<shakes head sadly>

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Hello,

Thanks for your reply. I don't know if it's a bit strange but I can enter this extremely wonderous and profound appreciation of life when considering what I think may be some really unexpected things. For example, I remember sitting around during lunchtime at work. I obviously wasn't particularly occupied at that moment so i could think about random ideas. I had my neck turned, I touched my neck and thought about how those muscles are all laid out so perfectly for my neck to work, then I considered my body and how amazing it is we are such complicated and, in my opinion, exceptionally impressive and precise machines, then I considered how the entire universe is organized in such a way that this is all happening for us/with us. It's so strange how you get there sometimes. There is considering the consequences of the idea of being the universe itself rather than separating yourself from the universe. There is considering the story of cosmogony so far.

You know, I find it interesting that you state you accept the pain of life and consider it a blessing - I agree. I once asked my father about what he would do if an asteroid was going to annihilate life on earth, would he go to a bar and drink or would he stand and watch it hit. He told me that he would choose getting drunk, he wouldn't want to see it coming. I found it pretty interesting to consider because death is a part of the experience of life as a mortal. Your death will only happen one time, would you want to fully experience the event? (I've read some pretty cool things about what happens when you die). It seems like most people would choose to look away. I think it's all a part of the story. I wonder, would you look at your death?

Sometimes I wonder.

Thank you for sharing this. I’m so glad to hear that others care about these ideas too.

I think meditating every night for the last 3 months has allowed me to get to what you might term a secular form of “The Sublime”. What I have observed is a gradual development of the ability to detach from human culture as you call it, in short bursts, throughout the day. The more I meditate, the more aware I am of the space between my environment and my reactions. In short, I can just exist. I believe this is one way to experience “reality” without all the cultural influences clouding it. Not sure if I’d call it an objective reality, but at least it’s one different from the usual culturally motivated one. Maybe it’s a different facet of reality.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that while in this state during the day, I often experience profound gratitude for being able to breathe, eat, sleep and experience the world. Gratitude is definitely heightened during and after my daily meditation practices, as well as feelings of forgiveness, benevolence and wishing other living beings well. There are also feelings that are quote unquote “unpleasant”, like despair, rage, terror and the like. I see all of these as part of the experience of being alive, something that non-living things cannot sense, so I count them as blessings and am interested in immersing in them fully. Overall, seems like the trend is towards being calmer, more deliberate with my choices, more comfortable with myself and accepting situations and others as they are.

Hopefully, the more I meditate, the more space I have to discern “reality” from cultural pressures. Well, at least insofar my senses and cultural background allows me to. What about you? Anything you do to trigger this state?

Your commentary is well written but you make certain leaps that I'd like to question, if you don't mind. Feel free to ignore me.

What is objective meaning in your view? Can you present an example of meaning without narrative? Memory is narrative, so that doesn't work. To demonstrate this, I simply ask you to give an example of something you remember that isn't drawn from narrative. Even non-personal facts like 1+1=2 are remembered principles extracted from narrative memories of examples where this was true.

I also must ask you to examine when you say, 'if they are giving a meaning that does not actually exist except in the mind they are all giving lies.' You mentioned pain. Pain does not exist outside the mind, or at least we have no evidence that it could. Is pain a lie? Is desire?

And again with 'the truth... can be told in such a way as to give a false meaning,' if only 'truth' is transmitted, where does the falsehood in that 'false meaning' come from? It would seem the falsehood is the one that conflates the map and the landscape.

Just thoughts...

Do they have a better case design!

Agreed. A ‘beautiful simplified present’ is not a universal phenomenology of dementia. It is instead frequently an experience of fear and dread and re-living ancient memories; being stuck in a cycle of believing you are still in a past moment.

The Sublime

I once heard (or maybe read) that daily exposure to the sublime is important. I think the point of it is to anchor your experiences and perspective of reality in the transcendent, awe inspiring, and divine. I often forget to engage in this kind of exposure. I do amateur astronomy and astrophotography but I usually get this sense of grandness and awe while engaged in thought about the nature of reality. When I happen to achieve this emotion - it's difficult to explain apart from "awe" or maybe it's kind of what religious ecstacy is like - I'm incredibly captivated by the idea of my existence in this world.

I often feel incredibly curious about what this is all about. I also often ponder human culture and how radically it changes from one Millenia to another, though the human animal is basically the same. This high variability in human culture makes the culture I know seem a bit arbitrary and absurd. It's like humans are so distracted by engaging in culture that those initial ideas, like asking why you're even alive, seems to regularly escape our attention. The nature of death, for example, remains uninspected until it finally surprises us all later in life as if we didn't really believe we were mortal all along. Our engagement in our culture - i.e., chasing money, a career, cars, houses, lovers, food, media, etc.. - distracts us from wondering about the nature of the reality in which we're engaging in that culture. This is true, at least for me, until I touch the sublime (usually in idea) and get sucked into the more fundamental, I think, experience of reality. However, I notice this occurs at night and I've also noticed that no matter how deep my thought had been through the night the next morning I wake up "locked in" to human culture once again. Each morning I wake up distracted and ignorant and some days I'm lucky enough to remember I'm part of something grand and wonderful.

I wonder now, how many of you experience this? Does it happen to you regularly? How do you achieve this? Feel free to comment how you'd like (obviously), I'm very curious.

My grandad had dementia before he died and he seemed tormented, afraid and angry most of the time. I don't think living with dementia is a positive experience for people who suffer through it

https://youtu.be/vxhTDIUCPMM

What is your claim about how the universe began and how life on Earth began?

Those aren't arguments I made. Those are facts.

Find a pen that made itself. If a simple pen can't make itself, then a cell that's thousands of times more complex than a pen can't make itself, much less a life that's trillions of cells working together.

Wow, you really know NOTHING about science, do you? BTW, none of those are "arguments." They're just false claims with nothing to support them.

If they are told as if they are the truth when one believes there is no truth. Then it is a lie.

Are metaphors lies?

We will probably never understand the true nature of our existence

But that doesn't mean it's not fun to talk about! What are some of your theories?

One of my personal theories is that we could be something along the lines of nanobots, infinitely occurring chemical reactions that will inevitably consume whatever it has been set upon with the either impersonal or deliberate attempt at... something we could probably never understand the purpose of

Noob alert...

Challenging political myth can serve to double down on the conviction of believers whereas growth and expansion on the original can gently move things on.

The Romans did this effectively with their gods when invading. Rather than banish, or outlaw the established god's of the country they had invaded, they gently introduced their similar deities and entwined them into established myth. Maybe not the best example but thought it was relevant.

Who is they?

The creator is outside the creation. The guy who invented the computer isn't inside the computer.

Evilutionism holds that life created itself from nothing.

Creation truth accepts that there was a creator.

Comparing the various versions of "reality" that different individuals describe offers some useful insight into the nature of humans, as well as the nature of reality.

A similar myth is that all Christians believe the same thing.

Another somewhat similar mythical belief is that mind reading is possible. Even Scientific Materialists believe that one, strangely enough...demonstrating the power of myths, I suppose.

That’s great! That’s pretty much what we do too.

Normal conversation in the Netherlands: “What are you doing tonight?” “Nothing” “Oh okay, so you are free to hang?” “No no, I have plans to do nothing!”

>I think your point is valid and I also wonder how much of our problem is “hyperbolic language”.

Or more generically: language that demonstrably does not match shared reality. Unfortunately, a widely distributed meme prevents that form of valid criticism.

Whoever designed this Matrix seems to have brought their A-Game. 😁

What if they're discovering the creation might be fake? Did the creation create itself like the blue dude in Watchmen?

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So, I have an assignment where in one of the questions that I need an example of egalitarian. Does anyone have any examples of egalitarian by any chance?