The horror! The horror!

Before I read the rest of these replies, I would like to apologize for this topic. I was drunk when I wrote it.

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The first four commandments establish your allegience to the Biblical god, Jehovah and his book. If you get established into his precepts you will not abuse your child, your dog, your or anything of yours. Neither will you abuse or missuse anything of your neighbor's. You might eat your cow, but while it's living under your care, you will treat it humanely.

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Don't forget your slaves, buz.The Bible has rules about how much your slaves are worth and how you should treat them.

Sorry for the obnoxious tone of my OP.I share the following views: 1. the mind is physical; (2) morality is relative; and (3)we have no free will (I guess). I was assuming that a physical process couldn't have free will.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-17-2005 15:33 AM

You're right,Rrhain. Not a good topic--at least not the way I expressed it.

Maybe I can improve this topic and make it a little better than that crap I wrote in the OP. Here's a question that interests me, and hopefully somebody will have some thoughts on it.Does it bother you--anyone--that in a few short years you will cease to exist?It bothers the hell out of me.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-17-2005 16:48 AM

Hi Robinrohan,
I believe many here as well as myself have grappled with these existential questions for some time now. We have become desensitized to some degree. Just remember there was a infinite period that you did not exist, and shall come a time when you will not exist. You were not aware of the period that you did not exist, nor will you be aware of the time when you will not exist. So you are spending the time you do have worrying. Peace.

Hi Robin,Doesn't it - the fact that it bothers you so much - make your existence a whole lot more interesting?It does for me. If it didn't bother me, I might as well not exist.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

I guess I've gotten a little more "sensitized" lately. People I've known all my life are dropping like flies. Just one funeral after another. .Now here's a different view on the question (as usual with Para).I look up ahead and what do I see? I see the black hole, and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. Like the poet said--"nothing more terrible, nothing more true."I keep trying to figure it out--keep trying to find some reason I have existed--but of course the answer is, there is no reason.That's "interesting" all right--if that is the term.

Robin,Illness, old age, and death were the three facts of life that convinced Gautama Siddhartha that suffering was unavoidable and led him to abandoned his life as a prince and future monarch to see if there was a way out of suffering.Well, their are several solutions "the eat, drink, and be merry live for the moments pleasure", or one can choose to believe in a religion that promises that if you follow it one day you will be reborn into a life with no suffering.The Buddha's solution and others of his sort was to look into just what existence is, what we are, not think about it but to experience it in detail to see just what this suffering is and who suffers it.There are other choices, these are the three that come first to mind. I'd suggest it worth your while to at least skim a couple of introductory books on Buddhism as you might find something there you can relate to.lfen

Robin,It's not so much that we are bothered by the prospect of not existing that's interesting, but that we can be bothered about it in the first place; it's not that there is no point to our existence, but that we can contemplate there being no point to it.Stars exist, rocks exist, icebergs exist. But they are not flabbergasted that they do. We are, and the paradox of our existence is that our contemplating the total absurdness of our situation is what makes it absurd in the first place. It's a bit like being in a Charlie Kaufman film.If that isn't interesting, I don't know what is.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Ifen, what is that book by Bernedette somebody? You mentioned it a couple of times.

Well, yes, from a theoretical point of view, if we think about evolutionary brain-making, it's almost as though the process went one step too far. I think I read somewhere that consciousness (full human consciousness) is a "byproduct," by which it was suggested that we could very well have done without it. I don't know about that; I would think that consciousness would help you survive. But assuming for a moment that such an idea is accurate, the absurdity would be that consciousness is the only thing that makes life worth living, even though it also tells us that life is not "worth living," all this the result of a "byproduct."So, yeah, that's pretty interesting.

The experience of no-self : a contemplative journeyAuthor: Roberts, Bernadette, 1931-
Publisher, Date: Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York, c1993. - Edition: Rev. ed.
ISBN: 0791416941 (pbk. : alk. paper) - Description: 211 p. ; 21 cmABE: Robin,Bernadette even discusses her experience of the "horror" as part of her passage. lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 01-18-2005 13:22 AM

Ifen I just read the first 3 chapters of Jaynes' book. What he is saying is rather amazing. Consciousness developing that late!It reminded me of something else I read--I think it was in Augustine-in which the author was very surprised to find someone reading a book "to himself"--i.e., not outloud. Everybody read books outloud up til the 4th century!

Robin,Well, self consciousness is what I think he is talking about. Sentience , or primordial awareness which is what I call consciousness would have been prior.Jaynes work is highly speculative and I don't how to substatiate it. It's just he is so brilliant in his theories that I enjoy reading all the possibilities his mind generated that were definately outside the box. The idea that writing was initially a trigger for auditory hallucinating of the words is another of his amazing but how could you ever prove it ideas. Still, I loved that book and want to find time to reread it one of these days.lfen