/yu/ - Feelings

>>1589
This is going to be a blessed thread, calling it now.
My personal philosophy is heavily shaped by a few figures that I admire greatly. Incidentally, most of them would be considered madmen by common folk. One of the greats is Joshua Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
As a young man, he found great success as a businessman in 1850s San Francisco. However, he found himself almost completely destitute after a swift and unfortunate change in the price of the rice he traded. In lieu of this tragedy, Norton walked off into the desert. When he finally returned roughly a year later, he promptly declared himself Emperor of the United States. He walked up to a tailor and ordered him to make some royal garments. And you know what? That's just what the tailor did.
Joshua had no money, no reputation, absolutely nothing. And yet, as far as everyone was concerned, Norton was indeed emperor. Policemen saluted him as he walked by. He maintained correspondence with such figures as Queen Victoria. He was an inspiration to prominent artists such as Mark Twain, who used him as inspiration for his character The King in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Once an angry mob of rioters marched towards chinatown with blood on their minds. The Emperor stood in their path, all alone. And what did he do? Did he command them to disperse, rant and puff and turn red in the face? No. He sat in the middle of the road and simply recited the Lord's prayer. And so the mob dispersed.
When he died, as all men must, he received an emperor's funeral even though he didn't have $10 to his name. Many people make pilgrimages to the site of his burial every year. He was a legendary madman, as I hope to be.

>>1590

Oh wow I never his whole story.
I don't know if it's me, but after his desert incident, I feel like he couldn't have been himself. His entire life had just been smashed into a pulp in front of his eyes, so he fled to the desert for the comfort of solitude.
When he came back and pulled off his "stunts", he had already lost a large chunk of what he had been before.

But his whole story man... the way he acted it almost feels like he was in a dream.
Like a dream where you can do whatever you want, and for once it all goes right.
He shed his shell, and just did whatever he wanted to.
He was free, but at what cost?

Just feels like a living fantasy, and yet an ominous nightmare.

>>1589
My main philosophy is kinda weird? Not sure how to explain it well, but I'll try my best! I think that one of its main aspects is this "optimistic nihilism", if that makes any sense. What I mean by this is that nothing inherently has any value or meaning. But because of this, we are free to give it the meanings we choose. The fact that everything was born without meaning does not mean we are forced to keep it that way. In terms of belief, I guess I would be categorized as pantheistic. I don't really think there is some god, but if there is, I don't really care. However, I do see the universe itself as some form of holiness, but I don't really think that it's really a "god", or possesses any form of will. It's just following the laws of nature, and for that, the universe is an art. Everything follows this cosmic, mathematically perfect, beauty to it. And when I say "the universe" I don't mean just space. When I say "the universe", I mean the universe. That includes us, it includes you and me. It includes the clouds and the sky, the sun and the moon, the crisp air after a rainy day, the smell of the goods at a bakery, the sounds of the dry leaves underneath your feet, and the gently falling snow. It includes the proteins, molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up our very being. I believe that the universe is the highest form of beauty, and that we are manifestations of it. We are manifestations of nature. We were put in this world with no purpose, and left to explore the rest of it and to indulge in its beauty. To create, to destroy, to dream, and to exist. The universe is yours to give meaning to.

>>1592

Yeah man. When someone cries the ole "but we're so insignificant to the universe", my internal response is just "so what?". Yes we're physically small, but our views of the universe are just as intricate as on any other scale of proportion. We're tiny in the grand scheme of things, but we don't live in the grand scheme of things. We live in our own lives. The sharp image of a lone tree on a blue sky in a field of grass; the little bright colored lights and the noticeable but ignored hum coming from our appliances during the night; animals bewildered by humans; people halfway across the globe with ideas and ambitions that you'll just never get to know.
Just so, so much we have yet to observe.

"... the more I see the less I know..."

The meaning of life is to find one ourselves.

I believe in God and that reality exists independent of consciousness. I feel as if there are too many coincidences for it to be false. I also believe that the material part of a human and the spiritual are not separate but instead overlap, though they overlap differently for each person creating different egos.

>>1633
Ye, I can agree on that

>>1634
Also, to me solipsism is from a perspective of rationality untrue. Sure, abstractly you can always formulate an argument for solipsism, but it's just a regression into absurdity. It's like saying "Are elves real?" and the answer would of course be negative. Then, you'd say "Yeah, but how?" and that person would say "I have never seen an elf, or known anyone who's seen an elf." but the response would be "Maybe they hide themselves so that humans don't know of them." but then you'd say "Why hasn't any of them mistakenly appeared?" and you'd say "Maybe they don't make mistakes" and so on.

>>1638
Well, that is very interesting. I heard this point before, so for me, I would like to find out more about my beliefs from this. I guess for elves, it doesn't help anyone, it's not a philosophy or morals, so it's less easier to believe in.

>>1593
>The meaning of life is to find one ourselves.
I've come to this conclusion as well
>>1633
With so many things happening, it would be an incredible coincidence if there weren't any coincidences.
Also, randomness often evens out with time. So if you persist in something sooner or later you might be lucky to get an unlikely chance that might seem like "fate" or god's help.
It's like murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong", except applied in the opposite way: if there's a chance of a good thing happening, eventually it just might. Rowling had to go through 12 time being rejected by publishing companies before somebody finally accepted harry potter. That's not fate. That's not god. That's purely Rowling's merit.
And this applies to any unlikely event happening. It just has to, sooner or later, happen to someone. You don't believe god exists because a friend of yours got a super-rare yugioh card, do you?
I believe in randomness + cause and effect (action and results/consequence).
I feel about god in a similar way as worded here: >>1638
I can't prove there isn't one, but,
I simply fail to see any reason to believe there is one
I haven't seen god, or seen any consequence of his actions, or seen any reasonable proof of there being anyone who has. Accepting the bible as truth would require me to accept many other religious texts by other religions, because why would I randomly pick one and declare all the others fake?
You might say reality is god's action. But what is the reason to believe that?
Actually I find it incredibly absurd when people say "how can reality exist without a creator?" and then easily accept the fact that god just always existed. how can god exist without a creator? If god can, why can't reality just always have existed? Where did god get inspiration to create reality from? How even is god, and how does it work?

Some people have a weird perception of god, as in equating him to reality. I fail to see anything more than them naming their feelings for reality as "god". "beauty" is a human interpretation of reality, and if you think about it it has no meaning to it. Beauty is an illusion, useful for survival most likely. What's the fucking difference between 2/3 and the golden ratio, in meaning? None. But to us one is more pleasant to look at. You see the meaninglessness of our feelings when attempting to actually understand reality? Reality wasn't built around our feelings, the opposite is true, our feelings were built to work well with reality. So of course reality is fucking beautiful to us.
There's no reason for basic human logic to be true, but it applies to reality, so we learnt it to better survive, as a result we constantly get surprised by how logical our universe is. See the point?

Regarding the human body and spirit,
I believe that our mind is somewhat like a computer: the brain is the hardware, on top there is an operative system (subconscious and other stuff) running the program "consciousness". As such there is no "soul" separate from the body, when the computer breaks the program stops running.
The difference from computers is that a lot of the programming is done on the hardware level. Our brain is not a general purpose pc, rather specifically designed to run Consciousness (Tm)
I also believe that ego is an illusion. Does a program feel itself like a separate, individual being? Does it have a "feeling of self", self-perception not just as itself existing in a position and occupying space, but as being an individual?
No. It's something which emerged because it's useful for survival. But there's no "self", the way you feel it. You're just a bionic robot running a program (built for reproduction).

If we were simple, there would be no need for it. I'm pretty sure an ant doesn't feel itself as having importance.
But humans are too complex to operate on bare instincts. The only way to use human intelligence well to achieve stuff is by having priorities.
Pain, pleasure, sadness, happiness and all other emotions are just a play to push you into making the right actions that will lead you to reproduce and spread your genes. And you see it all falling apart when you see the loopholes (like masturbation) and how our system fails to adapt successfully to such a sophisticated environment as today's
But why do we need a concept of "self" for this system? Because there are a lot of things that we do for ourselves (which we wouldn't if we didn't feel like we). I guess it's a layer of abstraction over the basic pain/pleasure drives.
Also interpersonal relations are very important and they couldn't exist if there was no self.
"I love you" has "I" and "you", two words describing different "selves" out of three.
Love towards nothing in particular or for any female body (as a piece of meat) would be much less useful in transmitting genes than love for *someone* specific.

reality does exist independently of consciousness, but reality to us is our perception of it.

>>1778
TL;DR
So much stuff happens that coincidences and unlikely events in general happen not that rarely
I have never seen god so I don't believe in it. Why pick up the bible over the koran? Why can god have always existed but not reality?
Reality is not beautiful because it was created so, reality is beautiful because we humans learned what is beautiful from reality. If reality was completely different (and ugly by our current standards) we would've learned to love it and have different standards based on that reality
There's no soul, consciousness is a program.
There's no self, it's an illusion useful to be motivated to do stuff in a more advanced way than "GOTTA SURVIVE", "GOTTA HAVE SEX" and to have relationships of all kinds
We need those two things in order to utilize our intelligence efficiently (and intelligence is our biggest evolutionary advantage)
reality does exist independently of consciousness, but reality to us is our perception of it.

>>1779
>There's no soul, consciousness is a program.
then show me the source

>>1782
Lol I didn't mean to make it that way but it kinda fits

Oh and sorry if I sound like I know exactly what I'm talking about and everyone else is wrong. This is just my opinion, really. Not any more valuable that anyone else's