I firmly believe that humans are not animals, so...animals do not prepare in advance for funerals
You are incorrect. Human animals have funerals.
We live in a world corrupted by violence and greed. If you call that "civilization" that's up to you. Nope, a "civilized society" doesn't mean to ME greed and violence.
Your religion teaches you to see the world so darkly. You and I live in the same world, but you see in the most pessimistic of terms like the Jehovah's Witnesses I told you about recently, who didn't know what to say to me after I told them what I'm telling you - I simply didn't agree with them. So they said thank you and left.
I know that the world has a lot of unhappiness in it, but there are millions of people living safe, comfortable, relatively easy lives full of love and beauty, and I'll bet that you're one of them like I am, but you see it only in terms of corruption and greed and disparage civilization because for you, that's all it is.
I'll bet that greed and corruption don't define your days. I'll bet that you have people and/or pets that you love and love you in return. I'll bet that you enjoy flowers and sunsets, and maybe a garden. I'll bet that you eat food you enjoy. I'll bet that you have labor saving devices that wash your clothes and dishes for you, a car, and an air conditioner if you live where it gets hot. I'll bet that you have a roof over your head, and that people stock your grocery stores for you, pick up your garbage, and deliver your mail.
I'm guessing, of course, but I just described the way millions or billions of lives are lived, and even if some of that is wrong, lake maybe you don't have a car or a garden, it's by choice.
That's also civilization, yet you disparage it and define your life in terms of violence, corruption, and greed despite having relatively few brushes with any of those.
Amazing how some of you guys (or gals) process to know sooo much!!
Thanks for noticing.
you are stuck in duality, a seer and a seen
We all are. That's our reality. We perceive consciousness as a subject observing itself and the varied, changing phenomena of consciousness—such as sights, impulses, and moral imperatives—as we move through time.
There will always be an inherent duality in consciousness, a feeling that 'this is me, here and now,' and 'that is an external part of nature, not the self,' along with times that are not the present (past or future).
non-duality has to be realized in stilling the mind.
What do you say - and please try to be as specific and concrete as you can - is the benefit of thinking more about that. I found nothing up that avenue of meditative pursuit. I read repeatedly about people trying to transcend dualistic thought, and I have no idea what it is they are pursuing or why. Why do you spend time trying the collapse that dualistic experience of self and other?
I asked AI that question: "
The benefit of contemplating the transcendence of dualistic thought lies in achieving a more integrated perspective. It is not about rejecting one side of a duality but about understanding and balancing both to perceive the whole. This pursuit aims to resolve the dissonance caused by seeing the self and others as separate, which can lead to a more harmonious and unified experience of existence."]
That's the kind of answer that I'm used to, and which says nothing specific to me. What dissonance in seeing self and other as subject and object? What more harmonious and unified experience?
keep your models, they are models of reality, not the reality they are meant to represent.
True. But so what? All a model or mental map need do is help one achieve his goals. There is no value in dwelling over what's actually on the other side of consciousness out there, because we can't have experience of it except through consciousness' lens. If the model works, we stick with it.
Consider racecar arcade games, where players turn a wheel and press foot pedals to mimic driving. It's easy to momentarily forget that one is not actually in a car, and the wheel in hand doesn't control real tires on the pavement. At that moment, the mental model is of an actual car; it's incorrect but serves its purpose. When the player steers right, the scene shifts accordingly, just as it would in a real vehicle. If a tree looms ahead, he swerves, avoiding an 'accident' in the simulation. The illusion only shatters if the tree isn't dodged, ending the game without real-world consequences. As long as the experience aligns with expectations, the model suffices, no matter how much it diverges from reality.
This concept extends to everyday life. What if reality isn't as it seems?
Numerous hypotheses speculate on the true nature beyond our conscious awareness, such as Boltzmann brains, simulated realities, brains in vats, and last Thursdayism. Echoing Descartes, we can be certain of nothing but the existence of our experiences, and I would add, the rules to manipulate them for future outcomes. For instance:
Suppose you discovered for an indisputable fact that the world outside was an illusion. Nevertheless, you still see your hand and finger and a flame on a candle. It's not real, you think, and stick your imagined finger into the imagined flame, it burns and hurts, you imagine that you quickly withdrew you imagined finger from that imagined flame, and the pain ends. Are you going to do it again, or just go back to the old rules that always worked before and still work now?
Probably not, and that's the point. The crux of the matter is that the accuracy of our models isn't always ascertainable; their utility lies in their functionality. If a model works, it's considered useful.
All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. When a person holds belief B that a particular action A will lead to a desired outcome D, and outcome D reliably follows action A, we regard belief B as true, correct, or knowledge. We can't know and for that reason needn't ponder for long what exists beyond the realm of consciousness.
