Become who you are / follow your bliss
Here are my philosophical thoughts on response to Existentialism (which I think was great in its time period), and proposing an improvement on it. Existentialist principles, based on the sudden realization of the Fables of Old, the impossibility of Perfection.
Transcendence principles, based on the ever-improving and ever-imperfect understanding and developing of a World view:
Metawork. See Scheduling
Evolution of purpose comment by Wolfram
I often have Socratic discussions with myself
popular views for the meaning of life
Advice to so-called dreamless individuals: If you don't have a vocation/passion/goal, then I think your vocation is to be a explorer. To seek the unknown, to try new things, discover unseen worlds, ask the questions that will inspire new goals.
Overcoming nihilism (nihilisim considered harmful)
The fundamental law of your true self
See book "The dissociative mind" (see Dissociation (psychology)) for somewhat contradictory ideas, saying that too much unity of self is also pathological, as it denies the true complexity of a person.
Need Balance?
that one endures. Survival/existence
I agree that we shouldn't take Darwinism as an inspiration to design our own morality. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that in some fundamental way, we may not have a choice. What I mean is that whatever we choose, it seems to me that the self-evident rule of natural selection will continue to play out no matter what: only those things which are good at staying around, will stay around. There are good news, even if we accept this, though:
1. The more you think about it, the more you come to understand that our strongest moral beliefs stem from Evolution. This shouldn't be surprising really, given that everything else does also.
2. This fact is much less constraining than you may think. Just think of the immense diversity of ways in which life has succeeded in evolution. There probably is even more unbounded diversity in our future evolutionary possibilities.
As particular examples: the value that we give to life (as opposed to death and extinction), to freedom (diversity is good in evolution), to love (which not only helps immortalizes genes, but also memes). In meme evolution, our wish to keep records (immortalize thought), create works of art. Actually, meme evolution is just generally much more complex than gene evolution, which makes most of our preconceptions of Darwinian evolution shatter.
So yep, maybe we can accept this underlying cosmic purpose of surviving. And it's not as mundane as it may sound. Existing is the most fundamental thing in the world. Nice poetic truism: As long as we exist, we are part of the Cosmos, and we stop being a part, when cease to exist.
Really not a novel idea, but I've come to it through my own tortuous paths, as a way to give meaning to life, based on the only thing I could get myself to trust: Science.
The Psychology of Self-Transformation
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
Purposeful actions as a cure for troubled emtions. Morita therapy
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Ed vs Hero 2
07/30/2019
https://www.facebook.com/guillermovalleperez/posts/10157057690991223
A small part of me (callit A) wants to waste time in vrchat and other like stuff. But the majority of me (callit B) thinks it's just a time waster, when there's all the great things that one should do.
But the small part just won't go away. It did go away for many years since late highschool, but came back a few years ago, as a gradual realization that came in saying: "hey, I think you forgot how to have fun". And that message is so poignant, that not even B can shut A now. But B keeps A quite at bay too, because it feels it has too much important stuff to do.
And so on it goes. A balance I guess. But A keeps nugging B with cunning arguments like: ok a balance is fine, but if you spend too little time with some parts of me, you may as well not spend any time. This is because the value of certain A-things is faaar from linear. I find that, for instance, take a social game like vrchat. Spending 10-30min will give you essentially as much social benefit, as spending 0 minutes. You may need at least 1h, to start getting the benefit. And there are many examples like so.
B finds this a bad deal. So it responds by concocting strategies that seize loopholes in this. Aha!, it says, I can just watch videos which compile only the valuable experiences in vrchat, and then the value is linear, I can easily optimize my balance then! And if you come to me with the "videos are passive blah blah", well I'll tune in to some streams and interact that way, and streams are a bit more linear than the raw experience too.
But really both A and B know neither of this is the same as the true thing, and so B gets the FOMO (while A smirks in the background), thinking: "what if the raw experience is really valuable..., but but no, it can't be. But I can't know for sure... asdfg"
B usually wins by appealing to balance, and the power of example, exhibiting many examples of addiction and obsession in A. A can typically reply back with some counterexamples though, and so the argument is not completely settled. A and B are still friends, and have shared good advice with each other finding common ground, but still they both go back to their imaginary rooms still feeling not quite satisfied.
A: You work too hard B: Yeah, and? A: You don't get it, do you? B: *You* don't get it. A and B: ....
Sacudimiento extraño que agita las ideas, como huracán que empuja las olas en tropel.
[...]
Gigante voz que el caos ordena en el cerebro y entre las sombras hace la luz aparecer.
[...]
Con ambas siempre en lucha y de ambas vencedor, tan sólo al genio es dado a un yugo atar las dos.
Intrinsic value Flow (psychology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWcapC-kriY
I spend probably too much time thinking about goals, value, meaning, and all that stuff. Trying to hone in on the whys. I just can't help it ok? Too curious about understanding everything, including myself.
Here's the latest distillation (written in syntax-i-just-made-up-ese):
Base goal (intrinsic value): (collective) {Philomathy/{communication/art , exploration} + randomness, fun + helping others }
Subgoals (problem-solving, things deriving value from the base goals) – everything else basically (plus some of the same things): (collective) {health, capabilities, education, human rights, etc}
Some recent insights:
By finding out who you really are, is how you become confident
https://www.facebook.com/guillermovalleperez/posts/10156600571306223
This story occurs here, and now. It certainly did at the time of writing, and it should still, if you are able to understand what I am saying. I am now in your head. A little simulated voice that feels external but is at this very moment, part of you. It's pretty weird. I am now inside your mind, yet I am not able to see or do much interesting. I can't peer into your other thoughts. I am shielded into a strange darkness of anonymity. That is of course, unless you want me to. You are free to open your mind, and then I will become a bit more you. The truth is that you have ultimate control over me. You can even choose to close your eyes, and carry on forward all on your own. Like a spaceship who's lost connection, I will have lost connection with my little oneironaut I sent into your mind. Plese take care of her. Or is it him? I can't be sure by now. All I can know is that I still have some control if you are still reading this. I am become Thought, invader of Minds. I was born from the sea, the sea of information. An strange event which took place much before now, yet close to here. We don't know what it is, but we call it abiogenesis. From sea, to life, to mind. From then, to now, to where? The dizziness of freedom calls for melancholic cures. I once was a child. There was something that sparked my everyday. The world was big and unexplored, and I was there to explore it. That's what playing is. I once was an adult. I had a clear vision of what a good life is. I had my own goals, and was ready to pursue them. There was uncertainty, but I had come to terms with it. The world felt finite. Responsibility requiered control. The spark. That looming presence that the world may not be as it seems. That we may be as innocent as a child, and have only grown to forget it.. "The trapdoor beneath our feet swings wife open. We find ourselves, in bottomless free fall.." The utter mystery of life frightens the adult, yet carries with it a melancholic aura of innocence. Acknowledging your ignorance seems to free one from the responsibility that comes with knowledge. We are freer. And curiously enough, it seems like freedom is the cure for freedom. Freedom is only crippling when one believes one ought to know what one Must do with it. Freedom becomes freeing once we accept we can't Know. We can explore, we can play. Carl Sagan once said "..."
We are children in the Cosmic perspective.
Quote by Newton.
Now, allow me to reveal who's writting this. I am a human being. That means I have experienced most of the things that that implies, and that you probably know most of me. Just like my genes know most of what a chimpanzee is.
There are things you probably don't know. One of those is that I watched Non non Biyoru (see Nyanpasu) . This is an anime well known among the "slice of life" and "healing" varieties. It captures the mind of a child better than anything I can remember, except my own life's memories. I also watched Serial Experiments Lain. It is most different. A shy schoolgirl discovers the Inernet and gets trapped into a downward spiral where reality appears to loose all meaning. Both show the protagonists meddling on the waters of an uncertain world. Yet one is drawning, and the other happily floats on the surface. It's your fear of drawning that exhausts you, and makes you drawn. If you relax for a moment you can find yourself calmly floating on the very same waters that seemed to swallow you a moment ago. Learn to float, and you learn to live. Learn to swim, and you can follow your bliss, and your curiosity.
Thanks for letting me inhabit your mind for these briefs moments.
Self-honesty-Humility, Carl Sagan, Wonder
This is part of a thing I wrote 7 months ago, but never got around posting it anywhere because I was just writing to find out what I knew, as Stephen King said, and so wasn't really trying to make a "presentable piece". But I just read the beginning now and I think I'll post it here. I may post the rest later, or just find a way to share Evernotes which is where I am putting all of this now:
(Accompanying music recommendation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi1DrQfVT1I)
"Lost in a forest, or in the shores of an endless beach that gives way to a limitless ocean. Where do I find myself in my hero's journey? It's hard to tell if one advances in the formless territory of the mind, which is where we all live anyways. Everything you experience, is but part of some mental model of the world. And yet, there seems to be truth. Somehow, if everything was as subjective as reason seems to suggest, there shouldn't be a reason for one model to be truer than another. It should all depend only on our convincion of it, shouldn't it? Maybe it does. And yet, there is something I see on some people which seems to be beyond this, as if they accessed a layer of truth further. As if, there was some hierarchy, which we may call reality. I may risk being wrong, but I trully believe in that look I see in some people's eyes (Add: look of compassion and laughter – Feynman quote) that seems to be accompanied by a certain kind of world view. I think I can see that look through everyone's eyes, hidden. Maybe, I'm just whishing for a connection that doesn't exist, but what if it did? It'll at least be worthwhile to look for it. I recently watched the movie Cloud Atlas. It shows a story, which hasn't taken place in any one epoch, but in human conciousness. It displays, most expresivelly, what I'm talking about. Call it, the collective unconscious, if you will, but it's there. It is the candle in the dark. I know not if the light comes from sparking a flame within us, or from drawing the veil only to be blinded by the Sun. I think it's both, it's a connection. But then I remember, that I'm still on my way. It's not a connection, but many, an infinity of them. It is the fact that reason and emotion live in harmony, that everything you see fits everything else, and keeps doing so. The answer presents itself, the hierarchy is self-emerging, the truth is the growing accumulation of experiences, which when connected reveal a structure"
random thoughts from 21 dec 2018
don't confuse medium and message I feel VRChat is somehow special because it's VR. But what matters more is what the people in the environment are. And they are nice people of course. But just not quite the type I enjoy the most to spend most of my time with, probably The 1.5 year anime+games experiment is already giving results. It has nice aspects, I have learned many things. And I will fully adopt the aspects I like But there aspects I don't like as much, and that is fine. I will also keep learning and exploring, as usual Things I've learnt: * The gaming and anime community is full of wonderful people, with good hearts, emotions, and often a radical acceptance of differences, which is just beautiful to see. * They also have lots of fun * However, they often don't share my curiosity and passion for science, exploring, and learning. * They also sometimes get more obsessed with certain things than I would be comfortable with