What do you guys make of the 'I am you, you are me' idea? I think it's a powerful way to view the world and if we keep this in mind, we can be better people.

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Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:26:30 2011 No.1944628 [Reply] [Original]

What do you guys make of the 'I am you, you are me' idea? I think it's a powerful way to view the world and if we keep this in mind, we can be better people.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:27:30 2011 No.1944632 Can you define it a bit better?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:30:30 2011 No.1944641 >>1944632 Eh, it's pretty self-explanatory? i'm you and you're me/me = we

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:31:30 2011 No.1944644 But we aren't one another. I'm me, you're you, and never in between shall the two meet.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:31:30 2011 No.1944642 >>1944632 i am "i" and you are "i"

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:36:30 2011 No.1944649

>>1944632
>>1944628
I think OP means transcendentalism.

And I think it's wrong. I mean, if you're talking about the sort of neo-pseudo scientific version of transcendentalism where someone says, " think about it. At one time, everything was just one dot of existence, so we're all really the same entity," kind of shit. Well, that's like the ship of theseus idea. It's like saying a mast and an anchor are still of the same ship when they are taken off and given to another ship. Or like saying a russian who moves to America and a russian who moves to England are still one in the same.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:36:30 2011 No.1944650 >>1944641 What about masochists?

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:37:30 2011 No.1944651

I think that whatever helps people not to be dicks to one another has its merits, though I've always had my misgivings about the whole "Golden Rule" maxim: "treat others as you would like to be treated." I mean, it all seems very egotistical, making oneself the measure of how we approach others.

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:37:30 2011 No.1944653

>>1944628
Thinking,Thinking...Remembering!
>This is the beginning—from "I" to "we". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we".

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:37:30 2011 No.1944655

What, the idea that all beings are inter-connected through some unseen biological force, such as the mitochondria within each of us connecting every living thing on the planet to be its own self-regulating organism?
Because that's what it seems that you're talking about.
Individualism has always been a strong force. Yes, the concept of the Collective exists, but that itself cannot progress because for that progress to occur it requires a particular one or handful of individual(s) to stand out above the rest and do something outstanding. I would argue society itself benefits from the contributions of a few particular minds.
Or is this a leftist-propaganda thread about social equality? I really can't tell to be honest.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:38:30 2011 No.1944658 >>1944644 well, physically and consciously no. but realize all we are is an awareness called "i" i think of it this way. when i litter i'm going to have to pick it up later, so why do it?

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:39:30 2011 No.1944659

I think that whatever helps people not to be dicks to one another has its merits, though I've always had my misgivings about the whole "Golden Rule" maxim: "treat others as you would like to be treated." I mean, it all seems very egotistical, making oneself the measure of how we approach others. How about treating other people with dignity for no other reason than the fact that other people deserve dignity? Just a thought.

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:39:30 2011 No.1944660

I understand you, OP, though I frame it a bit differently when thinking about the concept:

There is no special reason 'you' were born as 'you,' with all the circumstances and situations that surround 'your' life. In fact, 'you' could have just as easily come into consciousness somewhere else, a different race or gender, on a different continent . . Not implying there's an essential soul, actually the exact opposite . . there is no essential soul, and the flowering into consciousness of the 'me' concept, out of complete and utter nothingness, is not determined into one slot or the other . . it's a random becoming, pops up like a champagne bubble among millions of other champagne bubbles, and we should never be proud that we are who we are, simply because we could have just as easily been someone else.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:42:30 2011 No.1944667 >>1944655 It's just a way of looking at things. Not that deep.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:43:30 2011 No.1944675 >>1944660 Yeah man, I think the exact same thing.

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:46:30 2011 No.1944681

>>1944675
A quote from Schrodinger will better describe this sensation:

"Suppose you are sitting on a bench beside a path in high mountain country. There are grassy slopes all around, with rocks thrusting through them; on the opposite slope of the valley there is a stretch of scree with a low growth of alder bushes. Woods climb steeply on both sides of the valley, up to the line of treeless pasture; facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock faces touched at this moment with soft rose colour by the last rays of the departing sun, all marvellously sharp against the clear, pale, transparent blue of the sky.
"According to our usual way of looking at it, everything that you are seeing has, apart from small changes, been there for thousands of years before you. After a while -- not long -- you will no longer exist, and the woods and rocks and sky will continue, unchanged, for thousands of years after you.

cont'd

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:47:30 2011 No.1944682

>>1944681
"What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you, he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you, he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you, and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this 'someone else' really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father's father, thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference -- the difference between you and someone else -- when objectively what is there is the same?
"Looking and thinking in that matter you may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta: it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling, and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings."

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:53:30 2011 No.1944696 >>1944682 That quote mindfucked me

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:53:30 2011 No.1944697
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>>1944682
You just have to be open to the idea.

Here's a quote from Camus' The Fall...

"I stand before all humanity recapitulating my shames... saying "I was the lowest of the low." Then imperceptibly I pass from "I" to "we". When I get to "This is what we are," the trick has been played and I can tell them off. I am like them, to be sure: we are in the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak... The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you"

Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:58:30 2011 No.1944708

I am I & you are you. Cultivate your own garden and let me bother with my own, neither of which the other can or ought to concern himself with. I will share what I will or will hog what I want.

The miracle of consciousness is that YOU have a consciousness; why live your life by some hackneyed fixation on the obliteration of it?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 20 23:59:30 2011 No.1944710 TO THOSE WHO CHALLENGE THIS IDEA, I HAVE A QUESTION: WHO ARE YOU BESIDES "I"? BESIDES THE CHEMICAL INTERACTIONS IN YOUR BRAINS THAT CAUSES YOU TO BE AWARE?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:00:30 2011 No.1944712 >>1944708 ok ayn

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:03:30 2011 No.1944716

>>1944710

The fact that I am composed of chemicals etc. has no bearing on the fundamental, undeniable & utterly overwhelming beauty of the fact that I exist.

Art is colors on canvas; literature words on a page. No less they are beautiful, & I'd be damned if I equated Homer with Stephanie Meyer simply because they both played with words.

>herp derp homer just so happened to be great b/c time & circumstance he's the same as chuck palahniuk

This thread is mostly sickening to me, as it betrays an essential lack of self-worth among my fellow posters.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:04:30 2011 No.1944718

>>1944710

Yes yes who am I but a reflection of my representation towards you and your representation towards me.... blah blah blah

I am nothing I am a reflection in the sea and the tree and the falling leaves. I am not a thing but a point in time, not even that I am just an indication that time is moving because I sit still and die.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:05:30 2011 No.1944720

>>1944653
>From Grapes of Wrath
One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the West. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I'm alone and I am bewildered. In the night one family camps in a ditch and other family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here's the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate — "we lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from his first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing; "I have a little food" plus "I have none". If from this problem the sum is "we have a little food", the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two-men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mothers blanket — take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning — from "I" to "we".

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:06:30 2011 No.1944721

>>1944716
That's not what I'm saying. The core of of human beings is consciousness, "I". Writing a book doesn't do anything to it. Names are irrelevant. We all share the same basic awareness. I think it's important to remember this, to treat each other kindly.

That's it.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:07:30 2011 No.1944722

>>1944708
You don't see the fallacy in that argument? Saying that 'YOU have a consciousness' is problematic because it implies that YOU are anything but your consciousness . . Unless you believe in some eternal, personal soul that presides over consciousness, this idea is silly . . you don't 'have' a consciousness, you ARE that consciousness, and the Schrodinger quote is really stating that the illusion of "I am me, and only possibly could have been me" is unsustainable, because 'you' being 'you' is really an arbitrary occurrence that did not happen for any 'miraculous' reasons.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:13:30 2011 No.1944735

I think that maybe some of you are taking the "I" am "We" thing too literal... or I look at it differently, either one really.

But the whole I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together thing really isn't about how every single one of us is the exact same being but how our being plays a role in the beings around us.

'I' am 'We' because I play a role in the entirety of what is. I am a stroke of blue on the canvas, and you a stroke green and the others are others but together we form the whole picture.

I seriously think this is what is meant and not the weird hippie bullshit that "we're, like, just one consciousness man." If that were true why don't I know what you had for breakfast?

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:14:30 2011 No.1944737

>>1944721
Agreed. Consciousness is the same basic 'material' no matter where it is distributed. The ideas and memories that inform consciousness come to it 'after the fact,' so to speak, but, in terms of perception and raw sensation, consciousness is singular - we encounter the world with the same mechanisms of comprehension, which I guess would be kind of Kantian / Schopenhaurian.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:14:30 2011 No.1944738

>>1944722

Pardon the rudiments of the English language: a more apt wording might be, "The miracle of consciousness is that there exists that consciousness."

Opinions that seek to humiliate that consciousness—and here the world humble shows its deeper meaning—are by nature depraved, for they seek to invalidate what is essentially a beautiful thing.

Distinction is a miracle—it is true that what distinguishes you from me is arbitrary. But the beauty comes from the fact that something so arbitrary & frivolous created a feeling, thinking thing.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:23:30 2011 No.1944750

>>1944735
To call it 'hippie bullshit' is to denigrate a system of thought that has been in place wayyyyyyyy before the hippies.
Think about it like this: what was there before 'I'? Complete nothingness. What will there be after 'I'? Once again, complete nothingness. Now, complete nothingness is lack of consciousness, a vacuum, no-thing. So, when another 'I' springs up out of this nothingness, isn't it possible, even likely, that this 'I' will be . . 'I'? If you're starting with a complete lack and a complete vacuum, this 'I,' which, under normal circumstances, would be a separate, discrete individual, apart from you, could very easily be . . well, you. It's difficult to explain, but once you see it, you see it. It's not hippie bullshit . . if you believe that death is complete oblivion and erasure, then the arrival into the world of a new 'I' will be 'I' . .

Fuck, I don't know. It's a perception I've had since I was young, and it's very, very difficult to put into words. But it's very intuitive to me and I grasp it without even really being able to formulate it verbally.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:26:30 2011 No.1944755 We're just a big collective "I blob". A genocide occurs, the blob shrinks a bit. It will still exist until the last man dies.

>>	Tim Curry !BzH.Ds2Vo. Thu Jul 21 00:29:30 2011 No.1944762 Sounds like hokey bullshit to me. Jesus christ, is treating others the way you'd like to be treated such a hard concept to grasp that we have to twist it so horribly?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:31:30 2011 No.1944769 Solipsism also holds that "You" are "I." It also denies you a mental interior. On that basis I can then discard the notion of empathy.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:44:30 2011 No.1944791

>>1944750

I get what the argument is, yes. And sure maybe I shouldn't call it hippie bullshit. But really, I don't see why you're so convinced that out of the Nothingness only "I" can emerge. Sure, We all refer to ourselves as I and anyone who refers to themselves otherwise may be seen as a bit strange, but to think of you - yes I mean you who refers to yourself as I - and all of your experiences essentially the same as another who has completely different perceptions of the world because of a completely different set of experiences just because they also refer to themselves as I is just... not the way I look at things, so to me it is wrong.

From Nothingness we have a great variety of existence that is so vast that we cannot begin to comprehend or experience it all. I do not doubt that all forms of being are transitory and all are emerging and dissolving back into the primary being of Nothingness but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "I" that has emerged as who I know myself to be is the same "I" that has also emerged from it as who you know yourself to be. As I said before I believe we are all parts of the whole not the whole as parts. It's like a note in a melody, one note is not the melody and the melody is not the one note but they are bound together. And it is in this way that I think the saying that 'I' am 'We' holds true but more as a metaphor. Ya know like that literary device, synecdoche.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:50:30 2011 No.1944794 >>1944791 Do the experiences define the person or simply the awareness? The "I am you" view focuses on the latter.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:52:30 2011 No.1944796 File: 879 KB, 1248x540, bateman.jpg.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >If I were gay I would like to be KILLED, that's why I'm homophobic.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 00:53:30 2011 No.1944801 >>1944794 The awareness generalizes the person. The experiences define the person.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 01:49:30 2011 No.1944956 I do not believe in Qualia

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 02:02:30 2011 No.1944985 >>1944956 Can you expand upon this?

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 02:08:30 2011 No.1944999

>>1944985
self-awareness is a phenomenon yes, and I don't see it in purely mechanistic terms, but it self awareness is not a qualitatively different from an appearance of self-awareness

Put another way, and I can't remember who said it 'conciousness is the directional mechanism of attention'. It's reflexive, a process that creates mental constructs that relate to eachother, but the 'I' construct isn't a self, it's just a phenomena, process or experience, not unlike pain or euphoria

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 03:55:30 2011 No.1945210 >>1944956 Zombie

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 04:03:30 2011 No.1945223 >>1945210 P-Zombie to you, mate

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 04:30:30 2011 No.1945253 >>1945223 Can you expand upon this?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 04:40:30 2011 No.1945262 read "the minds I"

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 05:00:30 2011 No.1945277

>>1944791
I'm not saying that two separate people, at a given moment, are the 'same' - that's ludicrous. I'm saying that you exist right now as an "I" - and that one day you will pass away, and that "I" will vanish - and another "I" will appear, somewhere, which will be "you" again, insofar as it is "I" - assuming there is complete nothingness after death. It's really hard to explain properly, and I'm 90 percent sure I'm not conveying the concept how I want it to be heard.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 05:09:30 2011 No.1945287 >>1945253 Philosophical Zombie

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 05:30:30 2011 No.1945307

>>1944682
Damn, took me a long time to find a philosopher who shared this idea.
I realized it a few years ago.
There's no reason for us to be one person.
We're the consciousness of everyone at once but we don't know it because knowledge in the brain is separated.
It's the most logical thing, if souls don't exist. There's no reason for us to only experience consciousness in one person, one life, since there's no distinction between persons. We're the universe experiencing itself.
It also explains why we're alive right now and not a guy that died 500 years ago.
I mean, in regards to probability the odds of being alive are almost null, yet we are.
It supports the idea that we're alive experiencing consciousness in everything.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 15:53:30 2011 No.1946442 >>1944999 I really like this, I think I can get behind this idea.. but what do pain and euphoria have to do with it? does "self awareness" have some kind of connection with The Real?

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 16:03:30 2011 No.1946471

>We're the universe experiencing itself.

Sounds kinda Zen. I remember Alan Watts said that we are all apertures in the universe looking out. He compared it to a light bulb with a black cloth thrown over it, and the cloth has many pinholes in it, each hole being a person.

I've been really, really liking Alan Watts and his explanations of Zen recently. Check it out.

>>	Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM Thu Jul 21 16:06:02 2011 No.1946491 File: 18 KB, 500x375, 1311278800140.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] A whole thread about self-awareness through a "double" and nobody have mentioned Conrad, Dostoyevsky, or Lacan's Mirror Stage. pshh...moving on

>>	Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM Thu Jul 21 16:07:30 2011 No.1946497 File: 18 KB, 500x375, serious.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] A whole thread about self-awareness through a "double" and nobody has mentioned Conrad, Dostoyevsky, or Lacan's Mirror Stage. pshh...moving on

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 16:08:30 2011 No.1946503

>>1946471

The lightbulb is existence by the way...

He also says that existence is dependence/relationships. I remember he asks you to picture a ball in space. There is nothing but the ball. You cannot tell that the ball is moving or still because there's no frame of reference. He also goes on about how if anything were different we would be different. No apple trees, or a star that never was, or something, would change us. Like the butterfly effect I guess.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 16:36:30 2011 No.1946583 Consciousness is an illusory consequence of an individual's physical mechanisms, it isn't some external entity of which we are conduits.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 16:39:30 2011 No.1946592 If I am not I, and you are not you, and you and I are infact divisions of we, then what if one of us has to go? Wat do?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 16:47:30 2011 No.1946612 >>1946583 >Consciousness is an emergent consequence of an individual's physical mechanisms, it isn't some external entity of which we are conduits. ftfy

Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ Thu Jul 21 16:56:30 2011 No.1946634
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>>1946583
>it isn't some external entity of which we are conduits.
>2011
>seriously thinking that consciousness isn't the product of a parcel of non-physical material synchronised to the physical world by the loving and guiding hand of God Almighty.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 17:02:30 2011 No.1946649 >>1946634 >non-physical material synchronised to the physical world by the loving and guiding hand of God Almighty. It's okay to post stupid shit constantly under the banner of facetious trolling

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 17:03:30 2011 No.1946656 >>1946634 I love theists. Scientists require labs, data and years of scrutinous research to give you a single information while all theists need are their imagination and 10 seconds.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 17:15:30 2011 No.1946694 >>1946656 I love scientists. They thing scientific method isn't the product of the imagination.

Anonymous Thu Jul 21 17:15:30 2011 No.1946696

>>1945277

hello, it's this guy again >>1944791

that isn't really opposed to what I believe, perhaps i was misunderstanding what you were saying.

>>1946583
prove it

>>1946592
learn the dougie

>>1945307
i saw the consciousness of a rock a few months ago, it was a pretty solid experience

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 21 17:26:30 2011 No.1946730 >>1946696 What do you mean prove it? So that it can sit alongside your position on the shelf of proven ideas? - >>1946583

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/lit/ - Literature