Events

[Vlatko]

What are we doing in this world? What are we suppose to do here? Are we here on our own will or against, or either, or neither? Are we really deciding for anything that is happening to us?

Just turn back and look at your life. Think about whether everything what happened in your life was your choice? You were the real doer or not? When I look at my life I certainly know that I didn’t plan the sequence of events that took place in my life.

Ten years ago if someone told me about the things that will happen to me today I would’ve thought that that person is crazy. Than I would say that there is no possible way something like that to happen in my life 10 years from then.

So what happens today to me was not my real, conscious choice in the past. I was not even close to it. I was not even thinking of it. I feel like I was a puppet through my life, being unaware of the happenings.

Decisions that I was making through the time were not deciding where the stream of my life will go. They were not deciding what essentially is going to happen to me in future. I was making choices but for what? They were not real choices? It turns out that they were clouds. I feel that they were only interferences along my inevitable path to the end, or to a new beginning.

I’m thinking what if I stay just one day choice less. Not making any decisions. Everything will go exactly the same. My choices are not needed in this world. This world is not revolving around my choices. My choices are futile and impotent here.

No matter what I decide to do with my self the rivers will continue to flow, the sun will continue to rise and everything will dance in the same rhythm. My choices are just a drama in my mind, nothing else. I’m just fooling my self with them. They are helping me to feel my self important in this world.

In every moment I’m deciding to do something, I’m making a choice, than I’m taking action because of my decision and I’m expecting a result. The trick here is that I’m expecting a result. The result that I want to see, feel, or whatever, I’m expecting it to occur minute, hour, day, month, year latter. The point is that the result is always in the future. Actually I think that with my actions I can change or influence future. Basically I want to influence the sequence of the future events.

But is that really possible? Well, if that was really possible, than I would’ve prearranged my life. I would’ve easily prearranged my life with taking certain actions. Since that is not possible it turns out that I’m not the true master of my life. I’m just bitterly struggling along the way.

We are just thinking, deciding, acting, hoping, waiting, frustrating, over and over again in our life. We think that our life is what we actually think. But the truth is that our life is everything except thinking. Imagine a life without thoughts. Imagine you just watching, feeling, hearing, smelling without any interpretation.

Every thought is doomed to be about the past or future. You can not think about the present moment and you can not think out of nothing. You think through your memories, through your past, decorating it a little bit and starting to imagine things that suppose to happen in the future. All that is just clouds on your consciousness.

You can’t really know or affect the future, especially not with decorated past. So, the events in this world are taking place without noticing you, whether you are taking part of them or not.

[Hacbarton]

We are just thinking, deciding, acting, hoping, waiting, frustrating, over and over again in our life. We think that our life is what we actually think. But the truth is that our life is everything except thinking. Imagine a life without thoughts. Imagine you just watching, feeling, hearing, smelling without any interpretation.

You make an interesting point with this post, a point that was not amiss in the teachings of Heidegger, Sartre, and even some ideals of Hume and Buddhism. The idea that we are no more than our actions ("The genius of Proust is the work of Proust") is an old one. If you feel like a puppet, as if life has carried you and not the other way around, perhaps it is because you have been trying to view life and a supposed meaning objectively, a near impossible task. Your best chance at understanding life and coming to any comprehensive answer is to create the answer.

Life has no meaning beyond what we apply to it; a blank slate we are, and whether we remain that way is up to the slate itself.

[Flux]

Actually, Sartre's particular flavor of existentialism was squarely opposed to deteriminism, the notion that our choises have no effect, and that we are simply dragged through life. I think you right that Vlatko's views hold some resembelence to Hume's though.

Do our choices matter? I'd say so. I do think that it's important to make a distinction between making choices and having the results of choices turn out in the way we expect them too. For instance, I have made a personal decision to eat dinner tonight. The choice is made, and the rest is the result. Even if the result of my choice is quite different from what I expected, for instance if I somehow perish between now and supper, my choice has still affected reality--even if only by serving as an example in this post.

In my oppinion, the simple truth of the matter can be found in common sense in this case--we are free to cause some events, but not free to cause others. At this very moment, I am choosing to type, and am witnessing the fruits of my effors. I am also attemption to transform my chair into breakfast cereal by blinking at it, only to find that such an event is beyond my ability to cause.

I also don't think that the past and the present are the only things that we think about. For instance, try to add the numbers 45 and 83 in your head. While doing so, were you thinking about the past or the future? Depending on how you interpret it, I suppose you could say either, but I think its simpler to conclude that such a thought is neither about the past nor the future.

You mention the idea of staying choiceless for an entire day. It would seem to me that this is quite impossible, due to the simple fact that you would be choosing to do so, unless you fell asleep or lost conciousness.

Lastly, although I do believe that we have the freedom to make a difference in our own lives, I can't say that I've ever met a human being who was a "blank slate." We have oppinions, biases, agendas, emotions, etcetera. Again, I think that it is possible for us to move beyond all of these bonds to an extent, but I think that claiming that we are all blank slates is a bit of an exageration, even if it is a nice analogy.

[Vlatko]

For instance, I have made a personal decision to eat dinner tonight. The choice is made, and the rest is the result.

I've always loved the principle of causality. It can be easily applied to this example of yours Flux. Yes you've made a personal decision to eat, but with some reason built in. Your act already has some reason, even before coming to be. You were hungry or like you said you wanted to eat just to make a point in your post.

Anyhow you did that with reason. But even those reasons have causes. You were hungry because your body sent signals to your brain or you wanted to make a point in your post because you were previously provoked. And on and on... there is "because" to the infinity or for sure there is "because" to the BB.

If we choose to look through the eyes of Determinism we will see that everything in this world or universe is caused by something else. If everything happens because of something else than everything is already predetermined and we can't do anything about it. Actually we think that we are making choices, and we really are, but since everything is determined we are just fooling ourself that WE are making changes with our choices.

This can be easily bounced to the views of Buddhism since this teaching basically insists on "no-mind" or "no-ego" state maybe just to avoid or transcendent this sense of helplessness in this world called samsara were the events are taking place with or without you.

I also don't think that the past and the present are the only things that we think about. For instance, try to add the numbers 45 and 83 in your head. While doing so, were you thinking about the past or the future?

Well, think of it. How can you think about the present moment. When you think of it, it already passed. Adding numbers 45 and 83 is not thinking about the present. Again this thought is because of the past, because you were trying to prove something from the past, hoping to cause some effect in the future. Your thought is linked with the past and it is about the past. Another angle of looking at it, is that "adding numbers" is a skill that you acquired long time ago in the past and now you are thinking about it.

You mention the idea of staying choiceless for an entire day. It would seem to me that this is quite impossible, due to the simple fact that you would be choosing to do so, unless you fell asleep or lost conciousness.

Well than you are disapproving the existence or possibility of Buddha.

Cheers, Vlatko

[Flux]

Well than you are disapproving the existence or possibility of Buddha. .

I don't believe that this is what I'm doing. The Buddha became desireless, not choiceless. And why would Buddhism have teachings period if such teachings couldn't affect anything?

you were trying to prove something from the past, hoping to cause some effect in the future.

Ah, but I wasn't. Sometimes I do math that isn't related to specific problems, and that isn't done for specific purposes. I can't speak for others, but I can say for myself that many times when I'm thinking about abstract objects, they are no more aimed toward a particular time than they are aimed at a particular place. I can think about the concept of a perfect circle, and such a thought does not correspond to a specific place, so it needn't correspond to a specific time either.

If we choose to look through the eyes of Determinism

But if everything is determined, we can't choose to look through the eyes of determinism. Or can we? Here's where I stand on free will and determinism. I think that we do not yet know, and perhapse cannot know, whether or not the universe is deterministic, but I also see this question as seperate from the question as to whether we have free will. This is a philosophical stance known as compatiblism.

We do not yet know if our universe follows exact laws or more random principles. There is good evidence either way--many quantum phenomena at the subatomic level can only be explained by using probability distrubutions, making an inherently random universe at least a possiblility. However, there may be a variable underlying this phenomena, and even if there isn't, we don't know whether indeterminicy at a micro-level entails indeterminacy at a macro level. At any rate, scientifically speaking, the question of whether our universe is determined or spontaneaous is still wide open.

However, I think that even if our world did turn out to be deterministic, that this fact wouldn't count against the possibility of free will. Let's assume for a moment that the universe is completely determined and mechanistic, and that everything has a cause. Thus, as you mentioned, my choices would also have a cause. I see a sandwhich, some reactions happen in my brain, and I decide to eat the sandwhich.

Here's the essential point--just because choices are caused doesn't mean that they arn't choices. Simple as that. Regardless of whether or not it was physically determined since the beginning or time that I was to type these words, typing them is still a choice by every reasonable sense of the word. If our world is in fact deterministic (and I am far from certain that it is) then free will might be an "emergent phenomena" of sorts--something that cannot be so easily explained by the underlying principles that determine it.

[scameter]

Vlatko:So, the events in this world are taking place without noticing you, whether you are taking part of them or not.

Even if they are, that doesn't rule out meaning, spirituality, choice, or really anything else. For instance, if water is passing down a steel pipe, does the pipe take any notice of the water? No. It's not concious, so it can't even notice anything. The pipe does change though, in temperature, and other very minor, but still present, ways. But, no, the pipe doesn't notice the water. Does that mean the water doesn't have energy, movement, existence, or direction? Of course not. The pipe is merely the medium. That is the case for people too. Life is the medium of experience for people. We are here to experience physical life, regardless of what made us be here or for any other specific purpose we may have here, we're meant to be here; or else, we wouldn't be here. It's really quite simple. That is essential my evidence for the soul: personal realization of experience, or subjectivity, points to the soul, points to some other aspect to life than just physical reality. When we do anything that we do in life, it is in life; but, the mere fact that we're here, the simplest fact of all life, proves more than the rest of it.