OPTIMISM!

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Hello!

This spawns 'wishful thinking' and the level of its spawning equals the level of resulting positivity or negativity in relation to the partaker's POV. If said participant receives a correctly perceived outcome, their sense of wellbeing is further established and confidence resounds. If said participant is incorrect - the opposite.

Can humans exist without this suggestive process, and/or are we reliant on it?

Thank you!
Mark...

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@mark noble,

When speaking in general ontological terms, the word "existence" can be applied to all aspects of "being", but Heidegger for one delimited the term to mean the specifically human process of contemplation of one's own being. In that respect I do not think "optimism" was a key issue, rather it was "authenticity" or "self-determination". Presumably, however, if one's own POV gives negative results, the person is likely to be drawn into externally prescribed modes of being like "religion", which H might have categorized as "inauthentic", thereby detracting from "existence".

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@fresco,

Hi Fresco!

Pre-determinism is more along the lines I'm thinking of here, and the benefit/detriment caused by. Is it avoidable, navigable or malable even?

Nice post - Thank you.
Mark...

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@mark noble,

mark noble wrote:

Hello!

This spawns 'wishful thinking' and the level of its spawning equals the level of resulting positivity or negativity in relation to the partaker's POV. If said participant receives a correctly perceived outcome, their sense of wellbeing is further established and confidence resounds. If said participant is incorrect - the opposite.

Can humans exist without this suggestive process, and/or are we reliant on it?

Thank you!
Mark...

There's such a thing as egomania... no negative outcomes are considered. A person like that will march through failure after failure, astonishing everyone else with their blindness.

On the other hand you can look at the effects of pessimism. Like a girl who believes females are naturally bad at math. We'll never know what she could have understood... she's living out her expectations.

So I'm saying that a person might be like a computer... translating experience according to a program. But emotion, self-image, world-view.. those may be just as significant as logic.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

When speaking in general ontological terms, the word "existence" can be applied to all aspects of "being", but Heidegger for one delimited the term to mean the specifically human process of contemplation of one's own being. In that respect I do not think "optimism" was a key issue, rather it was "authenticity" or "self-determination". Presumably, however, if one's own POV gives negative results, the person is likely to be drawn into externally prescribed modes of being like "religion", which H might have categorized as "inauthentic", thereby detracting from "existence".

Been going Heidegger, I see. How does a person attain authenticity?

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@Arjuna,

He seems to advocate the well-known adage "know thyself", meaning recognize one's culturally conditioned thought habits and activities which occupy most of our "being". In that sense he follows a familiar line taken up by esotericists such as Gurdjieff (man is "asleep"). However, unlike the latter, I am not aware of any specific "improvement regime" advocated by H. (Googling "authenticity" might yield otherwqise).

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@mark noble,

mark noble wrote:

Can humans exist without this suggestive process, and/or are we reliant on it?

No, I don't think we're reliant on it, although without it, one's life is probably a little more miserable.

I think 'hope' is important, as without it it, everything can look rather bleak, espescially when dealing with an illness.

Those with an optimistic outlook probably tend to attract those with a similar trait. So, this could help if one if lonely.

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