Living a 'life', overall purposes.

dukkha

It is common to think of ourselves as living a life. What we mean by this is that our present sensations are merely a small part of some wider entity. Something like a lifetime, an overall thing. We see ourselves as living at a specific point of a over-reaching linear time line. As if our present is a train, travelling along a train track. The train track being our present, the track being our 'life'. Essentially what I'm arguing against is any conception of one's existence as being anything over what's presently being experienced.

So this idea of us having a 'life', is wrong. We merely exist presently. Time is not some linear objective thing which our present travels along. How time works is mentally we (presently) project a past behind us, and a future before us, the present being a movement. It's an illusion that there's an 'overall' time. And so there can't be an overall life which we have or lead. Essentially all there is, is what's presently being experienced.

And the same argument applies to the idea of an overall purpose to which one might (say) is the overall end to their life, their 'reason' for living.

We ask questions like "what is the point of life?", "what should the 'project' of my life be?", "what should the ultimate end of my life be (eg, pleasure, moral good, to serve good, to reproduce)?"

But (I posit), there are no 'ultimate' or 'overall' ends. We don't do one thing, in the service of an overall end. Rather we just do the thing because at that point that was an end for us. So, we don't eat in the service of some overreaching end or aim (eg; "to continue to live", "so I can continue to live to serve god", "so I increase my chance for survival"), rather we eat because at that specific time we desired to eat. Sure, afterwards we might intellectually say that we ate for some other purpose than for it's own sake, but this is not actually the case. That overall aim to which we devote out lives towards doesn't exist, because we don't have 'lives', all we have is what's presently being experienced.

So we don't desire to continue to live. Rather, we have a series of separate individual desires/ends/purposes (such as, to eat, to drink, wear clothes, etc), with the by-product of these individual ends being that we continue to live. The point being that at no point do we do something in service of an over-reaching something.

Essentially what we are, what we exist as, is nothing over and above this present experience(ing).

Terrapin Station

Time is just change/motion, which is real/objective. From a particular reference point, the present is changes that are happening, the past is changes that happened but that are no longer happening, and the future is changes that will happen but that haven't happened yet.

One's life in the sense you're addressing is the set of changes that occur to you from your conception to your death.

Purposes are subjective. They exist, for individuals, insofar as the individual thinks about them and assigns them. Some purposes are overarching; some are not. Some individuals do not really think about anything in those terms.

dukkha

From a particular reference point — Terrapin Station

But we only have one reference point, which is us here right now. We can't even know there are others.

from your conception to your death. — Terrapin Station

This is the type of thinking I am referring to, as if what one exists as is an overall timeline, or one 'has' this timeline. A linear sort of 'thing', with right now just being a particular point of that timeline. I say this timeline doesn't exist (except as a presently experienced idea).

purposes — Terrapin Station

How though? How does this work? How can I desire the sandwich over there, and then go eat it, and think nothing about the overall purpose (eg, 'leaving the world a better place than I found it') and yet that's really why I'm eating. How does this hidden purpose work? And why posit it?

Terrapin Station

But we only have one reference point, which is us here right now. We can't even know there are others. — dukkha

You have one in spatial location x at time T1, and then one in spatial location y (or x' etc.) at time T2, and so on. You know that others exist because you know there are other spatial locations. The spatial location of your refrigerator isn't the same as the spatial location of yourself, for example. And for that matter, you really have more than one reference point for yourself, as the spatial location for your sense of self isn't the same as the spatial location of your elbow, for example.

as if what one exists as is an overall timeline, or one 'has' this timeline. A linear sort of 'thing', with right now just being a particular point of that timeline. I say this timeline doesn't exist (except as a presently experienced idea). — dukkha

Again, it's just an overall set of changes/motions one goes through. I don't know what would make that "linear" or not, so I can't say whether it's linear. I'm not a strong supporter of the idea of a mathematical representation of such things.

How though? How does this work? How can I desire the sandwich over there, and then go eat it, and think nothing about the overall purpose (eg, 'leaving the world a better place than I found it') and yet that's really why I'm eating. How does this hidden purpose work? And why posit it? — dukkha

I wouldn't say there are overarching purposes where they're hidden. They're present-to-mind when they exist. They work by being present-to-mind for the individual in question.

unenlightened

We see ourselves as living at a specific point of a over-reaching linear time line. As if our present is a train, travelling along a train track. The train track being our present, the track being our 'life'. Essentially what I'm arguing against is any conception of one's existence as being anything over what's presently being experienced.

So this idea of us having a 'life', is wrong. We merely exist presently. Time is not some linear objective thing which our present travels along. How time works is mentally we (presently) project a past behind us, and a future before us, the present being a movement. It's an illusion that there's an 'overall' time. And so there can't be an overall life which we have or lead. Essentially all there is, is what's presently being experienced.

And the same argument applies to the idea of an overall purpose to which one might (say) is the overall end to their life, their 'reason' for living. — dukkha

It's an excellent exposition of presentism until you apply it, and then it all goes pear shaped. When I wait for the bus, it is not because I desire to wait, but because I desire the bus and it isn't here. Indeed desire itself is invariably a projection to the future.

So let us admit that such mental projection enhances life by enabling learning, planning, cooperation and imagination. The architect draws in great detail a house that does not exist so that the builders can coordinate their present activity to produce in the future a beautiful home. This is the power of thought, which no one would wish to be without.

But the problem I think you are trying to solve, the mistake you want to correct is also a very real one; that we confuse thought and life. But the solution is not to stop thinking, but to understand the limits of thought and not to imagine we can live in it. Purposes are part of thought, not of life.

Cavacava

↪Terrapin Station

Time is just change/motion, which is real/objective. From a particular reference point,

Where is that "reference point" ...is it in space? Are we that "reference point"? Or is that "reference point" more theoretic as part of a systematic system of knowledge, i.e., any point we name as the "reference point".

schopenhauer1

So we don't desire to continue to live. Rather, we have a series of separate individual desires/ends/purposes (such as, to eat, to drink, wear clothes, etc), with the by-product of these individual ends being that we continue to live. The point being that at no point do we do something in service of an over-reaching something.

Essentially what we are, what we exist as, is nothing over and above this present experience(ing). — dukkha

Yes, this is similar to Schopenhauer's idea of Will. We are desiring beings. Why do we desire to procreate more people so they can simply desire, I do not know, and I think the more important existential question? Why is it we keep making more little desiring things and continue the human project?

Punshhh

Because we are constructed to do it, its second nature. We find ourselves doing it as though we have some grand destination. Some of us think and say why are we doing it? as though there must be a destination, but there need not be one for us to be here and doing it.

Nils Loc

Is this a recommendation to "be here now"?

It isn't easy for those to reign in their irrational fears by which their perceptions are organized. A lot of the time the projected future, present and or past is unhelpfully false, or at least distorted in some sometimes useful sometimes harmful way. My fears about the future have me in an existential anxiety trap. Reworking the habits of perception is not easy by any means.

Stories of past, present, future bring order to chaos, unless they do the opposite, which they often do.

And I second what Unenlightened said, the eloquent bastard.

Terrapin Station

Where is that "reference point" . — Cavacava

Reference points are spatial and temporal locations. In this context, I was referring to just spatial locations.

Cavacava

↪Terrapin Station

Why isn't time simply changes in position in space, consider, perhaps nature is indifferent to time's span? If motion is simply changes in configuration from some (I guess it has to be absolute, otherwise how could it be measured) point of view then what does time describe beyond changes in the configurations of points in space.

Terrapin Station

Why isn't time simply changes in position in space, — Cavacava

Change or motion is necessarily changes in spatial position (of something with respect to the positions of other things). That's relative to particular reference points though, as is everything.

_db

So this idea of us having a 'life', is wrong. We merely exist presently. Time is not some linear objective thing which our present travels along. How time works is mentally we (presently) project a past behind us, and a future before us, the present being a movement. It's an illusion that there's an 'overall' time. And so there can't be an overall life which we have or lead. Essentially all there is, is what's presently being experienced. — dukkha

This strikes me as potentially incoherent. At first you deny that the past or future exist, yet then go on to say the present is a movement, or a process. Yet you can't have movement or process without a start and a finish, i.e. past and future.

What is actually happening, then, is that the past maintains its existence superficially by memory, and the future instantiates itself by teleology.

Gooseone

I have this hunch that hedonistic nihilism basically boils down to people being irked they are not in control of time: "If nobody can assure me that the future will bring me what I want, I'll just have as much of what I want right now".

Solipsism would be when people feel they don't have enough control over the thoughts they're generating.

Both seem to have a tendency to make people try and rationalise their emotions, it never seems to help in escaping them fully though and some measures to try and physically escape them are a bit, well, harsh.

I really feel this text was relevant to this thread.

Living a 'life', overall purposes.

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