This thread may be unpopular; so be it. If I reach a single person, that is enough.
Seven years ago, I discovered my life's purpose -- but didn't realize it at the time. I had discovered Buddhism, and this notion that one could attain perfect happiness without a single material possession instantly lifted up my spirit from the depths it had remained in since childhood, since I had learned of death, and had heard those stories of children who become orphans from a plane crash, knowing that the only thing separating us from them is a stroke of luck. And that chasing any happiness in this world is to embrace a dice roll with a good probability of immense suffering. You can call it silly, but to single-digit-age me, consigning yourself to fate like this was more or less insane, and that was only confirmed by the large quantity of childhood suffering outside of my control. So from there I ducked out of (most) socializing to learn everything I could, unconsciously in response to this issue.
When I discovered Buddhism, I was truly elated for the first time in years, to this doctrine promising everything that I had desired. But as I dug deeper, I encountered problems with this scripture, and meditation and so on that could only build to one conclusion: Enlightenment is not real. The pieces building up to this conclusion are too numerous to list, but essentially there is little evidence to believe in a state of enlightenment qua profound transformation of your moment-to-moment experience where the problem of change is solved. What does happen though is a non-dualist revelation analogous to the mystic experiences of all religions. In fact, for the Hindus and Jains it was this experience that led to liberation in the next life. Nothing came afterward. Now consider that yoga and meditation were practiced in India for a solid millennium before Buddhism, and if such a state existed the Hindus and Jains would have surely noted it. So this revelation is quite achievable, but it is functionally the end of the mystic path. There is almost no evidence to suggest otherwise.
Now, why am I writing this post...? Because I can't accept that outcome. I refuse to believe it simply ends there, and we have a healthy amount of evidence that is largely ignored which gives us reason to be skeptics. Here's a brief list:
- Meditative jhanas exist, and they are (allegedly) the most pleasant sensation a human can experience, they can be sustained for hours, and demand very little energy. These show up on brain scans.
- You can take drugs in a lucid dream, and this produces the effects of the drug (for the majority). What's more, if you imagine a drug you've never tried, it will match whatever you expect to occur.
- The human body functions remarkably well on drugs, or in other altered states of consciousness.
- LSD has been observed to produce virtually any symptoms imaginable, or even no symptoms at all.
- LSD-like effects may be obtained easily through hyperventilation, at no cost to oneself (save a little energy).
- I have myself replicated some effects of alcohol and cough syrup through meditation.
- Predictive processing is a fact at this point; we humans play an active role in constructing our perceptions.
- Meditation has effects on the parasympathetic nervous system we did not know were possible until recently. Wim Hoff and Tummo do as well.
Hence the following conclusion:
- There is little reason to believe in the "No free lunch" theory of human happiness, that is to say, that our good must be obtained at some expense.
You can take a very, very tentative stance that our body's homeostasis lends itself to survival by default, but that perhaps by some mysterious process this homeostasis may be changed, and so effects that are normally won through bitter exertion are now had easily.
I am aware this is fringe -- probably too fringe for here, honestly. But be aware you are my best shot. The Buddhists are too dogmatic, the dreamers are too "spiritual". There is clearly something worth investigating here, but apparently nobody is doing so. My tag is crashestoearth on discord, but I'm responsive here as well. Add me if you're curious, and skeptics too please chime in. If you are a Buddhist dogmatist though I'm not interested. Thanks for reading.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I get you, but IMO this is a "High intelligence + High openness" result. There are some profoundly intelligent people like Schopenhauer who never second-guessed their axioms or sought out a higher authority or basis for them, and when questioned on what authority they're derived from, he and others always defer to Plato's forms or the "laws of nature" or whatever. And rather than infinite regress, they arrive at some bedrock idea like entelechy and say "Yep, this explains everything" and there is nothing before it. And to their defense is the Eleatic argument that something cannot come from nothing, and this is the most widely loved idea by philosophers because it spits in the face of infinite regress.
I suppose so, yeah. Some people arrive at axioms "I think therefore I am", others arrive at nothingness "Nothing is real" or at least the conclusion that thinking is fundamentally limited "The dao of which can be spoken is not the real dao", "where one cannot speak one must be silent", "I can only know that I know nothing", "Life is absurd".
That "something cannot come from nothing" does not take into account the mystery of why anything exists at all, it also doesn't imply that anything is truly universal - but that something arbitrary seems to be all which exists. You can call laws of physics, human nature, and the universe fundamental, but they're "specific", things which exist in themselves, and thus not thing which generalize outside of themselves. Different people could exist, different universes, different laws of physics. Ours just happen to be what we were given.
And in all honesty, we cannot even communicate or think unless we use a foundation, so I think it's fine just to choose something. Just like it's fine to choose a language, a culture, a religion, an axiomatic system, a system of values, a morality. None of them will be universally valid, but they will be valid in the scope in which they exist, and that's good enough. It's the same for me, I must have a personality, a job, and a social role. I can only specialize, as general improvement stop being possible at a certain point (since the areas of further improvement contradict eachother). I actually recommend not learning too much or growing too wise, as you may lose your ability to believe in the arbitrary things that you've chosen. The alternative to having both pros and cons is simply having nothing at all, which is worse. In other words, we must be egoistic and take actions which from certain perspectives, are mistakes. Our locally valid ideas are only valid in a limited scope, but we must believe in them nonetheless. We must believe in ourselves with no external validation beyond the fact that we exist. We solve nihilism by rejecting the idea that universal validity/external proof is required for something to be real (in other words, rather than solving the problem, we reject the problem). In the words of Max Stirner "I have based my affair on nothing" (meaning on himself I suppose). My own existence is an axiom to me, that's the solution to any existential problems I may have.
The primary lesson is that it all falls apart once you get to the edges, so we shouldn't dwell too long there. Hence most of our bright philosophers like Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz doubling as scientists, historians, politicians, missionaries and giving the rag of philosophy a squeeze to extract whatever potential was in it. Any effort you'd like to invest in philosophy should be redirected toward psychology, IMO.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link