/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20530135]

I am you, you are me. The sensations of the present moment, and of personal identity, are illusions. Special relativity supports eternalism, so it is already accepted that the past and future are just as real as your present moment, but there is no universal “now.” Again, that is an illusion. This is what Einstein himself believed, because he understood special relativity.

If my consciousness were somehow taken back to a random moment in my childhood, I wouldn’t notice the difference, neither now nor in that moment. If I lived this life a million times before, I wouldn’t notice the difference. Similarly, if between every moment of my life, I experienced a moment of your life, how could I tell the difference? My brain has no memories of your brain. So it is logically possible to be everyone at all times, but from within each experience, you are bound by your subjective perceptions, memories, illusions.

The problem with the standard view of closed individualism is that the personal identity is not well-defined. What makes you you? Are atom-by-atom copies of you still you? Or if you lost all your memories, and had the memories of another? Or if half of your brain were joined with half of another? If you came from nothing to be born, and enter nothing after you die, then why do you think this can’t happen again? Reincarnation is real but it occurs across all beings and all times at once. Heaven is real but we must create it.

[Anonymous No.20530209]

Time has a direction because of entropy. What we call the past is a lower entropy state, and the future is a higher entropy state. Remembering a memory increases entropy, so we and the universe evolved to only remember the past, although the future is just as real as the past. This explains the illusion of the flow of time that we experience.

[Anonymous No.20530350]

Strange that the strongest foundation for ethics is hardly talked about. This should be as controversial as the debates about free will or god or any moral topic. It’s pretty significant if every single person you affect is also you.

[Anonymous No.20530593]

bump

[Anonymous No.20530924]

Eventually the whole world will know this truth, and all forms of purposeful torture and abuse will be eradicated, at the very least.

[Anonymous No.20530943]

>>20530135
Lay off the shrooms, anon

[Anonymous No.20531025]

>>20530943
I have never done psychedelics of any sort + not an argument

[Anonymous No.20531042]

I btfo you out the last time you tried this Open Individualism shit. Its irrelevant because it would be indiscernible from the situation now if you didn't remember being anybody else and you should probably just treat everybody like its true because that's empathy and the golden rule.

[Anonymous No.20531066]

>>20531042
It’s obviously not the same. A psychopath who has no empathy and sees no reason to be moral does not care if he tortures his cats. But if he believed that he and the cat are just different channels on a television of consciousness which he is, then he probably wouldn’t torture the cat, no? The golden rule has no real foundation outside of open individualism. Empathy is self-serving, morality is always about whatever is good for you, or the species. That’s how evolution works.

[Anonymous No.20531091]

>>20530924
Wishful thinking. You're ignoring psychopathy and a whole range of other mental disorders. Not to mention the fact that people purposefully abuse and punish themselves all the time. Knowing everyone is you would do very little to end suffering because people who harm themselves and others don't care about ethics.

[Anonymous No.20531119]

>>20531091
Yes you’re right, but you must agree that the impact would be significant. Much more so than any religion or philosophy before. Jealousy, for example, would be much less common, and all the emotional problems that stem from feelings of inadequacy would be less severe. Of course it is difficult to change our biology, but a firm believer in these ideas would care much more about helping others when possible, and not being so selfish and short-sighted and desperate.

[Anonymous No.20531362]

>>20531119
that's what you assume...
In reality this is nearly irrelevant as the thing making decisions and giving rise to states such as jealousy is by definition separate from other things (the body+mind)

[Anonymous No.20531381]

>>20531362
therefore it's going to operate in a world of separate agents competing with each other. The feelings felt by another body are not felt by any other body around it, meaning the decisions in other bodies will not take the feeling into account in the same way the body experiencing it would and no amount of theory or ideology will change that

[Anonymous No.20531455]

>>20531362
I experience it myself because I believe it. I meditate on this idea and imagine myself to be others when dealing with them. This doesn’t mean I’ll be a saint, but it minimizes the probability of my harming someone else purely for my own gain. Or using someone for my pleasure. For example, leading a girl on and making her believe that you’ll be serious about a relationship with her. After realizing open individualism I took this much more seriously

[Anonymous No.20531528]

>>20531455
>imagine myself to be others when dealing with them
that's literally what empathy is
You attaching significance to this idea is just an expression of your empathetic, agreeable nature, not the other way around. It's also an example of slave morality. Your type would come to a similar ideology regardless. It's just a way of directing your attention to centering your experience around another bodymind. Guess what, this happens all the time regardless, when you love someone, when you have children, when you identify with someone, when you share a common ideology etc etc etc
I am an Advaitist myself for a few years now meaning I don't believe in a separate self which automatically makes me an open individualist but I'd have no problem with torturing or humiliating people I don't like, open individualism has zero effect on me in this domain

[Anonymous No.20531625]

>>20530209
>Time has a direction because of entropy. What we call the past is a lower entropy state, and the future is a higher entropy state.
I like this Boltzman idea but the problem is then it's more likely that dinosaur fossils just came into being fully formed rather than being part of a dinosaur that once lived.

[Anonymous No.20531710]

>>20531625
that’s not a problem. All moments already exist

[Anonymous No.20532288]

>>20530135
>>20531066
I remember coming to a similar revalation one day when I was very hungover/still drunk on a bus early in the morning, but I lacked/still lack the knowledge to put it into words. At least the part about the perception of individual identity as being a "side effect" of the way we've evolved to experience the world. The TV analogy is a great way to describe it. I don't know much about theoretical physics though, so I never really considered the relationship between space and time and how it played into my ponderings.

[Anonymous No.20532340]

OP you are on the right track. this is why we are here. now go past advaita and into christianity. your logic is sound, but there is also an answer to who WE are, where we come from abd where we are going to. and its infinitely weirder than even what you are describing here.

[Anonymous No.20532374]

>>20532288
I think the way I approached it was that I determined there was no "objective" difference between myself and any other given person aside from the fact that I happened to be bound by my own memories and perceptions, but without those binds there's no objective difference between myself and the other person. It's hard to describe. I don't into philosophy, so I could just be rambling.

[Anonymous No.20532389]

>>20532340
>yeah those are all sound arguments that I have literally no way of refuting but this particular institution says that akshually, you are this experience you are having and that's it and I know it to be true because there was a talking snake in a garden once and some broad ate an apple
If you have something to add, add it, don't start with this "oooh yeah you are on the right track but you need to inspect this diametrically opposed metaphysical system"

[Anonymous No.20532392]

>>20530135
I'm gay, so you're gay.

[Anonymous No.20532402]

>>20532374
yeah I got that too after a DMT trip, I saw a glimpse of what I can now only describe as satt-citt-ananda and from then on I realized that pure Subject can have no Object in it, it is just Subject

[Anonymous No.20532638]

>>20531528
Empathy is an evolved emotion that facilitates cooperation. It plays a similar role as guilt or fear of punishment or desire for reward. It’s ultimately designed to give you good consequences, or at least your genes. When unnecessary people often lose empathy because they can benefit in other ways. But open individualism provides a constant basis for morality that is essentially egoism. Only a retard could believe in it while also choosing to treat other people like shit anyway

[Anonymous No.20533019]

>>20532340
huh

[Anonymous No.20533758]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20534110]

Though it is difficult to actually prove beyond a doubt that all this is the case, it is the only logically coherent view on identity. Empty individualism and open individualism are often set against each other, but they are one and the same. Closed individualism has no arguments other than the fact that we feel as if time flows, or that we have a unique, closed identity. But both of these perceptions are accounted for as illusions within open individualism

[Anonymous No.20534189]

I am here.. Now.

[Anonymous No.20534275]

>>20532638
Empathy is not an emotion, it's a faculty of cognition (ie mirror neurons)

>Only a retard could believe in it while also choosing to treat other people like shit anyway
That conviction of yours comes from a lack of discernment. In order for your statement to be true, you'd have to be able to identify with the transcendental subject, which you can't because it's not an object by definition. Therefore you'll always identify with the separate

[Anonymous No.20534510]

>>20534275
>Empathy is not an emotion, it's a faculty of cognition (ie mirror neurons
regardless, we act on empathy because we feel it as an emotion or desire.
>Therefore you'll always identify with the separate
yes, all instantiations of the separate. It is the same as identifying with an experience in the future of your current life. Obviously you are only experiencing the present moment, but you can still value the future and act accordingly

[Anonymous No.20534559]

>>20534510
>It is the same as identifying with an experience in the future of your current life
great example
Everyone knows with much more certainty than open individualism will ever have that it's going to be them experiencing their future and on top of this the connection of their current experience to the future is not purely based on an abstraction but on past experience of it always being the case, yet the vast majority of people procrastinate, engage in unhealthy habits and sabotage their future in thousands of ways by preferring short term gratification. The same happens with open individualism but with significantly less motivational force because it's just an abstraction.

[Anonymous No.20534582]

>>20534559
You see, the knowledge of an idea doesn't imply actions that align with the given idea. Open individualists miss this one simple fact.

[Anonymous No.20534596]

>>20534559
Yes, people are flawed regardless, no one is disputing that. But let’s imagine that people had no concept of future, or consequences. Surely our behavior would be much different. Then you come along, and say, “Even if people could apprehend the possibility of future experience, they would still act according to their instincts and infatuation with the present moment.” But obviously there is a significant difference.

You can make a completely rational defense for ethical egoism, which would make it possible for someone to ignore a crying animal on the side of the road, if he did not feel the simple urge to help. But if he were an open individualist, it would certainly be more LIKELY that he help the animal, because he views the animal as his “future” self. You’re playing dumb if you think there is no motivating power in such a belief.

[Anonymous No.20534605]

>>20534582
And? If not watching porn is healthier than watching porn, should we neglect to tell people about this since many people will watch porn regardless?

[Anonymous No.20534618]

>>20534596
>>20534605
My argument wasn't for the idea to have a potential net positive effect, I was more responding to this

>Only a retard could believe in it while also choosing to treat other people like shit anyway
which is clearly retarded as for many people it wouldn't even make a difference

[Anonymous No.20534637]

>>20534618
yes I agree that for many people, their lives wouldn’t be much affected. However in extreme cases, it’s possible for suffering to be prevented. And there would be extreme examples of people whose lives would change greatly, as they would be more proactive about reducing suffering in the world, etc.

Moral behavior is typically thought of as behavior that a perfectly rational being would follow. Imagine an ideal world in which people could align their actions with their rationality. Then a world full of egoists and a world full of open individualists would be significantly different (I use egoism here because it is just as rational if not more rational than other moral systems, and especially so in the absence of the influence of emotions like empathy). If we are heading to a more rational world, then we should strive to create a more open individualist world. And in the meantime there will be positive effects

[Anonymous No.20534663]

>>20534637
The only functional path towards open individualism is through Dharmic anatta (no self), meaning a path of subtraction as opposed to addition. Seeing the absence of a separate self with inherent existence as opposed to adding a belief about open individualism on top of an illusory belief in a self which is just egoism+.

[Anonymous No.20534691]

>>20534663
Open and empty individualism are essentially the same. The problem with fixating on no self is that you become practically a solipsist and forget about the world. What good is enlightenment if you only experience it in this life? There is no karma or souls. If you have no self, then you can’t destroy it. Past and present moments in your life are as real as moments in others’ lives.

[Anonymous No.20534709]

>>20534691
>The problem with fixating on no self is that you become practically a solipsist and forget about the world
No self is not an idea to fixate on, it's an abiding awareness of an experiential fact while solipcism is an idea which necessitates a self, otherwise what is it that exists in
a solipcistic model?

>Open and empty individualism are essentially the same.
The former is usually an idea/ideology, the latter is an experiential insight

[Anonymous No.20534734]

>>20534709
According to no self, how do you differentiate between the present moment and past or future moments? How do you describe the experiences of other people? How do you describe “your” experience?

[Anonymous No.20534739]

>>20534734
Nothing changes in that regard, you just cease believing that relative objects in the field of experience are yourself. You still refer to "your" body-mind as yourself for communication purposes

[Anonymous No.20534747]

>>20534739
I think open individualism equates the self with the field of experience itself, unless you think this also is not the self. If you want we can just say that “experiences are experienced” without referring to a self but again this is both empty and open individualism because there is no creation of selves to distinguish experiences from others. No experiences belonging to one and not another.

[Anonymous No.20534768]

>>20534747
>open individualism equates the self with the field of experience itself
sure, if the field of experience is not an object or not limited and is the same with any experience which makes it the absolute subject

the conclusions are the same

[Anonymous No.20535368]

.

[Anonymous No.20536038]

>>20532392
Oh

[Anonymous No.20536058]

>>20530135
didn't ask

[Anonymous No.20536070]

>>20530135
Sartre already did this...?

[Anonymous No.20536071]

>>20531066
evilution is based upon the perception that if humans existed, there would be no monkeys, so its not as airtight as one might think.

[Anonymous No.20536885]

>>20530135
Relevant videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JomlwxRAtZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9unZn75Moo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhoqz4PEtkU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP3dCVhOnzE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrGoOlPepC8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WKqO16mkGE

[Anonymous No.20537116]

>>20536885
be careful out there. appears the kid in the last video killed himself. as i mentioned earlier in this thread there is a lot of truth in this stuff, but is not the whole truth.
through christ all things are possible

[Anonymous No.20537286]

>>20537116
That guy had mental health issues, including Asperger’s and schizophrenia, as well as psychedelic abuse and huge feelings of inadequacy. He was an incel and a huge simp for some girl he never talked to.

[Anonymous No.20537435]

>>20531119
I fully understand what this point is and it’s also awe-inspiring to me, but it does nothing to lessen my own def-hatred or hatred of other’s imperfections. I’m not sure what path needs to be taken, it’s something more than just knowledge, willed action maybe? But how can that be taught, that’s a path a person has to walk themselves. Is there ever any external remedy that can be made for that I have to wonder