I notice you using "withdraw kindness". I think that's an interesting phrasing as withdrawing kindness assumes that the default is kindness. Perhaps that isn't everyone's default? — schopenhauer1

Granted, but it’s still relative. When I say ‘withdraw kindness’, I’m referring to a level of kindness or civility that was previously assumed as a default in the exchange.

It’s like when you engage in what you believe is an intellectual discussion, and then someone starts making unfavourable assumptions about your intelligence, education, upbringing or mental health. Now, personally I think a minimum level of kindness or civility for an intellectual discussion is to give people the benefit of the doubt in terms of reasonable intelligence or education - but I know that many people gauge these by certain subjective criteria, and will readily discount the intelligence/education of someone who doesn’t fit that criteria. Of these, there are people who will withdraw kindness at this point - and it shows in their use of language.

What if a mean person gets a lot of praise from those that admire the mean person for his/her meanness? What if they don't perceive it as mean? What if they do? Does this make a difference for the admirer of the mean person? When can someone judge when someone is mean? There may be no bad consequences for the mean person. It is like asymmetric warfare if a person is continually nice in the face of meanness. There is an unfair advantage that is being exploited. — schopenhauer1

This is what I mean about humility. Is it really warfare, or is that just how we perceive it? There are many posters here who begin or enter a discussion with a certain amount of pride in the superiority of their viewpoint. They’ve put a lot of thought and research into it, after all, and many have degrees and experience to back it up. When a fellow poster disagrees, is the aim to win the argument, or is it to reach a mutual understanding? For those who are set on winning the argument, kindness often has no place in the discussion. Does that make them a ‘mean person’, or is it just their approach that is ‘mean’? Should there be bad consequences for this approach?

I think most people who recognise they are being ‘mean’ have either a logical or other value-based justification for refusing to interact with kindness - one that renders their ‘meanness’ neutral in their opinion, rather than good or bad. When others admire someone for being ‘mean’, they view the exchange as warfare and have a similar value-based reason for choosing that particular side.

Many of society’s value structures are based on warfare, tipping scales, finite resources, survival of the fittest, etc. We tend to view humility - like pain, loss or lack - as suffering: something we should strive to avoid at all cost. But humility isn’t a bad thing - it’s essential to the process of life. There is no ultimate position of superiority - to exist we accept humility: there exists always something greater, better, stronger, more important than ourselves.

Kindness doesn’t mean being a mouse. Someone who maintains kindness in the face of meanness is not being exploited - they’re standing their ground, recognising that their inferiority is not something to hide from. It’s just a starting point.

Mean is one of those words whose meaning has changed significantly over time - the original word meant ‘common to one or more people’, which soon became ‘inferior in rank’ and then developed into meaning ‘ignoble, small-minded’. It’s a tricky word to associate with morality.

I think ‘mean’ is always a subjective, relative term. It refers to a value relation between the subject and object, but rather than good/bad, the distinction implies a middle-of-the-road value that is neither good nor bad as such. The similarity to ‘inconsiderate’ mentioned earlier alludes to the lack of intentionality: I don’t think people choose to be mean as such, rather their behaviour towards someone or something is evaluated (by anyone interacting with the relational behaviour) as lacking in intentional kindness, while not involving intentional malice, either.

It’s like: ‘I don’t want to imply that you’re doing it on purpose, but what you’re doing or saying lacks a certain level of kindness that I expect from the exchange’.

Personally, I think withdrawing kindness has no positive effect in any exchange, and there is no call or justification for it under any circumstances. But I wouldn’t call it immoral - I tend not to evaluate behaviour in this way.

If you tell me that I’m being ‘mean’, I would interpret it as a call to consider that my behaviour has fallen below the minimum level of kindness and civility that you expect in the exchange. Of course, I may not agree with your assessment or that the exchange requires that level of kindness - but if I wish to continue the exchange, then we need to reach some level of agreement.

I think mean-ness also relates to humility, so the association with ‘arrogance’ mentioned earlier is another good point. When we call a behaviour out as ‘mean’, we consider our own behaviour in the exchange (or as a rule) to be kinder in comparison. That may not be accurate, but withdrawing kindness as a response to ‘mean’ behaviour is only stooping to their level. If I build someone's self esteem, I am not extracting it from my own or tipping a balance in their favour. When both parties withdraw kindness, then nothing positive will result, and any suggestion otherwise is a matter of ignorance, IMO.

I think continuing to demonstrate the level of kindness we expect from others is the most effective way to eliminate mean-ness in an exchange.

Here's the kicker though. Ultimately, everything is connected. It is one thing. There is just one big experience going on, one big causal network. — petrichor

We may think of everything as ‘connected’, but some of it is only potentially connected, so we cannot assume a causal network at all. We also need to be careful how we use the term ‘thing’ here in saying that everything is “one big thing”. It isn’t ‘one big entangled physical system’ unless everything in it has interacted at some point in spacetime. We can be fairly certain this has not occurred, and is unlikely to happen in the future, given that the universe (from a 4D perspective) is expanding - everything is moving further away from each other. So this ‘connection’ we are talking about must exist irrespective of spacetime.

Our personal mental states seem locally limited and personal only because the whole complex of information is not integrated in my little brain. Information about the whole universe is not available to my brain. Only a limited number of causal impacts are directed at my brain at any given moment. And my mouth can therefore never report on information that isn't causally antecedent to its movements. Our personal isolation is an illusion that results from the fact that the amount of information about the rest of the universe available to any particular part of the universe at any given time is limited. What is known anywhere is a function of how information is integrated, and what is within the light-cone of what sets an absolute limit. Though at our most fundamental level, we are one, I can't remember your childhood, and so I fail to realize that I am you at the bottom-most level. Even more inaccessible to Petrichor's brain are the memories of a distant alien outside his light cone. — petrichor

I can’t remember your childhood - certainly not the way you do. But you can tell me about your experiences. The information you give me in this manner is limited, sure, but it’s more than I had before - and it’s more than you’d be able to pass on to, say, a chimpanzee. So I can connect to you and to your childhood - acquiring and integrating information via very different connections to those that enabled you to acquire the same information. It’s possible that I may not have even been born when your childhood occurred (I don’t know your age, this is hypothetical), making it impossible for me to ever actually experience your childhood myself. Yet I can relate to your experiences in such a way that enables me to integrate some information from those experiences as if I had experienced it myself. We ultimately derive from the same origin, but personally I think it’s more like ‘I am you’ at the highest levels of existence, rather than at the bottom-most level.

That’s quite a missive. I read it because I can relate to these thoughts - I’ve certainly thrown similar ones around over the last few years, so in many ways I understand where you’re coming from. I’ll reply in stages, if that’s okay.

Your Rovelli quote is very interesting. I'll have to read that book. I suspect that he is putting his finger perhaps on just what consciousness is, without saying so. To be aware of something is precisely to be a system with information about another system. — petrichor

Rovelli is a physicist who works on Loop Quantum Theory, so it’s no surprise that he’s deliberately avoiding discussions of consciousness. But Chapter 12: Information in the book certainly sheds light on how information acquired by a system could be explored as a kind of proto-consciousness (even if he refuses to say so). If we think of this vague awareness as one-dimensional, and then look at chemical reactions (ie. interactions with a duration forming a system in itself) as having the capacity for an integrated two-dimensional awareness, then I think the evolution of consciousness starts to take shape.

The puzzle to me is the question of how, if such a situation obtains, interactions ever occur at all! How is it determined that two particles actually collide if their positions before the collision are undefined? There must be something to this picture that I am missing. Maybe the problem here is in thinking of the space between as a pure emptiness, which, for such elementary particles, means complete isolation. — petrichor

You’re looking at space as something that already exists in and of itself. I’m thinking this is the error. When we talk about colliding particles in space, only we know that the space is there. To the particles, there is no space. There is not even the collision. There is only the information.

I have often thought it curious to realize that nobody has ever seen a photon in flight, "from the side", so to speak. From the side, we see a tennis ball flying through the air only because photons are arriving on our retina that came directly from the tennis ball. Without local photon impacts on the retina, there is no seeing. All photon detections are measurements of an increase in energy somewhere, a jump in an electron's energy level. Never is a photon seen between its source and its destination. If it is detected, that's it, it has arrived. The detection point is its destination, and it has been converted into something else. A photon, in other words, is never seen as a photon. It is always seen only as a loss of energy at the source or a gain in energy at the destination. A photon, for us to see it in flight, would have to be emitting photons! — petrichor

Understanding a photon’s ‘behaviour’ involves the fifth-dimensional aspect I was talking about before. We understand that there are three dimensions of space, plus the fourth dimension of time. We think of this as physical reality, because it can be observed/measured. A photon messes with this because we have evidence that a photon exists as an event - that is, we can detect a change in energy and even predict how this energy will manifest - yet it has no defined trajectory through spacetime. It has a probability, or a potentiality. Between the source and measurement, a photon exists in a range of potential locations, even though no time has lapsed. Furthermore, it’s only because we have narrowed down the source and the basic trajectory (ie. through the slit) that we can even calculate a probability with any confidence. A photon without such limitations could potentially be anywhere at any time.

A photon demonstrates the five-dimensional aspect of reality, as well as our capacity to interact with it. The photon exists regardless of its position in spacetime, and we ‘know’ it exists as a relationship between a measurable source and a measurable detection point in spacetime. But when we observe a photon mid-flight, it decoheres into a particle with a specific trajectory.

So if we go back to the colliding particles that were previously undefined, and see them as colliding photons instead, then spacetime is irrelevant. It is the collision or interaction itself that creates spacetime as a relation between the resulting particles.

Thank you - I found your OP presents an intriguing perspective of which I am naively unfamiliar.

I am mid-40s, married cisfemale, raised Catholic and extremely sheltered, so it’s been a bit of a journey for me to reach my current perspective on gender and sexuality - which I thought was relatively comprehensive in acknowledging diversity. I now see that I may still have some learning to do.

I had fairly recently laid out my perspective on this: I saw gender and sexuality as a three-dimensional structure along three axes:

1. Genitalia and general physicality (ie. born physically male-both-female on a spectrum)
2. Gender identity (ie. socially determined gender roles)
3. Sexual preference (develops post-puberty)

To be honest, I thought that trans people had been ‘influenced’ by socially determined gender roles (particularly in relation to clothing choice) to match their physicality to the gender with which they identify socially. I thought that if children’s clothing were all gender-neutral and children were not identified by gender or referred to by gender-specific pronouns (big ask, I know) then perhaps people wouldn’t need to surgically alter their body in order to feel ‘comfortable’ with their body. They’d be free to identify socially with gender regardless of their physicality.

But I do recognise a distinction between interacting ‘as a woman’ with those around me (social gender), and being able to ‘feel feminine’ for no-one else except myself (bearing). So at the very least, what you’ve shared has led me to rethink my perspective.

I agree with aspects of both analyses, but consider this. We're speaking as if what is 'physical' is known when it's not. Matter itself is actually a very mysterious thing. We have a culturally-inherited mental map of 'mind and matter' but in reality both terms are abstractions.

Furthermore we assume that, whatever 'mind' is, it's a product of evolution, which is understandable as an essentially physical process - so that mind has emerged from the evolutionary process. But I question the notion of the supremacy or ultimacy of the physical as being the source or origin of what we understand as 'mind' - even though it seems obvious that it must be that, and even though we don't have any clear alternative. — Wayfarer

I think that you and I are pretty much on the same page here, particularly in relation to evolutionary process - I make no such assumption here with regard to mind. An ‘alternative’, in my view, is that reality is six-dimensional from the point of origin, rendering what we term ‘physical’ or 4D reality as a limited perspective of the potential information available - like learning what an apple is purely from photographs.

You might wonder then why I doubt a computer is conscious. My answer is that I think it is the relations between the substantial elements of the system that are important, since their interactions are likely atoms of experience. The abstract relations between pieces of code are not the substantial interactions that are happening in the chip. What is happening in the code is perhaps best seen as virtual, just a way for us to think at a high level about how to organize the low-level operations. But the chip is like a Turing machine, just erasing and writing 1s and 0s according to some simple rules, with no awareness of what this information represents. Even that is too high-level. A charge in a circuit, isn't to itself a '1' or a '0'. — petrichor

A computer is made up of one-dimensional information systems, similar to the rock particles. The difference is that we have organised these systems so that the information they transfer with each interaction travels through the system with minimal noise in a pre-arranged way and collates according to a logical structure or algorithm that is a one-dimensional impression of what I consider to be a six-dimensional reality. The amount of one-dimensional information required to simulate even a four-dimensional event with any accuracy requires extremely complex calculations. So instructing a computer simulation to relate to even a single object or event on a five-dimensional level (value/significance) would involve ridiculous amounts of data.

But I have read that this has been achieved on a small and limited scale, where a computer simulation was capable of demonstrating a limited social ‘relationship’ with a ‘pet’. It was an interesting read (I’ll try to locate it).

We imagine the world to be empty of subjectivity, to be pure object, pure surface, pure exterior, only because we tend to visualize things as though from outside, and we bracket out ourselves and our perspective points. But if you realize that in order for a rock to really be, that there must be something that is the rock, a curious realization starts to emerge. And consciousness starts to seem slightly less mysterious, almost necessary even. It seems that this is just what it is for a thing to be. It must have its own side. Things must have interiors. Something finds itself as that thing. When people like Hawking ask, "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?", this is the answer. It isn't that we have equations and then these somehow get actualized and substantialized. No, being is there from the start, and the equations only describe the way being relates itself itself to itself. And it is in the nature of being to be! It can't not be!

So I guess this is a kind of panpsychism, which is really a dissociated monopsychism. Every particle interaction is likely a sort of experience. — petrichor

We need to remember that a ‘rock’ is a conceptual object to you and me, but not to itself. If you break a rock in half it becomes two rocks, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the rock notices the difference. But the individual particles located at the break do integrate new information from different particles in the air that are now colliding with them. They oxidise, change in temperature, etc. That’s the extent of the awareness here: a one-dimensional, zero duration flash of more in each particle. The rock is a relational concept in our minds.

I enjoyed reading your long post, and found myself nodding throughout. I find the recent collaboration of Information Theory with QM (Rovelli) and with consciousness studies (Tononi and Chalmers) to be fascinating work, even if I can sometimes only follow from a philosophical standpoint.

My own suspicion is that our consciousness is really just a highly organized form of something that is fundamental. What I mean to say is that basic subjectivity is there everywhere in nature at a very low level. But in the case of dirt or something like that, it isn't organized in the right way so as to yield an inner experience that is anything like ours in terms of its structure. — petrichor

This is similar to my own view, but I tend to use the term ‘integrated’ rather than ‘organised’. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of organising matter in a particular way, but of building an integrated system by facilitating that ‘basic subjectivity’ from the ground level.

At the bottom-most level, there is probably no consciousness as we think of it. As at that level, there is no differentiation at all. There is only unity, and so there is no division of subject and object. Consciousness as we think of it always involves a subject and objects. One side of this relation does not occur without the other. — petrichor

The proto-consciousness at the bottom-most level, in my view, is a vague awareness of more than this-here-now, whose only evidence is a one-dimensional transfer of information/energy that is immediately integrated into the system. Try to imagine what it is like to be a particle (bear with me), with zero awareness of either itself or anything other than itself, colliding with another particle. It is the differentiation between the two particles at that point of collision that ‘informs’ each particle (ie. heat/energy transfer, trajectory, etc), but the particle can only be ‘aware’ of differentiation as a vagueness that has zero duration in time. So it’s not consciousness as we think of it. But it’s a start.

I think when we talk about subject-object in relation to consciousness, we need to recognise that these are concepts. The question of whether or not a particular subject or object can exist at the level in question is problematic both at this fundamental level and at the highest levels of consciousness, particularly from a materialist or physicalist perspective. From memory, I think Nagel’s ‘view from nowhere’ addresses this problem to some extent.

I sometimes think that it might be simply a matter of relation, but with the important consideration that there is being. What do I mean? When we normally imagine two things in relation, we see them both in our mind's eye as objects "out there" in a space, and we are apart from them or bracketed out. This misleads. Suppose you just have primitive Being, or Unity, or whatever, The Undifferentiated. Call it what you like. Then, somehow (don't ask me how!), it divides, or comes to relate itself to itself, as in a reflection, or something like that. Whatever the case, suppose you now have two things, A and B, and they are in relation. There is no perspective outside of these. There is no objective point of view. There is no third thing. We need to resist imagining it that way, as if we occupy a perspective separate from both A and B. There are only two perspectives. For A, B is an object. For B, A is an object. And for each, it is itself, a subject. For B, A is A. That seems trivial. But for A, "I am A." See the difference? — petrichor

I agree that relation is the key here, and the absence of the ‘third thing’ is precisely where QM in collaboration with Information Theory proves to be interesting, because for QM the observer must always be accounted for:

A physical system manifests itself only by interacting with another. The description of a physical system, then, is always given in relation to another physical system, one with which it interacts. Any description of a system is therefore always a description of the information which a system has about another system, that is to say, the correlation between the two systems. The mysteries of quantum mechanics become less dense if interpreted this way, as the descriptions of the information that physical systems have about one another. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘Reality is Not What it Seems’

Scientists have looked for the correlates of consciousness in particular things. But, as you implied, the locus of Mind is in the relationships between things. Mind is meta-physical, like Mathematics, not physical, like neurons. — Gnomon

Technically, I agree. But I don’t find this helpful as an either-or dichotomy, as if the metaphysical is not physical and vice versa. Mind refers to a capacity to interact with an aspect of reality that is not reducible to measurable/observable events or objects in spacetime. That aspect is not exclusive to mind or confined to certain ‘spooky’ elements of our experience - it is part of the relational structure of the universe that forms reality.

God in modern theological discourse is more of a concept, the attributes of which include ‘personal’ - in that God ‘knows, loves and relates to us all’ (David Bentley Hart). Most people find this particular attribute of God difficult to grasp unless God has some form of ‘personhood’, hence the pronoun.

So personhood as an essential attribute of God is a distortion of modern theological description, yet this mistaken assumption continues to form a fundamental part of Christian doctrine. That we can relate to God AS a person does not mean that God IS a person - but this distinction is inconsequential to practical religion (and also complicates the already contentious issue of the Trinity).

The gender problem persists from the pulpit and in Christian apologetics as a result of this assumption of personhood that is not only perpetuated by bible literalists, but also fails to be corrected in Christian doctrines - seemingly because it unnecessarily complicates a key component of Christianity: that of personally relating to God.

Of course, traditional Christianity is also run by old men with little if any understanding of women, and is institutionally resistant to change - so there is that...

You're right. I just wanted to draw a line between spoken language and music as clearly as possible.

Spoken language isn't really music for the simple reason that no one buys recorded speeches or ordinary conversations for their musical value. However there's a possibility of an unknown determinator we may be unaware of or perhaps what is frankly music and what is language fall on a spectrum of what is music. — TheMadFool

That’s the thing about value structures: there is no clear objective line you can draw between music and language as concepts. The fact that you’re saying it ‘isn’t really music’ should point out the subjectivity of these structures of relations - like saying turquoise is ‘not really blue’.

I still think a spectrum is too simplified a structure to depict the ‘musical value’ of an expression of sound, though - don’t you?

For me, musical value describes the degree of logical/mathematical structure or patterns in how each quality of sound in an expression relates to each other: pitch, timbre, rhythm, volume, etc. So a poem is considered musical relative to prose, and someone’s voice might have a musical quality to it that stands out for the listener in relation to voices they normally hear.

There are recordings of spoken language, though, whose particular ‘musical’ qualities identify them for me even without hearing them in their entirety: the ‘I have a dream’ of MLK, JFK’s ‘we choose to go to the moon’, or even the expression ‘oh, the humanity!’ of the Hindenburg disaster, to name a few. The ability of even these snippets of sound to evoke memory or emotion, set tone or elicit mood suggests that what we’re talking about here are complex relations of experience, rather than ‘music’ as such.

So when you talk about ‘language transforming into a song’, what I think you may be referring to (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is the repetition or growing familiarity of patterns and structure in language (and even obscure sounds) producing a kind of ‘shorthand’ to meaning. I think this certainly occurs between family members, in mass media and even to some extent within cultural groups. I recall attending church for the first time after years of absence, and falling easily into the pattern of responses - the familiar drone of recitations like a musical performance - before realising that I no longer believed what I was saying...

Man directly experiences the world around him. He directly touches it, looks at it, tastes it, listen's to it and so on. These aren't indirect interactions. — NOS4A2

This is a standard way of describing how ‘man’ interacts with ‘the world’, sure. But consider this:

To listen is to mentally interpret the vibrations of the eardrums in response to vibrations of surrounding air molecules in response to vibrations of other molecules.

To look at something is to mentally interpret differences in the speed and strength of light particles from a number of sources as they reflect off the retina from reflections off a variety of surface molecular structures.

These aren’t direct interactions in reality. How we experience the world is through a series of complex relations with our sensory systems and with the relative structure of the world. To say that ‘man directly experiences the world around him’ as an argument against the importance of ‘mind’ is to be ignorant of the actual systems and relations that constitute both ‘man’ and ‘the world’.

The idea I'm proposing is actually quite compatible with your 'enformationism'. What is it, that grasps meaning? Be very careful when you respond, as it's easy to miss the fact that what 'grasps meaning' is itself never an object of perception. It is, to allude to a Hindu doctrine, 'the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the unthought thinker'. Descartes' error was to conceive of this as something that exists, which leads to the intractable problems of how 'it' interacts with 'the body'.There is no 'it' as an objective reality but at the same time, it's impossible to deny the reality of the thinking subject. There's a cognitive shift required here - mind is the condition of all knowledge, all statements about what is or isn't, but mind itself is unknowable. — Wayfarer

I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘know’. It seems (to me, anyway) that the confidence with which we ‘know’ in any complete or ‘objective’ sense has been eroding for some time. To know is to approach a comprehensive sense of meaning from all possible perspectives. I think it’s at least possible to approach this with respect to mind, but it certainly won’t be deemed ‘knowledge’ by current expectations in that it won’t be reducible to confident statements about what is or isn’t.

From my perspective, at least, ‘mind’ as a concept refers collectively to relations of experience, in the same sense as ‘time’ refers to relations of events. How those relations are structured is where I think a paradigm shift is required, because we don’t often consider ourselves (at least from a scientific perspective) to exist ‘outside time’, let alone interact with this aspect of reality, or even acknowledge such an aspect as reality. And yet this is how social creatures interact with the world.

A concept could be personally encountered in a way, but you’re right - in articulating what I think a concept is, I do recognise that it isn’t the same as an experience.

So in your view a concept that you have is an event? — Terrapin Station

An event is not the same as an experience, in my view - although one can have an experience of an event.

So, no - a concept is not an event. In my view, a concept is a structure of related experience.

Conventional definitions of "experience":

"direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge"

"something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through"

"practical contact with and observation of facts or events." — Terrapin Station

I’m not sure I follow how concepts, ideas, desires, etc are not experiences (albeit internal ones), even according to these conventional definitions.

The only distinction between the experience of an idea and the experience of, say, a play is the lack of external sensory interaction. Are you saying that an experience must be reducible to an interaction with 3D physical space in time in order to be an experience?

I recognise that ‘mental phenomena’ loosely describes the nature of these events from a physicalist standpoint, but surely there is still an internal, subjective experience of the phenomena, just as there is an internal experience of the play that is related to, but not reducible to, the event itself?

Don’t get me wrong, I disagree that mind is something separable from the functions of the brain, but I also disagree that it’s the same as the brain or contained by it.

The way I see it, ‘mind’ is a concept that collectively refers to all our relations of experience, including sensory data, thoughts, ideas, memories, knowledge, feelings and intuition. Some of these relations are the result of brain function, but some are not. These relations interact as mind - irrespective of time and according to subjective, sometimes amorphous or conflicting structures of value/significance (ie. logic, language, self, society, etc) - and inform the organism as an integrated system, not just the brain. That’s my take.

The way I see it, love is neither just a feeling nor just a mindset. It is a choice or volition in that it’s the initial act of a subjective experience - so it’s both.

An experience is ‘eternal’ in that it is not bound by time. Love can appear to fade or increase with time, sure - but it can also be fundamentally unchanged by time, distance or physical appearance.

This is what complicates descriptions of love: an outward appearance, expression or act of love in the world also has an inward experience of that same love which initiates any such act.

The way I see it, to love is to perceive and initiate interaction with the potential of another. You can wait to be led by the limbic system’s response to stimuli, allowing your emotions to ‘move’ you - or you can generate your own emotions based on a conscious experience of unrealised potential. When you value that unrealised potential, you can initiate loving acts that help to realise that potential in the world.

That means clinically depressed soul mates can't love one another, no matter what they think, and no matter what kind deeds they do for each other. Of course, there will be moments where these clinically depressed soul mates can love one another, since there are moments where clinically depressed people are able to feel positive emotions, such as love, pride, and joy. But, there wouldn't be that many moments, which means it would hardly be a loving relationship. Lastly, not only do we require positive emotions to love and experience joy, but we also require them to see goodness, beauty, magnificence, and awesomeness in moments, things, situations, works of art, and life itself. That's been my personal experience. — TranscendedRealms

I can’t say I understand what it’s like to be clinically depressed, and I honestly don’t mean to question your experience. I’m trying to understand. But I wonder if you are waiting for these positive emotions to just happen on their own? Joy, for me, is not a feeling that comes over me, but often requires a conscious choice on my part to experience the potential moment as valuable in itself, rather than focus on how it relates to the past or future. I think attributing value to potential experiences is a choice we often need to make consciously, not a feeling or emotion we need to move us. Despite what others may tell you about how their feelings were the ‘cause’ of love, I think it is their openness to value the potential of the interaction that allows them to feel and to love. It can happen by chance, sure. But it can also be a choice to look for different kinds of value in our potential interactions with the world.

Admittedly it opens us up to fear and to experiences of pain, loss and humiliation - but that’s what they often don’t tell you about what it means to love: all of this comes as a package deal. When you respond to the value of the potential interaction despite the fear - I think that’s love.

First of all, money from family is never a loan in the financial sense, despite what the giver may think or have been led to believe. A loan is a relationship built purely on the exchange of money. Your relationship already exists, and so is not contingent upon any exchange of money. At best, this ‘loan’ is for life, just as your relationship is. Your suspicions are correct here. Any money he returns to you before your relationship ends will be considered by your brother as over and above his obligations to you.

From what little you’ve told us, it does seem as if your older brother is playing on his position in the family (ie. the respect he assumes as ‘older’ brother) to acquire more than his initial share, rather than acknowledging the humility of his financial position or the generosity you display in helping him when your other siblings refused.

You say that you see this money as an investment in your relationship with him - be careful of this thought. If you’re expecting your further generosity to inspire gratitude or respect from him, then I would say that you are being taken advantage of. If you’re trying to avoid his anger, then that’s not a good reason to give him the money, either. That’s fear - and you should have no reason to be afraid of your brother’s anger, or of him withdrawing his love for you over money. If he chooses to stake his relationship with you on money, that’s his problem, not yours. Don’t you make the same mistake.

If you say no to giving him money, it will not change your relationship as brothers, despite what he would have you believe. Your love for him has never been measured in dollars and neither has the love of your other siblings. Remember that and remind him of that, too.

But if you’re willing to give him the money, knowing that it won’t come back and won’t change his attitude towards you one iota, and may even increase the chance of him asking for more, then that’s different. Only you can make that call.

A family relationship is with you for life. Money is either nothing between family, or it’s everything. It seems that you brother is making it everything...

But then, you are looking at this grandiose things, when suffering happens at an individual level.. Yes maladaptation is quite informative, but tell that to the suffering animal who is affected by it. Understanding a larger "narrative" or seeing a cool principle (like "interaction" or "collaboration") as something behind the scenes, does not negate the negatives of individual lives, nor does it add anything to what is the case. These are just fuzzy descriptors. And then what? We still live our lives.. — schopenhauer1

And so we come back full circle...

You can argue that suffering shouldn’t happen all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it does happen on an individual level, yes. The most effective thing we can do to prevent or reduce the individual suffering of others is stop working so hard to avoid it as we live our own lives - by our ignorance and fear, or our refusal to connect or collaborate. This applies to how we interact with the entire universe, not just other human beings. Because the more we do to avoid pain, loss, sacrifice and humiliation in our own lives, the more we contribute to it in the lives of others.

This is all assuming we need to learn from it. Why? — schopenhauer1

I think you misunderstand me, here. You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to learn from suffering (yours or someone else’s), and you don’t need to procreate. You don’t even need to live (despite what your bodily systems might prefer) - you have the capacity to check out at any time. There is no overriding compulsion for you to understand the universe - that it’s an underlying drive inherent in all matter does not make it a need as such. It doesn’t override or circumvent anything - it’s what the universe does when we haven’t got it trying to do (or to not do) anything else, for whatever reason.

I’m thinking now that teleology is the wrong term here, because I’m not talking about a specific aim or overriding purpose. The universe is striving to understand itself - your life is part of that process, but you’re under no obligation to participate. Follow your own agenda, but understand that this inherent striving will continue with or without your help. It’s not about nature finding a way to procreate, it’s about humanity (as the most effective participants) finding more efficient and effective ways to increase awareness, connection and collaboration on a universal scale. Procreation is NOT the answer - that’s not my argument at all.

Let's be clear, carbon might interact, but it does not make a choice. It does not will. It follows the dictates of various forces like electromagnetism, strong force, electron exchange, etc. The valence atoms interact with other ones to create molecules, etc. — schopenhauer1

Again, a misunderstanding. Carbon IS matter that has already made choices which fundamentally distinguish it from helium, from our point of view. It’s all matter, but it’s the inherent will to interact with such variety that makes carbon carbon - not any creator.

At the end of the day, humans can choose to simply stop putting more people into existence. Somehow people feel though, that a way of life "must" be perpetuated. This is bad faith.. No one needs to live to experience a way of life. "Ways of life" are not some poor fellow that needs a human host in some symbiotic relationship. Rather, the parent is inculcated that their life would be more fulfilled (read less bored and less time to self-reflect) if they were to procreate and then inculcate the new being. Joy and happiness have been weaponized as reasons of control. People need to live a way of life because ya know..joy and happiness.. and a lot of control and suffering. No one needs to be controlled, no one needs to joy and happiness prior to birth. — schopenhauer1

I agree with all of this, except for what I’ve highlighted in bold, which I find confusing. Are you saying here that we don’t need to create another life in order to experience the fullness of life? If so, then once again, I agree. Funnily enough, this is not a new argument, but is hidden away in the NT (in the words of Jesus) in the hope that no-one finds it or takes it seriously...

Having expressed my agreement here, I will say that I’ve personally learned more about the universe, life, myself and people in general from my own experience of raising two children - with all of its past present and future pain, humiliation, sacrifice and loss - than I have learned from anything else so far. I can’t deny that. Of course, the fact that they’re my children I accept as fundamentally unimportant, and I could have learned more from raising children that were not my own. In fact, I could have learned MUCH more just from increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with everyone and everything that currently exists in the world, instead of trying to create my own part of the world to control...hindsight’s 20/20, isn’t it?

A few thoughts:

Language is a means to express and share subjective experience. Words, music, visual art and movement can all do this among humans. Birds are missing only words.

The extraordinary ease with which music can connect with our inner selves reminds us that there is often more to our experience and to meaning than words alone can express. Sound in general, as vibration, gives us scope to interact with both mind and body simultaneously, where words often distinguish the mind from the world.

Having said that, poetry is language with musical quality, and has the ability to connect with our inner selves and with others in terms of emotion, etc.

The way I see it, film is an expression of experience, and should be relatable as such for its audience. Realism refers to this relatability - when you’re imagining what it would be like to really experience instead of questioning the logic, then it’s a good film regardless of whether or not it’s logically possible.

Most war movies aren’t made for the soldiers to relive their experience, but for those of us who didn’t fight to relate to their experience. It doesn’t need to be an accurate portrayal, so long as it gives us a deeper understanding or sense of what the experience would have been like, given that we’ve not experienced anything remotely like it ourselves. I dare say the reality would be too far removed from our own experiences to be conveyed in a two hour film in a way that accurately portrays the full physical, emotional and mental impact of the experience.

I’m reminded of Yan Martel’s ‘Beatrice and Virgil’ - a bizarre novel that takes the reader on an absurd journey to gain a deeper perspective of the holocaust.

Hate is a strong, negative emotional reaction to a fear one cannot avoid.

When we love, we often fear losing what we love, and then resolve to hate what we fear could take it from us. But a love that generates hatred, that gives way to fear, is not a healthy love. To love another is to risk losing them, to risk being hurt, and to accept that we are incomplete in ourselves, that we are more with them than without them.

We are afraid of losing so many other things that are important to us, and of experiencing a lack, just as we are afraid of pain and humiliation. We reserve our hatred for those people, actions and institutions that threaten to, or actually, inflict this suffering on us - individually, socially, nationally, ideologically, etc.

Why? Because we don’t believe we should suffer. Because that’s what happens only to other people.

When we have the courage to risk loss, lack, pain or humiliation, there is no need to hate - that’s just fear talking.

I don't know how avoidance of pain is "patriarchial", that seems like a misuse of that word, and a category error of that concept even. — schopenhauer1

I didn’t say that avoidance of pain was patriarchal at all. I said that the illusion that the process of perpetuation (sexual reproduction, childbirth and parenting) succeeds in avoiding pain is a patriarchal illusion at best.

What I will say is, if there is suffering and pain in the world, why try to have more people to experience this? If you say because collaboration and learn from it, I will just say that this is circular reasoning. No one needs the pain to grow from it. — schopenhauer1

More people experiencing suffering and pain in the world is a consequence of this misguided ‘need’ to procreate as a solution to suffering. If you can find a way for the universe to maximise its awareness, connection and collaboration without the process of life, then please share it with the rest of us.

Not everyone needs to experience the pain to grow from it - I agree. Higher levels of human interaction - of awareness, connection and collaboration through language and meaning, for instance - enables this. But someone needs to have experienced it, at least. The experience of pain needs to have existed - that is unavoidable. Not only that, but it needs to be an experience we can relate to, otherwise how can we learn from it?

Collaboration doesn't seem to be anything in and of itself beyond just something that helps individuals and societies function. But to live "for" it? No justification other than the maybe the warm fuzzy feeling the concept provides us? Actually, you said "interaction" for this one.. still sounds about the same as collaboration, but you'd have to explain your difference. — schopenhauer1

Collaboration is working together in achieving for the benefit of all involved. Interaction is more general: when you experience pain, this is a call to attend to what is happening as a source of new information. If all you do in response is take a pain-killer, you’re not gaining much information. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take pain-killers, only that the pain should not be perceived as an affront to your existence.

This just sounds incorrect. Matter chooses? Matter exists, sure. Animals are born from circumstances that occurred in the previous generation, so no individual can participate or will it.. someone actually wills it for the succeeding generation. — schopenhauer1

I figured that’s what you would jump on. Matter exists only insofar as it interacts. We currently think of matter as three-dimensional objects in time, or four-dimensional events at best, and struggle to make the required connection to mind, where potentiality, value and meaning somehow impact on the world. Process philosophy attributes an experiential aspect to all matter, and quantum mechanics suggests that we cannot overlook the role of an observer or subjective experience in the interaction of matter, so it’s not such a paradigm shift, in my view.

Animals are born from circumstances that occurred in the previous generation, but we cannot predict this occurrence as accurately as we’d like, can we? I’m not saying an embryo is giving any thought to the matter, mind you. By choice or will, I simply refer to a yes/no answer to certain interactions in relation to awareness, connection and collaboration at the most rudimentary level. Helium is a relatively inert substance, in that the choice of interactions is limited by nature. Carbon, on the other hand, is open to a much wider variety of interactions by nature. The specific chemical reactions that contribute to the generation of life open up the variety of these interactions exponentially.

Granted, but I actually think this matters more in times of complete catastrophe more than most functioning society.. Heidegger's more interesting idea was that of "thrownness" that which we cannot help being born into.. society's makeup, history, and our environmental contingencies, for example. — schopenhauer1

Yes, it’s much easier in a functioning society to feel entitled to live forever, to not lose our life or a loved one, to not feel hunger or suffer from pain, and to always feel superior in everything we do...
By ‘thrownness’ Heidegger refers to the inseparable nature of our being in the world and in time. The idea that one’s mind is distinct from its physical circumstances is certainly false - and yet we are also capable of understanding and relating to the world from a position that transcends time.

You are placing some Platonic-like goal in evolution that isn't there. Evolution is not aiming for the benefit of existence. It isn't aiming at anything. The mechanism is self-perpetuating, that is a given, but it is really trial and error, keeping features that work for the animal on an individual level, that then gets propagated to other individuals that would shape a new species in an environmental niche. Of course, what you aren't talking about is the mutations that don't work out, that are detrimental for the individual and the species. — schopenhauer1

Like Nagel, I simply dispute the application of Darwinian evolution theory as a comprehensive answer to ALL diversity in nature - it isn’t sufficient. If it really was a case of survival of the fittest, then why do humans produce some of the most fragile offspring, who are built more for maximising awareness, connection and collaboration than for survival?

That’s not to say that natural selection doesn’t exist at all. What I propose is a teleological evolution of integrated information systems, in which natural selection is a limiting process that applies to living matter in particular. Mutations that don’t work out are as informative to us in their apparent failure as those that survive, aren’t they?

I think there is something about happiness principle in there, or self-actualization, or civilization progress, or some such. The ultimate loss is more of an afterthought for most unless you are living with death everyday (nice juxtaposition, living with death). Either way, the perpetuation is for aforementioned reasons or ones of that genre. — schopenhauer1

All these reasons are only masking or denying the reality: that pain, loss/lack and humility are essential to the process of life.

The Happiness Principle, for instance, argues that pain is immoral - but pain is a call for increased awareness of an incident that requires interaction. To strive to avoid it at all cost is to be ignorant, selfish and continually hard-done-by. And any illusion that perpetuation is a source of pleasure and avoidance of pain is patriarchal at best.

Self-actualisation as a reason for perpetuation ignores the role of humility: that procreation is only achievable through collaboration, for instance.

Civilisation progress, on the other hand, discounts the pain, loss and humility of individuals for the sake of promised long-term eradication from a more civilised society - keep perpetuating, and one day your descendants will be pain-free and live forever...?

Heidegger says that to be human is to exist temporally between birth and death. We strive to deny or ignore it as much as possible, but the reality is that we are ‘living with death’ everyday. If you don’t believe this, then you’re either not paying attention, or you’re in denial as suggested.

The way I see it (and bear with me - the theory is in its early stages of formulation), the aim of existence as a whole is to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. All matter has initially ‘chosen’ or willed the extent of their participation in the process, and thus the nature of their existence. Living matter, and humans in particular, consist of the most interactive participants. But pain as a call to be aware, loss or lack as a call to connect and humility as a call to collaborate have each impacted on all matter, not just life, at the most rudimentary levels of existence. Still, life in general has kept saying ‘yes’, so to speak, and evolving more efficient ways to achieve this aim for the benefit of all existence.

Procreation, then, is only one strategy for continuing this process - and long since rendered less than efficient in itself.

Meaning brute life, like hunger, staying warm, thirst, and the like once one is alive or that life needs to perpetuate itself as an imperative (which then of course begs the question why)? — schopenhauer1

Meaning hunger, cold, thirst, loss, humility, inevitable death and the like once one is alive, yes. Life does not need to perpetuate itself. We like to think it does because it takes the focus off the ultimate loss.

Fullness of life is an imperative. The alternative is not an emotional state. It is nonexistence. Nonexistence just is being not is. It is not depression. — schopenhauer1

The way I see it, life is an imperative; fullness of life is a subjective experience. And there is more than one alternative.

A number of alternatives involve shutting out, ignoring or denying the full extent of what living involves of necessity, while continuing to at least subconsciously respond to stimuli. I imagine this can be emotionally exhausting or frustrating. I would say that existential depression is a symptom of some of these alternatives, but I’m only addressing the experience as it was presented.

Nonexistence is an absolute rejection of life, a refusal to interact at any level. I agree - this is not depression. To me it’s more of a concept.

I call bs..this sounds good but provides nothing but pretend givens. Why is this necessary or desirable? By this mean why is compassion above nonexistence? More platitudes will follow. — schopenhauer1

Where did I say compassion was either necessary or desirable? Just because I prefer compassion does not mean that you should.

How am I supposed to deal with the fact that I'll just expirence life through my eyes and thoughts when there are so many verions of reality out there? — raindrop

When you listen to other people’s stories, one would assume that it provides you with a glimpse of how reality looks to them. You probably notice that many elements of their reality relate to yours in some way. Perhaps they took the same bus as you, or watched the same TV show, etc. When you put these two perspectives of the same experience side by side in your mind and accept them both as reality, this alternative perspective adds another aspect to reality.

Picture an art studio, with several easels set up around an object. One artist draws the object from each easel position, and then the artworks are piled on top of each other and flipped through, creating the effect of rotating around the object. The information gathered from 2D images of these different perspectives creates a 3D image of the object in your mind.

Now imagine a group of random people in an art gallery, looking at the same installation. They each walk around it several times, so they have a clear 3D image of it in their mind. They are also there all at the same time, so the event for them has little difference. And yet in a discussion about the artwork, no two perspectives would be the same. Some may feel strongly about it, loving it or hating it, others may not have thought much about the piece at all, or else they’re so inspired/offended that they cannot stop talking about it. These differences stem not just from the way they physically see the artwork, but from the sum of past experiences and body of knowledge that they also bring to this experience.

The reality of the experience is the same - it is their experiential perspective that differs. The more of these different perspectives you can weave together in your mind, the deeper your understanding of reality. Because reality is more than a 3D object in space, and more than an event or instance of that object in time. Reality also includes how the world is experienced through so many eyes and thoughts. The resulting reality from combining multiple perspectives, just like the object in the 2D images, is more accurate than a single perspective.

So be aware, connect and collaborate where you can, and strive for a more accurate reality. That’s the point of being alive - in my perspective, anyway.

Can specifically human mind understand the intentions of another abstract mind of unlimited thinking power, given human gets enough time? — IuriiVovchenko

The nature of the human mind is such that this capacity, while potentially realisable, cannot be realised in isolation. A single human mind, working collaboratively with a hypothetical abstract mind of unlimited thinking power, can eventually understand the intentions of that mind sufficiently to approach a functional shared meaning. For all intents and purposes, they would be of ‘one mind’.

I think a human mind that increases its awareness, connection and collaboration with other minds increases its capacity for shared meaning/understanding. This includes other animals. Human minds are structured to enable this, and are not as limited by evolution or physical structure as some might think.

Having said that, an awareness of this evolution and physical structure of the human mind may interfere with this capacity in reality. Because unless this hypothetical abstract mind can identify with this element of the human mind experience, and not have its own evolution and physical structure with which the human mind cannot identify, then there is an imperfect connection between the two minds.

I have little idea what you're saying in most of the initial post you made about this. (That's why I responded with a "Say what?"--a lot of your post came across like gobbledygook to me.)

So I said that I could see saying that valuations are a relation between the individual valuing something and what they're valuing. But the valuation is strictly something mental the individual is doing. — Terrapin Station

Well then, I appreciate the attempt to connect.

So I don’t assume where you’re coming from, do you regard subjective experience to be informative, or do you draw the line at what can be measured or objectively verified?

What information do you have regarding this ‘something mental’ that the individual is doing?

So what's the difference between information and speculation? Would you say it's basically the same thing? — frank

Sorry, that wasn’t very clear. Information is not the same as speculation, no. Information is what we have that is real (not necessarily physically real, mind you). Speculation is the process of guessing what might fill the gaps between the information we have. The scientific method makes use of speculation in order to acquire more information.

The information we have is not of the future as such. It’s about the future as much as it is a correlation regardless of time. We use this information to speculate about the future, and we use our speculation to seek more information.

The way I see it, the higher the dimensional information the more variables, and so the more information we need to make reliable predictions. The scientific method struggles at these higher levels, leading to more speculation than we would like. But rejecting information that doesn’t meet certain criteria (ie. reducibility to three- or four-dimensional information) is detrimental to the scientific method’s ability to acquire more information, in my opinion.

okay, you lost me. Can we go back a bit...

Is your problem with this statement I made?

Moral values are relations between a subject and their experience of behaviour: theirs and/or others’. — Possibility

Or is it with something else?

Is information just traces left behind by a thing? Can we have information about the future? — frank

In my view, information is proof of meaning. Two dimensional information - noticing that the same space can have a different shape to it - is proof of a three-dimensional aspect to the space. Three-dimensional information - noticing that the same object can change in spatial details - is proof of a temporal (4D) aspect to the object. Four dimensional information - noticing that the same event can happen differently - is proof of an aspect of (5D) experience to the event. Five dimensional information - noticing that the same experience can have a different value - is proof of an aspect of (6D) meaning to the experience.

So when we notice that the same event can happen differently at different times, we can look for information about how those differences relate to surrounding events. Then we can recognise those surrounding events as causal relations, and predict certain future events based on the occurrence of related preceding events. In this way, we can have information about the future.

It's okay to say that it's a relation between the subject and what they're valuing, I suppose, but the valuing part of that equation only occurs in the subject's brain. — Terrapin Station

The ‘valuing part’ you refer to is a set of measurable/observable events in the brain that can be related to the experience of valuing. That doesn’t amount to a value relation, and it doesn’t prove that a value relation is only in the subject’s brain, any more than a quantity is.

1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then they will be contingent, not necessary
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent (that is, if something is valuable, it is valuable of necessity not contingently)
3. Therefore moral values are not the values of a subject — Bartricks

You’re referring to ‘value’ as a property of the subject. This is inaccurate, and the main reason why the argument fails.

Value is a relation between an experiencing subject and the events/objects of their experience. It is neither an inherent property of the subject nor of the event/object.

Moral values are relations between a subject and their experience of behaviour: theirs and/or others’. It is a property of the subject only in relation to behaviour, and a property of behaviour only in relation to the subject. This means that moral values are contingent upon both subject and behaviour.

But as a subject we are aware of the self as an event/object of experience, too - and a small and temporary one at that. And yet we are aware of the value of certain behaviours irrespective of the lifetime of the subject. So we posit the existence of an ‘eternal subject’ that is not a limited or temporary event/object of experience - to which all events/objects must necessarily relate, because value is not contingent in our experience upon limited, temporary events/objects.

Enter ‘good’ as an abstract subject - a value. Suddenly a value is no longer seen as a relation contingent upon an experiencing subject and the objects of their experience, but becomes the subject itself. An eternal subject, no less. Something necessary. And it’s no surprise that we find ourselves to be ‘created’ in its image...

Moral values are not the values of a subject, they are relations between a subject/observer (singular or collective) and their experience of behaviour. As such they are contingent, not necessary.

If something is valuable, it is always valuable only in relation to a subject/observer, and is therefore contingent upon the subject/observer. The question is: who or what is the subject/observer?

Surely the purpose of participating is to learn
— Janus

An angry, insulting, patronizing participant has nothing to teach me. — uncanni

You missed the point. It isn’t what they can teach you, but what you can learn from your participation in the discussion: humility, patience, tolerance...

Do you believe that some countries are illegitimate in that they took someone's land with out permission? If so, what should be done about it ideally? Should we give back the the land? To whom? the original owners or the previous owners?

Should Israel give the land back to Palestine? Should Australians give back their land to aborigines? Should Americans give back the land to the natives? Surely that's the only fair thing to do.

All humans took land away from animals. Should we abandon civilization and give back the land to animals? Wait a minute...those animals took land from other animals. Perhaps we should give land to the original animals. What are the original animals? They're probably extinct by now. Now what? — Purple Pond

Illegitimate? Not at the time, in most cases. Rude, disrespectful, oppressive, dismissive - yes.

To be honest, giving the land back - even if you could work out who to give it ‘back’ to - wouldn’t really solve the problem, and it’s not even close to ‘fair’. Because it isn’t just the land that was taken without permission in most cases.

In Australia, land ‘ownership’ for Aboriginal people amounts to their spiritual and cultural connection to country. Fences and trespassing laws prevent them from accessing their songlines - cultural histories, songs and myths that are linked to natural landmarks and the experience of walking the land. Access to fishing and hunting grounds as well as other food or water sources and meeting spaces also play a significant role in their family and social dynamics, and in retrieving their cultural confidence.

Restoring or at least striving to understand and respect these connections goes some way towards ‘giving back’ to Aboriginal communities the freedom and confidence to then connect with the world on their terms - as a rich and vibrant culture that has value, and as a proud people deeply connected to their environment - instead of a displaced and scattered people with a lost culture.

What Aboriginal culture can teach us about connecting to the land we live on and the diversity of life it sustains, how to listen to the country and restore its strength, and how to respect someone else’s connection to (instead of ‘ownership’ of) the land, are more valuable to us now, in this current climate, than they ever have been.

I feel as though wallowing is the appropriate response if life truly is suffering. — Wallows

Life is not only suffering, though. The point is that we shouldn’t be focused on trying to avoid it or eliminate it, but on what we can do with our life in spite of it.

One has to understand that the frantic pace we set ourselves and are imposed by society as necessary, are actually quite detrimental to one's life and way of being. It is this haphazard push for more, that is harmful actually. — Wallows

The ‘haphazard push for more’ is simply trying to avoid or eliminate the ‘suffering’ experience of loss or lack. Our lives are incomplete - as living beings we are dissipative structures in a state of disequilibrium, continually in the process of internalising part of our environment and losing part of ourselves as ‘waste’. To live is to be incomplete. This is an unavoidable condition of life. We need to accept that we will never reach a point in our lives when we feel like we have enough. Then we can stop pushing so hard for more, and instead focus on sharing this more with others.

And, I suppose Cynicism deserves a mention here. One can either become cynical or compassionate at the suffering of others. Is there a third way? — Wallows

Cynicism is an attitude of disconnection: we refuse to recognise that we have any way of changing the situation of suffering, either for ourselves or for others, by our actions. We’re all billiard balls being bounced around in life, only focused inward.

Pity and self-pity are not cynicism, and not compassion. Instead they recognise a connection, but its one that travels only one way. Pity gives in an attempt to eradicate the suffering of others; self-pity takes and expects others to notice and respond to their suffering. Compassion focuses on a two-way sharing of the experience of suffering, as just one part of this fullness of life to be shared.