Philosophical mental jerking
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I find the need to think about the big questions about life and the universe even if it amounts to nothing more than mental jerking. I don't believe in god, yet I do believe in answers and thoughts that are transcendent. I have the need to believe that there exists profound answers which could be unearthed; If only I or anyone could just think with the right angle or collection of ideas, inspirations and knowledge it could be unearthed. Life without this underlying effort would feel unbearably hollow and insignificant.
Perhaps I'm simply holding onto this belief to reject nihilism and romanticize life.
Difficulties of discussion
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have problems understanding people. In many situations I find myself on the receiving end of an explanation and I struggle to figure out the vaguest idea of what the other person means. It must be that the quality of the explanation and my receptiveness to it are simply not above the requirement to successfully communicate ideas.
This difficulty in communication leads to irritation and repetitions in unsuccessful explanations. This is more often the case when people come into a discussion with their minds set and they've aligned themselves to argue.
Argument is not the only form of meaningful discussion people can have. Exchange of knowledge and a mutual exploration of ideas and concepts is as productive if not more so.
Despite the difficulties I absolutely believe in the importance of talking about hard to grasp ideas and concepts. None of the big questions in life are going to be simple and easily communicated across, yet they are vitally important to think and talk about. Not bothering with talking about these hard to grasp and talk about concepts is just resigning yourself to a potential life of ignorance.
Free will
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recently I've found listening to Sam Harris podcasts very comforting while I jog. Perhaps it's the fact that I like listening to shooting sounds and voices, or that I easily lose myself in thought once engaged with intriguing with ideas, or something entirely different, but the bearability of the activity has definitely improved that last couple of times I went for a run.
The last podcast I listened to Sam briefly talked about free will and how once he fully realized it's lack of existence, he no longer thought the act of being angry at other people was sane.
At the time I just sort of accepted this statement, as I didn't disagree with any particular step, but it has stuck with me for a while and I find myself wondering about it, or at least I'm doing so right now. I want to spend some time to think of the full implications of what it means for free will to not exist and how I can change my behavior in light of this fact, to be more consistent with this understanding.
Free will doesn't exist because at the biological level physics governs the processes. At the level of thoughts, the thoughts that bubble out are uncontrollable, at least not directly and in any real way that is guaranteed to work, and people don't have control over the information available to them when making decisions.
How then is it possible to justify anger towards someone for their behavior when all of the elements that went into the decision making process was outside of their control?
No comments:
Post a Comment