The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who you Are

Good. I'm visiting a sick friend in another city and that should take the rest of the day.

A biological organism is more than its nervous system. When I stub my toe, I literally feel its pain. Organisms are interdependent with their environment, but don't immediately feel its pain--which is unfortunate, because eventually they could when the environment goes up in smoke. That, indeed, is a major dilemma facing our species. We can empathize, sometime to the point of putting a loved one's life, or even our country, above our own life. But that requires emotional/ideational development, which some cultures (like the Hopi) encourage, and others (like the U.S.) tend to discourage. Like hate, "it has to be carefully taught."

He's entitled to his opinion. I'm not convinced

I'think what he said was; "as separate individuals we have no common ground, no common "sense" of being common." As separate individuals we can come together for a common cause, as in World War II, or 9-11. When we perceive a common threat, real or imagined.

That may be, but he said "religion can't help". I think non-dogmatic religion can.

I guess I share the view that humans are interdependent with each other and their environment, and can learn to be much more in touch with those. Vedantists and Buddhists tend to put it in stronger language. Budhists: "Self" does not exist. Vedantists: there is only Brahman. I have trouble with those. But admittedly they're a relief from the "me, me, me" of current U.S. libertarianism.

 

Matter and energy are mutually exchangeable. We know that. But only extreme reductionism would say one is "nothing but" the other, or that the difference is not salient.

 

My what? The DNA is the same and the memories provide the sense of continuity that is selfhood. The "outside influences" were indeed outside, whether internal or external, acting on an existing organism.

Of course it is. It's a metaphor used mainly by Zoroastrians, Essenes, and Christian "end times" fundamentalists.

 

All the evidence indicates space-time is hyperuniform, and we require physics beyond the standard theory, but that are equally egalitarian, flat, and normalized.

 

A war and a terrorist attack aren't exactly a "taffy pull".I became a Christian after a "moment of clarity" (religious experience, psychotic break, etc.), which began with the biblical passage that we are all created in God's image and likeness. Next step was Atman. I think in that sense,we're all reflections of divinity, and that should be a powerful common bond. Walmart has never been the same! But as a moral actor, I take sole responsibility for my thoughts and deeds.

I'm afraid you'll have to do better than etymology to convince me that I'm the multiverse and my own grandpa.I even contain genes from his past relations, but that doesn't settle the matter.

Sorry, but I think my consciousness is the thing I experience most immediately. You could be a figment of my imagination, but I couldn't be a figment of my own imagination. Descartes was right on that score. Sure, I could be hallucinating about other things, and those hallucinations could be brought about by drugs. I could be a brain in a jar in some science lab, and my universe could be a virtual reality simulation. But my primal bet is that I exist and can generally rely on my senses, reason and intuition. I'm not gonna let some hallucination like yourself talk me out of that. I recall a discussion with a Vedantist on HF awhile back. He was arguing that physical reality doesn't exist. I suggested he take a leap off a tall building and see how it turns out. Never heard back from him. I've often wondered and felt a little guilty about that one.

The Qur'an (50:16) tells us Allah is closer to us than our jugular. As a panendeist, I believe that God is in my head and every molecule of my body, as well as in everyone and everything else in the multiverse, but that doesn't make me God. Just a microscopic part of God, and not entirely even that.

 

bibles, korans, and the "the book" of every other religion that has one, were all written by humans for entirely human reasons,
none of which have anything to do with the existence or non existence of one or more gods or god like beings,
who owe nothing to anything we tell each other to pretend we know about them.

don't understand watt's appearant objection to the observations of science.
which have no direct baring on the context which he examines.
my awareness is connected, currently, to a life form, which is male, human, and old.
none of these however do i perceive as identity.
perspectives, priorities and preferences (in ALL things) are what i do.

air exists to inflate basket balls if basketball is what you're interested in.
my interests are more in landscapes then the personalities that populate them.

but also of course, in not wanting things that legitimately make them unhappy, when that can be sustainably avoided in a real way, which it often can.
i'd still be happier to spend eternity alone in a forest, where everything else allowed me to be happy and at peace with it,
then in the presence of anything. though it might be fun to say hi occasionally, as long as it didn't get too carried away with that wanting to be feared crap.

i'm not a god and not wanting to be a god, but all that human stuff just gives me a headake.
and i find other things, not owning them but just being able to see and enjoy their existence,
a lot more interesting.

experience tells me to expect anything i say about that to be taken other then what it really means.
still i believe in the goodness of strangeness and not in the goodness of wishing to be feared.
which has nothing to do with sex, or religion, or politics.

i like goddesses when they drop by for tea, even if the only do so as long as i don't try to touch them.
not sure why, but they're welcome.

 

So enlighten us. What is it? I'm going by what seems to be a consensus on what we experience with our senses. The guy I mentioned seemed to be taking Bishop Berkeley's view that this is a kind of virtual reality illusion "all in our minds by God, or in this case Brahman. People can entertain such views if they want, so long as they're harmless, but I see no reason to accept them.

 

"Light" certainly is more prevalent, but the term came up in your presentation of Watts as a stark dualism between Light and Darkness. And I think Watts was being critical. In fact, he listed it , or more generally "Opposites" of which it was an example, among the "six fictions". Stark dualism can be found here and there, but the traditions I mentioned seem to be the worst "offenders".
Monism could also be considered a "social fiction", relying mainly on taste for a certain metaphysical conception. I personally think it's important to draw a clear distinction between right and wrong, in order to avoid the "social fiction" of relativism.

 

Exactly! No one knows the true nature of ultimate reality. We're just guessing and placing our bets. I like to make educated bets, based on evidence, reason, intuition and personal experience. When confronted with theory that seems counter-intuitive, e.g., non-self or physical reality is an illusion, I expect lots of convincing evidence and arguments to persuade me to change my views. I haven't read Watts' book, so I'm mainly reacting to the description and quotations you provide.