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I'm making a religion based on Emergence.

Started by Kai, July 04, 2009, 04:57:41 PM

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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel on July 12, 2009, 11:40:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 12, 2009, 10:12:00 PM
Sounds too much like native American hippie crap.

I feel no need to thank or apologize to a fucking cow.

Hey.

Allow me to restate that: 

QuoteSounds too much like what hippies think native Americans did.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 13, 2009, 12:00:02 AM
Quote from: Nigel on July 12, 2009, 11:40:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 12, 2009, 10:12:00 PM
Sounds too much like native American hippie crap.

I feel no need to thank or apologize to a fucking cow.

Hey.

Allow me to restate that: 

QuoteSounds too much like what hippies think native Americans did.

MUCH better!  :D
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

It is actually true that we are supposed to recognize and appreciate the value of that which we consume or destroy in order to sustain our lives. I do this by loving the shit out of things.

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel on July 13, 2009, 12:38:30 AM
It is actually true that we are supposed to recognize and appreciate the value of that which we consume or destroy in order to sustain our lives. I do this by loving the shit out of things.



I do it by eating them.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 13, 2009, 12:47:29 AM
Quote from: Nigel on July 13, 2009, 12:38:30 AM
It is actually true that we are supposed to recognize and appreciate the value of that which we consume or destroy in order to sustain our lives. I do this by loving the shit out of things.



I do it by eating them.

Rev Roger cuts right to the still-beating heart of the matter.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 13, 2009, 12:47:29 AM
Quote from: Nigel on July 13, 2009, 12:38:30 AM
It is actually true that we are supposed to recognize and appreciate the value of that which we consume or destroy in order to sustain our lives. I do this by loving the shit out of things.



I do it by eating them.

:lulz:

Fucking Cornish.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Bruno

Quote from: Kai on July 08, 2009, 01:45:45 PM

So, we fear death, we loose touch of our roots and the Process that goes on around us, and we try to control It in ways that are ultimately damaging for ourselves and our species. We loose our sense of awe, our communion with Life, and our respect for Life and the Process of Sustaing.

The solution to this starts with an awareness of ones own agency, and extends to the understanding of agency in all Life. It may not be conscious, but all living things have an end, a teleos, and a continuance. You let your mind sweep back across time to see the lineages bind together at the root in the Progenitor and see just how connected all life is by this chain of continuance. Life leads to Life, there is no lack of life inbetween. This is a 3.5 billion year unbroken chain. You go back further, see the atoms within us are a continuance of the atoms that came at the first moment, the energy there is the energy that has been since the Beginning, and the particular compositions of our bodies, these atoms were formed in the depths of stars. So, we too are connected to the greater cosmos in that way.

And we can reach out with our minds and see all the connections going on here on Earth in the Process of Sustaining, all the Giving and Taking and how it forms this giant network so incredibly complex and yet so simply in continuance, and realize we share in this. All these connections generate a sense of of great awe in me, liberating awe.

We can go a step further and consider our own death, but what is death really? If we are not just our minds in our bodies but our minds as part of our bodies, then our bodies don't really end. At the moment of death, other life begins taking of our sustainence. Our atoms continue in the earth, in the air, but mostly in other living things. So, we don't really end at death, we continue as part of Life.

All of these things instill a great sense of awe, respect, and fearlessness of death in me. When people realize what they are part of they will no longer fight death with illusions of forever taking. This is not saying utopia, or an end of pain, but those individual humans who choose to see it will know that we are not alone, that we all share in this Process, we're all together in this. We will cease being a destructive force in our own ecology, simply from awareness over time. Awareness breeds empathy, and empathy for each other and for our place in the Process is what we need now, more than anything. Thats how it starts. And I in this at least will not fear death.

I've heard this "death is no biggie, after all, our atoms will still be around." argument before. Honestly, it doesn't do much for me. You could use the same argument to defend book burning. The information is destroyed, but hay, look... atoms!

The atoms in our corpses aren't even our original atoms. We poop those out several several times in our lifespans. Are our poop atoms any more or less sacred than our corpse atoms?

The point I'm getting at is: The part that we leave behind that really matters, the part that is really us, isn't our physical remains, but our memes.
Formerly something else...

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

#37
Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on August 01, 2009, 04:07:25 PM
Quote from: Kai on July 08, 2009, 01:45:45 PM

So, we fear death, we loose touch of our roots and the Process that goes on around us, and we try to control It in ways that are ultimately damaging for ourselves and our species. We loose our sense of awe, our communion with Life, and our respect for Life and the Process of Sustaing.

The solution to this starts with an awareness of ones own agency, and extends to the understanding of agency in all Life. It may not be conscious, but all living things have an end, a teleos, and a continuance. You let your mind sweep back across time to see the lineages bind together at the root in the Progenitor and see just how connected all life is by this chain of continuance. Life leads to Life, there is no lack of life inbetween. This is a 3.5 billion year unbroken chain. You go back further, see the atoms within us are a continuance of the atoms that came at the first moment, the energy there is the energy that has been since the Beginning, and the particular compositions of our bodies, these atoms were formed in the depths of stars. So, we too are connected to the greater cosmos in that way.

And we can reach out with our minds and see all the connections going on here on Earth in the Process of Sustaining, all the Giving and Taking and how it forms this giant network so incredibly complex and yet so simply in continuance, and realize we share in this. All these connections generate a sense of of great awe in me, liberating awe.

We can go a step further and consider our own death, but what is death really? If we are not just our minds in our bodies but our minds as part of our bodies, then our bodies don't really end. At the moment of death, other life begins taking of our sustainence. Our atoms continue in the earth, in the air, but mostly in other living things. So, we don't really end at death, we continue as part of Life.

All of these things instill a great sense of awe, respect, and fearlessness of death in me. When people realize what they are part of they will no longer fight death with illusions of forever taking. This is not saying utopia, or an end of pain, but those individual humans who choose to see it will know that we are not alone, that we all share in this Process, we're all together in this. We will cease being a destructive force in our own ecology, simply from awareness over time. Awareness breeds empathy, and empathy for each other and for our place in the Process is what we need now, more than anything. Thats how it starts. And I in this at least will not fear death.

I've heard this "death is no biggie, after all, our atoms will still be around." argument before. Honestly, it doesn't do much for me. You could use the same argument to defend book burning. The information is destroyed, but hay, look... atoms!

The atoms in our corpses aren't even our original atoms. We poop those out several several times in our lifespans. Are our poop atoms any more or less sacred than our corpse atoms?

The point I'm getting at is: The part that we leave behind that really matters, the part that is really us, isn't our physical remains, but our memes.

P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A



Kai

Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on August 01, 2009, 04:07:25 PM
Quote from: Kai on July 08, 2009, 01:45:45 PM

So, we fear death, we loose touch of our roots and the Process that goes on around us, and we try to control It in ways that are ultimately damaging for ourselves and our species. We loose our sense of awe, our communion with Life, and our respect for Life and the Process of Sustaing.

The solution to this starts with an awareness of ones own agency, and extends to the understanding of agency in all Life. It may not be conscious, but all living things have an end, a teleos, and a continuance. You let your mind sweep back across time to see the lineages bind together at the root in the Progenitor and see just how connected all life is by this chain of continuance. Life leads to Life, there is no lack of life inbetween. This is a 3.5 billion year unbroken chain. You go back further, see the atoms within us are a continuance of the atoms that came at the first moment, the energy there is the energy that has been since the Beginning, and the particular compositions of our bodies, these atoms were formed in the depths of stars. So, we too are connected to the greater cosmos in that way.

And we can reach out with our minds and see all the connections going on here on Earth in the Process of Sustaining, all the Giving and Taking and how it forms this giant network so incredibly complex and yet so simply in continuance, and realize we share in this. All these connections generate a sense of of great awe in me, liberating awe.

We can go a step further and consider our own death, but what is death really? If we are not just our minds in our bodies but our minds as part of our bodies, then our bodies don't really end. At the moment of death, other life begins taking of our sustainence. Our atoms continue in the earth, in the air, but mostly in other living things. So, we don't really end at death, we continue as part of Life.

All of these things instill a great sense of awe, respect, and fearlessness of death in me. When people realize what they are part of they will no longer fight death with illusions of forever taking. This is not saying utopia, or an end of pain, but those individual humans who choose to see it will know that we are not alone, that we all share in this Process, we're all together in this. We will cease being a destructive force in our own ecology, simply from awareness over time. Awareness breeds empathy, and empathy for each other and for our place in the Process is what we need now, more than anything. Thats how it starts. And I in this at least will not fear death.

I've heard this "death is no biggie, after all, our atoms will still be around." argument before. Honestly, it doesn't do much for me. You could use the same argument to defend book burning. The information is destroyed, but hay, look... atoms!

The atoms in our corpses aren't even our original atoms. We poop those out several several times in our lifespans. Are our poop atoms any more or less sacred than our corpse atoms?

The point I'm getting at is: The part that we leave behind that really matters, the part that is really us, isn't our physical remains, but our memes.

I've been thinking about your post for almost a month now but I don't even know where to begin addressing it. On the other hand I know I need to address it because the "dissolution of self from death" in relation to the meaning of human existence, Emergence and The Process of Sustaining is an important discussion.

I'm going to come at this from an athiestic nihilistic perspective for a moment.

If neurobiology is correct and our consciousness is an emergent property of our many many neurons in network throughout our bodies, then we are our bodies, or at least, the I is emergent from our bodies and part of. I am nothing more than a lineage of processed sensory information interacting with the universe. When that network ceases to function, this transient emergent system will cease to occur. I will be gone forever. This existence is short and devoid of meaning, just something that happened to happen, and when it's over, its over.


That particular line of thinking doesn't appeal to me. I know you aren't a nihilist, was not saying you were. I needed to take the extreme on that to work back from it.

It's true we can't avoid completely the death of our neural networks, but most of us spend our whole lives in fear of the end. I'm not saying that we should seek out our demises. To do so is foolish, stupid and a misuse of our emergent teleos. Since we can continue, everything points towards continuing. There is a difference between not fearing death, and seeking it out. All life works for its own continuance.

There seems to be some meaning in this teleosic continuation. We're all part of the same great lineage, and all striving to continue, yet we don't all continue. In order to get through the next day, I have to take life to sustain myself. In the process I destroy that teleos (and neural network) to keep my own teleos and neural network going. Yet in this way, the whole network of life in this emergence system the Process of Sustaining goes on. Death of some leads to life for others. The whole thing keeps going. It seems to me that there is only one reason that I /couldn't/ draw meaning from this, and that is if I thought humans were somehow separate from The Process. I am part of this bigger thing and this bigger Process is part of me. Even if my neural networks don't continue the whole Process continues and therefore I in some way also continue. To follow the ideas of Antero Alli, its only a paradox until you consider that death and continuing are both aspects of being human, and of being Life.

Ecology isn't the only greater Emergence system we are part of. Consciousness connecting with Consciousness leads to social networks and the wide human experience we call culture. Though I don't like the word "meme", there is continuation in social networks as there is in ecology. Finding meaning in one certainly doesn't exclude finding meaning in the other. What we pass out and on and forward in ideas is just as meaningful. :)

I hope that begins to address these issues.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

And to the other issue. I recognize my bias as having a background in catholicism with a deep feeling for ritual. Formally stating my feelings and thanks goes along with it. It focuses me, and its meaningful for me. Nobody else necessarily shares that, and I'm okay with that.

~Kai,

Absurdist to the core.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Triple Zero

Kai, just wanted to say I agree with that. Nothing to add.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Kai on August 29, 2009, 08:15:29 PM
It's true we can't avoid completely the death of our neural networks, but most of us spend our whole lives in fear of the end. I'm not saying that we should seek out our demises. To do so is foolish, stupid and a misuse of our emergent teleos. Since we can continue, everything points towards continuing. There is a difference between not fearing death, and seeking it out. All life works for its own continuance.

Two points:

1.  I don't think I know anybody who spends their whole life, or even a large portion of it, in fear of the end.  Maybe they do and I just haven't twigged on yet, or it's the kind of thing people keep to themselves (and do a very good job of it.)  Maybe it's because most of the people I know are younger and not yet at the point where worrying about dying is fashionable?  I know I personally am more afraid that I might end up in situation where the most correct option is to kill someone, do so, and then not feel remorse afterwards - which is a highly improbable situation, especially when compared to the certainty of my expiring.  (Unless Quantum Immortality is correct, which would be awesome.)

2.  I'm not saying we should seek out unfavored energy states.  To do so is foolish, stupid, and a misuse of our potential energy.  Since we can undergo decomposition, everything points to breaking chemical bonds.  There is a difference between respecting temporary high-energy states, and greedily clinging to them.  All order works for the increase of universal entropy.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Kai

Quote from: GA on August 31, 2009, 01:28:17 AM
Quote from: Kai on August 29, 2009, 08:15:29 PM
It's true we can't avoid completely the death of our neural networks, but most of us spend our whole lives in fear of the end. I'm not saying that we should seek out our demises. To do so is foolish, stupid and a misuse of our emergent teleos. Since we can continue, everything points towards continuing. There is a difference between not fearing death, and seeking it out. All life works for its own continuance.

Two points:

1.  I don't think I know anybody who spends their whole life, or even a large portion of it, in fear of the end.  Maybe they do and I just haven't twigged on yet, or it's the kind of thing people keep to themselves (and do a very good job of it.)  Maybe it's because most of the people I know are younger and not yet at the point where worrying about dying is fashionable?  I know I personally am more afraid that I might end up in situation where the most correct option is to kill someone, do so, and then not feel remorse afterwards - which is a highly improbable situation, especially when compared to the certainty of my expiring.  (Unless Quantum Immortality is correct, which would be awesome.)

2.  I'm not saying we should seek out unfavored energy states.  To do so is foolish, stupid, and a misuse of our potential energy.  Since we can undergo decomposition, everything points to breaking chemical bonds.  There is a difference between respecting temporary high-energy states, and greedily clinging to them.  All order works for the increase of universal entropy.

1. I'm not sure how to address this point right now. When I have a way for it, I'll get back to you.

2. I don't respond to argumentum ad absurdum.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish