Someone here

all that matters is the quality of the present moment. Because that's all there is to reality. A present moment. do you agree /disagree? Why /why not? My claim is simply that ,Ultimately, “Happiness” (not pleasure), is all that “should” matter in life, for everyone. However, it’s important to understand what defines happiness. For many, happiness is good food, a good movie, an iWatch, or a salary raise. For others, happiness is alcohol, or a high from drugs or sex. For others, happiness is a new romantic relationship. But this is not true happiness that I'm trying to point to . True happiness is a continuing state of mind which is content, satisfied, peaceful, balanced, tranquil, and joyful. It is the absence of negative thoughts and emotions like anger, hate, resentment, jealousy, envy, desire, lust, worry, fear, anxiety, and depression. Sensory pleasures, such as mentioned above, are temporary, and self serving. We always want more, and are never satisfied. This only promotes more unhappiness. To me it's the absence of a pursuit. If you are always chasing something it is never with you. Whatever you chase will always be moving away. Happiness cannot be when you find love or get the job or quit the job or get the apartment or resolve your inner turmoil. It absolutely has to be found in the right now. the imperfect, unsettled, painful now.

Nope. The other way around. Our future is dependent on our present. The things we do ,know and practice in the present which is ths only reality there is, is what determines the future. Not sure what are you implying by that. Although I know that Linear time is a human construct. quantum physics theorizes that it's all dimensional. The past and the future are all happening concurrently in a different dimensional space and everything is connected. So your point is rather nerdy and nuanced that I feel like you had to go out of your way to utter that ?

I see where you're coming from. If you were happy all day everyday you would be bored quickly. The taste of Happiness can never be enjoyed to the fullest without tasting defeats. The uglier you lose, the more sweet it is when you taste victory. I think it is very ideal to seek happiness always, but Life can be enjoyed better when you look forward to every feeling. Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Excitement, Sorrows, More Sorrows..etc ..All of these are ingredients to your best Dish of Success But i think that Basically life is a cycle of happiness, sadness,clarity, and confusion. Sometimes happiness is everything in life. Sometimes it's the happiness of others or your loved ones . Actually, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. To be happy, we embrace the tough times. I learned that happiness is not about getting what you want : it's about loving what you have. We are lucky to have many things, like: fresh air,clean water, warmth, shelter,family and food. The things money can't buy : love, health and family. Sometimes we worry too much : we need to let go of. Doing good makes us feel good. That's happiness. And doing things we love. Life doesn't have to be complicated. Happiness should not be hard. But we often make it so.

For me it's ice tea ..what àbout you?

Ooofff! Ya biffed it! Right wing arguments based on the bipartisanship of the sexes does not make sense and may not be politically correct. I see a lot of absolutism in the article you posted when it comes to defining what libertarians are and what leftist are . The relativism is nesscary. Although, I have witnessed some truth to your article. The political compass does not yet share perspective to corporation being anything but leftist libertarian. For example..The argument for power in the Ukraine, however, has political direction witch is sympathetic of the seige warfare of the leftist libertarians. The comparison to leftist libertarians I like to use for balancing compass directions is ISIS of Syria during the processes of lamentation and the refection of ISIS. Both of these processes are strategies of exploitation used by selective services.

I think In general, left-wing politics focuses on the group, while right-wing politics focuses on the individual. There is much more to left-wing and right-wing politics than that, of course, but I think it's true, as far as it goes. Am I correct? I don't see that libertarianism and authoritarianism are even 'opposites'. And libertarianism, as we know, focusses strongly on the individual, as right-wing politics also does. In my impression, when anarchy arises, it is rather the lower-ranking members who will seek to coagulate around a new leader and propel him to the forefront. BTW Leo.. what books do you suggest to read for beginners In politics to build a good political foundational understanding? Thanks ?

Try Modafinil. One pill is equal to 4 cups of French coffee. Also add more carbohydrates to your diet . Drink plenty of water and sleep at least 8 hours everyday. You can also try energy drinks although they give temporary boost of energy but then will make you crash like a motherfucker eventually. Also, you might want to check up with a doctor to see if everything (blood sugar ,hormones etc) are all well and fine . Best wishes ?

We see the sun rising everday ..so we conclude that it will rise again tommorrow..but what guarantees that a pattern that is true today will not break down tommorrow? Just because something has happened a certain way every single time we have taken an observation, is it guaranteed to happen the same way the next time? If an apple is seen to fall down from a tree a million times, is it guaranteed to fall down a million and one-th time? No, there is no surety it will. Similarly, even if gravity and other modern scientific laws are observed to be true a trillion times, there really is no guarantee it will be true the next day. We just assume it always will. But there is no law in this universe that guarantees that. It seems a basic assumption of science is: there are some basic laws that will always be true But it is only an assumption, the universe doesn't guarantee it, God doesn't guarantee it. I think what this means is that, literally everything, is logically possible, and we can never 100% rule out any possibility. Science cannot rule out God, nor can it rule out that I will wake up tomorrow in the body of a lioness. Science only has observations, it doesn't have the rulebook of the universe. It is based on an assumption, and there is no reason why that assumption must be true. And this makes me feel scared sometimes. Think. There is no guarantee you will be rewarded for your hard work. No guarantee, even if everything happens right, that you will live a good life. Even if everything happens in your favor scientifically, well there's always a chance the universe says "screw science" and just give you immeasurable suffering randomly. In fact there is no reason why that can't happen, we just assume it won't. Worst of all, we toil hard, see our friends and family and others work hard, suffer, and pin everything they have on this one basic assumption, which has no reason to be true. For example, a father working his ass off to pay medical bills for his disabled daughter could wake up to find his daughter dead for no reason. Everything he has in his life could crash all in one moment. There is no reason why it can't happen. And it isn't even a game of probability, because probability assumes that past events are linked to the future events, and can be used to make predictions of the future. But in reality, every event possible must be, "logically", equally likely, since we have no real laws to tell them apart, only the assumption that what happened in the past will also happen the same way in the future. Only an assumption, nothing else

Similar to the no free will realization..it can be "freeing " as you said or it can be daunting. Depending on how you interpret it and how you fit it into your worldview . I would say for Me it makes me disillusioned with life. Because I know that the very next moment the entire universe could collapse into nothing or I could go to bed at night and never wake up again . I know it's not healthy to entertain such thoughts .but that's what is on my mind recently. However..of course THIS right here right now matters. A lot of the time, people tend to discount our time here on earth. Not just Nihilists, but also many Theists, or everyone, in general, does it at one point or another. The best thing that I have realized is that, no matter the scale of the Universe, no matter the consequences of the afterlife, no matter the past, or the distant future. Right now matters! Why? Because we are living right now. There are other people living right now. We have a span of (hopefully) 50–100+years where we exist amongst other people. We should make the present count because we have the present. We have a life worth living right now, so it deserves whatever we can give it. I found this in myself when I was talking to a friend about his Nihilistic perspective. He asked me, “Why should we even try if, in the end, nothing will matter?” Because right now matters. Who cares about what will happen in the distant future, when we are not around to see it if we can make a positive impact on what we have right now, where we can.

We don’t know (and probably cannot ever know) however, if there was nothing then we wouldn’t be here to comment on it. Its not circular reasoning . I know that what i say is coherent because it makes sense to me . The goal of reasoning is to make conclusions about reality. For that you need premises that are rooted in reality, which are demonstrably true. Circular reasoning lacks those roots and therefore, while creating an own cosmos of coherent logic, does not allow us to make any conclusions about reality. An example would be You can claim that the Bible says that God exists and that the Bible must be true because it came from God, but that does not mean that God exists or anything in the Bible is true. It just means that it could be that way, not that it actually is that way. I have always believed that sanity is relative to the culture and the times. I feel my sanity is stronger than the insanity I perceive and experience around me every day. In the Roman times, drunkenness and debauchery were fairly normal and considered within the realm of the sane person who fit well into his/her culture and time. Such behavior now would seem to weigh in more heavily on the side of insanity unless one were a privileged celebrity or an un-mentionably rich individual who seeks to define his own place in the culture. Good point. I agree. The past expires into the present and does not exist in the present. the past time expires into the present. The only way of seeing or knowing about the past or past time is to examine what has been left remaining from the past and by seeking memories of the past.which only occur now .

Who told you that reality comes to you through the senses or through mind (whatever that means )? That's a false assumption. Reality is 100% direct . Of course reality is consciousness. But consciousness is not perception. There is a big difference. Perception implies subject-object relationship. While consciousness =being . reality is not the result of sensory perception. ‘Our senses’ as well as ‘our minds’ appear in reality, not reality in them. That which is constantly on the move, changing all the time, dependent on other things cannot be real [e.g., there are no senses without the air you breath, which is ignored as something trivial, attributing to the senses that which in fact is just one link in the causal chain, but not the cause]. To know reality, you must start with the knower.fiind the nature of the knower by questioning that which you learned from others about what you are, on top of which you added your own ideas. Identify all the false ideas and remove them; here’s where logic and reason complete their job. When you know the knower, you will know reality. This kind of knowledge is unique, unlike the worldly knowledge of phenomena. You know reality directly, by being, not with the help of the mind as an intermediary. The mind has no access to reality; all it can do is to identify the false and discard it. Reality will then shine fort, self evident.

OK..many people seem to suggest that .I want to explore this In more depth : Your beliefs act as a filter of how you see the World. There are MILLIONS of bits of information coming at you at any one point. If you tried to take ALL of that data in, your mind simply couldn’t cope. So your beliefs act as filters of what you see and what you don’t see. For instance, tow people can have the same experience and see it differently. You could walk into a store, and the security might swipe a glance at you. If you believe that people are out to get you, then you might take that glance in ENTIRELY the wrong way and believe that the security guard is out to get you. If you have a different believe that most people are nice, you wouldn’t think twice about that glance. Same reality. Two different points of view. And whatever you believe your mind tunes into and helps you filter out the millions of bits coming your way into what ‘fits’ into your World. So if you believe you’re unlucky, you just won’t tune into an opportunity that might be right under your nose, because your beliefs won’t ‘tune into’ that opportunity. Your mind won’t allow you to and you may get self sabotaging thoughts to stop you. Conversely, if you believe that you’re the type of person whom attracts opportunity, you wouldn’t think twice to take action on an opportunity that comes your way. That’s how we shape our reality through our beliefs. The only way to change your beliefs is by CONSTANTLY telling yourself a different story until you break down the old belief and so the new belief becomes more automatic.

I think I know what you're talking about because I'm going through a shitty time of my life. Life is shit, no wonder why u asked this question. But why? Cuz shits everywhere. You wake up, shit. You get late for college, shit. You laugh, shit. You cry, shit. You fart… shit's coming up. More than half of the life is spent in washroom, half in eating, half in doing things you do not know the meaning of and can't explain why you doing it. Like why tf am I writing this? So yeah life is shit. Sometimes other people deal with your shit (mom while changing diapers) but others cannot deal with your shit for your whole life. You learn how to deal with your shit, cuz at the end of the day, its your life, your shit, either get it together, or lose control of your life. Either ways are shitty, but what can I say, life is more shittier than you think. Lol I searched on google 'Life is shit’, and it showed me results of 'Shitty Life Syndrome’ for a moment I was life “wait what? Wtf” lol it's just some shitty syndrome. Have you ever noticed a pig? Where does it live? What's shit to you, is heaven to him. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. Don't be a human, be a pig. Enjoy the shit all around you and hope that there's more coming your way. Because the more shit you dive into, the more you enjoy. So, enjoy. If I had enough guts to commit suicide I would. The world is filled with darkness, cruelty and suffering. You can't trust anyone and human beings are selfish. What is the point of life? Some people are destined for misfortune whilst others are lucky. Why do people bring more human beings into this cruel world? Plus we all die anyway and become nothing. So what's the point.? We're all full of shit man ?

But you are also philosophizing so you are not escaping this problem. I still stand by my conviction..Believing in something CAN NOT make it a reality any more than giving an inanimate object a name can give it sentience. However, the things you believe DO influence the way you perceive the world. And the way you perceive the world has a huge influence over which parts of reality you’re attentive to vs which parts you ignore. Ie, if you believe that something is real (or possible) you are much more likely to observe evidence about it in reality. Eg. If you believe that Santa is real/possible you will notice things in reality that support (or disprove) your belief; sleigh bells ringing on Christmas Eve, mysterious presents around the Christmas tree, those mysterious presents disappearing when you move out of your parents home

The universe hasn't collapsed into nothing already because well..here it is . We observe it everyday. And it's functioning super well. I don't know if I'm making sense or not. But since people who replied on this thread responded with coherent answers that tells me that I'm making sense . Of course we are not in complete chaos right now because the entropy in the universe around us is not infinite. Scientists expect it to reach infinity at the moment of heat death. But it didn't happen yet . Yeah thats a nerdy point..the sun doesn't rise..its the the rotation of the earth around it's axis . So we could reframe the question "what guarantees that the earth will continue to rotate around its axis ?"

I disagree. What about the laws of physics? Are they real or just figment of our collective imagination? What keeps the sun rising everday is the rotation of the earth around its axis. If I stopped believing the earth will keep rotating around its axis that won't make it happen. reality is not a matter of belief. Beliefs do not create reality as it is. Sometimes beliefs don’t even reflect reality. For instance, many religious beliefs are basically founded on pure wishful thinking. Such sectarian beliefs have certainly created a reality for millions if not billions of people. The same goes for so-called scientific beliefs like evolution and abiogenesis.

"Your brain farted "lol Well, you are of course familiar with the big bang theory which is the only theory in modern physics and cosmology that explains the origin of the universe..and it says the universe is expanding. And the universe is not only expanding, but the expansion rate is actually accelerating. Essentially this indicates that there is a force still being applied which is making things expand. There are many schools of thought on how the end of the universe as we know it will play out, and one of those theories is “the big crunch,” which indicates that everything will eventually start collapsing in back towards the center. If the expansion of the universe is still accelerating, however, it's indicative that if the universe will end in a big crunch, then chances are it's not even close to the point where it will begin to slow it's expansion… we may, in fact, still be part of the big bang in what has, so far, been a nearly 14 billion year long explosion. It's also possible that the universe is full of dark matter, and that somehow the dark matter is what's facilitating this acceleration. Will we ever find out the answer? Probably not… at least, not until it actually starts to happen…. So ask me this question again in 15 trillion years, and we will see then if the universe is still accelerating outward or if it has yet to begin to slow down… if I were a gambling man I would put my money on eternal expansion and eventual heat death as the cause for the end.

That doesn't comfort me. Seriously though..isn't there anything I'n the laws of physics that prevents that ? Like these cosmological constants ? There must be some force that is holding the universe together and preventing it from just flying apart randomly for no reason at all .. Otherwise this would be a huge glitch in the matrix

Yeah isn't it scary though ? Breaking news.. The universe might end this very second..that's a fact. You can't prove that everything won't just disappear boom gone this very second. No you can't. You want to believe it can't. But it most certainly can. What the fuck is holding everything together anyways?.. Just a creepy thought. Pulling it out of my stuffy subconscious. And be sure you can find thousands of such creepy thoughts. When you understand this you might want to consider to let go of a lot of bullshit that you think you know.

So if I stopped believing that the sun will rise up tommorrow...it won't?

To my mind this is mostly based on expectations. Those who anticipate that life has a deeper meaning or some sort of cosmic justice or balance are vulnerable to disappointment when they observe the randomness or "unfairness" of life. OTOH, those who accept the lack of any discernable "plan" or deeper meaning and concentrate on the numerous aspects of life that are within their personal control or at least direct influence can enjoy the benefits of that influence and control and thus create a local (as opposed to universal) "plan" (their own).

Hume's main argument against causality is that we see things happening in the world in pattern. Then we conclude that the same phenomenon will repeat the next time it's tried. What this also means, is that a truly two linked events will never do anything because they don't have any concrete laws to rely on and it cannot logically justify why past observations must be linked to the future either. Equivalently, it may do anything it wishes because there is no reason why one set of actions is better than another. So no reason why doing nothing is better than doing something. They are all equally good options for it. The universe is lawless to it unless it figures out some new information. Then it means human being are not completely logical beings either. As I type this, I rely on the same assumption that I talked about earlier, and consider this course of action better than others. My actions therefore are completely irrational. There is no way to justify them. It is just that I have a desire, and I'm hoping the said assumption is true and will help me fulfill my desires, even though I cannot logically justify it. My human instincts want me to believe that there is a pattern. In fact my instincts developed like this in the first place because there was a pattern, and because it contained a link to predicting the future. There is still no way to guarantee that the patterns always work, or will continue to work, but biological systems discovered that their best bet to survival was working under the assumption that it will mostly work.

Prove me wrong. Is there a single thing in this uncertain world of ours that is by definition, “impossible?” I think NO . Of course, many people misinterpret the meaning of the word “impossible.” If something cannot be done now, does that mean that it will never be done? No, of course not. For example, we humans used to think that flying was impossible, that it was the stuff that only happened in fairytales. But look at our world now! Airplanes! People probably also thought, at a certain point in time, that seacraft made of metal was impossible. Well, look at our harbors now! Metal ships everywhere! So what really is impossible? In my opinion, nothing is strictly impossible. If you can’t do it, that doesn’t mean that others won’t be able to. A fish would obviously think that climbing a tree was impossible, but little did the fish know that it was indeed possible. For the fish, it was impossible, but for a monkey, it was possible. In the same way, the monkey would think that it was impossible to live in water, but the fish demonstrated to him that it was indeed possible. Now, there are some things that are possible but not plausible, as I like to say. Have you ever wondered why humans haven’t built any flying cities? Many people would say that such things are impossible. But are they really? No! Flying cities are possible, just not plausible. If you build a gigantic metal platform and attach millions upon billions of engines and propellers to it and build a city on the platform, you have a flying city! It is indeed possible, but the cost of building such a mammoth would be extremely high. That is why we are still stuck to the ground. But if something is deemed impossible now, that may change in the future. In some cases, particular things that were possible in the past are now impossible. A good example of this is Greek fire. In conclusion, is anything truly impossible! No. The correct way to view this is, “With God, anything is possible

Why are we always constantly seeking more achievements ,which might take multiple forms ? More money .more sex .more luxury items etc. Why can't we be satisfied with having just about right what's nesscary for our survival and that's it? food and water and shelter and basics of life ? Why do people go out of their way? To me,minimalism seems to be more simplistic and easy to walk through in this life . Minimalism is not about depriving yourself from basic comfort or putting yourself through hardships. It is about developing in yourself the mindset of a monk. We are on a journey on Earth. This journey shall last a few decades. In the grand scheme of cosmos, our lives do not last for more than a blink. When we travel to some place , we try to pack only as much as is necessary. Anything more becomes a burden, an inconvenience. Same goes for life. Pack only that is necessary. Everything else is a burden. I do not see any cons of minimalist lifestyle.

@r0ckyreed You are projecting the idea that what you are experiencing right now has a deeper independent reality to it. Which you call the external objective world. You Believe the world exists when you are not perceiving it. recognize it’s a more of convoluted belief system that requires extra mind baggage.. that careful.. objective.. direct study of experience and reality does not need. In fact.. if you studied your direct experience long enough you’d notice all sensory perception has no solidity to it at all.. it’s just a fluid.. spacious.. fluctuating field of is-ness popping into and out of a void. the “objective” reality science thinks is out there is quite literally impossible if they knew what they were actually studying, which is perception. The thoughts that think there’s an objective layer are also popping into and out of this void. This requires an extremely stable...mindful concentration of what is really happening vs what your mind thinks is happening.