tsutanai
6th October 2007, 07:07 PM
Hello, Robert. I hope you will oblige me and answer my question. :)
My reasoning has led me to the following conclusions. Please tell me, if you can, which, if any of them, are incorrect according to your understanding of things:
1. There is in fact no such thing as free will, unless you take the phrase to refer to the ability to will something other than what God wills. What action one takes is a merely a function of the arrangement of matter and energy within one's physical brain and one's soul (if the soul exists) and the current stimuli/conditions to which the actor is being exposed.
2. What is termed 'love' is a merely a gladness - sometimes a very intense gladness - directed at someone or something, a gladness that derives from the knowledge that that being or thing in some way benefits you or may somehow be of aid to you should your life become straitened at some point in the future.
3. All of the things to which human beings attach the most importance, all the things which humans regard as being the most profound, mystical, magical, and spiritual are in the mean merely products of human competitive drives, products of the will to be better than others and to make their superiority known to others. What I have in mind here is art, music, poetry, philosophy, humour, etc... Sometimes these things are clearly sought and pursued for their own sake, but most of the time human achievements in any field relate more to will to climb the human hierarchical pyramid, as I call it, than to anything else. And isn't that sad? The very reason why people wish to climb this pyramid is that at the top one receives what evolutionary psychologists would call "the goodies" (i.e. more opportunities for procreation, right of first refusal of food, the power to direct events and be in control, and a feeling of safety and security knowing that when things get rough, your underlings will be their to bail you out.) So therefore, the things regarded as products of the soul and of the more meaningful, deep, and beautiful facets of one's being are really predicated on base and instinctual human lusts for empty material things.
4. The vast majority of human beliefs are falsehoods, which few ever come to recognize as such because people have a few very severe blindspots that hide from them the true subconscious motivations and reasons for their actions. They contrive all sorts of tortuous and overly-elaborate - and perfectly silly - explanations for their deeds. This is a Freudian idea. Much of his hypotheses have been utterly discredited but I believe that there remains a great deal of merit in this one. His belief, to put things more line with his wording, was that people are largely unaware of the real reasons for why they do what they do - the real reasons existing within the subconscious mind and not the conscious mind.
These realizations of mine have really had the effect of making life seem quite meaningless, boring, empty, and futile. I would like to discover that any one of them were false, but I am not hopeful in the least. I find myself wishing I didn't exist, whether in body or soul, because life just doesn't offer anything interesting or enjoyable to me. It's all very blah and meh and to me seems to be not much more than a disordered and chaotic, and purposeless series of acts and events.
Thank you very much for your time.
My reasoning has led me to the following conclusions. Please tell me, if you can, which, if any of them, are incorrect according to your understanding of things:
1. There is in fact no such thing as free will, unless you take the phrase to refer to the ability to will something other than what God wills. What action one takes is a merely a function of the arrangement of matter and energy within one's physical brain and one's soul (if the soul exists) and the current stimuli/conditions to which the actor is being exposed.
2. What is termed 'love' is a merely a gladness - sometimes a very intense gladness - directed at someone or something, a gladness that derives from the knowledge that that being or thing in some way benefits you or may somehow be of aid to you should your life become straitened at some point in the future.
3. All of the things to which human beings attach the most importance, all the things which humans regard as being the most profound, mystical, magical, and spiritual are in the mean merely products of human competitive drives, products of the will to be better than others and to make their superiority known to others. What I have in mind here is art, music, poetry, philosophy, humour, etc... Sometimes these things are clearly sought and pursued for their own sake, but most of the time human achievements in any field relate more to will to climb the human hierarchical pyramid, as I call it, than to anything else. And isn't that sad? The very reason why people wish to climb this pyramid is that at the top one receives what evolutionary psychologists would call "the goodies" (i.e. more opportunities for procreation, right of first refusal of food, the power to direct events and be in control, and a feeling of safety and security knowing that when things get rough, your underlings will be their to bail you out.) So therefore, the things regarded as products of the soul and of the more meaningful, deep, and beautiful facets of one's being are really predicated on base and instinctual human lusts for empty material things.
4. The vast majority of human beliefs are falsehoods, which few ever come to recognize as such because people have a few very severe blindspots that hide from them the true subconscious motivations and reasons for their actions. They contrive all sorts of tortuous and overly-elaborate - and perfectly silly - explanations for their deeds. This is a Freudian idea. Much of his hypotheses have been utterly discredited but I believe that there remains a great deal of merit in this one. His belief, to put things more line with his wording, was that people are largely unaware of the real reasons for why they do what they do - the real reasons existing within the subconscious mind and not the conscious mind.
These realizations of mine have really had the effect of making life seem quite meaningless, boring, empty, and futile. I would like to discover that any one of them were false, but I am not hopeful in the least. I find myself wishing I didn't exist, whether in body or soul, because life just doesn't offer anything interesting or enjoyable to me. It's all very blah and meh and to me seems to be not much more than a disordered and chaotic, and purposeless series of acts and events.
Thank you very much for your time.