Playing With Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

What is shame?

[UnbornTao]

Experiment this year: live with no excuses or self-justification.

Edited March 1 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Whenever you are fully engaged in something, there's no resistance. This increases vitality.

[UnbornTao]

Several episodes I have yet to watch:

• Science series
• How survival shapes who you are
• Holons and holistic thinking series
• Godel's theorem
• Quantum mechanics series
• Exquisite Balance
• States of consciousness
• among others

Edited May 17 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

On 1/10/2024 at 0:18 PM, UnbornTao said:

Have yet to watch several episodes:

• Science series
• How survival shapes who you are
• Holons and Holistic thinking series
• Godel's theorem
• Quantum mechanics series
• Exquisite Balance
• States of consciousness

And looking forward to:

• Justification
• Bootstrapping yourself
• Relativism Part II
• excellent work, excellence
• The avoidance of hard work
• Conscious relationships, communication
• Einstein's theory of relativity
• Integrity Part II
• More on Serious Philosophy
• Conscious leadership
• Postmodernism
• Clarity
• deconstructing science part 4
• The map is not the territory
• ecstasy
• the happiness spectrum
• shadow work
• respect
• Setting boundaries
• context-awareness, creating context
• oblique ways of thinking
• abstraction
• how to think
• investment (in life)
• reframing

Suggestions:

• an interview
• dialogue with a serious mystic/philosopher/spiritual teacher/personal development "guru"

Edited November 17 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

 

[UnbornTao]

While contemplating, answers are irrelevant; what we're after is insight.

People confuse similar expressions with shared experience – with the expression being sourced by the same experience or insight. However, parroting hearsay is in reality the popular approach.

I may share some profound axiom or truism such as "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", however, without the direct consciousness that sourced the creation of such communication in the first place, I might as well jerk off.

Are you communicating something real or passing down hearsay while trying to convince yourself of its validity? This is a subtle form of self-deception.

Make the work yours, that is, be the one in the driver's seat, generating insights independent of study, opinion and belief. This is the only way it's going to work.

Edited April 2 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

As a practice to start developing integrity, commit yourself to doing a relatively simple act habitually, something you'd ashamed not to do. For example, meditate everyday for 10 seconds.

With time, as you keep your word, your self-esteem is going to increase. As a result of you acting with integrity, your word will begin to have power, and you'll get to know yourself as a person that can be trusted. At that point, you'll have to be careful about what to commit yourself to, as whatever you give your word to, you are going to get it done.

Notice, too, the consequences of being out of integrity. You don't need to give your word; you can remain bound to your impulses, going after gratification and running away from pain and discomfort, although this will create a disempowering experience. Being out of integrity is "evidence" that you are someone that can't be trusted since everytime you give your word, you fail to be loyal to it, and you know it in your experience. Therefore, you don't trust yourself.

Whenever you give your word, even if casually, keep it. Otherwise, don't give it.

Edited March 20 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

When you stop the crap, what do you know in your experience?

[UnbornTao]

Exchange with ChatGPT that I found interesting:

You

Tell me about Wittgenstein's work on certainty

ChatGPT

Ludwig Wittgenstein's work "On Certainty" is a significant philosophical text that explores the nature of knowledge and certainty. This work, composed in the last 18 months of his life, comprises a collection of notes edited by his students, G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Here are some key points from "On Certainty":

• Critique of Skepticism: Wittgenstein critiques the radical skepticism of philosophers like Descartes, who doubt everything, including the existence of the external world and the self. Wittgenstein argues that such doubt is not genuinely possible in practice, as our everyday actions show that we do not doubt these basic aspects of life.
• Framework Propositions: He introduces the concept of "framework propositions," which are basic beliefs or certainties that underlie all our knowledge and inquiries. These are not known through evidence but are a part of the framework through which we see and interpret the world.
• Role of Language: Wittgenstein emphasizes the role of language in forming our concepts of knowledge and certainty. He argues that what counts as evidence or justification is partly determined by the language games we participate in, and these games are grounded in our form of life.
• No Private Language: He continues his earlier idea from the "Philosophical Investigations" that there is no private language. Knowledge and certainty are embedded in communal practices and cannot be understood in isolation from these practices.
• Epistemology and Pragmatism: Wittgenstein's approach to knowledge in "On Certainty" is often seen as a form of epistemological pragmatism. He suggests that the justification for our beliefs ends not in absolute certainty but in the practical, unchallenged bedrock of our life experiences.
• Reaction Against Traditional Epistemology: Throughout "On Certainty," Wittgenstein reacts against the traditional epistemological quest for absolute, indubitable foundations for knowledge. He argues that such a quest is misguided and that our real-life practices of asserting, doubting, and justifying are sufficient for understanding knowledge.
• Limits of Doubt and Justification: Wittgenstein explores the idea that there are limits to meaningful doubt and justification. Some things are so fundamental to our conceptual scheme that they cannot be meaningfully doubted or need no justification.
• Contextual Nature of Knowledge: He highlights that what counts as knowledge or certainty is context-dependent and varies with different circumstances and language games.

"On Certainty" is a profound work that challenges and extends Wittgenstein's earlier ideas in the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and the "Philosophical Investigations." It offers a unique perspective on epistemology, emphasizing the practical, communal, and language-based aspects of knowledge and certainty.

[UnbornTao]

shit, this was heartbreaking. Watch the whole episode.

 

Edited May 12 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What is now without concept?

[UnbornTao]

Deal with problems before they originate.

Where are your actions headed? What results are they creating for you? What results do you extrapolate your actions will produce in the long term?

Pay attention to where your actions are headed and change course immediately if necessary. Don't wait for potential issues to gain momentum. The stronger the inertia, the more discipline it'll take to shift direction.

Edited April 7 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Cultivate something consciously:

a skill, a hobby, a business, a relationship, a creative project, understanding some field, an optimist disposition, a contemplative attitude.

Edited March 19 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Make, and increasingly sharpen, the distinctions of intellect and experience. What are they really? How does each of them show up?

In this work, rather than being stuck in intellect, which is convenient and comparatively easy, you need to ground yourself in your experience.

Edited April 27 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Beliefs are thoughts about what's true. As long as you recognize them as such, keep the beliefs that you find empowering.

Relating to beliefs in this way is both more functional and sincere since it leaves the door open for the truth to be unknown.

This uncertainty persists as our underlying condition regardless of how much we play with beliefs.

Edited March 27 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Is happiness circumstantially-derived?

Edited March 25 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

To discover something for oneself is not a matter of stepping back to think about it, or figuring it out, or conceptualizing it, theorizing about it, or the like – it’s a matter of direct engagement with something. As we would say, "being out here" with it.

Getting clear about what something is may be a required step toward discovering it for oneself, but is not the state change that is discovering it for oneself.

It’s not a matter of stepping back to think about, figure out, conceptualize, theorize – it’s a matter of direct engagement with.

 

Quote

... among the worst things we can do is to give [students] the impression that they understand something they do not really understand, that something has been explained when it has not been explained, and that a problem has been solved when it has not been solved.

– John Searle

Edited March 6 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

But now I realize that apart from a few special days now and then, life mostly does consist of one dull, insignificant day after another. Human beings are attracted to drama and variety. The humdrum we hold in disdain. Wrapped up in the routines of our daily lives, we let them slide by unnoticed. But I believe that hidden in these ordinary, unremarkable routines of life is a great truth that requires our attention.

The business of living is not in the least special. In a sense it all comes down to two things: eating and excreting. These activities are common to all life forms. Every creature on earth is born, through eating and excreting helps maintain the balance of the great chain of being, and dies. In the realm of nature, these activities are essential to the continuity of life, and they give value to each being’s life. People are no different. If human life has meaning, it lies above all in the essential fact of our physical existence in this world. This is what I strongly believe.

By contemplating life as it is, stripped of all extraneous added value, I found I could let go of a myriad of things that had been gnawing at my mind. Through the prosaic repetition of Eiheiji’s exacting daily routines for washing the face, eating, defecating, and sleeping, this is the answer that I felt in my bones: accept unconditionally the fact of your life and treasure each moment of each day.

— Kaoru Nonomura, Eat Sleep Sit.

Edited March 5 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]