Spinoza and Survival

[charles1]

When you first start studying philosophy, one of the first notion you'll learn is Spinoza's "conatus" , which is a term meaning basically that a being is always trying to persist in being such a being. And I can't help comparing it to homeostasis, survival and eventually even self-bias since Spinoza noticed that judgement were secondary to desires i.e. the Ego. 

But, I'm sure he only glimpsed a part of those concepts.  Since I'm more a student of philosophy than Non-Dual teachings, I wonder : what did he miss ? What are the nuances of survival that philosophers never catched ? ( Maybe just because of not being able to overcome the self-bias of being a philosopher ) 

And may you link some of the best post on Survival and Self bias ? It would be great for a pittyful and extremely biased white man upper class Western Society newbie like me...

[Mert]

Honestly, I think Spinoza hit the nail in a lot of stuff and that's one of them. Everything else comes from this survival need.

[Consilience]

I think the big one is that this “Being” as an individual is actually non existent. That’s what’s so paradoxical about the ego is that the ego isn’t a solid, individual being. The ego, the ‘being surviving’ is a process based within the illusion of space and time. The mind makes objective distinctions like self vs others, object 1 vs object 2, while also making the distinction past vs future. As well as other existential assumptions. Within a field of these fundamental assumptions, the possibility of an individual being arises.

Upon closer examination, it can be experienced that this entire mechanism of creation is a function of time, it has to constantly be created in order for the illusion of individuality to be withheld. The individual is self referencing across time in a strange loop like manor, it is both the source of creation and the creation itself, it creates the conditions needed for its own persistence but is always doing so as a function of time. I don’t know how many philosophers have become conscious of this. 

When one rests their attention into the present moment, realizes they themselves are the moment, realizes the emptiness and infinity of now, the ego is seen to be a facade precisely because the ground it needs to operate (primarily time but also many other existential assumptions) has been taken out from under it. 

Moreover, many philosophers get stuck with intellectualizing this stuff rather than actually experiencing it directly. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Consilience