I remember when I was studying a lot of philosophy, and when things were pretty bad [in my life], that I was feeling pretty hopeless, that I was thinking about life: “Is this it? Is this all there is?” I had gotten to a point where I was feeling like I had a pretty solid [...]
Posts Tagged ‘philosophy’
We are all connected in being human
Posted in Life, tagged human condition, life, philosophy, society on July 5, 2011 |
Jesus and Letting Go
Posted in Life, tagged freedom, happiness, philosophy, religion on June 20, 2011 |
The thought just occurred to me that this is what the Jesus story is ultimately about: letting go. It is about the “death” of what you are in order to be who you are. It is about a dying of the old, of your old illusory life, in order to be “resurrected” as who you [...]
Losing Everything
Posted in Life, tagged courage, freedom, philosophy, truth on June 10, 2011 |
That line from Fight Club: that it’s only when we lose everything that we’re free to do anything. Is this true? I don’t know, but there is much truth in it. I think that most people, including myself, instinctively (or, out of fear, if we are to be honest with ourselves) think that, well, you [...]
WHAT we desire matters
Posted in Life, tagged ego-self, philosophy, selfish desire on May 4, 2011 |
Spinoza seems to be an egoist in the sense that he contends that all things try to persevere in their own beings. Many ‘egoists’ express a similar idea, which is that all beings are, ‘by nature,’ selfish, in that their prime motivation is self-preservation and self-satisfaction. But I think that these ideas are fundamentally different. [...]
The Unloaded Gun
Posted in Life, tagged attitude, belief, control, freedom, philosophy, reality, religion on February 8, 2011 |
(See “Hypocrisy in Morality” for the first part of this discussion.) Most people have it backwards—morality does not determine motivations and values, values and motivations determine morality. This is why organized religion has it wrong, because it functions on the former—false—principle. And it is why societies which attempt to function based on this backward logic [...]
The Spirit from the Machine
Posted in Life, tagged life, mind, philosophy, reality, science on October 13, 2010 |
It may be that everything that makes up ‘the mind’ and ‘the spirit’ is a product of ‘neurons’ and ‘neurotransmitters’ in the brain, that it is an ‘organic’ process. But why should the workings of the brain, which we hardly understand at all, necessarily preclude spirit, character, psychology? We may know that certain things occur [...]
