Philosophy of Therapy: A quick Poll
Looking back, I’ve noticed that during my studies of philosophy, ethics and logic I have experienced some of the most profound mental health improvements. More so than when I studied Psychology.
So I wanted to get other people’s perspectives on this. At whatever level of study.
So I wanted to get other people’s perspectives on this. At whatever level of study.
Comments (91)
IF we keep doing the same things that are driving us crazy, then we will stay crazy. Ceasing crazy-making behavior will (usually) help a great deal. That assumes, of course, that one can change. If raising one's 6 children on a poverty budget is driving one crazy, one might have to stick with it anyway. Or, if the only job one can find is bad for mental health, one might have to stay on the job. [During WWII soldiers in Europe deserted at a fairly high rte -- usually returning to their units later. Soldiers in the Pacific almost never deserted. Did the Pacific Theater soldiers like being in battle? Probably not. But in a war fought on isolated islands in a big ocean, there was no way to desert.]
That's my case. Other people might have knotty problems that weigh heavily on their minds, for which clarity of thought might be extremely helpful and bring relief. In that sort of situation, philosophy could be good therapy. If one is troubled by one's history of bad actions, an study of ethics might prove very helpful.
Or troubles by the history of bad actions inflicted upon them.
Sometimes people [i]are out to get us[/I] and the only thing we can do is avoid them or defend ourselves. This may be much easier said than done. Harassers can be devious devils.
I wouldn't hazard a guess about the percentages of internal vs. external stressors. In many cases, it's both. We have pictures of what a perfect life ought to be. Other people fail to cooperate in supporting our picture of the perfect life. Other people in the apartment building make too much noise. The neighbor's dogs bark all the time. There is too much traffic in the street. On and on. We keep identifying new guilty parties who are ruining our perfect life. Alternatively, we could try and accept that we live in a very unsatisfactory, noisy, dog-barking, trafficed, world. (Easier said than done.).
I can testify to having made my own life more difficult than it needed to be because I didn't follow my own good advice.
Poor people, for instance, suffer from a higher rate of both physical and mental diseases because of the low quality of their surrounding environment. Bad air, maybe lead in the paint on the windows (or in the water), low grade housing, poverty, food deserts, crime, violence, crappy schools, and so forth.
I understand the fact that billions of people live with what I perceive as an Illusion or fairy tale. I can understand how the naked, stark, no-God version is just too harsh for so many. If it requires some specific kind of emotional maturity to assert one's atheism, like a putting away of childish things, I don't count it for a whole lot on the maturity scale-- I count patience and kindness with others extremely high on the emotional scale.
Atheism doesn't diminish the pleasure I experience reading and studying the Torah etc. I'd say my bottom line is to read philosophy psychoanalytically and through Marx's definition of ideology. I always like to try to understand the material base of one's professed beliefs, for therein I find the truth. Expose the ideology. Deconstruct.
One example: My decades of studying and teaching about Spanish American history, culture and literature (using a Marxist-psychoanalytic perspective) revealed the entire dirty underbelly of the conquest of the New World--which may come as no surprise to anyone on this forum, but when I taught a course on Colonial prose texts including chronicles, letters, diaries, royal proclamations, papal dispositions, indigenous versions of the conquest, laws regarding treatment of indigenous and African slaves, etc. The deals the Pope was making with Portugal and Spain, dividing up the new continent--and all of this so the Catholic church could save souls and convert savages. It was pure greed and imperialistic fanaticism that whipped Ferdinand and Isabel into a frenzy, and if you've ever read Cristóbal Colón's diary, his sociopathic view of the indigenous people (how easily they can be subjugated and expolited by the king) is chilling.
And to read about what Pizarro's men did a few decades later in the region that became Perú: reminiscent of the war atrocities we see sprinkeled throughout history. So the indigenous people wouold tell them where the gold was. Greed, blood-lust and drive for power are always woven throughout the dominant group's economic base. Imperialism: what a pretty word for genocide/enslavement/occupation.
So in conclusion, one can easily see that the notion of a loving God and saving souls had nothing to do with the genuine enterprise. Anyone who believes that ideology is a a dangerous fool.
More recently, I've been having the worst mental health catastrophe of my life, existential horror like I simply could not comprehend before it afflicted me, and for the nearly a year I've been suffering through it and failing to philosophize my way out of it, I began to think that it had proven the abject failure of all philosophy and I even tried (with no success) to abandon my principles and run to religion just to escape the emotional suffering, but as of this weekend I feel like I have not only philosophized my way out of that problem at long last, but also once again discovered the most profound missing pieces of my philosophical system in the process.
On a related note, the Buddha is sometimes said to be 'the supreme physician' and his teaching said to comprise 'the greatest medicine'.
Exercising the brain is generally good for the brain right? I would say that philosophical discussions allow readymade branches into other areas of thought - meaning interest in ethics attaches to aesthetics, politics to economics, nihilism to hedonism, etc.,. Other subject areas like sciences and arts do this too, but they are pursuits I find to be less accessible without practical knowledge of methodology (which is another area for philosophical discussion).
I particularly find the term ‘philosophy’ to be an item universal with a universal though, so I can easily understand people swerving away from the question.
Words based upon knowledge of all thought and belief, so as to be able to know which aspects of human thought and belief are unique to humans and which are not. Being anthropomorphic is not equivalent to being human. It's what's going on when we mistakenly attribute characteristics unique to humans to things other than humans.
Philosophy has been quite helpful in that arena.
I don't think there have been any negative effects from philosophy in my life per se. The unexamined life is not worth living, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, etc etc.
But there are social... consequences. It can feel a little isolating every now and then to have thoughts or want to have conversations you can't share with everyone, because they just don't get it/have zero interest. But then you find like-minded people and surround yourself with curious people, and it ain't so bad after all.
It positively affected my critical thinking/reasoning abilities in general, but I wouldn't say that amounted to any impact on my mental health.
It might be harder to say since (a) I've never had any significant mental health problems aside from some problems with anxiety at one point--I was getting panic attacks which seemed to be related to being hypochondriacal, although hypochondria might have been kind of ad hoc to explain the panic attacks; it wound up seeming to be more due to a lifestyle change at the time, or they could have been drug precipitated--I was doing a lot of experimentation at that time (philosophy didn't do anything to help with that--the panic attacks just gradually lessened/went away after about a year), and (b) I first started reading a ton of philosophy when I was 11 years old.
I'd have to say that all aspects of human thought and belief are unique to humans: what are you suggesting???
Giving the universe anthropomorphic characteristics is what I was referring to.
Evolutionary theory suggests otherwise.
https://apple.news/Ayy3RPwHkT4SyIt0EBG4gYw
:up:
[quote=Grre]
https://apple.news/Ayy3RPwHkT4SyIt0EBG4gYw [/quote]
Thanks.
I'm a cheerful pessimist (i.e. sarcastic absurdist) - philosophizing has helped me for decades to grind & polish daily the lense(s) through which I've made some sense of The Nonsense (& fuckery) of my life, the universe and everything. I can't imagine 'intellectual hygiene' not having helped to some degree maintain my mental health and fitness. So far. :scream:
I don't know what you mean by "project onto the universe"?
I wanted to re-approach this.
It's not fait accompli. It's not inevitable. It could be a necessary(unavoidable) foregone logical conclusion, but that assumes precisely what's in question, and thus needs adequately argued for. I'm strongly doubting - outright denying - that all human terminological description misattributes uniquely human characteristics to that which is not human.
Not all description is anthropomorphic.
I know of no way to avoid sounding pretentious should the reader chose such an interpretation, but I'm hopeful that this lands gently enough despite the risk...
You seem to be charging yourself with projecting humanity onto things not human. I wonder why?
I mean, I know it doesn't have to be that way, and based upon what you did say, I would strongly disagree. I'm suggesting that perhaps you're being a little too hard on yourself. If you think that anthropomorphism is inevitable, then I want to ask if you remember the source of that particular belief?
I mean, where did you get that idea? Seriously. I'm not being rhetorical at all here. Rather, I'm saying that that source gave you misleading ideas. Moreover, you most certainly do not have to keep on believing those things.
Calling the universe "beautiful" does not always count as being completely anthropomorphic. I mean, when the speaker knows that they are simply stating their own personal tastes, then they presumably would also know that that is not the same as saying that the universe is inherently, intrinsically, or otherwise beautiful in and of itself, independently of all human thought and belief. The former(knowing that statement's an expression of one's personal taste) is not a case of misattributing uniquely human characteristics to that which is not human. The latter(claiming that beauty - somehow - exists within beautiful things prior to all humans) does exactly that.
A more poetic rendering of the same sentiment could be:One who knows that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder ought also know that beauty cannot possibly be both, always in the eye of a beholder and exist prior to beholders.
:smile:
Gotta be some eyes around somewhere in order for anything to be in them. So, with all that in mind... We can believe that the universe is beautiful, without believing that beauty is inherent to things we call beautiful.
Philosophy helped me tremendously in that I've developed a much more reliable criterion for critically examining all the different narratives. In addition, it's also helped me to better navigate my own personal relationships, you know, the daily interactions we all have(I presume).
An earlier poster remarked about the lack of popular appeal. I would agree. That's a large part of why I'm very fond of putting things as simply and concisely as possible, whenever possible, assuming we're talking about an adequate explanation. "God did it" does not work for me(for example).
The other topic mentioned intelligent design, which is an irritating term for me. Or perhaps it was someone referring to the "order" of the universe that got me thinking of how humans project their own types of perceptions (order vs chaos) onto the universe..
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my sweeping generalization. I try to avoid anthropomorphizing the cosmos; I'm even trying to stop thinking of Mother Nature as "feminine." I'm in the process of paring down my atheism to bare bones (forgive the anthropomorphism)--stripped of any kind of language that would make it more warm and fuzzy, so to speak. So a term like intelligent design rubs me the wrong way these days. I perceive the known universe as operating according to a series of predictable (up or down to a point, with some exceptions, like the mechanics of liquids) "laws" we call physics; and I conclude that if we ever achieve the ability to know what is now unknown and it did not follow the "laws" of physics, that we'd find another discourse with which to explain it to ourselves.
Well said. I think of dark laughter, the infinity of consciousness, a gleam in the eye. It comes and goes. And it's darkly ironic, pessimistic. 'It' enjoys playing with terrible things. Somehow nonsense and fuckery work as a background, as raw material.
I’ll open up a discussion soon on Optimism vs Pessimism using the question “how we should react to climate change?” as a medium for the overall debate between Optimism and Pessimism.
Sounds good! I also answer your OP a little more. Philosophy has mostly been good for me, but it's led me down some dangerous paths. Nietzsche was a dangerous brew for me in my 20s. I've read many thinkers, but I tend to love the 'evil' thinkers. I don't mean they were bad people but that took delight in describing what unsettling about existence. They offered the red pill. Like the chess player Tal.
[quote=Wiki]
Widely regarded as a creative genius and one of the best attacking players of all time, Tal played in a daring, combinatorial style.[2][3] His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability. It has been said that “Every game for him was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem".[4] He was often called "Misha", a diminutive for Mikhail, and "The magician from Riga".
...
Tal was the archetype of the attacking player, developing an extremely powerful and imaginative style of play. His approach over the board was very pragmatic—in that respect, he is one of the heirs of ex-world champion Emanuel Lasker. He often sacrificed material in search of the initiative, which is defined by the ability to make threats to which the opponent must respond. With such intuitive sacrifices, he created vast complications, and many masters found it impossible to solve all the problems he created over the board, though deeper post-game analysis found flaws in some of his conceptions.
[/quote]
He created vast complications! That's the red pill, and it's addictive. Philosophy is a celebration of the infinity of consciousness, and consciousness is self-mutilating, armed always against what it was in the name of what it might be.
Sounds like me a little haha I’m an aggressive player too although I’m probably nowhere near this guys level. I’ve won 52% of all 121 of my recorded matches. That’s a vast improvement to when I started recording though. :)
I got into 1 minute games on various websites. It was a blast, but it made me a worse player. I just couldn't resist turning it into art, making mad sacrifices, playing on the time/panic element.
Another great game is Stratego, which is best modified so that each player starts with maybe 10 pieces (from some varying menu). This adds the element of bluff, and all that space makes the scouts especially important.
I've looked into Shogi. Fascinating! I've actually invented quite a few games, some of them with psychedelic rules. One of these days (so I tell myself), I'll make an app or at least put the ideas out there.
Doing excessive pill swallowing of anything is bad for my mental health. Philosophy, logic I need moderation, because yes both can induce stress to some degree if I don't take breaks. Math follows similar. But at the same time, I can't imagine it's good for my 'head' health when I do more than 2 hours of it, because I start developing headaches (LOL). I can't say I know ANYONE that is substantially mentally healthy under the age of 30 that does nothing but take red pills - so I think psychology must be considered along side philosophy - especially for newbies and the younger generation (or for anyone..) that are not skilled in handling such truths and managing copes.
I will say this, Ethics greatly improves my mental health and makes me feel wonderful. My favorite branch of philosophy is ethics, if I had to name anything, for this reason.
I study law, and I love the ethics and theatrical portion. I love Nussbaum's take on Philosophy and Law for that reason. Yes, because WITHOUT this consideration law can cause great depression in all things really, and brain melt when you so detached and not attending to your emotional health - without moderation anything has the tendency to depress you very quickly unless you practice stoicism and such. I do not practice stoicism in any degree, so you can imagine shit effects me in many ways.
I will say this, talking/discussing philosophy with others I find very stressful. I find this forum stressful as hell. Half of it is just folks throwing bad medicine laced with nonsense and cheap red paint at others, that NO ONE is opening their mouth OR minds for.
Why are you here then? (That's not meant to be snide, I sincerely don't understand why you'd hang around a place on the internet that stresses you out).
I suppose the same could be said (about) Sisyphus and her stone ...
I would not know what philosophy would even look like if it wasn't continually being applied to everyday real life events.
What else could test it?
That's some of what I mean by the red pill --an exposure to voices, voices, voices. And what these voices talk about is the other voices. Interpretations of interpretations of interpretations...
'The spirit is a stomach.' The ability to digest the overwhelming plurality of dissonant voices does seem to depend on something solid, something not in doubt. Or something that only changes slowly. Sudden revolutions are dangerous. A gradual drift is maybe safer and more common.
I'll add a Nietzsche quote here that gets at this.
[quote=Nietzsche]
That imperious something which is popularly called "the spirit," wishes to be master internally and externally, and to feel itself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling will. Its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of the "outside world." Its object thereby is the incorporation of new "experiences," the assortment of new things in the old arrangements—in short, growth; or more properly, the FEELING of growth, the feeling of increased power—is its object. This same will has at its service an apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power, its "digestive power," to speak figuratively (and in fact "the spirit" resembles a stomach more than anything else). Here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is NOT so and so, but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified—an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them—the constant pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts that it is best protected and concealed!—COUNTER TO this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for every outside is a cloak—there operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and INSISTS on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe words. He will say: "There is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit": let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our "extravagant honesty" were talked about, whispered about, and glorified—we free, VERY free spirits—and some day perhaps SUCH will actually be our—posthumous glory! Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time until then—we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is something in them that makes one's heart swell with pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text HOMO NATURA must again be recognized.
[/quote]
Sisyphus doesn't have a choice. I doubt Swan is trapped here in his own personal afterlife unable to die because he's already dead yet unable to truly live because he's forced to do nothing but read our philosophizing all day every day.
Philosophers often use thought experiments to test their intuitions, replete with fantasies such as zombies and trolleys.
Yeah. I know.
Many philosophers posit impossible scenarios. Brains in vats are dead. There is never going to be a time where I sit and count people as a means to determine which ones I should push into the oncoming trolley, simply because some 'philosopher' type says I have to do it...
Whatever...
Yes indeed. To me that's how ideas are tested, and that's why book learning alone isn't worth much. Life evaluates the books as the books inspire life with new possibilities.
What's it to you..? Maybe ask yourself that. You are supposed to be ignoring me, as claimed in another thread.
Get a room.
All these voices are like an addictive drug. I get stressed in a pleasant way, so my problem is that I tend to find would I should be doing boring. My mind gets revved up. I keep thinking philosophy, philosophy, philosophy.
What, so you can peak through the curtains like the voyeur you obviously are..?
Stop calling me a dude. I'm plenty female.
That must be it.
:smirk:
I welcome disputation and “red pills”. They’re challenging, but act as a grindstone and thickener of the skin. If one never hears another opinion he makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it (paraphrasing Thomas Paine).
Well put. Thomas Paine. One of my all time favorites when it somes to consifering when to decide that the government has made life worse than it would be without it.
:smile:
I sometimes get the feeling that you're a sheep in wolf's clothing.
I think my gist may come from my experience with people that take high-doses of red-pill(s) have a high susceptibility to get dogmatic (and lower the receptivity of 'blue pillers' so to speak. crossing over) because it can be easily lost the examination of such voices & readily understanding what these truths mean & filtering through them in a useful fashion. I know for myself, my biggest issue is filtering through the 'right' red pills, such as taking large scale numbers and applying to them intimate settings where they are no longer useful.
Some fall into reckless ideologies - or start falling back into a religious state of mind. Take the scientism crowd for instance - I do not think red pills should become fetishistic placebos for (few joys) we happen to have in life. Moderation in all. Some red-pillers are often unskilled with managing their psychological health in accordance because they think that 'red pills' hold explanatory answers (that MUST be it, 42).
I like to think that I handle 'the voices' well, but too much of anything results in overexposure and high-sensitivity if I do not let myself desensitize in some fashion, because then you just get low-receptive people calling the dogmatics idiots (when they may or may not even be wrong).
(You know I'm just taking the piss out of you for fun and don't actually give a damn, right?)
Quoting 180 Proof
*Does. :hearts: :kiss:
Edit: I read that wrong.
Here I agree.
Quoting NOS4A2
Cannot disagree with that.
Was it Jung who said “Where you least want to look is precisely where you should be looking.” ?
Yeah, that's not how it works. Calling an obvious octopus (by all it's attributes necessary to be an octopus), a giraffe will annoy any octopus, imo. That is a reasonable reaction to stupidity.
It has nothing to do with the shit-show that is evident and apparent sheep getting unreasonably upset when a majority of people identify them as a sheep when they prefer to identify as a starfish.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Then for what?
I know what you mean. The pill metaphor breaks down. As I see it, it's just human to crave authority. And it seems to me that we all believe in something, however vague, and act and talk from that.
Quoting Swan
I totally agree. The red pill is one more blue pill. All of the pills are blue pills, in a certain sense. As I see it, we use words to orient ourselves in existence. I also agree about scientism, rationalism, just about any -ism. And my own whatever-ism.
The explanatory answers of the red pills. Ah yes. I love this theme. Conspiracy theory, the general fantasy of unveiling the truth. We like sexy grand narratives. We are lost without oversimplifications, myths. One of the more seductive and confounding myths is that of living mythlessly.
Quoting Swan
Indeed. And sometimes it gets too mean for my taste. And even the positive stress (when real conversation happens) reminds me of nicotine. The world today is just so crowded, noisy, and pluralistic that I need TV, nicotine, news, books. It's like treating over-stimulation with over-stimulation. I think about moving to someplace outside the city. I have envied janitors who work alone at night. Hard to know if it's an idle fantasy.
Would you say all 'beliefs' have a potentiality to be dangerous in some degree then..? If humans are highly susceptible to crave authority.
Quoting jellyfish
That is a very interesting take. I was thinking something similar, that the red pill is nothing but a red capsule with blue gel inside. Perhaps the blue pill (really does) just kill us all in the end. Human(s) attempting to escape all things human - the blue goo and desire to consume it may be inescapable - for some (red pill poppers) just turn into addicts - addicted to the blue goo - the bold red seductively attracts, void of answers, but it is the blue substance inside that ends us all.
Quoting jellyfish
I was watching a movie last night; and the family owned a farm for regular vacationing. I felt envious thinking to myself about that. I am not much of a country gal, but wish sometimes my family owned a farm out in the country, even if comes to something as simple as milking a cow. It would be a nice escape to be on a farm for a bit.
I too can get overwhelmed with a lot of the chaos. Often, I need long periods of complete silence, and keep the radio off during my work commutes. If I can't have good music, or listen to a lecture of some sort, I'd prefer complete silence.
Yeah I'd say so. Even if our ideas are well-adapted to the world (maximize survival and comfort), there world can and does change. Any successful system of habits/thoughts can become obsolete (maybe by simply beginning to bore our wicked hearts.)
And then there's the issue of us not simply wanting to maximize survival and comfort. What I have in mind is the glamour of war, hard drugs, risky sex. Dionysus, in other words. We can get bored, stultified, world-weary and so crave danger, intense experiences, etc.
Quoting Swan
I like the way you put it. I see this idea as one of the fundamental things I realized as I studied philosophy. Nietzsche liked to talk about an organism venting its power. So even if we are seduced by an ideology that doesn't privilege survival or respectability, it's giving us something. It makes us feel noble, grand, like we're really living. It's all self-help books, even if someone of them are dark, ironic, and dangerous.
Quoting Swan
Nice. Yeah, I think the human as human wants to transcend the human. I like this theme in Kojeve. We don't just desire like other animals. We desire what others desire. We desire recognition, the submission of others, to be envied. Our restlessness or itch for the impossible object is our glory and our curse.
I edit to add what is easy to leave out: we desire to be in love, to be dominated, to be lost in a Cause. In my lonely and glorious wickedness I sometimes envy those who think they solidly are somebody. I find my own name alien and strange. It's pasted on. It's a dead thing slapped on me by the machine. Sartre felt this way, I think. I don't care about his positive results. I do love his darker lines. The gods laugh with and at the grim existentialists.
To me the typical blue pills are connected to the relaxed warmth of group membership. Red pill types are blessed/cursed with the creative genius as their ideal --and are maybe just antagonist personalities who enjoy disagreeing, finding faults and holes in the systems of others. Corrosive reason, the demon in the machine, the god who only exists as the negation of others gods.
So I agree with what you suggest, that we'll always need some kind of pill --that we're the metaphysical-mythical animal. Does this kill us directly? As I see it, nature does that for us, no matter what we believe.
Quoting Swan
I relate. I think about a little piece of land, a tiny house, a life more physical and rounded, where I use lots of tools that keep things up and running. My training involves computers, but part of me rebels against the idea of staring at screens 40 hours a week. It's just so discarnate. And then the products I'd be making would only push the culture further in that direction.
Quoting Swan
I highly relate to this. I love silence. Maybe it's because I want to enjoy the quiet noise in my own head. I think McLuhan saw it coming, the dissolution of certain way of being in the electrified hyper-connected global village. The lonely crowd. Yet I also love the stimulation. Ambivalence.
:sad:
Likewise. As I get older I more and more prefer silence (of either an anechoic place/headphones or remote wilderness) even to my favorite jazz or blues. A touch of misophonia maybe plays a role; but it's prolonged quiet that stills me deep down. So I can listen to myself think.
Quoting jellyfish
:death: :fire: :scream:
I've been there. Up and down. I've scribbled joyous manifestos only to be dragged back down. In my experience, no abstract system holds things up. With the same 'metaphysical' system I've been both very high and very low. We're flesh and blood. The stuff we say and think are just the tip of the iceberg. I connect this with the 'anti-metaphysics' of the darkness as presented in Nietzsche and elsewhere. We're embedded in a terrible way, more vulnerable than we would usually like to know.
A PULSE. Amor fati, brutha! :cool:
You too, brother. 'We know time.'
That's a really thoughtful response, thanks for taking the time to write it out. I suppose I'm still filtering through things myself.
I really like what you said here:
Quoting jellyfish
Actually, I typed a long response, but I just removed it. I don't want to make this a sob fest.
Very much same for me. I have a love/hate with music - because it has the power to trigger (misophonia?) in me as well. Good songs slowly lose their magic - to where I prefer to play music (piano); instead of listen ... this helps reduce sitting still and contemplating losses & old feelings, you are instead, just feeling and then, creating new feeling.
I now just listen to white noise, people talking about interesting things (if they are going to talk at all), or in complete silence. Silence feels so good. I love to be still - probably because I am never still in the head. One day I dream of a total stillness.
I thought that that realization had broken me free from the loop of feeling bad because life seems meaningless because I feel bad because life seems meaningless... which all started with me feeling bad, just about nothing in particular, until my brain found things to chalk those feelings up to, which then perpetuated those feelings. When I had this realization (thanks to someone here on this forum actually, comparing the feeling of existential dread to the opposite of a mystical experience) I simultaneously entered a nearly week-long period of near-mystical-experience high, feeling better than I've felt maybe all year long. And then between yesterday and today, for no reason I can find besides maybe either lack of good sleep or too much caffeine trying to counter that, I found myself spiraling into a panic attack about pointless cosmic bullshit there's no sense worrying about again, and even reminding me "there's no actual problem there, this is just an illusion of a problem prompted by an irrational state of mind" didn't break me out of it again like I thought had happened a week ago.
(I added about 13 paragraphs on this topic, starting about 7 paragraphs down, in the last essay of my book early last week).
Hey, I am happy to read it. Or send me a PM. I am addicted to the red pill. I like deep conversations. IRL, I am 'that friend.' My idea of a good time is sharing a pot of coffee (black, of course) and walking around for 3 hours talking about all the stuff that 'one' doesn't talk about in mixed company. .
Thanks for pardoning what I feared would be excessive. I tend to err on the side of 'too much.'
Fellow red pill addict here. Why haven't we ever (as far as we know) crossed paths on one of my long monological walks? PM me, jelly, so we can discuss a moonless rendezvous for deep conversating while fortified by beverages of choice. :cool:
I guess we've just missed one another so far in this too-wide world. I think I'd recognize a fellow monological walker. These days I'm walking the lonely-lovely streets at 4AM. I have the cityscape to myself, not counting the headlights on the interstate above my head and the coyote who lives in an ex-junkyard nearby. That coyote is my brother or sister.
I’m sorry if I stressed you out before. I have an addictive personality so moderation is extremely difficult for me but you’re right. It is very much needed. Even in debate. It just irritates me when people don’t read what I say because I was neglected a lot as a child and I do actually take my time to read everything others write even if I think it’s wrong.
I shouldn’t have called God must be atheist an arrogant fool it’s true, I still believe he was behaving like one but I usually make a point to differentiate between behaviour and person as I don’t believe anyone is anything in permanence. Just a bunch of humans fluctuating between it all.
Anyway hope you have a good night and that there are no hard feelings.
:cool:
Thanks. I am very much a tea drinker (or just plain water - boring, I know). I do like black coffee on specific occasions, but I've found it drives me uncomfortably up walls. I could use "that friend", as I find them extremely difficult to find, or maybe I am just constantly looking in the wrong places. :razz:
Your posts are extremely refreshing (usually I have a tendency to overwhelm) with my long-winded rambles (it doesn't help I love to write - so I can get VERY long-winded), and just end up boring people off - I get like that usually all hours after midnight, to which I could use an ear to ramble into. My friends (or more so 'associates') either fall asleep or haven't much to add.
No hard feelings. I am not an asshole at all, so that post was not meant to bust your balls or anything, and I know you were frustrated with him. It is just a pet-peeve of mine when other's go around indirectly claiming this form of faux-humility (which is really just faux low-self esteem self-depreciation posts glossed up to look noble) that only chumps fall for, above all others - attempting to lower the confidence that other's may have; and pseudo-diagnosing people with emotional problems while claiming to have some transcendent upperhand on self-reflection/critical self-analysis, and etc. Those are like, the least self-aware people I've met - and tend to not understand people all that well for the amount of armchair psychology they spew; most "combative" individual(s) I've found on forums and in the internet & such; do too much self-reflection (and are quite self-aware) in my opinion, to the point where they have a tendency to become somewhat narcissistically absorbed in it - & they are struggling with their own 'red-pills' (truths) about themselves.
I really can't see someone that self-reflects on a daily basis being some form of pacifist. Lol. I want to say elderly people that are pacifists piss me off, as well. Most of them have lost of the cognitive capacity to even self-reflect (which is where the elderly-arrogance) comes from. Which is bizarre and off-putting, generates low receptivity from people that still have the capacity to overcome challenges. Imaging virtual signaling your noble efforts of kindness while simultaneously calling those you (don't understand - through any form of personalized interaction and/or individual evaluation) intellectually/emotionally deficient. So, yes I go around checking people that think they're uncheckable.
Imagining coming on a Philosophy or debate forum telling people to calm down. As jellyfish said in your thread, are we going to ignore that a majority a Philosophers just write books on books of shit-talking back and forth to each other (ripping each other apart) - of course with more 'tact' and verbose intellectual rants.
That to me, is the nature of philosophy. Conflict. So conflict-avoidant people (shining their superior passivity), attempting to intervene and silence different communication styles that hold more conviction than yours makes little sense to me. But sure, let's call people that speak with conviction "aggressive," "rude" etc, etc. THESE types of silencing tactics do not work on me. Save your bullshit, honestly. As someone that's taken various speech classes and has been said to have a naturally commanding tone, I find these posts about silencing diverse communication styles to be just nonsensical.
Most people that operate around people knows no one gives a flying fuck about not stepping on your toes. People will talk over you, EVEN IF you raise your hand. So sure, you can grab and seat and eat - or continuing raising your hand waiting for NO ONE to call on you (even though that that's the "nicest") thing to do. All respect I've gotten is from demanding it; not expecting it and getting upset when no one gives it. If you want respect, you demand it. That's all I get out of it.
BUT cultivating patience has by far been one of my largest hurdles - along with my intuition (which I attempt to limit/reduce) to get the best of me, because a large amount of my posts are wholly intuitive, rather than a basis of long-term analysis and things of the like. But what can you do.
Anxiety is a horrible experience. Panic is fear-based though, so I'm left wondering...
What is there to be afraid of when it comes to 'cosmic stuff'? I'm sorry if you've already been asked this, I haven't read through the entire thread. I'm curious...
Did you once believe in the God of Abraham?
I like green tea. It tastes like dirt in a good way.
Quoting Swan
Thanks. I like your posts. They are raw and authentic.
I’d argue that all humility, faux or otherwise comes from insecurity. However we shouldn’t be saying insecurity like it’s a bad thing as I honestly feel our insecurity is what forces us to be humble. Acknowledging that no one is secure in the first place is important here.
Also you do realise that reading this back, your whole response also sounds like “pseudo-diagnosing people with emotional problems while claiming to have some transcendent upperhand on self-reflection/critical self-analysis, and etc.”?
I mean the nature of reality is conflict really.
Well it’s a pet peeve of mine to come onto a philosophy forum, expecting to talk about philosophy and expecting people to be able to argue well enough to convince you that you are wrong when you really are. Yet when they refuse to read what is written (which you and god must be atheist have both claimed not to do) with my posts and comments and start saying unhelpful things like calling me an entitled manchild and saying I sound like this and that just because they can’t come up with an argument, when they refuse to do all of this then it’s nolonger a talk about philosophy. It’s just some basic response that I could get from anyone on the street really.
So tell me, why should I give a damn about your pet peeve when you don’t understand mine?
Are you saying I have faux humility because I actually do or because you are jealous of the fact that I have real humility? Or are you just showing off to try and get off with Jellyfish?
Now, I actually apologised and I’ll let that apology stand.
However I do not accept your “Sorry, I'm not an asshole, but..” response. Try again. I’m being my authentic self, if this is your authentic self then that’s fine. Right now though, the only difference between us is I see you as an iceberg but you look back and see a mountain. I’m not a mountain.
It still amazes me sometimes that someone as rude as yourself can call people names, contribute nothing to discussions except vitriol and then give a crappy “I’m sorry, but you deserved” it response because I actually genuinely felt sorry for the way I treated you because I understand one thing. It takes two to tango.
Oh you’ve done speech classes? That’s nice, I’ve got a masters in ethics. However neither of us should be making appeals to authority because it’s fallacious and you kinda want to try and avoid fallacies in philosophical debate.
Oh I see, so when you command things and others don’t listen your ego gets bruised and you call them insecure for not recognising your true place as leader of all? Right then. Maybe you should read my intellectual honesty post again and take some notes. Unfortunately though I’m not so weak willed that I bow to trumpism.
“Silencing diverse communication styles”
Example 1
Student: Professor, you’re an arrogant manchild
Professor: get out.
Student to other student during debate: you’re an arrogant manchild
Professor to insulting student: you’ve lost the debate.
Get over yourself.
...seriously, "Swan" by his?/"her" own admission finds this forum exhausting, hates it and all zyr actions on here point to them trying to pick up men in an uncomfortably edgelordy/nerdy way
To get back to the actual, original post: I've engaged with philosophy in both a formal academic setting and on my own. In an academic setting where I've taken courses produced by the actual philosophy department (e.g. metaphysics, environmental ethics, etc.) I've found the study to be very disheartening and depression-inducing but I think this is because most of these professors seemed to be nihilists at heart. I find it very hard to learn from people with nihilistic tendencies. Additionally there was this whole "pissing contest" vibe within the philosophy department at UCSD (my alma mater) that made me truly hate it. When it seems like there is no room for debate, authentic exploration and discourse in a discipline, it really turns me off.
However, I've tangentially encountered philosophy in my religious studies coursework (this was my major) and, when approached from a multi-disciplinary standpoint I found it to be fascinating, enriching, and sometimes legitimately epiphany-inducing.
I seriously think that isolating philosophy into one discrete discipline is bizarre and elevates the act of "philosophizing" to some holy institution that is reserved for long-dead white men. I also feel it decontextualizes philosophies from their original geographic, temporal and sociological context which, in my opinion, makes it impossible to grasp the totality and actual gestalt of certain philosophical concepts.
TLDR: When I've studied philosophy within discrete "philosophy-department" academic courses I've found the study to be depressing. Whey I've encountered philosophical concepts in interdisciplinary study of other things (i.e. religion, politics) I've found it to be very enriching and even sometimes uplifting.
I'll just quote a paragraph from the last essay of my book:
Also more recently since I wrote that, the prospect of living forever is also terrifying because boredom.
But when I'm not feeling so pointlessly anxious, I can look at all that stuff and just hope for progress in overcoming it, not worry too much about failure at that endeavor, and also not feel that fear of eternal boredom because so long as I'm happy just to be alive ("ontophilic" I've started calling it) there's no need for distractions to fill the time.
Quoting creativesoul
I was raised in a household that did, but then gradually grew out of it thinking they were just stories for children like Santa Claus, only to be surprised as I reached adulthood to realize that adults honestly believed those stories and didn't just tell them to children. So I guess "not really", but "technically".
Hope this doesn't sound trite. It certainly could be thought of overly simplistic, but I find there to be a universal common denominator in all of those cosmic fears and the God of Abraham...
They're all logically possible.
However, logical possibility alone does not warrant belief. There are certain things that come alongside privilege... time to think about all of the different logically possible scenarios is one.
:wink:
A non sequitur? yeah, well ...
The mere possibility of the Insufficiency of "Sufficient Reason" (e.g. anterior posteriority ... non-existence of g/G, the Absurd, the copernican principle, libet's delay, natural selection, boltzmann's constant, noether's first theorem, qubits, etc) never fails to astonish me ... (c2008)
:death: :flower: