Out of Pod Experience

Okay, let us take this to the pinnacle of trees in the forest type of conversation.

Meaning of life, there is none. It is what you place on it. If raising a huge family, collecting numbers in a bank or worshipping a fiction gives you fulfilment then that is the meaning you give your life.

There's a huge meaning to life mate. Problem is, a bunch of logical reductionists weiner-like and denial-like reduced the thinking into "can be proved" or "bah, cannot be proved." That was in the 17th century, they were creating the Enlightenment. Bless them, they did a brilliant job. But it's about 400 years later now. Mechanical universe and rational thinking about life are kaput., imo. In the end, it leads to a Nietzsche conclusion.

Vedas are so cool, they worked all of this stuff 1100 years ago. They even created a really subtle vocabulary of terms for discussing it. You can skip years of euro-american thought-school if you check out old sources. Damn modern egos, they think they were the first persons to ever think. As if the same thoughts haven't crossed mind for so many years and so many climates, over many ages.

In opposition, you can cut so much with Newton's Flaming Laser Sword.

I love Nietzsche. The guy's thoughts are really aesthetically beautiful. The way really good music is aesthetically beautiful. But, as you read along, you can see where the deductive philosophical reasoning is going to lead to. Nihilism, basically. Which is a term sounds kind of cool, but a pretty tough and hopeless philosophy to live with on a daily basis. You're just existing from minute to minute, and putting up with having to do a lot of unpleasant b.s. just to keep your body alive. For what point? So you can keep doing it until you're too old and decrepit to do it anymore?

I've got no objection to using rationale thinking and deductive reasoning to examine the physical world, or the electromagetic/waveform quantum world. But I think using only that one tool as a basic for philosophical examination isn't a good idea. One is unnecessarily limiting oneself to one tradition's (the Greek logic, through Cartesian deconstructionist tradition's) train of thought.* Said another way, rejecting anything that doesn't fit into a certain worldview seems a little narrow, no?

*Source: Quantum physicist Frifjiof Kapra, The Tao of Physics

The go hand in hand. Like peas and carrots. Or the Illuminati and chemtrails.

That's not nihilism, that's just depression.

Nihilism is doing away with pre-established absolute objective Truths, values, meanings and narratives, and finding / developing your own personal ones, whatever those may be, or however those may change over time. Ideas, not ideologies.

It MMO terms, other systems of thought would be the sandbox games, where you are given a set of values, a given purpose, and a path to follow. Nihilism would be EVE, where you make your own.





I did read the Tao of Physics many years ago, along with a plethora of other similar books, seeking to establish parallels between various types of eastern mysticism and quantum physics, and exploring the nature of consciousness, the fabric of reality, and so on.

It was a compelling read indeed, interesting food for thought, particularly back when I used to take a lot more psychedelics - even if it felt at times as if he was stretching a bit much modern physics to fit it into that mold, and indeed his ideas, along with those of others such as Deepak Chopra, or more recently the makers of "What the bleep do we know", have caused a degree of controversy amongst the scientific community.

But as interesting as I may find it, I don't personally take it seriously. Quantum physics (along with Relativity) have introduced some counter-intuitive concepts and they have indeed made scientists to revisit the Newtonian view we had of the universe, and there are many things we still don't understand. But that does not mean that we are all part one consciousness, or whatever other "mystical concepts" (ie: someone-pulled-it-out-of-his-nether-regions-thousands-of-years-ago) some of these authors seem to take as an absolute objective Truth.

I'd rather stick to evidence and the scientific method when it comes to making science. For playful and whimsical speculative thinking anything goes, of course.

meh ...its still all bollox !

I see what you mean. The thoughts make sense, but the scientific proofs are pretty fuzzy. They seem to be kind of based on intuition and speculation. A series of thoughts and speculations, based on only a few of hard scientific evidence.

But... what if the scientific method itself isn't adequate for the task of discovering reality? As a crude example, what if it's something like trying to use a ruler to measure electromagnetism? It's the wrong tool for the job. The scientific method is definitely the right tool for arriving about conclusions about measurable things. But what if there are things that cannot be measured (using our way of thinking and our current technological tools). If it cannot be proven using the current set of tools, does that mean it doesn't exist?

I just think demanding that everything be measured and "proven" is a limiting factor. If it is something that exists, but our way of thinking cannot conceive of, how can we ever explore it if we limit ourselves to our current set of intellectual tools?

I have to disagree, mate. A lame impala can't survive. Same as a lame chick on a farm anywhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Americas. That happens due to basic farming/nature brutality. Compare that to modern human group/consenses decision making. Hot damn, I'd rather be a lame chick on a deep-woods Kamchatka farm, than to have some human deciding who and who isn't worthy. Lame chick at least gets a fair shake of the dice.