I believe this is the an ancient Hindu story of creation (more or less).

I understand and it's a good philosophical argument I just don't need the roundabout-ness of it.

This itself is so value-laden and personal in its opinion, that it self-refutes the earlier point here: — schopenhauer1

You make too many assumptions of my statements and prematurely reached your conclusions on me self-refuting.

Then why add to the problem of interaction in the first place? Sound like mental gymnastics.

Why would you create? What would you do? What reality would you set up? Would you get bored? — Benj96

Exactly the same as it has been, is and will be.

If I was all that is then self-consciousness does not make sense since there is no self as opposed to other-self.
In that case the only thing to do is create a "game" where an entity has the ability to become self-conscious thus I become conscious of myself from the entities that I myself have created.

That heaven would be hell. Eternal torture. Meaningless. Eternal void would be preferable.

"Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick."

You are explaining idealism as dualistic. In your explanation the mental and the non-mental are two and thus interaction has to be explained.
As I understand idealism, all is mental. The non-mental is an expression of the mental.
Like the water surface and the ripple, the mental is the water (all there is) and the ripples are the non-mental (water excited).

what I am particularly interested in is whether these belief systems may impact people's positions towards recycling; whether it would make sense to recycle if you hold these positions. — Chris H

If X is not misanthrope/antinatalist and does not recycle, I don't see how X becoming misanthrope/antinatalist makes them recycle.
I think pro-environmentalism precedes misanthropy/antinatalism in a misanthrope/antinatalist who recycles.
I see correlation but not necessarily direct causation.

I can't consider misanthropy as a philosophy. It's more an emotional reaction to negative life experience coated in "philosophical" language, which makes it intellectually dishonest. Thus I don't put much value in its arguments.

Antinatalism makes good logical points but they fall short within the context of the whole human experience.

The problem of environmental damage is real but the solution of antinatalism and misanthropism is irrational. If you have a thorn in your foot the solution is not to cut it off.

As for your survey I'm sorry to say that I couldn't go on with it.
In your questions you made too many assumptions of one's situation. i.e in my country/culture recycling is not a practical matter yet, it is just talked about, so I didn't know how to answer.
Also the way your questions were asked I felt answering each of them as "it depends", it was all very context-depended.

No creator does not mean no creation.
No purpose does not mean meaninglessness.

The creation of the ego in a person is inevitable.
It arises out of the dynamics of biology, environment and society.
Why do we have it? Primarily it wasn't really up to us, just growing up with people ego arises.
Why do we enforce it and take pride in it? In general it's depended on your culture. The western society gave a strong importance to the individual and his/her success over the world. Especially after the scientific enlightenment.
In older societies especially non-western, individual pride was looked down upon, so it was not encouraged. People were rewarded more when they acted in the service of their community/tribe.

The question of the ego can be inquired in different levels but you seem to be asking more about the narcissistic side of the ego.
I would say that is because of the western culture where there is a worship of the hero and of youth and individual power.
This need for positive feedback of the ego comes from constant (mainly unconscious) self-doubt and insecurity.

“Any man who says ‘I am King’ is no true king.”- Tywin Lannister

What you are describing as "atheist" is actually a anti-theist.
Your "atheist" is just a believer of no-god, but a believer nonetheless, that's why he/she is trying to convince the theist.
A real atheist would be indifferent to god.

"No dearer is man's life than that which he holds dear.
Take care that you hold not your precious life as cheap as gold"

If you put your values on "my actions and life and all my accomplishments" then death will take it all away and nihilism is inevitable. That's why people create consolations like afterlife, so one doesn't feel the nihility.

When the Buddha learned that one day he too will grow old and die he renounced everything so he can find "that which survives death".

So everyone has essentially two paths:
The temporary satisfaction of the worldly matter which end up in Nihility.
or The search for that within oneself which belongs to Eternity.

If something doesn't make sense from a religious angle for example then pivot into philosophy, or science. The more perspectives the fuller the picture resolution — punos

I agree but without clarification it makes thinks unnecessarily complicated.

Well i didn't intend to give that impression because i'm a monist not a dualist; there is one thing and all is made of it, just more complex forms of the same thing (energy and matter). If consciousness is fundamental then it must be found either at the level of pure energy (before matter), or somehow before energy itself which is as fundamental as i think one can get. — punos

On this we agree.

We should at least have a stable definition of what consciousness is so that we know how to identify it when it shows up. How can we tell the difference between something that is conscious and something that is not? How would you define consciousness in this context? — punos

I use consciousness as Mind -not the particular mind- or Intellect in neoplatonism, Dharma in buddhism, Tao in taoism etc. I don't mean consciousness as the capacity of humans to be conscious, I call that meta-consciousness.
I use it as pure energy which through its own intelligence creates complex/conditioned energy, which is matter.
My point is that matter is not something different from consciousness but a manifestation of it.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771855

We are speaking different languages.
You are using consciousness mainly as being conscious or meta-consciousness.
I'm using it as a fundamental principle of reality.
Also the use of the word intelligence is different. I'm using it as the guiding principle of consciousness.
Another difference is that you create a duality of matter and consciousness. I do not.
It's not that I disagree with most of what you have said. It's just that you use the words that I used in different meaning.

In either case, consciousness exists, how it exists, and how its effects are amplified are up for debate, but its clear that natural laws permit its existence, if not neccesitate it. — Benj96

I agree. I can't imagine how a thinking human being can say that consciousness doesn't.

But it also doesn't make any sense to me how consciousness is emergent from matter.
That would mean that matter precedes it.
How can matter without any form of intelligence -since in this case consciousness is emergent- create something like consciousness, which is intelligence. It's like a sculpture creating the sculptor.

No matter how I go through it, science, philosophy or religion, consciousness always has to be fundamental and not emergent.

I am not assuming how it is like to be a stone or a cat. I only maintain that it's experience is not like human's. I would say that's a fair deduction.

This quote is saying the same thing as I am.
The author is as disappointed with the progress of science and technology as me.
The only difference is that I'm being more tolerant and considering the bullshit innovation that are today "progress" nonetheless whereas the author is denying that they should be called so.
A sentiment that I sympathise with.

I was just curious if you thought that the pace of progress in science has slowed — Joshs

Obviously the progress of science and technology is going forward. I'm simply adding that its primary focus is not on general human needs but the needs of the market.

Aware of my awareness, consciousness of my consciousness. The process is a self-referential loop — Art48

Is that one explanation of the aim of meditation? — Art48

Yes, the aim of meditation is to move from awareness of objects to awareness of awareness.
But I am wary of seeing it as a self-referential loop which leads to infinite loop.
Awareness of awareness are not two awareness looking at each other but only awareness knowing itself simply by being itself.

By this do you mean we sacrifice innovation in philosophy to innovation in science and technology, or that progress in science and technology also suffer? — Joshs

Its not about either or. They all suffer in one direction and "progress" in another.
Philosophy became more and more analytical, the original meaning was lost.
Science and technology became servant to money and forgot its original purpose.

what if we observed the world through breaking it down further and if gaps between those micorscopic concepts were also looked at? — obscurelaunting

What if this approach to the smaller and smaller is the problem of modernity with the advent of science and technology?
What if our alienation with the creative comes because we have sacrificed the holistic approach?

If they are not the same surely they can be separated? — Benj96

I mean they are not on the same level of being.
Like sunlight and the sun. Sunlight is a radiation of the sun. It is the sun as emanation of it but it is not exactly the sun. (Idk how scientifically correct this is so take it just as a metaphor)

Can we take away ones consciousness without affecting their body in any way? Can we take away ones body without affecting their conscious experience in any way? — Benj96

Im not sure that this can be proven but consider this:
In a perfect sensory depravation chamber the body is "eliminated" from consciousness. But even then, one has the qualia of presence, here-ness, being.
I consider this a good indicator of consciousness without matter. Although I'm aware that in this instance there is still a brain working.

If they are truly separable, then we are talking about the afterlife. Where one's sense of self can fully be removed from the corpus. — Benj96

Would this content-less pure awareness continue as the body/material vessel decomposes at death and transfigures/is recycled back into the ecosystem? — Benj96

I would put it as an immaterial continuation. This doesn't mean that a self as an identity has an afterlife somewhere.
Imagine a person as a wave and with death the wave collapses into the ocean. The wave continues as the ocean but it does not identify as a wave anymore.

f the content-less pure awareness is a constant underlying manifestation of physical "living bodies", it suggests pan-psychism. That everything is capable of content-less pure awareness fundamentally but can only manifest as an identity/ agent through "being" a physical system. A body. A thing. — Benj96

Im not very familiar with panpsychism but I would not consider that everything has pure awareness/conciousness.
Different physical things obey different Laws of consciousness.
A stone, a cat and a human possess different capacities of embodying consciousness.

The question remains: Just what was he proving? — Vera Mont

I would say that he was proving his philosophy by example. If he would have accepted exile he would have implicitly abandoned his philosophy.
He was showing that he lived his life to the extent that he did not fear death.

The 'I' may be like an underlying reflective narrator, as an aspect of subjectivity. The 'I'in being able to observe in the process of making meaning out of the various experiences. This 'I' as a central aspect of thinking was what lead Descartes to the, 'I think, therefore I am', may be what lead to the position of dualism. — Jack Cummins

This takes us to a deeper level.
I would say that the "I", as you put it, as a reflective narrator, the Descartes "I", is a construction created by the interaction of "I" as consciousness-without-content and matter (body, environment, culture etc.)

So, there is content-less subjectivity as pure awareness which through attention it interacts with matter thus creating the 'self' (reflective narrator), which is enacted in mind-body.

No, explain: Why should happiness and truth be mutually exclusive? — baker

I never said they should be mutually exclusive. I said they could be, and gave you a simple example.

I agree. They are not separate.
So to an extent we are the body but I don't believe that we are the consciousness in the same way.
My disagreement to OP is that "I" as consciousness and "I" as a body are not on the same level of "me" as being.

when we look as subjective actors upon the world, it is an illusion, because inner and outer are not a dualistic split. — Jack Cummins

I'm not clear what you mean by this. Could you expand?

what would you suggest in lieu? — Benj96

Also to @Jack Cummins

If you subscribe to materialism, which says consciousness is emergent from matter then I can't suggest anything else.
If not, If consciousness' reality is independent of matter then: You are consciousness which is embodied/embedded/enacted in matter.
So you have a body and the body is you as an extension of you as consciousness.
So I wouldn't say I am an object if this object without me as consciousness "drops dead".

I am also an object (I have a material body). — Benj96

I don't fully agree to this.
And by your own sentence you don't either.
You say: I am an object and then you say I have this object.
Being and having are not the same.

When you don't feel like being respectful anymore, that's when maybe you should end your dialogue which has stopped being one.

"An unexamined life is not worth living".
Everything is a distraction to an untrained dog.
Work on your attention.
Let not your monkey mind lead your life.

What makes a prophet, if not his words?
We are all prophets, then, partaking of the same reality, describing it each in a different way. — Vera Mont

The words don't make a prophet so not all are prophets, that's obvious.

The most genuine prophets don't communicate ta all: they have pure, direct, inexplicable experience. — Vera Mont

Those are the only prophets, not just most genuine.
Direct experience comes first, then they attempt to express the inexpressible and because of the differences of time and space they seem to disagree to the casual.

But if you mean they experience the same reality, — Art48

Ofc that's what I mean.
It is silly saying that they agree merely verbally.
Clear example Buddha says no-god, Jesus says God.
Buddha says no self, Hinduism says Atman.

When it comes to the ultimate one should attend to the implicit.

Another view, would be all "genuine" prophets experience the same Reality, but they express their experience differently, and so sometimes may disagree. — Art48

But why do you call it disagreement when they experience the same reality? Their agreement is beyond the words and that's what agreement is. I always surprised how much people cling to words.

All religions canonize the same superstition. — 180 Proof

I'm not talking about religions.

Sure you can disregard all of them, its up to you. But you are not solving any problem by doing that.

Many people wonder what happens after death.
If prophets agree about what happens after death, please enlighten us as to what they agree on.
(You can't do it.) — Art48

You ask me to show you something and then you say "(You can't do it.)".
I'll not bother arguing with someone who has completely made up their mind.

I suppose the problem is my use of the word prophet. It is used very broadly.
I personally would disregard most so-called prophet. But that's just my take on them.