Comment by verisimi
2 months ago
Here's a question for you. Imagine a child who was well looked after (fed and loved) but didn't go to school for 12+ years. Now imagine the same person who from the age of 5-6 followed the usual path of 12+ years of schooling. Which person do you imagine would be more fully themselves, the more complete expression of whatever was already inside? If the schooled person did a PhD too (so another 6 years) would that help or hinder them from becoming themselves?
To me, the answer is obvious. Inserting thousands of ideas and patterns of thoughts into a person will be unlikely to help them become a true expression of their nature. If you know gardening, the schooled person is more like a trained tree - grown in a way that suits the farmer - the more tied back the tree is, the less free it is.
As I see it, each individual is unique, with a soul. Each is capable of reaching a full expression of itself, by itself. What I also see is that there are many systems that are intentional manipulations, put in place in order to farm individuals at the individual's expense. The more education one receives, the more amenable one is to being 'farmed' according to the terms that were inserted. To me, this is the installation of an unnatural and servile mentality, which once adopted makes the person easy to harness - the person will even think being harnessed and 'in service' is right and good.
The problem is that these principles were not their own. These are like religious beliefs, and unlike principles founded according to personal experience. Received principles will always be unnatural. Acting according to them, is to act in an inauthentic way. However, there is no material reason to address the inauthenticity, as when one looks around, everyone else is doing the same. This results in a self-supporting, collective delusion.
In my view there are answers to what the self is - but 'society' cannot teach you them - it can only fill you with delusions. Imo, you would be on a better footing to forget everything you think you know (this costs you nothing) and do something like apply the scientific method personally - let your personal experiences guide you. Know the difference between 'knowing' because of experience and 'belief' because you were taught it. Even more simply, know thyself.
My position is that we are nothing but our circumstances(I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?), or to put it more directly: We are our circumstances. Our Soul Is That. There is nothing that is "already inside".
The tree does not exist in isolation, separate from the patterns of rain and sunshine that shape its growth. "The separation is an illusion".
I have indeed been on the same path as you of trying to shed delusions and applying the scientific method, and have up to this point found no indication of any "causeless cause" to steer me besides the fundamental is-ness of the universe.
Put bluntly, I believe that if you hadn't started with the assumption of a soul, you would be entirely unable to arrive at the conclusion of a soul by rational methods. And starting by assuming the unproven instead of emptyness is epistemological cheating.
> There is nothing that is "already inside".
Have you seen babies, or puppies? You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities. Its not just chemistry or nurture.
> "The separation is an illusion"
But you don't really think this. You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.
>You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities
Refer to my previous post: "I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?"
That's not some mysterious transcendant soul, that's genetics. Literally the exact same thing as a computer program. Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.
>You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.
You missed the point of the argument. Just as the tree is not separate from its circumstances, neither am I.
You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.
Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.
Really I am no more distinct from the tree than, say, my fingernail is distinct from my nosebone. They belong to the same Individual.
4 replies →