>its by no means certain that there even is such a thing as 'free will'.
It may well be that free will is embryonic in humans until operationalised by personal effort
Thus the would-be initiate may spend decades learning to become independent of popular emotion and thought
i think this is certaily true, though this is still within the realm
of conciouss awareness.
we know that if we shed our cultural baggage we are no longer
slaves to that, but we do not know that this new freedom is in
fact that, and not another layer of illusion.
there is no null hypothesis for something by definition outside of
conciouss awareness.
and since that is the only thing we can experiance directly,
we will allways have to wonder about what lies byond.
its like infinite regress; we can understand god as the creator of
the universe, but then that begs the question who created god?
or with the big bang, why did it happen? what came before the big
bang and what came before that? etc.
i dont think there is a solution to this problem, unless we consider
radicly different models of reality such as the holo universe.
It seems to me that in the short time you have been on this board your expression of thoughts has become much easier to follow - to the point that you are now receiving compliments from Maat
thanks guys
The strength of our species lies in the individual working from within a group, not in isolation, - and we have done that remarkably well.
good point.
and it makes me wonder:
are we capable of contradicting our own nature?
if we are then selfsacrifice can be an ultimate expression of freedom.
if not and we sacrifice oursleves because it is in our nature to do so,
then it is an expression of absolute slavery.
wich reminds me: if there is no free will, then there realy is no
such thing as a selfless act, and what we call morality is nothing
more then illusion.
i think we can and do contradict nature.
whatever there may be out there to influence us, 'controll'
and the need for it seem to me a primitive and selflimiting way
of approaching situations.
Terrence McKenna once said that looking at nature and how it
works, if there is any truth to the idea of a 'gaian mind' or earth
spirit, then this could not possibly be anything other then female.
i tend to agree with that and the thought that the universe is set up in a way in wich all things are rigidly defined and/or controlled
seems counterintuitive to me.
it seems to me that notions of controll are realy a product of our
own cultural clothing and the overall system of nature doesnt
seem to care for it.
What then is the impact on people living nearby a Freemason's lodge that conducts regular initiations and raisings?
interesting thought.
i think there are all kinds of dynamics at work that cause a loge
to radiate positivity to its surroundings.
i think the same is true for all places were people come together
and express positivity with consistancy.
in fact, i think thats where haunted houses and things like that
come from.
what some people call ghosts, i have long thought to be an
expression of some kind of emotional residue left behind by
traumatic experiances of people in the past.
anyways, have any of you seen the movie 'the matrix' ?
if you havent i reccomend it.
its about a guy who finds out that reality is a computer generated
simulation...