UnbornTao

@zurew Got confused with the other thread. Setting notions of the after‑death aside - which is mostly what my earlier claims about philosophy and spirituality were related to - I'll stick with the basic physical needs for this one. The claims about it being BS were specifically referring to prolonged (years‑long) abstinence from water, sleep, and food. I acknowledged that, in some extreme cases, people have reportedly gone without food for several months. These are not the same claims, though. Can the human body survive without oxygen for long? That's already a "rule." We could call it a fact, a valid belief, or an educated guess, but it really does seem to be how things work. There's no way around that. Likewise, the human body can't perceive sounds outside certain wavelengths. That limitation is part of the body's design. The domain of objective physical reality is the most grounded and "real" one we have, and we notice that it doesn't operate randomly or arbitrarily - hence the hardware analogy. Just in case, I wouldn't brush it off so quickly because of its simplicity. Not a very satisfactory answer but I might say more at some point.

Agree. Even if you were to benefit somewhat along the way, selling snake oil is a false endeavor. It's about what one is up to and the spirit of the work - what it actually does. And a cult turns people into followers. Then again, it's a cult with a large following, so people clearly can't distinguish one thing from another, which is baffling to me. They fail to recognize that they're being fed a pleasant-sounding worldview and are swayed by the assertiveness and charisma. And none of it is true. People are gullible and haven't yet learned to "hear." This dynamic may partly explain why the founder of Scientology claimed that, if you want to get rich, you should start a religion (or cult). And he was right!

Maybe, existentially speaking, there's no such thing as nonconformity, since to exist at all, one must adopt or take on some form. Is conformity "to take on, adopt, or be influenced by the form of something?" What is form? No form, no con(with)-formity. Some abstract shit that some of you guys like.

Wanting to feel special. And how much of that underlies the search for nonconformity?

Conform to my nonconformity!™

Does that require the activity commonly thought of as "thinking"? It seems like it's a physiological reaction or stimulus, something that applies to other animal species as well. No language needed for that. I think you're conflating language with words, sounds, and symbols here. More like a communication. What do you specifically mean by "my experience of being alive"? If you will, avoid using vagueness and abstraction to avoid confronting the fact that it isn't entirely clear - to either of us. If we were to delve into that, we'd likely find that a lot of what gets taken for granted as "life" isn't actually inherent to it. Examine what you assume about what it means to be alive. For example, language may be tacitly considered an integral part of life, but is it? What about, say, emotions? I hear that. Still, what is language, really? We keep taking it for granted. Without it, there isn't even the notion of another entity 'getting something across' for you to interpret and make sense of in the first place. So we can see that the notion of "feeling others' vibes" actually rests on this very language-possibility.

How so? It was clear to me, by the way you wrote, that you're taking conformity as a negative thing to be avoided, placing yourself as a sort of special outsider who doesn't conform to the "sheep." And I pointed out that this very dynamic - wanting to appear special in our own eyes and in the eyes of others - seems to be virtually universal in our culture. I suspect that, deep down, everyone is profoundly conformist. How could it be otherwise? Ask yourself how much of your life is lived in accordance with past inventions and in relation to a society. "What is original in my experience, generated by me, or consciously taken up?" What, in my experience, isn't programming or is not influenced by the "other"? We could save time by simply asking what is not conformity. It's like the appearance of multiple apps in an app store: on paper they can look alike or be infinitely varied, but most software exists on, or is founded upon, a common ground - namely, the operating system. The examples of noncomformity that might come to mind usually belong to the "different app" category.

Are you asking us to tell you what to value, or what a value is? To me, it sounds like emotional awareness or mastery would count as values, so go with it if that's your choice - it's a good value. Try to get clear on what it actually entails so that it doesn't just become an abstraction.

Okay, that is fair.

@Daniel Balan Being the nonconformist lone wolf is ironically a more common cultural role than being part of the flock. The comformity of reactivity. @Daniel Balan For example, wearing clothes is mostly comformity, too. And so is wanting to feel special, which we all seem to do to varying degrees.

Now, bring up some positive examples of conformity that you engage in or benefit from, even if unknowingly: wearing clothes, using the metric system, updating your mobile apps, or checking expiry labels. Or, hey, using language and participating in cultural customs. It seems to me we are more comformists than we're willing to admit, both individually and collectively. And, again, that's not necessarily bad - or good, either. It's part of being a social animal, deeply embedded in our biology and psychology.

Eye see. Sorry, just issued us two warning points for the joke.

Goool!

That may be.

Yeah. Like the kernel of an operating system.

You might want to look into Vipassana programs.

This would require a much more involved effort on our part. Some food for thought: Okay. And what's that? Notice it's mostly taken for granted. You seem to think that language is just a "commentary" or side note layered on top of your personal experience of reality - as if they were distinctly and unequivocally separate. Try to remove the invention of language from your experience. Imagine what life was like prior to its invention. This is a significant meditation. For example, would your experience of thinking and taking to yourself be the same? Could you even think without language? Then again, how could communication exist without having language as a possibility or context? What makes a symbol possible? How can something like a sound come to represent something that is not itself that sound? Can you unpack what you mean by energy and "language is energy"? If your claim is that language is universal and not invented, I'll have to disagree with that.

And yet, the profundity of this principle continues to elude us.

Based on that, your claim should be more like: life is occurring, rather than "existence is." We could say that existence comes prior to life, this being a process enabled by the former. You seem to want to claim that the canvas shares the quality of invention of the painting - as if the canvas were also a result of the painting or of the act of painting.

God bless America!

People love being told what to believe (despite vehemently denying it at the same time); that's partly why cults are so emotionally appealing. Add to this the fact that, collectively, we don't really know how to listen or what to pay attention to, and you have a recipe for these dynamics. It does make getting popular a lot easier, though.

@Judy2 Those are normal and can be thought of as human needs to some degree. Everyone values or desires a certain level of safety, validation, comfort. But yeah, you might be overthinking - let it unfold organically. Perhaps use feeling as your guide, with thinking as a complement. "What do I love? What do I find meaningful?" These are some of the core questions to focus on.

I don't think Leo has made it yet.

How dare you! Yeah. Also, culture as a whole, it seems - which has its positive aspects, too.

That kind of openness is rather airy-fairy in this case because, beyond someone's death, everything else is entirely made up - by others. It's like entertaining the idea that Santa Claus exists simply because it sounds plausible and enough people believe in him. Again, a useful metric - and a good starting point for being rooted in presently occurring perceptions - is distinguishing an experience from what's merely believed, wished for, heard, preferred, or imagined, whatever the source. Consider the origin of such notion. If you recognize that it is essentially a shared story or fairy tale, then that's a useful recognition, too.