Position on the human race

My view on the human race, if I were to attempt to describe it simply would be that of jaded humanism that verges on misanthropy.

I loved the universe, mankind and existance itself. Not with a burning fiery passion but a simple peaceful affinity and affection. Why shouldn't I have? Rich parents, white skin, good education, fantastic health and if it's not too arrogant to say at least a comfortable ammount of intelligence and sufficient good looks that I haven't had to worry about a date in my life.

That was when I was much, much younger. Then I came across suffering for the first time, not my own but still it was a confusing time for me. I was empathic enough to be able to imagine their situation even though I hadn't ever experienced it. Still, in my innocence I assumed that accidents happen and occasionally bad things will happen despite everyone's best intentions. I didn't understand why things occurred the way they did.

This is about the age that religion attempts to prey on the minds of children if they're not already part of the church community, naturally religion attempted to bring me in as part of them and "explain" these problems I saw. Even back then I could see their fantacism was a broadsword where a scalpel was needed and that they were a part of the problem.

I always thought that if I could only understand why this suffering occured I would be able to fix it. Now I'm beginning to understand and I can see why individuals act the way they do, yet there are six billion of you and only one of me. No matter how much I try I'll never be able to completely understand the pattern. I still hope that perhaps, just maybe, I'll be able to understand enough to set up a self-reinforcing process that could twist that pattern in just the right ways to have things fix themselves in a few thousand years rather than slide into decay. Logically however I know that there is no way anyone could understand these patterns completely. There's too much.

I've still never suffered, I probably never will but I don't want to be alone in that. So I love you all and wish you all the best, yet at the same time I despise you for the fact that no matter what I do you will all continue to destroy yourselves and each other.

You have the potential to do anything. I seriously believe that without any sense of exaggeration. Homo Sapiens is omnipotent. One human isn't, but if all of our species desired something... anything... and worked for it, we would have it.

For that potential I love you, and for wasting it I hate you.

....

Val, You asked.

What makes you think you won't suffer?

And why do you say "you" instead of "we" and "us"?

From my starting point that particular end point is unlikely. Not impossible, but certainly not assured nor even in my opinion likely. On the other hand there are those for whom where they are now will most likely result in a lifetime of suffering.



Freudian perhaps, my desires and inner point of view subconciously shaping my speech without my realising it. There are certainly times when I don't feel like one of you, and there are times when I realise that we are all in the same boat and that I share the same flaws as the rest of us.

(for the record the grammar in that paragraph was deliberate)

Never the less, it isn't me that I'm worried about or me who will be affected. I could quite easily just live my life with security and happiness. It's my species that I worry about, I personally am doing just fine.

Yes - I assumed the grammar was deliberate.

I am frankly gob-smacked that you believe you are unlikely to suffer - but perhaps we define this differently?

But enough, perhaps, of what is a digression?

I wonder at what makes you think that I will... The possibility that we define the terms differently is of course entirely likely.

Being on the negative it is somewhat difficult for me to answer, much as if I were to ask you "why aren't you going to suddenly fall upwards onto the ceiling today?". While the question is certainly answerable it is... taxing.

Well, if you care to give it, I should be interested to hear your definition of suffering.

Starvation, dehydration, severe disease, torture, sacrificing morality for survival, imprisonment, discrimination, mutilation, exile, mass grief. More of a cross-section really than a definition but I trust it's indicative none the less.

Anti-buddha, good if you have not suffered.

My Point of View on humanity:
We are stuck between the primitive emotional/feeling driven state of animals and the rational/empathetic state of being.

Well I'm certainly pleased about it, that's for sure.



Agreed. Though the human race can never become fully logical. What is the logical purpose of life? In what way should we logically act? Think about it and I'll discuss it when you've come up with some answers.

From what i`ve seen, he/she realizes that most of what happens to people, is self-inflicted, that, he/she won`t inflict the level of ignorance/arrogance required to 'suffer' in his/her life.

I started out on the opposite end of 'life' than 'theantibuddha' - low middle class parents - a long list of family problems & events - more experiences that I care to have experienced (these would be considered learning experiences by the lesser) - and I am also _immensely_ aware of the day to day arrogance of the average person, the insanity & oppression that they inflict on themselves, and I can`t help but wonder "WHY are they like this?". It is truly amazing to see people with no ambition, and people that believe that someone owes them for the terrible life they have designed for themselves.

I too feel alone.

Honestly, I don't know if I can come up with a good answer to that question. All I can say right now is that I will not let my feelings deceive me.

Ah - you have indeed edited out, as it were, many of the causes of human suffering as I define it - (like illness, debility, loss of loved ones etc etc) - that are pretty much universal. Yes - I get your thrust, indeed. I would be interested - if it were possible - to check with you in 20 years if you still have the same definition. A discussion of what constitutes suffering would be quite interesting to me - but is not the purpose of this thread.

Position on the human race?


Hmmmm - an ape with a marvellously - and, handy-dandy, tragically - fizzy brain: which has landed us amidst the fruits and sodom-apples of intellect, but with a series of wired-in instincts/social inhibitions/responses which were protective and reasonable earlier in our evolution, but which have fallen behind the demands of our current reality.

We struggle to do what we do best - adapt and change - but with very mixed results.

Bless us - I wish us well.

antibuddha

Because of lack of time, this reply is only about your conception of suffering. Later I'll try to give my opinion about your initial statement.

Although I suffer in myself, the cause of the pain may be not only in myself. We can suffer because of the death of another person we loved. We can suffer because of an illness of someone else.
We are not always so deeply centered in ourselves.
I think it is curious that your examples of suffering have only to do with the subject who suffers. Of course, in the end, the sensations are in the subject. But the cause of those sensations can be external. When you love someone, for example, you sudden realize that this person is not only an object for your sensations, but a subject in herself. That is why, in my opinion, love is possible. And if that person dies, your grief is not only egoist - to be deprived from her presence. It is also for her, when you realize she will no more walk, talk, feel, smile, BE HER. That she is nothing but a chemical process of decomposition, and for all eternity.

As I said, later I will try to answer your initial statement.

Antibuddha, I think I must be a little overly optomistic, but then I think that is logically the most productive and useful approach to take anyway. The self help books have hijacked Mahatma Ghandi's "Be the change you wish to see in the world" but the dude had a way with words that work.

My prediction would be that the human race will continue to blunder on in the general direction of the "betterment of all" with frequent backwards steps such as nazism and line dancing.

Having said that, the one huge obstacle in our path is that of overpopulation. No species has ever been through a population boom like ours and not suffered a drastic decline, without finding new space to invade. It think it's a problem we will solve but not until we have to, and even then I think there will be some rather severe Darwinian "rationalisation" along the way.

So the long term outlook is fine with occaisional hurricanes.

I see us as the first race ever to be truly aware of itself and to have the power to control the future of the race entire, and I think we haven't even become used to the idea let alone know how to harness the potential of it.

More likely we will continue to work as seperate tribes, with some tribes working better than others and those tribes surviving better. Like always.

I'm sure Charles Darwin would agree with me when I suggest that lasting world peace would be the worst thing that could ever happen to the human race.

As for your personal suffering antibuddha , I hope you do. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Antibudhha, I know you will have understood my last evil wish upon you, but I think I had better clarify for the sake of all who pass this way.

I think that a complete lack of suffering in one's life would mean that you fail enjoy the benefits that suffering could bring you. Those benefits could range from a better understanding of your own strengths right through to artistic inspiration. At the very least, suffering teaches you how wonderful life is when you are not. I don't think a full, complete life with no regrets could be possible without some degree of suffering along the way.

So get out there and break a leg!

antibuddha

I've still never suffered, I probably never will but I don't want to be alone in that. So I love you all and wish you all the best, yet at the same time I despise you for the fact that no matter what I do you will all continue to destroy yourselves and each other.

Yes. We are still predators, the most terrifying predators that the Earth has know. We destroyed all other species, we destroy life everyday, we destroy ourselves everyday.
Perhaps we can blame evolution, for giving us a tool as powerful as intelligence without providing us the empathy with the suffering of our victims.
But, being the infuriated beasts we are, we can also see ourselves, think about us. Frequently life appears to us like "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury". But it was a man that wrote that. We are able to make stupid wars, but also able to think how stupid they are. And, sometimes, to stop them.
You will say: but that doesn't prevent us from starting another stupid war.
Yes, that is our condition. And I have no hope of a "redemption". Scientific knowledge, rationality, information, are standard values in our modern civilization. But this civilization is also the "civilization" of Hitler and Stalin, Hiroxima, Bosnia, Rwanda and the civilization of the fellow next door that wakes one morning not happy with his life, takes a gun and kills ten or twelve people of an high school.

I think you want to much from people. We are just like that. In one moment talking rationally about Plato or Kant and in other moment insulting the driver next to us for the most futile reasons.
But you cannot escape from being like that. No one can.

Ray, I'm not going to say I'm right on this one but a few years ago I believed as you do there until I changed my mind. That doesn't mean that I've "advanced beyond you" or anything like that, I'm just saying that I do understand your viewpoint but now think differently.

Logic can never provide a reason for existing. Self-preservation? Why? Reproduction? Why?... "because it's always been that way" isn't a sufficient answer, not for logic.

Emotions however, they don't care about reasons or rationales. Our emotions know what they want. They want to live, they want to reproduce. If we want meaning and purpose in our lives (and it's pretty tough to get anywhere without that), then we can only get them from our emotions.

Logic can not be our end goal, only emotion can. Yet logic can lead us to control our emotions and surpress them when necessary to lead to greater emotional reward in the future.

Didn't I cover that with severe disease? I put the word severe in there to distinguish from colds and fluus.



Oh whoops, that one I should have listed, since I certainly consider that suffering.



Mass grief. Losing a loved one, one at a time is normal. We've been experiencing that for millions of years and -should- have the cultural and emotional development to handle it. Yet mass grief, the loss of your entire family at once, that is a tragedy that we are not equiped to handle.

The way you sound about it seems to expect that I don't think I'll ever stub my toe. Of course I will. My parents will die before me (most likely, though I could be surprised on that one) and maybe my siblings or even my spouse. I will catch various diseases and have the occasional accident. I will grow old and eventually die. Maybe I'll even be one of the statistics who gets paralyzed in a car accident, it's possible.

But I live in a first world country and will probably never have to face war, deadly diseases, starvation and the other myriad problems that afflict the poor and unfortunate around the world. For me any case of true suffering will come from tragic freak accidents, for them it is a guaranteed occurance.



Just to avoid the ugly hyphenate I'm male....

And you're soooooorrrrtt of right. There are some self-inflicted things that I will avoid, that I do believe, but no that's not the reason that I won't suffer. I'm saying that as a white australian I'm not likely to have to deal with the same crap that a south-american or vietnamese person might. Let alone the extreme poverty of certain nations.

On a global level, there is "self-inflicted" suffering of the human race. Except when our species is pushed it's the poor who feel the pinch. As a first-worlder I don't feel the consequences of human arrogance and stupidity, I reap the reward.



LMAO. Everyone seems obsessed about that statement which I threw in to clarify that I don't feel this way out of selfish desires... Oh well, may as well discuss that with you too.



Val mate, look at how I was using the word in my original post... it was to differentiate from the empathic suffering I have to put up with looking at the suffering in the world. Including empathic suffering would somewhat defeat the purpose.

As much as I hate to use the christian cop-out "You're taking me out of context", I kind of have to. I'm explaining how I used the word in that sentence, not my over-arching conception of it. As my original post should make clear I do experience a great deal of empathic suffering and sympathy.



I disagree. The world needs optimists who can get things done, yes, but it equally needs cynics and pessimists to prepare for the worst case scenarios that may never even come. You tend your oar and I'll tend mine.



That's my hope... in fact on a good bright cheery day I sometimes even think it to be likely. Yet the spectre of the possibilities I can foresee still worry me, even at the best of times.



Agreed. I personally won't reproduce. At times my genetic programming attempts to compel me and society very very strongly encourages you to have children. Yet the thought of the overpopulation of the earth is enough to fight that... for now.



I Disagree. Darwin spoke of natural selection, artificial selection is equally powerful. However... to genuinely give up war I believe we would require artificial selection to be introduced. Though that's really another topic (which maybe I should start a thread for).



Thanks I appreciate it, same goes for you too.

Here's my take on it:

I do think that we should shape our feelings to what is right. Emotions are not senses, they are therefore not a direct nerve experience of reality and are not fixed. Logic, or reason (I meant here all the logical faculties, and the ability to identify, etc), is the only way I "know" and the only way that I can exist meaningfully. Without it, the awareness of being does not exist, only a group of atoms lost in its own feelings. I can not let feelings be a guide, that is for the rational mind to do.

I believe in this for complicated reasons which I can't explain right now 'cause Superman is on TV. Cheers.