The Problem is Choice

[Brickjectivity]

All of the above, yes?

I'm so confused. Its like a number with lots of factors.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Are you here by choice? Whose?
Yours? Your parents'? God's?

I think my dear father botched a 'coitus interruptus'. That is how they did it in 1942.

 

[Howard Is]

I think my dear father botched a 'coitus interruptus'.

Nah. He got it right

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Are you here by choice? Whose?

Yours? Your parents'? God's?

And was that a traditional problem, or is asking that a new problem that is a byproduct of modernity? I think maybe if you were born a long time ago in an animist tribal situation, it might look like an ephemeral situation lacking solidity to us, but you probably had a better grasp of why you were alive from the get go. As you would not have as much choice and greater external knowledge to sculpt who you were, your potential feeds back into a solidification of known purpose. It's only now that we are so anxious about the choices we have

 

[Howard Is]

And was that a traditional problem, or is asking that a new problem that is a byproduct of modernity? I think maybe if you were born a long time ago in an animist tribal situation, it might look like an ephemeral situation lacking solidity to us, but you probably had a better grasp of why you were alive from the get go. As you would not have as much choice and greater external knowledge to sculpt who you were, your potential feeds back into a solidification of known purpose. It's only now that we are so anxious about the choices we have

You make a solid point.

Concomitant to that, modern educated people feel under pressure to have the right answers to the Big Questions. As far as I can tell, none of the Big Questions have produced a Big Answer.

Ask an unnecessary question, get an unnecessary answer ?

Before the Big Questions, chopping wood and carrying water. After the Big Questions, chopping wood and carrying water.

Traleg Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama I studied with, once said to a group of his students “You westerners behave as though there is a list of questions, and a list of answers, and your task is to match the questions to the answers”.

Another of the lamas once commented “The superficial is the real”.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Before the Big Questions, chopping wood and carrying water. After the Big Questions, chopping wood and carrying water.

That would make an interesting bumper sticker

Another of the lamas once commented “The superficial is the real”.

Well, I mean in a way, what you see topically in things is kind of what you're designed to see. We can study the brain, the atom, and the ideas we have, but our noses aren't really naturally pointed toward analyzing those things from birth. Are they? We may try to open the doors to those things to try to get past what is 'superficial,' but the superficial remains as an end product, oftentimes naturally in closest proximity to the senses as if healthful fruit to a chimp

 

[MonkeyFire]

There is a problem with all things but you don't here me complaining, even knowledge is iconic as the fallen angel of light.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Do you mean am I in this forum by choice?

Depends on what you man.

Certainly no one has put a gun to my head. I am responsible for being here.

On the other hand, WHY did I make this decision? For that, there are a thousand variable which come into play, but certainly if they were different I would have chosen differently. So you could say that my choice was made dependent upon those variable, and not "freely." But that all gets into philosophy that is heady and really not very constructive. Stick with the first answer.