People say they have control on their lives. They believe they are totally aware of and free to make the decisions they make. They think they are unique with unique experiences, and that their lives are leading to something unique and different than others. Frankly, I think it's more of a wishful thinking and in part a denial of lack of control/choice in their lives.
Of course every individual has some unique experiences as they occupy a unique location in space and have a unique perspective and perception of the proceedings of this world. But does that mean they are unique? It may fool someone for once when asking people about their aspirations and motivations of life. Every person will tell something different about their goals and expectations from life. But the pattern gradually emerges from those various details.
Hidden beneath those superficial goals, an undeniable determined pattern comes out. A pattern that is universal and applies to all that we care to call alive. The pattern we call the life cycle - survival and reproduction/spread of traits/genes. If anything can be taken as fact about this existence it is not the newton's laws or the einstein's theories or the M-theory, it is the theory of evolution. It is so true and revealing that its realization makes a person so insecure and run into denial as though one's clothes suddenly disappeared in middle of a crowd and runs for cover. But the life itself is to blame.
The theory reveals the underlying coldness of life. It reveals that underlying machinery of every human is the same. So much so that the justifications of one's life and values start looking like mere excuses to living through the mundane life cycle out of fear of death and desire towards short lived biological pleasures. Every person aspires and lives for the same things which are relative successes for- resources, mates, children and their sucess. No human is exception, let alone humans, no entity down to molecular level is exception to this cycle.
People call themselves sentient beings with ablility to make choice, but nothing distinguishes a non sentient from a sentient organism. We, the multicellular organisms, are no more than motile colonies of unicellular organisms specialized for different tasks in our bodies, working in unison. We have a primitive bacteria powering us, residing in each of our cells in the form of mitochondria. The cell nucleus, gender, natural death, and all the multicellular life on earth has been possible only because of the symbiosis of a bacteria inside methanogen type of archaea. We, the humans, are in part a methanogen and in part a bacteria, falling into fulfilling the goals of these organisms that comprise us, as they would have done in their unicellular form. We have the same working machinery, requirements and choiceless outcome as any other living/replicating thing. Our entire sentient lives and that of non sentient beings are driven by and limited to the same basic properties and goals of life.
Humans then appear like thinking robots, thought puppets of their circumstances, merely riding the inevitable thoughts and emotions of their life cycle phases- preoccupied by acquiring resources and status, preoccupied by interactions with would be/acquired mates, preoccupied with having children or success of had children. The ones not participating in them are the rejects adopting indirect ways to promote the same or those lost in depression.
People call themselves sentient beings with ablility to make choice, but nothing distinguishes a non sentient from a sentient organism. We, the multicellular organisms, are no more than motile colonies of unicellular organisms specialized for different tasks in our bodies, working in unison. We have a primitive bacteria powering us, residing in each of our cells in the form of mitochondria. The cell nucleus, gender, natural death, and all the multicellular life on earth has been possible only because of the symbiosis of a bacteria inside methanogen type of archaea. We, the humans, are in part a methanogen and in part a bacteria, falling into fulfilling the goals of these organisms that comprise us, as they would have done in their unicellular form. We have the same working machinery, requirements and choiceless outcome as any other living/replicating thing. Our entire sentient lives and that of non sentient beings are driven by and limited to the same basic properties and goals of life.
Humans then appear like thinking robots, thought puppets of their circumstances, merely riding the inevitable thoughts and emotions of their life cycle phases- preoccupied by acquiring resources and status, preoccupied by interactions with would be/acquired mates, preoccupied with having children or success of had children. The ones not participating in them are the rejects adopting indirect ways to promote the same or those lost in depression.
It also shows that life if made of anything, it is only bad and no good and that issues and problems are naturally occurring integral indispensable part of life. This is even more revealing when one, realizing the pain caused to others by own actions, tries to self regulate oneself in order to avoid causing them, and at the end, comes out blank, finding oneself ending up losing any whatsoever meaning to this life, that there is no other option to survive. Life does not offer anything beyond this bleak cycle, there is hardly anything else we can do or like in this life. Life is red in tooth and claw.
Crimes are a good illustration of cause and effect nature of our lives and the lack of choice. Society is very quick to attach guilt to such acts. But when analyzed and looked deeper for the source of such acts, one finds none, and istead discovers a logical inevitable chain of events leading to the act which any normal human, if put through, would commit. One only concludes that they are naturally occuring inevitable derivatives of the life process. The very reason why modern science analysis of crimes has difficulty setting guilt. Difficulty because actually, none is responsible or guilty. Instead, it is the life itself.
Crimes are a good illustration of cause and effect nature of our lives and the lack of choice. Society is very quick to attach guilt to such acts. But when analyzed and looked deeper for the source of such acts, one finds none, and istead discovers a logical inevitable chain of events leading to the act which any normal human, if put through, would commit. One only concludes that they are naturally occuring inevitable derivatives of the life process. The very reason why modern science analysis of crimes has difficulty setting guilt. Difficulty because actually, none is responsible or guilty. Instead, it is the life itself.
Finally, it shows us that ours is a deterministic existence, that we are merely links in the energy changes of the universe, and rightly takes away the notion of free will. It shows us that we are merely living on the details/derivatives of the mundane preset cycle. That we are fooling ourselves on driving a vehicle that is already on rails. This has been shown to be true in various neuro experiments where decisions have been tracked to physical changes in the brain well before one becomes consciously aware of them. Almost all aspects of human thought, emotion and behaviour have been accounted for and connected to the optimal survival and spread basis of life. We are not 'conscious agents' but 'conscious spectators', an epiphenomenon, derivative of a basic blind universal assortment/differential process. We are only as free to do anything else in this life as we are to breathing.
The quantum uncertainities and the quantum decoherence ambiguities arising from double slit interference experiments are in need of a radically different point of view and a completely new interpretation. If ours was not a deterministic existence, an underlying determined clear pattern of anything would not have been possible. But it has, and it shows nobody is in choice/control, that the universe is mindless and unwinding on its own. Rightly mindless, there is hardly anything that makes sense or value in this monotonous life of pointless pains and unreal pleasures.
The quantum uncertainities and the quantum decoherence ambiguities arising from double slit interference experiments are in need of a radically different point of view and a completely new interpretation. If ours was not a deterministic existence, an underlying determined clear pattern of anything would not have been possible. But it has, and it shows nobody is in choice/control, that the universe is mindless and unwinding on its own. Rightly mindless, there is hardly anything that makes sense or value in this monotonous life of pointless pains and unreal pleasures.
I think people are more like ants zoomed in. Divided and sorted in to various task specific areas by the society's various filtering processes. People getting created and dying like ants in all kinds of ways all the time. Human life hardly having any greater value or choice than that of an ant. We are living an ant's life, it's just that our lives are more elaborate. May be every species perceives about self that way. But still, life hardly has any true value or goal, or anything that concerns us or our emotions and hardships that we go through or put others through. Sadly, we can not do anything about it. Life will just go on the way it is till the universe's conditions cause it. Sigh.
Wether the universe works like the materialists thought in the 1800s (like a clockwerk), or like modern day physisists think of it, (that something that actually is random exists), or how the religious percieve it, that god gave people free will, I have never understood what free will means.
ReplyDeleteIts either random or predetermined, in any case we dont decide our genes, nor do we decide our experiences and environments. And everything we do is a cause of those elements.
I know plenty intelligent people who choose not to have kids and not be part of this cycle, you so much speak of.
ReplyDeleteThe most known people in the world, were people who didn't want to be part of the cycle, or the ones who were predestined to live a certain way... And willingly let know of everything they knew and had and pursued what it was that made them happy. (Buddha, Madre Teresa, etc)
That IS free will... You are born into gold and money and you CHOOSE to leave it all behind and try to fulfill what you so much long for. It takes courage... However.
We often complain about war, and the fact we are puppets in this world, etc but our first thought is never to CHANGE it. It's always about quitting, going to sleep, dying. It's a cowardly thing to do.
I have traveled many places, and I learn something new everywhere I go and with the people I come in contact with. There will be plenty of "worthless" people who come your way... But the hand full of people you'll meet who would do anything for you (moreso than family) those people make it all worthwhile.
The most simple things in life make this world, marvelous. When was the last time you just sat outside looking at the stars?
We grow into these bitter people, with adult vision, and all we see is what's wrong with our surroundings. Not everything we used to see.
When was the last time you tried or did something for the first time? Adventure yourself. See the world (feel it)... There's so much more to it than the weight of the world on your shoulders.