From a particular reference point — Terrapin Station
from your conception to your death. — Terrapin Station
purposes — Terrapin Station
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.But we only have one reference point, which is us here right now. We can't even know there are others. — dukkha
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
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
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
Time is just change/motion, which is real/objective. From a particular reference point,
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
Reference points are spatial and temporal locations. In this context, I was referring to just spatial locations.Where is that "reference point" . — 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.Why isn't time simply changes in position in space, — Cavacava
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
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