These types of pitiful kwestchuns are degenerate forms of the so called riddle of the universe; but by this I mean the real and authentic riddle of the universe.
All brat kwestchuns of the “whoy” type known to exasperated mothers the world over, derive from a failure to deal with the riddle proper and in turn emanate from that failure.
The “interrogation” of stars, nature, birds, people and everything else are pathological effects of a failure to resolve the “riddle” in those particular instances where it is in fact unresolved.
But the word riddle is far too small and misleading a word for it.
Your OP does not read as a proposal. It simply states a number of assertions without qualification. Which is fine, but that’s where my question about your knowledge came from.
I also raised the issue of children. I know I came up with meanings as a child and came up with meanings that did not fit my family’s beliefs. I have seen this as an adult with children also. They attribute meaning and speculate metaphysically.
This does not mean they are correct in their speculations on meaning, but the idea that there are these priests who speculated, for selfish reasons, and that others, passive non-speculators who were fooled by these people, does not fit my experience of children, who seem quite capable of speculating on such things on their own. IOW this search for meaning seems to arise naturally, whether it is a necessary or good process, the search for meaning that is, is another issue.
Your response above seems like more assertions. Why do you think speculation into meaning was not in their capacity? I am quite sure they did in fact speculate their way to tools, uses of hides for clothing and all sorts of practical day to day solutions, some of which may not have worked and many that did, cultural artifacts, cultural rules. How else did they invent things, tame animals, come up with new words and problem solve in many of the ways we do? How could they possibly have developed all the medicinal uses of plants that they did?
Also their religions are not mediated in the more absolute way of Catholicism. ‘Normal’ people had encounters with spirits, took vision quests, went into sweat lodges and had what we would call religious experiences. Much of what could get one into trouble with a church or be seen as practicing witchcraft was part and parcel of many hunter gatherere non-shaman members of the group.
You assert that the speculators, the priests must have come up with these ideas to benefit themselves. IOW 1) they were just making stuff up and 2) you know their motive. For example you are saying that they could not have had good motives, thought they were helping but were speculating poorly. I am not sure why you think this either.
This is tricky to answer, but in these discussion Western educated minds tend to come in with a lot of assumptions from science. That minds and sentience are isolated events and vast majority of the universe is dead and certainly not sentient. Therefore our concept of meaning is a pathetic fallacy, a projection on a universe that has no feeling or conscousness. This has become the default position and so any assertion othewise bears the burden of proof. But the axiom these people work with is simply that, an axiom. That consciousness is the product of nervous systems and complexity. I do not think this is the case.
I think the whole damn thing is alive, call that God if you will, and conscious. I think this whole has hopes and preferences and thus our sense of meaing fits with something beyond us. I do not think that we all have the same meaning, except perhaps on some very abstract, general level. But I do think that one can be more or less aligned with the whole.
A person may do something because they fear hell, or because they want to go to heaven, for example.
With regards to the particular part of the brain used, I would suggest that both aspects are controled by that part of the mind. One cannot say definitively that fear is in control…there are many who have conquered most fears and are barelly controled by any if any at all.
Then there is the word itself, in many languages the same word used for fear also means awe. (I think Arabic might be one…at least old arabic…)
And I would think of it like this, one might think fear is important, but what is fear without awe, or without respect?
If one does not respect a thing to be dangerous, they do not fear it…
if something is of a mute nature, wherein no harm comes of not doing it, but good comes of doing it, a person still does that thing because good will come of it… It is not a matter of action as avoidance of pain, or neccessarilly action for the gain of pleasure, it is action for the sake of benefit one way or the other. And of course different people are able to see farther as to what will have a deeper benefit than the more immediate things…
Most woman would find this insulting…But I see the first paragraph happening a good bit…I have a sister…and she did that to me all the time…I tend to avoid woman that use that method now…But with regards to the idea in the end…I find that we have more societal pressure on mens expected behavior then we need in a lot of ways…I agree that we should not have irrational behavior…but not all crying is irrational…or disfunctional…and can even be a means to get intouch with the inner self, that is to say understand lower level concerns regarding a subject…Ultiamtely what I’m saying is often men get locked into this idea of not crying and then when they honestly find themselves in aplace where such would be ok they hold back and bottle up the release that is crying(and of time this lead to complete disregard for subconcious concerns)…I mean think about it crying is not so much irrational in itseslf…it is more commonly a natural realease from excessive astoundment negative or positve…be one suddenly made very happy or very sad…In the end the release thereof is functionaly relieving…and can allow more clear functioning afterwords…(can be said to be preventative of unneeded anger) but of course that doesn’t mean cry all the time…or cry at every little thing…or cry just to get your way…or cry just to recieve the high of relief…
Word. Everything is speculation. We speculate that traditions are good to follow, that what we are taught (like that traditions are good to follow) are good things to listen to, people don’t just know anything, we guess…
I am not sure everything speculation, though I wish more people believed that were the case, since I often see people thinking they being rational when it seems like speculation to me. Still I think there are other things one can do. That said I tend to use the word intuition rather than speculation. Intuition (and speculation) can be a highly skilled activity or it can be the zenith of idiocy or it can be somewhere in between: guessing.
Well I might agree there is a difference between intution and specualtion…in otherwords a person can do a thing by mere reaction…instinct maybe…and thus it had no cognitive functions that reaied on the speculation that it was good or that any of the reasons that one might think it was good were good and so forth…by speculation…But then in so far as relying on one’s gut feeling (if that is what is meant by intuition) I would say that relys on a person speculating that such is a good idea…
My intuition says the following: I have to rely on intuition and to not do so would be dangerous, even lifethreatening.
what other choice do I have in many, many situations?
even in those situations where I have time and perhaps I could make a go at some of these decisions by another method - I simply don’t have the energy or need.
Last, rationality depends on intuition, so I can’t see how one has any choice.
What about the things we get into in our lives that are beyond our basic needs? Sure, one knows what is good for him and what aids him in all situations. if that weren’t the case he’d be an idiot. But at what point is deception happening? If we invest our conscious thinking selves too much with a system of reality that was arrived at arbitrarily, where does that put us? Does it take us away from the mishaps of speculation? Or cast you into a maelstrom of, ‘where the hell did I go?’
How does one make a distinction between “intuition” and “subconcious impulse” if they are one and the same then it still comes down to reasoning by consciousness. and regardless one’s concsiousness could always intervene (one’s higher state thinking), if it doesn’t in a bad intutional state then such could be called a faulty thought process anyways…i.e. negligence.
I was using the term ‘life’ as meaning that which is the physical/biological life of all living things. I’m afraid you have misjudged my meaning and went ahead to call out a contradiction. Instead, I would rather you take it with the realization that what is known from perception, conception or any other activity of thought is far removed from the living quality I’m referring to.
Life is all that is inside of us. The intellect is no match to the intelligence of the life of the human organism. That life is fantastic and inscrutable in so far as how it came to exist. Theories include evolution, intelligent design, etc.
The situation everyone finds themselves in, perception, etc. has to do with living together with the things around and relationships. In that sense you live in a world of your own ideas and project that onto the outside world. The act of projecting your knowledge on things gives you an identity reference point – that you as a subject exist in relation to the objects around. That is the life of the intellect or thought. Intellect and thought are dead, yet they are holding all the keys and are trying to control the life.
Fear is both an emotion and an instinct, which is why it’s called a ‘basic’ emotion. Basic fear is a survival mechanism-- it’s present in all animals. But in Homo sapien, fear is also an emotion in that it can be the anticipation of a possible ‘bad’–or unintended–consequence of a decision, for example. “I’m afraid of what might happen if…” Or, “I’m frightened about what will happen to world economy if the US defaults on its loans.”
And most of what you describe both above and below are learned–and learned through experience. You have to fall and hurt yourself first, before you learn to take care where you step. Again, this is an anticipation of dire consequences that promotes the emotion of fear.
See my above responses.
The rest of your post is silly nonsense that has nothing to do with either the OP or ‘fear’ as a basic emotion.
If I may iterate what’s been said before. Protohumans may or may not have had a ‘burning desire’ to know the ‘meaning of life/existence’. But the various genera classified as Homo certainly had minds–often very good ones, or they wouldn’t have been able to go beyond the cave, create tools, or expand cultures. In short, they wouldn’t have been able to survive and grow. They did have thoughts about an after-life, as exhibited in their burial rituals, and they did have questions about what was in the unexplored world around them–otherwise they wouldn’t have walked–or sailed–over the ‘next hill’ to find out.
They had no need for a ‘salesman’ to teach them what questions to ask in order to gain power over them. They had already derived, from nature, nature gods who really did have power over them. Given those nature gods, certain strains of the Homo genera that led to Homo sapien, developed myth and ritual. Myth and ritual are essential to the human psyche even today.
If anyone disagrees with my recap, please add your thoughts.
I think this is a good question and not an easy one to answer. But I want to sidestep it since in context it is a response to my assertions which I stand by without necessarily being able to give you a good rule of thumb. I make decisions all the time not bases on either deduction or induction, as far as I can tell. If I were to try to reason my way to all these decisions, I would die. I would never make it to the fridge to eat. Let alone be a good worker, friend, football thrower, reader, or even, yes, someone who reasons.
The intuition is the subconscious interpolating things better than we can in many ways on the conscious level. I.E. the subconscious can pick up on the level of noise in a general area and nudge the person to say avoid it if it has a particular frequency associated with negativity…(like a threatening voice) even when it is beyond the volume of conscious recognition. intuition as such is good to follow often but not always so good when it is desiring a big mak due to some commercial…
ultimately though I would of course say that everything is a matter of though on some level though there are many tendencies and such that we have due to gentic makeup of our subconscious, though one might call such genetic memory…IDK
So the entire argument bases on the preclusion of validity on the strength of articulation. The meaning of life, when verbally invoked, ceases to possess any philosophical weight. Why not just say “ohm” and not post?