I agree, that some oppressed people in the world, have compelling reasons to consider suicide as "an escape clause". Yet, ironically, most of those suffering souls do not make that drastic choice. So there seems to be an innate "will to live" despite all incentives to give-up. That perseverance in the face of despair, may be one source of dogged optimism. But my positive outlook is more of an intellectually-developed philosophical worldview, as summarized in the BothAnd Principle.. :smile:Let's throw in working to improve that reality while simultaneously adapting one's attitude and I'm with you. Also include an escape clause : some situations are so dire that a self-induced painless exit is reasonable. — Zugzwang
Yes. But humans do "have to bother". It's in our nature to compare what-is with what-could-be. And to strive to better a bad situation. Would you change places with a blithe Panda bear, contentedly chewing on bamboo, unbothered by the immanent extinction of its species? :cool:Yet, most animals seem to be unbothered by questions about Life's Meaning, or the inevitability of Life's End. T — Gnomon
They don't have to bother. They just live. — Pristina
What other choice do we have, besides depression and suicide, when faced with our lack of omniscience or omnipotence? — Gnomon
Some Misanthropes on this forum seem to be willing to trade places with the "lower" animals, who are merely faced with choices of Life or Death, instead of Good or Evil. Human self-consciousness includes awareness of our Existential plight. Yet, most animals seem to be unbothered by questions about Life's Meaning, or the inevitability of Life's End. That human tendency to philosophical ennui, may be why Feynman advised his fellow physicists to "shut-up [about metaphysical questions] and calculate". — Gnomon
How do believers in a cosmic logic, with humans at the center of it, deal with this possibly? Square it with the Thesis? — Zugzwang
Unfortunately, since many of the posters on this forum are materialists -- with philosophical physics envy -- I am forced to deal more with the tangible forms of Information. But that's OK. — Gnomon
Would you change places with a blithe Panda bear, contentedly chewing on bamboo, unbothered by the immanent extinction of its species? — Gnomon
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. — Whitman
I think nowadays ‘nature’ has become a stand-in for ‘the unconditioned’ in traditional philosophy. It’s the unpolluted, the pristine, the sacred ancestors - the nearest secular culture can come to ‘the sacred’. But that looses sight of the fact that in traditional cultures, although nature was esteemed, she was not idolized. — Wayfarer
There’s been predictions of Armageddon, ‘the end of the world’, in Christianity since it started. How they deal with it is to say that the Faithful will at that point all go to Heaven, where they will all live forever. (although I also have to say the possibility of actual Armageddon has seemed chillingly real ever since Hiroshima.) — Wayfarer
I just heard a bit of "gallows humor" in YouTube's The Expanse. Miller, the battle-scarred detective on space station Eros, was surrounded by men with guns. So the situation was not looking good for his survival. When encouraged by his partner to hang-in there, he quipped "optimism is for *ssholes and earthers ". Not exactly a Seinfeld quote, who when asked "what's your script about?", replied "nothing". Nevertheless, the dour detective persevered, and lived to quip another hopeless day. :joke:Gallows humor. — Zugzwang
I don't personally know many "believers in cosmic logic", but I'm currently reading the book by Astronomer Physicist John D. Barrow, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. He's no Pollyanna, but he looks on the bright side of the cosmic coin. He lists several cosmologists, since the 18th century, who "believed in an evolving, melioristic universe". The book's Introduction, by famous physicist John Archibald Wheeler, makes an assertion that "squares" with my thesis : "our own time has made enormous headway in sniffing out the sophisticated relations between entropy, information, randomness, and computability". [my emphasis]AFAIK, there's nothing stopping an asteroid from wiping us out. How do believers in a cosmic logic, with humans at the center of it, deal with this possibly? Square it with the Thesis? — Zugzwang
My tower of mental facts, not material ivory, is built upon the foundation of ubiquitous Information. So, it's true that the Mind is a product of a material Brain. But that Brain consists of immaterial Information. Are you aware of the Matter-Energy-Information Equivalence Principle? Matter is indeed physical, but Energy is only a mental inference from the effects of Causation on Matter. And Information is the Aristotelian "Substance" of both. Hence, the Brain is made from intangible Information. :nerd:Sounds as if you speak from a tower of saddened ivory. What's wrong with viewing the mind as settled in the brain? The brain is made from matter. — DanLager
So, why worry about the infinite array of possible futures, what could be, when what is "now" is at least OK. Worrying does not not change the future. Only actions, both positive & negative, can change what-might-be into what-is. Don't worry, be happy. :grin:but then things are going OK for me, for now. — Zugzwang
This formerly Hot thread seems to have cooled-off. And the topical question, which implies a rational (intentional?) First Cause, seems to have elicited one succinct cynical answer : "there is no why" (i.e. no reason), and a variety of philosophical curiosity postulations : "the reason-for-being for whom?". The succinct answer is plausible, only if nothing existed prior to the Big Bang, hence no reason-for-being, apart from Serendipity. But even atheist scientists are aware of the poverty of the "no why" retort. Which is why so many irrational or unintentional Causes, or just-so Prior Conditions, have been proposed by those who seek only data, not reasons : Quantum Fluctuation, Many Worlds, Multiverse, Hyper-Inflation, etc. So, we are faced with A> the simple Brute Fact of the world's Self-Existence, or B> the rational inference of a specific Cause to explain the observed universal Effect.People who don't believe in God or any higher power like to say that the Big Bang was the start of the universe and everything. Well even if that is the case, that still leaves the question of why there was a Big Bang in the first place. — HardWorker
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