If we are an accident, then what is the point?

[painretreat]

I dont think its always true... i would rather say one cant think without existing...



Well... maybe. Our consciousness is not our "self", our "i", so while we are bounded to be a percieving concsiousness, we still can leave our egos, our "i"s, and percieve them from outside with our pure consciousness.
And those who accomplish this learns that the sense of self is only another illusion, empty and void.[/QUOTE]

Coelho; Wow, that is heavy! Good thinking!:thumbsup:

[Reefer Rogue]

Only two things i would like to point...



I dont think its always true... i would rather say one cant think without existing...



Well... maybe. Our consciousness is not our "self", our "i", so while we are bounded to be a percieving concsiousness, we still can leave our egos, our "i"s, and percieve them from outside with our pure consciousness.
And those who accomplish this learns that the sense of self is only another illusion, empty and void.

Well, you can say that and be correct as i said what i said and was not incorrect. I know i exist because i am thinking.

I disagree that my sense of self is as you have described, even if i had that alleged knowledge. My point was that only non humans can have an objective view about humanity.

[Coelho]

I know i exist because i am thinking.

Well... i agree completly with it. But knowing you exist is not the same as just existing... and thats what i wished to point.

I disagree that my sense of self is as you have described, even if i had that alleged knowledge. My point was that only non humans can have an objective view about humanity.

You may be right... but i think differently. I strongly believe (from my own experiences) that we call our "self", our "i" is only a small part of our entire consciousness. For example, right now im looking to my computers screen. Im seeing it. And im aware that "i" am seeing it. But even if i were not aware that "i" were seeing it, still i would be seeing it.

The idea of an "i", of a self, is a thing we learn when children, from our parents and all older people, which help us to deal with the peoples world. But it is not a thing that is hardwired in our brains. Only the pure perception is. What i call "pure perception" is the ability to percieve the world without be constantly thinking "im seeing this, im hearing that, etc", the ability to just see, to just hear, without interpreting what we percieve, without fitting it into words, or concepts, or thoughts. It is a very unusual state of mind, but it can be accomplished by means of meditation, or by use of some psychedelics.

And like the idea of the self, almost all characters of "humanity" we people have are learned. When were children we learn what being a human is like, what we must do as humans, what we must feel as humans, how we must behave as humans, and so on. But they are not the only ways we can be. It is possible to think, to feel, and to behave in ways far different from the "standard" humans. But we are so used (or rather brainwashed) to be like humans that we dont even imagine we could be otherwise.

So, if a person can disentangle itself from the quirks of being human, it can actually percieve the human world as if viewed from outside. And im sure its what several mysticals, sages, and spiritual teachers did. They were able to see the human world from outside, and so they could delineate its strong and weak points, and give teachings to improve the human condition. And the fact they went outside the "normal" human scope would very well explain why their wisdom is frequently deep, far reaching, and sometimes thought as being "divinely inspirated". (Not that i dont believe in divine inspiration. But i think its not the only explanation)

BTW... If you ever had any experience with some stronger psychedelic, im sure you will understand what i meant with all this... :stoned:

[Reefer Rogue]

Okay, i get what you're saying more clearly now. We are always perceiving, whether we are aware or not, so long as we exist. I'd say that to gain a complete, absolute, objective view of oneself it must be made by someone other then yourself. However, i will concede that the imagination is a powerful tool at our disposal and thus could allow us to gain an alternative perspective on ourselves as well as humanity in general. As children we are raised and taught by the status quo, as we become our own rational, progressive beings we are more aware of the world around us a thus we always have the choice to reject these teachings in favour of autonomy.

[delusionsofNORMALity]

The point is, let's just forget that we choose to do it this way, step out of yourself a second - and think, why does anything matter if we all die anyway?

for the bee it is the good of the hive. for the wolf it is the hunt and the comforts of a well fed pack. for humanity it is the search for patterns and finding the point to existence. they are all valid reasons to live and they are all false. this is a journey to no particular destination, a pointless extravagance of creation which exists merely because it can. this is the universe expanding to explore every possibility and fill every niche before it too ends.

merely asking the question is point enough. expecting some universal answer is going a step too far. each creature derives meaning from its circumstances. that is the point. no grand design but the patterns we perceive. no meanings but the ones we invent. no journey's end because the path is the only important thing.

....people feel uneasy and annoyed when you mention something like this, because it goes against everything they know.

of course you'll annoy the animals if you keep on poking them like this. here we've gone and invested generations into inventing answers to the question and you come along and ask us to explain ourselves. we trot out the standard answers and find them lacking, so we have to begin all over again. we have to start sifting through the patterns, aligning them where we can and coming to some conclusion that will satisfy for a few moments more.

But if, it turns out there is no afterlife, what stops everything from being meaningless?

an afterlife never was the be all end all of existence, it was merely the point at which we stopped asking. it was a satisfactory conclusion that allowed us to start searching through patterns more relevant to survival.

[40oz]

I'd say that to gain a complete, absolute, objective view of oneself it must be made by someone other then yourself.

This is very true. How can you know anything at all about yourself if you have nobody to compare yourself to, to see what you're not? The mind works in a funny way, it requires to give itself an identity, so it can identify the world around it and its place in it. To keep a certain identity, the mind will choose to see what it wants to see, to prove this identity to itself.

This is why when you mess up or do something stupid or act mean you tell yourself "oh that wasn't really me, I was just angry" or "I would have caught the ball but the sun was in my eyes". Things that you do that do not agree with your self concept cause dissonance, which is the type of thinking i described above. This is why it is hard to rely on yourself to get a completely accurate idea of yourself.

[nacci11235]

Nihilism! Alright, so I was too lazy to read the whole thread, so someone might have said something similar to what I'm gonna say.

Assuming there is no God, i.e. no repercussions for our actions, then we should do whatever we feel like doing. The point is that there is no meaning. Experiencing life doesn't give it meaning. Under these assumptions, we should do whatever we think will gain us pleasure. For some, that means lightin' up every day. For others, it means trying to live as comfortably as possible. In order to do so, an individual would sacrifice certain aspects of their free will and enter a social contract with other people, thus forming a society. According to the social contract, members of society will help each other under the premise that they will be helped as well. Not necessarily meaning communism or anything. Take capitalism for example. A banker lends money to an entrepreneur under the assumption the the entrepreneur will pay him back with interest. They are offering each other a service, each helping each other live a more comfortable life style. Look at it as you will. I'm not sure all of this was coherently written, but I'm tired of writing and don't feel like reading back over it. So, yeah.

[nacci11235]

for the bee it is the good of the hive. for the wolf it is the hunt and the comforts of a well fed pack. for humanity it is the search for patterns and finding the point to existence. they are all valid reasons to live and they are all false. this is a journey to no particular destination, a pointless extravagance of creation which exists merely because it can. this is the universe expanding to explore every possibility and fill every niche before it too ends.

Postmodernism. The problem is that you and BathingApes are arguing with different semantics. BathingApes is looking for an unbiased, universal answer. You're providing an answer built around an individual's perceptions. The question amounts to whether or not there is some sort of universal standard by which significance is attached to life. Basically, if God doesn't exist, then do whatever you want. There is no meaning in life. What you do will be totally and completely pointless. So do whatever you want.

[Immolation]

I'd just like to see the Human Race Continue.Maybe one day we will defeat Death and Death will be an Option not an Inevitability.

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

IF we were an accident, the point would be to cope with the accident.