Posted: Dec 29, 2017 2:21 pm
DavidMcC wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote:Matthew Shute wrote:
If only you could have the final say on what's "worthy" around here, eh, SoS?I doubt that a selfless hive-consciousness is ever supposed to work like that, on paper at least. In practice, when it comes to humans, someone usually decides that the proles are less a hive and more a herd or a flock in need of a shepherd. Surreptitious, I guess borrowing from E. O. Wilson, points out: we're not ants, and whenever humans try to act like ants, it's not long before the cracks start to show in the veneer. Ants themselves might seem a relatively "selfless" bunch, an individual ant not counting for much on its own; but you might also reflect that, if there's a lack of self-identification among ants, this isn't accompanied any lack of brutal ant-conflict, so jamest's "rot" remains. What's the next ontological error, then? Nest identification?
You recently got through telling BWE that an unmet demand to delineate the boundaries of trees doesn't abolish trees: you can still identify a tree when you see one. But now you seem to think that jamest has addressed some profound error, or one that was worth addressing, since he's noticed that if you open someone's head you won't find a little homunculus in there, pulling levers. SoS's brain thinking about SoS's brain, and the way it is distinct from, say, jamest's brain: this will necessarily involve a bit of self-identification on the part of SoS's brain, will it not?
Good point. Though I'm trying to be nice here. That's what you get from yourself when you realize that your self is pretty much a fleeting category. Still, an actual thing nonetheless.
Selfless thinking comes to not clinging to your particular fleeting bag of memories and activities in an occurrent fashion. One of the fucked up things about being human is that we pretty much know how and roughly when all this is going to end. We can take a stance on what we are and what it is that is actually ending. Ending our lives is exactly equivalent to living our lives. Two sides of the same coin.
I have noticed a softening of my views and my actions resulting from an increasingly clear understanding of my place in the vast physical. Also noticed that I no longer give a fuck about dying.
So let's not get ridiculous about how this works. It's a stance and an exercise in daily internal narratives that seems to be making an improvement of some kind.
Speed, are you trying to imply that all you have is a "fleeting bag of memories"?
If so, please define "fleeting" in at least semi-quantitative terms, because it could imply that you don't have fully functional amygdalae.
Are you fearless?
'There may be other explanations for your poat, but the one I have mentioned above is as good as any.
My amygdalae are kind of like a bag of badly calibrated fire-alarms with unfortunately fresh batteries.
To make a measure of 'fleeting'; let's see.
My memories are not completely trustworthy for one. They tend to get edits on viewing. There's that.
Next they are untrustworthy in that they imply a fixed 'me'. Like a solid ship sailing through life. I attach the 'Michael' tag to the hull of the ship. But I just imagine this sort of thing. Not that it don't exist. Just like there are trees in the world there is a singular form called Michael that probabilistically hovers around a bag of proteins and blueprints for about one hundred years. 24463 days thus far.
Now if it makes me happy or at least content to cling to this labeling then fine. But if I project to a time when the bag will burst and I become unhappy then what we are saying here is then cast off the delusion of self.
It's not serious.