Setting aside the studies on rat brain for the moment …
If you “modulate” anxiety cells, then you’re going to be reducing all anxiety and not just the anxiety which gives rise to religious beliefs. That reduced anxiety can have unexpected effects.
For example, he wants to reduce terrorism. But it seems likely that existential angst, like fear of death, actually prevents some people from engaging in terrorism. If you modulate their anxiety cells, then you could end up with more terrorist acts. Those acts may not be motivated by passages in the Koran, they may be motivated by other ideologies. It’s not like people will stop acting on their beliefs.
Oh yes, mom says anything good that happens is of God and anything bad that happens is of the devil. Dad says everything is bad and good things are flukes. Alan Watts says whatever happens, I did it. This reminds me of:
My view has always been that it depends whether you’re filling the glass or emptying the glass. I’m not sure what that makes me
Do we chase money? Success? Or do we live as paupers? Do we strive to eat healthy? Abstain from smoking drinking? What’s the point when we’re going to die anyway? The point of the dance is to dance, not to get to the other side of the dance floor.
Um, any behaviour engaged in to the point that it leads to a severe detriment in a persons quality of life, and that reduces a persons level of functionality?
Clever. If you fill the glass too much it spills over. Don’t fill it enough and you won’t get a decent drink. I like it =D>
Yes I scratched my head on that one for a long time and still don’t have it fully figured out. Even if I the ego is different from I the universe, why would I fight myself? Of course, his position is there is only “I”. Yes, my parents are really screwed up and I’m still realizing the depths of it and what’s worse is I came from them, so I’m screwed up too. I think the only thing I have that they do not is introspection. If you’re crazy, how can you tell? The only thing I know to do is wait a couple years then reread what I wrote and think “Wow I was really screwed up when I wrote that!” But at the time, it seemed ok. So we can’t know if we’re crazy. Everyone else can be crazy, but we can’t see it in ourselves.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
So is Alan crazy or am I (or you)? Who is mixed up? Part of the reason I am here is to get to the bottom of that.
If someone is saying “my life sucks”, then he/she ought to do something to change it. And obviously he/she has some idea of what is wrong with that life and what would improve it. In most cases, some improvement is possible - maybe a big improvement is possible.
Yes but I realized one day that we can’t have 1 apple without the entire universe. An apple needs a tree that needs the ground and air which needs a planet which needs a star which needs a universe. A blackhole on the other end of the universe is just as necessary for you to be here as your own heart, and as Alan puts it, the same way you work your thyroid gland is the same way you shine the sun. Or we could say that whatever natural processes that cause your thyroid gland to function are of the same origin as those that shine the sun.
So what is the difference between “you” and “it”? He says this is why meditators focus on breathing because breathing is both something you do and something that happens to you and the purpose is to realize that there is no difference because whatever you do IS something that happens to you and the corollary is whatever that happens to you IS something you do.
I did get some good advice from dad once. He said “You expect too much”. Perhaps I am too idealistic in thinking we could have one year of “normal weather” by random chance instead on once-in-a-century droughts in the summer along with floods in the winter year after year. Why can’t it rain in the summer instead of the winter just by random fluke, just once??? But I expect too much and should feel astonished that we exist at all considering what a rough place the universe is. Yes, he’s right, I’m being arrogant and feeling entitled to good weather as if the universe owes me something.
Life “sucking” is a matter of perspective and expectation. If I’m not king of the world, then life just sucks.
I was originally going to put your post in order at the top, but decided to cut n paste it at the end as a summation because, yes, that’s it and there’s a lot of profundity in analogizing the glass being half full (realistic expectations, not being greedy, counting blessings, the Middle Way of Buddhism)
Sure, but perspective and expectations are within your control.
If you have to be “king of the world” for life not to suck, then you’re going to be unhappy your entire life unless you manage to become “king of the world”.
If you change your expectations, then life stops sucking.
What’s all this talk about choice and control? If I prefer vanilla over chocolate, isn’t it because of how I’m put together? I had no choice in that. The words I choose to type next is just a function of my genetics and my environment and those are two things I have no control over. How do you have control and I don’t?
