To be free of feeling, then, is to be free of this enslavement, to no longer care, and no longer care that one does not care. Indifference is the "highest" form of consciousness because the subject is quite literally free of the world itself. They have "woken up" from the nightmare. — darthbarracuda
You don't need motivation for things you actually want to do, you need demotivation for those things, and motivation for things that you don't want to do. Which does indeed require a lot of self-deception, a lot of fear and weakness. — All sight
We put arbitrary, fiat-like value on a goal to keep our minds at peace and impose stability. If we are to truly look at what we are doing, we are constantly thinking of ways to make sure we have something to work towards. — schopenhauer1
To be free of feeling, then, is to be free of this enslavement, to no longer care, and no longer care that one does not care. Indifference is the "highest" form of consciousness because the subject is quite literally free of the world itself. They have "woken up" from the nightmare. — darthbarracuda
We humans are placed in a precarious spot at almost every moment of the day. By this I mean that we have to deceive ourselves that what we are doing is meaningful, or is something worth doing, or is just what must be done in our role — schopenhauer1
a bird has no need for self-deception — schopenhauer1
I don't think Freud is entirely wrong. Many of our motivations are primitive and not necessarily known by or acknowledged by our conscious self reflection. Much of our behavior and many of our decisions are driven by emotional needs and only later rationalized by internal dialogue. It is not so much self deceit as it is a form of self ignorance. — prothero
Your post assumes that everyone else feels the same way. They might not; it might be a matter of perspective. — Wayfarer
Au contraire. Given the endless and thankless effort which birds must expend on their instinctive egg-hatching natalism and olympic level migrations twice a year just to lay more eggs and exhaust themselves feeding another batch of ungrateful chicks -- I'd say they have maximum reasons for self-deception. Those songs they sing? All lies. Bright colors? Deceptions. Mating for life? A hoax.
Are worms really worth getting up early for? Another lie. — Bitter Crank
Since meaning is subjective, how can one lie about it?
In any case, I doubt that many people do say to themselves that there is something more meaningful to their goals than the value they place upon them. I can't know what other people say in their heads, but it seems to me that would be a strange thing to say. — andrewk
Your post assumes that everyone else feels the same way. They might not; it might be a matter of perspective.
— Wayfarer
The fact that we need perspective at all is telling. — schopenhauer1
"I have a preference", something we are encultured to make choices about. Then we make the second move to be motivated by these preferences. — schopenhauer1
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”
― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming
I think you should only argue this way after you've explored the evolutionary theory of perception.We humans are placed in a precarious spot at almost every moment of the day. By this I mean that we have to deceive ourselves that what we are doing is meaningful, or is something worth doing, or is just what must be done in our role as (place arbitrary role here- citizen, learner, responsible adult, employee, etc.). Beyond the aversion to discomforts like hunger, heat/cold, and no shelter, we are in a constant state of having to believe that any move or decision is one even worth making. — schopenhauer1
How can that be a deception? It is not a proposition, and only propositions can be deceptions. People either value things because they can't help but do so or they choose to value them. Either way, there is no proposition, so no scope for a deception.It's that they place value on goals in the first place — schopenhauer1
I'm a nihilist. I believe nothing is intrinsically meaningful, that free will doesn't exist, that value is as malleable as air and that there is ultimately no point to doing anything ever. Yay — khaled
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