Workless

Yeah, I watched the George Carlin clip of him talking about this on youtube, and I agree - the planet will exist just fine without us in whatever balance it achieves at any given time. The observable universe very clearly shows that planets really don’t need life at all. And I agree that everything we do damages nature, but that’s not the point. The point is whether we damage nature in such a way or to such a degree more than it balances itself back out, with or without our help, such that our conditions remain viable for our continued existence in the way that we are choosing to exist. Sustainability.

I’m fine damaging nature, as long as it rebuilds itself with or without our help, such that we can continue in the long term as well as the short. Be active, use energy - preferably renewable energy, in consistency with what I’ve just described. From what I can tell from what has been turned into this big mess of relative misinformation, we are throwing things out of balance and maybe unsustainably so. I wish it was easier to find out for sure and to communicate the results in a way that isn’t so supposedly disputable. Whilst I support skepticism, I think it’s possible to apply it without good reason, and I believe this is what’s being done towards data that suggests we’re fucking things up. I also believe there are people out there who overstate the degree to which we are fucking things up. Ought we all be obliged to be scientists who are able to conduct such tests ourselves independently? Is that what it’s going to take? I think there are forces out there that have gone out of their way to successfully discredit good science, and that’s a huge shame - and a potentially hugely damaging one at that. Not one we can reasonably afford.

I say push things hard, but only if it can be shown that there are natural forces that will push back to keep such pushing sustainable. I’m not a materialist. At all. I want less things, if anything, and much of my problem in disposing what I do have is that I have no faith that my method of disposal will be compatible with the kind of sustainability that I’ve just been talking about. I would be in favour of forcing companies to only produce things in such a way that they could dismantle them in a sustainable way - whether or not for them to reuse in future production. Ideally there would be an inbuilt reason for them to want to do this themselves without the need for force, but I don’t think such a mechanism exists to anywhere near enough of an extent.

In many ways I would be saying the same things as you, but I am overly careful in how I present them and to what extent I show support - simply because of who there is to convince, and what there really is to justify it.

It’s bad to work as little as possible.
It feels bad to do nothing.
There’s not enough productivity in the world.
There’s not enough hard working people.
If we’re to survive as a species, we must do as little as much as we can.
Leave your mark on things.
Leave them changed.
exist as a an acheiver.
There is so much to do.
Do what needs to be done, and what you feel like doing, then do more
Allow nature to do things through you, and nothing will be left undone.
It is not me who acts, but nature through me.
As long as your have food and a roof over your head, you can do anything
Doing nothing is useless, not important.

My new friend! =D>

Alan was a genius of geniuses. I don’t understand why he’s not more popular and my only explanation is that a bird that flies high appears small.

The fact that you recognize his value therefore says a lot about your perception, imo.

But, to be clear, Alan was a combination of hinduism and buddhism.

The 4 models of the universe he put forth are:

The ceramic model
The fully automatic model
The organic model
The dramatic model

He preferred the dramatic (hindu) with the underpinning of the organic (buddhist). He said the ceramic and automatic were the dumbest ideas; especially the latter. Some folks think he favored atheism since he said “the bible should be ceremoniously and reverently burned every Easter”, but he actually put atheism at the bottom of the totem pole.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtqtKnWriCM[/youtube]

I’d start around 8:00, but the pertinent part comes around 16:50, which is:

“Now all this is perfectly idiotic. If you would think that the idea of the universe as being the creation of a benevolent old gentleman, although he’s not so benevolent he takes a sort of “this hurts me more than it hurts you” sort of attitude… uh, you can have that on the one hand and if that becomes uncomfortable, you can exchange it for its opposite: the idea that the ultimate reality doesn’t have any intelligence at all. At least that gets rid of the ole bogie in the sky, but in exchange for a picture of the world that is completely stupid. Now these ideas don’t make any sense… especially the last one… because you cannot get an intelligent organism, such as a human being, out of an unintelligent universe.”

So as to not derail the thread from the topic, I’ll mention that another idea of Alan’s was the attribution of intelligence to the thistledown which harnessed the wind to move about like a sailor using the wind instead of rowing, which is much more work. Sometimes doing less work can be considered more intelligent. “Work smarter; not harder.”

Everything else furthers the illusion of the ego. The only innocent activity is that which is done naturally, which I simply call “fun”. Everything else is done for bragging rights, including and most-especially religious activity.

“Nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance.” Alan Watts

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tncnWp67wQI[/youtube]

“The distinction between the natural and artificial is a very artificial distinction.” Alan Watts

To call ourselves artificial is egoic self-flattery that we’re somehow above nature and it behooves us to take care of it. We are nature and everything we do is natural.

Haha, reminds me of another Alan Watts bit:

Why survive? What’s that for? He said life is really a lot of tubes. They put things in one end so they can let it out the other. The tubes grow eyes and ganglia on one end, we call the head, so it can find more things to put in one end to let it out the other. And all the stuff going through wears the tube out, so they find ways of reproducing so the show can go on and all this is terribly important! We must continue!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghz7VXW437Y[/youtube]

Nature and artifice are subjective, like all cognition, but they can be usefully applied to the objective world, aggregately, or relatively.
Like this shirt is aggregately or relatively black so I’m calling it black, or it’s sufficiently unnatural because it’s made of polyester that I’m calling it unnatural.
Where we draw the line is fraught with ambiguity, but life and thinking demand we draw the line somewhere, sometime.

For me, artifice is what’s been radically and methodically transformed by a sentient being’s imagination and intellect.

Biology is slow to change, but culture can change overnight, in the blink of Gaia’s eye, the former is more unconscious, but more tried and tested, the latter is more conscious, but highly experimental, and needs to be exercised with a great deal of care and caution.
Man once supposed his culture and inventions were handed to them by the Gods, but now we know better, we make it up.

Humanity is just starting to awaken to its own intellectual capacity, and like a kid that’s just been handed a loaded gun, we’ve gotten trigger happy.
With great power comes great responsibility.
If we don’t handle our culture, science and tech with the greatest care, if we run away with it, we will destroy much of nature with it, and ourselves in the process, as we are poised to do.
Innovation should happen, but it must happen gradually, wisely, in culture, science and tech.
If we just start playing around with stuff for the sheer hell of it, like we have been, we’re going to wish we never awoke from our primordial intellectual slumber.

We want to survive for the sake of surviving, and other things, like knowledge and understanding for their own sake, or hedonism and materialism for their own sake, that is what we do.
Some people want more out of life than others, and people want different things.
When some hear another describe their life, particularly if they lack empathy/are engrossed with themselves, it might sound like a kind of living death to them, but for the person describing it, it may not be, they may be perfectly or mostly fine with it.
Or it might even be that most things in life and our socio-economy available for us to consume, aren’t really worth the trouble, for some perhaps, perhaps for all.

We’re porous beings, but of course we don’t fill ourselves just so we can empty and refill ourselves, we’re trying to retain as much of what we’re made of as possible, and allows us to function optimally, and expel as much of what we’re not made of as possible, and inhibits our functioning.

Myself I believe in having some sense of self.
Alan Watts has broadened, enriched and loosened my sense of self rather than annihilating it.

I almost always believe in steering a middle course between metaphysical, and ethical absolutes.

Not everything that isn’t done for sheer fun and enjoymenmt is disengenuous or malicious.
There is such a thing as discipline.
We discipline ourselves for its own sake, because it can be fun to discipline ourselves, sometimes.
We discipline ourselves as a test of our mettle, not just so we can brag, but because we enjoy a good challenge, and strengthening ourselves, physically, intellectually, and our resolve.
And we discipline ourselves so we’re more able to avoid the things that aren’t so fun, and so we’re more able to attain the things that are fun, in the long run.

Of course you can have too much discipline, it’s about finding the right balance for the right person or people at the right time.
But we’re never 100% balanced, and that’s part of the fun too.

@Serendip

Yea, he was one of the smartest men I ever read or listened to.

And Daoism, but scientism and monotheism left their mark on him too, at least negatively, as an example of how not to think.

Of these, I tend to prefer the organic, Buddhist/Daoist model, but I recognize validity in all of them, on some level.
While these four models are perhaps the most influential in history, I wouldn’t confine all of man’s philosophizing to just four.

I agree with him, there is a kind of intelligence to the universe, but it’s probably much deeper, more subtle and mysterious than the ceramic model supposes.
I think there’s probably a hell of a lot more going on than man can presently, if ever fathom, that all of these models are fundamentally, grossly incomplete.

Yes and moreover, I think whether artifice exists is also subjective. I suppose people are free to believe it exists, which makes it subjective, but it has to be defined into existence as an arbitrary abstraction or dissection of the universe. We have to create the notion of artificial by defining it as, say, anything made by man that doesn’t also exist without man’s effort. It’s an arbitrary distinction since we could include what homids make, or any other animal, in the definition of artificial. But since it’s a complete conceptual abstraction, it’s not anything we call real because it’s made by man and therefore is artificial.

If you say “anything made by man is artificial” then your definition is artificial because you made it and are a man. So the distinction between the natural and artificial is an artificial distinction.

Good point, but isn’t that just a shuffling of semantics? You’re renaming “polyester” to “unnatural” as a placeholder for “manmade”. It reinforces the idea that man is somehow apart from the universe.

That’s a good idea, but then beaver dams are artificial by that definition because beavers are sentient. Now I’m wondering what is not sentient.

Who or what makes us up? We could be a proxy… a means to an end. The universe uses us to invent things.

Alan said if you believe, for example, that the big bang happened, then you are the big bang still coming on. This is where we have to ask ourselves a question: Am I stupid or is he? Can we get our heads around what he is talking about in order to judge its validity?

I’m not sure if I’m smarter than a thistledown. I think I’m only more conscious, but not smarter because I don’t know the definition of smart. Big brains must be coddled and fed, so in terms of survivability, it’s not too smart. The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn’t Always the Smart One

But intelligence itself is just a process of the universe and the analogy is that of bandwidth where information doesn’t necessary travel faster or is processed faster, but the bandwidth (consciousness) is higher for humans than thistledowns. Do you see what I mean?

We could say that intelligence is perception of things that others do not have. Do you see what I mean?

“Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” - Goethe

Smarter things have more ‘eyes’ or more tools to be conscious of what’s going on, but they aren’t necessarily smarter per se, but more conscious, which is just a function of complexity and no reason for a parade or celebration because we’re better and should bear extra responsibility, as in meddling with things we do not necessarily understand.

How do we know what is good?

“Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown”, said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree. Isn’t it arrogant to believe we’re not putting metaphorical fish up trees for their own protection? How do we know we are doing good?

I think we’ve already damaged nature too much, and it’s not just me that thinks that, science thinks that.
I’d like to see a rewilding of the planet, where world population is reduced by about 90%.
I’d also like to see global economic decline by about 90%.
I don’t want to see another species go extinct because of our doing, and if we continue down the road we’re on, we’re going to see thousands of species go extinct, we’re going to see massive climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, water shortage, peak oil, gas and uranium.
We’re going to see world war 3 fought over dwindling resources, and we’re going to see the (near) extinction of our species.

In terms of biomass, humans are already the largest species on the planet, and thanks solely to us, hominidae is practically the 3rd largest taxological family on the planet, after ants and termites, but relative to their biomass, I don’t think ants and termites consume a 10th or even a 100th of what we do, and they tend to allow what they consume to renew itself, they aren’t dependent on non-renewable resources and don’t pollute the way we do.
either we need to learn how to produce/consume a lot more like ants/termites, or our population needs to be reduced 10 fold.

We didn’t have these problems threatening to destroy us during the preindustrial age, so either we need to rewind the technological clock a couple of centuries in some ways, in all ways, or we need to depopulate.
Making our tech greener is insufficient, we need to power down and depopulate.
We consume and pollute way too much, capitalism must be replaced by ecosocialist governments. Our economies must become lean, austere, we shouldn’t produce much more than we need to survive.

We could theorize that we want to survive because we believe we’re something less than the totality of what there is. Ants don’t have such an instinct to survive because their focus is on the colony’s survival; they identify with the colony and not themselves; they see themselves as part of the whole organism that is the colony. So, your desire for self-preservation depends on what you call “self”. If you, for example, identified with the whole universe, you’d find it silly and laughable that folks worry about surviving. “Survive? What do you mean? Who do you think you are? How did this ant develop a sense of self?” It’s a theory.

Yup, what’s true is relative.

There could be a deeper meaning to the tubes. “Life is a journey from the maternity ward to the crematorium.” - Father Mascal. Stuff goes in and stuff goes out. In/out, on/off, life/death. A great Zen master said just before he died, “From the bathtub, to the bathtub, I have uttered stuff and nonsense.”

Yes me too. I don’t think there is a way out of the game, except death.

Moderation in all things, including moderation - Twain

I’d like to think of an example that supports your assertion, but I can’t.

Fun is the innocent motivation.

What’s the point of refining our mettle? Is it fun or self-esteem? What else?

That seems innocent since the ultimate goal is fun and not ego.

You know what they say about Jack working too much

That reminds me of Mark Twain again. I like Twain.

Well, we could simplify and say the universe is:

Guided
Unguided
Growing
Acted

What’s another idea?

Yes and I’ll go further and posit that it’s impossible to fathom it completely because there will always exist an infinite regression since an eye cannot look at itself

What about the man that works hard his entire life and dies of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty five?

Better yet a man who works thirty five years at a company that eventually becomes outsourced to a foreign nation leaving him broke, without any retirement, and destroys all his life savings in the process.

Then of course there is the wealthiest of the world where they’re the idle leisure class, they’re bums of course just bums that happened to be worth millions or billions of dollars.

exactly, what about that guy who worked 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, drank 6 cups of coffee and 6 cans of pop a day, ate at McDicks because he didn’t have time to eat properly or exercise, only managed to get 4 hours of sleep a night, and his heart exploded because it couldn’t cope with all the stress and unhealthy living?
Well, increasingly that’s what the average American and Canadians lifestyle looks like, chasing the American Mirage, a shrinking middle class and a standard of living in freefall.
I say no, I’d rather work as little as I can, be healthy, and not contribute to the destruction of the environment or making the fat cats even fatter and lazier.
I’d rather rant online all day about how this sux, and if more people spent their time and energy scamming the system back, and working towards a socialist revolution, things could be different.

It’s quite simple really, if people are not properly incentivized, motivated, compensated in wages, having access to benefits of society, having concern of their overall health, having access to education or social mobility, or having access to a higher living standards where instead it is entirely reduced where they’re treated little more than mere slaves people are not going work very well under such environmental conditions. And why should they? Why should they work for nothing at all?! What such an arrangement to be under! Instead of however addressing this subject in western society where there is a lot of special interests not to it’s easier to call people lazy, societal defects, and call them a burden on society. There is no representation in government today to address these issues and that is because profit of the few individuals that run it.

That’s where we’re at in this insane socio economic experiment of western civilization.

Fucking A!