretty much sums up how we could have heaven on earth..Now imagine that with marijuana shrooms and lsd...Now imagine years in the future, while on these, in a space ship at the center of the galaxy with everyone you know..dude, this is heaven
     
  12. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    Debatable. I'm not sure what type of person it is that thrives on conflict. It seems the modern day, average American thrives on it when it doesn't concern them, or if it does concern them, they enjoy it as long as they are "winning".


    Then maybe it really is about the journey rather than the destination? That's my understanding of it.



    Is pointing the finger and blaming someone else really a cure for suffering? Or does one still suffer while dragging another along with them?

    People suffer in the West, albeit differently than more remote, violent places. Just take a look around. How many people do you think are honestly 100% content with their lives, and will remain that way until they die? At any rate, I was more referring to mental suffering. While your example displays an extreme level of physical suffering, I feel like I have to be an ass and say that even pain originates from within us. :D

    I'm not advocating a roll over and die approach to life here. Of course people can wrong us, but I think that even the end result of those situations are rarely handled well, even by the victim. We perpetuate it and react to things in the worst possible way sometimes. All of your examples were somewhat specific, and what I was getting at was the cause of suffering, everyone's suffering, suffering in general.

    It's kind of like the old Plato writing, where Socrates asks Meno what virtue is, and Meno gives him the virture of a man, the virtue of a woman, the virtue of a child, the virtue of a politician, and so on. Socrates goes on to jokingly remark "I seem to be in great luck, Meno; while I am looking for one virtue, I have found you to have a whole swarm of them!"

    What I'm getting at, is that in any and all cases of suffering, there must be some fundamental similarity. Discover and resolve this, and you will suffer no more.
     
  13. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    No no no, you're thinking too big. I don't mean war or genocide. I mean the fact that you and a friend might disagree about something and that that would make your conversations more interesting than if you agreed on everything.

    If you thought I was talking about conflict like in Gaza all this time then this thread must've been bloody confusing until now.


    I think both can be important. If the destination was of no importance, you wouldn't go on the journey in the first place. Unless you were, like, Monkey, or something.


    I don't think it always has to be about suffering. If you get mugged, and you feel it was unjust, and that sense of injustice angers you, it doesn't do any good not to blame those who mugged you. Who else's fault would it be?

    I just don't understand why it's so hard for anyone on this forum to get that, no, actually, sometimes people have problems that don't just stem them from projecting or whatever. Sometimes, someone does something to you, with the specific intent to causing you to suffer. I just don't see how it's healthy to believe that that's somehow a problem coming from within you.


    Not many, but calling that "suffering" is ridiculous. Life is greatest with a balance of happiness and contentment, essentially the joy of adventure and the joy of stability. Either one, without the other, can be hard to bear.

    I understand, I think, that you're referring to the suffering of humanity as a whole coming from within humanity as a whole. The problem is that we, as individuals, are limited in our ability to do anything about that. We can try not to be shitty to each other, and we can hope that that does some good. But the point is, if someone is actively making you suffer, it seems like it would be small comfort to think that it's just a problem of humanity as a whole that comes from within; it wouldn't stop your suffering, and unless everyone else is suffering as well, it's unlikely to get it changed.

    I just feel like this whole "all suffering comes from within" philosophy was dreamed up by people whose problems really do all come from within. Frickin' baby boomers.


    I suppose. But then, I also think Socrates is wrong. Meno's actually proposing a more modern idea, that virtue is relative to one's circumstances. So, for example, the virtue of a rich man might be different from a poor man's; the same act would have different value. One person can give to charity and it be a genuinely touching sacrifice. Another can give the same amount, even the same proportion, of their wealth to a charity, and yet it still be seen as a cynical exercise.

    Unless I'm miles off. Whenever I hear an anecdote about how a famous philosopher takes the piss out of one of his students, I always want him to be wrong. Maybe it's because I've been a student. But the ancient Greeks seemed to be all about coming up with stripped-down, essential ideas, regardless of how much that process divorced the idea from its application.

    See, I don't think conflict causes suffering. I really don't. Conflict is healthy. Callousness within conflict causes suffering. If someone annoys me deliberately, it might piss me off while they're doing it, but it won't do lasting damage. If someone annoys me by simply not caring, that's the sort of thing that will put you out for the rest of the day.

    It's an idea, anyway.

    As for the fundamental similarity, I know that most people have basically the same needs. But again, it comes down to whether someone respects your needs, whether they be from the top of the pyramid, or the very bottom.

    [​IMG]

    But again, I don't consider conflict to be suffering. It may cause suffering, but it is not suffering itself.
     
  14. kaminoishiki

    kaminoishiki Member

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    Separation leads to suffering.
     
  15. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    Hmm I dunno. I don't think interest is contingent on agreement/disagreement. Either way could be pleasurable.




    This I really do disagree with though. A journey doesn't need a destination. People do things all the time just for the raw experience of it.




    It also doesn't do any good to blame those who mugged you. What will blame do for you? Nothing, really. It isn't going to somehow reverse your mugging. And even the modern day concept of "justice" is sort of sadistic when you think about it. We want to see others suffer for trespasses against us, but it doesn't really resolve the initial trespass. An eye for an eye and the world goes blind.



    Suffering is a lot of things. But whether you are talking about joy of adventure or joy of stability, there is still the presence of "joy" in both cases. ;)


    The problem is that we have an unsettling tendancy to pass on suffering when we receive it. Someone wrongs us, we feel some sort of negative emotion about it, and we usually pass that on to someone else, in some way, shape, or form. The idea is to not be a suffering person in the first place, and the buck stops with you.


    This stuff has been around far longer than the baby boomers, ya know. :D




    Of course different expressions of virtue exist, but what is virtue, fundamentally? In any and all cases of the expression of "virtue" there is some unifying theme. The form or essence of virtue, or "true" virtue.

    I'll quote Socrates again - "Even if they are many and various, all of them have one and the same form which makes them virtues, and it is right to look to this when one is asked to make clear what virtue is."

    This is what they were concerned with defining (which they never quite got around to doing btw), and just as you can talk about virtue in these terms, you can also talk about suffering.

    Think about it in terms of something concrete. If we were to talk about flowers, we could talk about roses, tulips, daisies, all sorts of flowers. But yet, they still all remain flowers. They are each in possesion of qualities or attributes that is objectively agreed to make them flowers.

    Of course, defining things on these terms is much easier to do with concrete examples, and nearly impossible with abstract concepts such as virtue.


    Wouldn't all conflict by nature have some sort of degree of callousness attached?


    It's difficult to define any sort of abstract ideal or concept, by their very nature. They sort of defy rigidness and words. But as kaminoishiki points out, suffering seems to ultimately be caused by the illusion of seperative existence.
     
  16. snake_grass

    snake_grass Senior Member

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  17. snake_grass

    snake_grass Senior Member

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    i had a dream once about a new world that you go to and there is a house built the way you want it and in this house there is everything that your mind could ever want

    and if you didnt have what you want and some other place you want to be or someone you might cosider of visiting there was this guy always walking around giving people what they want and taking them where they want to be
     
  18. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    If there's no conflict, there's no achievement. At least, that's true of the real world. It's at least a wisdom of some kind that getting what you want all the time makes you dissatisfied, "sleep of the just", "the best meal is the one you cook yourself", and so on. There's not many maxims about how not trying very hard is the key to happiness.

    Maybe, but then, by this logic, being a drifter would be the most rewarding lifestyle there is.

    And very often, the experience is the goal; people will go in expecting one experience, and very often come away with something totally different, and richer for not getting exactly what they expect.





    I see what you're saying, but then, blame is an internal problem. Perhaps I'm using the wrong word, since it implies that someone is hanging onto anger and such. But nevertheless, one doesn't have to be expecting one's suffering to be undone to be aware of who is responsible. If someone commits a crime against you which you did not provoke, I don't think it does one any good to accept it as "one of those things" - not because it isn't, but because I don't believe anyone could not be angry. As a very wise man said "Anger's alright, bitterness no". Long-term anger at things you can't control does you know good, but denial of one's gut reactions doesn't do anyone any good either; in fact, it's often what causes bitterness!





    I know. Think of it as a balanced diet. While many foods are good for us, eating one to the exclusion of the other is invariably bad. I think the only way to avoid boredom or desensitisation is a balance of happiness from excitement and contentment from stability.




    I really think that's just an awful idea. If someone is causing you to suffer, the chances are they're doing it to others. Am I such an unenlightened jerk for thinking that the answer to hatred and spite is meekness and indifference?

    I mean, apart from anything else, they say that many violent situations can be avoided by matching aggression, rather than trying to avoid the conflict. Don't believe me? Try co-operating with a mugging. I'd say the odds are fifty-fifty (based on my own experience, anyway) that you'll be a victim of violence for not showing the person the respect they think they deserve.


    That's as maybe, but it's definitely gained a serious resurgence in the West since people's lifestyles became a lot more affluent and our populations became more atomised.


    If you're talking about what I think you are, a hell of a lot of thinkers since Socrates have argued that these unifying essences don't exist at all, or at best only exist by coincidence.


    I don't think so, no. People are different, people have perfectly legitimate reasons to be in conflict with one another, and one can be in conflict with another without being callous.

    There are countless small conflicts throughout life. Pretty much every meaningful exchange has some kind of "micro-conflict" at its heart. When you go to buy something at a shop, the conflict is that the shopkeeper has something, and you want it. Through the exchange of money, you resolve the conflict. If the shopkeeper ignores you, or refuses to sell you the item, or if you steal the item from the shopkeeper or are rude to him, nothing is resolved. In this equation, callousness is drawing out a conflict.

    I think callousness is what exacerbates conflict to the point of bitterness, violence, etc. Two people arguing passionately about something may well become very passionate. But they will likely only become bitter rivals, and take out their aggression on others, if they are forced to "suffer" - constrained from exercising their ideological conflicts by circumstance, by other influences, etc.

    I don't know, I just know that, if a debate ends prematurely, it's frustrating. If it's allowed to run its course, it can be satisfying and rewarding.

    We usually define things by what they aren't, rather than what they are. Even when we are consciously describing, say, the colour of something, we are relying on the listener knowing, say, "Red" as "not Green", "not Blue" an so on. With abstract concepts, this is even more important, because we don't have points of reference. How do you describe "value"? We all know what value is, somehow, but describing it is near impossible.

    My personal view is that it disadvantages us to try and simplify these things. The same way as I dislike Socrates and co's obsession with establishing the essence of things (and their cackhanded way of going about it apparently by trial and error; maybe I'm just a product of the 20th century but I don't understand how structuralism isn't just glaringly obvious), I feel that there is an annoying tendency in the 21st century for people to filter the world through their own beliefs, rather than structuring their beliefs around the world. This is surely true of the afterlife. We have absolutely no means to form any kind of belief about the afterlife, yet we seem to have been able to accumulate not only ideas, but damn-near-certainties about it. How can that happen? I'm aware that I'm only speculating - I'm getting the sense that I might be alone in this. (Not specifically directed at you, by the way).
     
  19. snake_grass

    snake_grass Senior Member

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    lol

    know what you hate then rewind back to what made you hate and try to figure away over it
     
  20. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    Yeah. I'm not convinced that it does much good though; you usually end up thinking about how you could've reacted differently and regretting it. I've mostly found that I regretted missed opportunities more often than taken ones.
     

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