I don't think of myself as very mature, but maybe it is a maturity of a certain type. I just think it works for me, so in that sense, I am of course going to try to promote it.Originally Posted by redbaron
I don't think of myself as very mature, but maybe it is a maturity of a certain type. I just think it works for me, so in that sense, I am of course going to try to promote it.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
If you have no say in something as important as your own birth, then what do you actually have a say in?
This topic reminds me of one of my classmates who works herself into sincere distress over things external to herself. Examples include: who exactly gets a higher mark than her, how much a person studies vs how well they feel about the material, someone cheating on an exam. In each case I can think of a solid argument of why she shouldn't give a fuck, mostly because not doing so means she wouldn't always be unhappy about school.
Hell, who knows, maybe she doesn't have free will and is mentally incapable of reason. If I accept that people do not consciously attempt to maximize their own distress, then maybe I am wrong - maybe some people are incapable of controlling their emotions.
If so, sucks to be them for sure.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
Non-sequitur. The circumstances of your birth bear no weight on your ability to deal with a myriad of events unrelated to your birth.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
Joy said that we should have personal responsibility for our lives. I can think of lots of extreme examples where that having personal responsibility is impossible. I use extreme examples because we all have personal responsibility over minor things, like when we go to the toilet etc. (though perhaps that isn't a good example).
Maybe Joy will weigh-in on what Joy said.
You both have a point, and the question boils down to what kind of context you're trying to frame it in. Normal lives where the relatively good prevails, or terrible, fucked-up circumstances that likely bear no resemblance to the life of any member of this forum?
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
At it's core, choice probably doesn't exist for us guys and gals, probably.
You may be right, but even in that context I would argue there's enough of an illusion of choice to base a distinction on.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
Well, if all things were equal, that would mean other people's goals would often get in the way of your own goals. These other people may also help you against your will, and you may help them against their will.
I would agree with this (or rather, see nothing explicit with which to disagree), but I'm having difficulty relating it to the topic at hand.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
Personal responsibility can only truly exist when you have complete control over your actions. If the concept of personal responsibility only exists in 'normal' circumstances, then it seems like a compromised concept, as though there are different levels of personal responsibility.
I.e. "Everybody is responsible for their choice of career...except when they aren't.". Seems kind of obvious to me.
I would say for a certainty there is.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
I think I mostly agree with that... but I haven't watched much of the Rocky movies (if that's what that is) and don't know the context. I think there might be something I don't agree with but I don't know what. Mainly that's the sort of "hard reality" of it. Of course in your mind you can think it's all sorts of things, but it does sort of come down to that... It doesn't mean that everyone's fully responsible for everything that ever happens to them... it's more that life is not fair, and complaining about it won't change that it's unfair. If you accept no responsibility for how you create your own life and your own reality, seeing yourself instead as pushed in different directions not of your choosing by different forces in life, then you can't do anything to make your life better or you "can't have a life". If you do take responsibility you may have a hard life (or not), but at least you lived it. I'm not sure that I prefer to see it so seriously as that... I don't know. This is something I am reminded of by things, that I tend to forget. It's the sort of thing that is "hard," but less hard is not reality... it's fantasy.
I should add: "Cowards do that" was a bit harsh... I wouldn't say that.
This topic makes me want to shoot myself. And, no, I am not choosing to have these feelings.
"To become is just like falling asleep. You never know exactly when it happens, the transition, the magic, and you think, if you could only recall that exact moment of crossing the line then you would understand everything; you would see it all"
"Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child."
but you're choosing to keep reading the thread. which is why I'm leaving! lol
IEI-Fe 4w3
As for the more "objective" statement: "life is what you make it"... for that I'd have to say... "yes, and no." It isn't that simple imo. For instance if you took a 5 year old kid and put them in a jail cell, where they had minimal interaction with other people, and only had the bare minimum sustanance... is that 5 year old's life what s/he makes it? What life can you make for yourself in a jail cell? I wouldn't expect this hypothetical person to live very long in these conditions... they'd get depressed and the lack of human contact/loneliness/lack of stimulation would do them in.
In order to make life into something you have to a) have the necessary awareness; and b) have enough "means" to... There are some requirements. And it will be easier for some than for others... which isn't fair... and is then annoying.
It's sort of like even if you do have the awareness, etc. to think about and work on making the best out of what you have... if what you have isn't enough, you might not be able to get very far. The 5 year old in the example has neither the means or the awareness and pretty much screwed.
As a personal philosophy "life is what you make it" is empowering though - and if you don't believe that then it's hard to make anything out of life. Trying to state it as an objective truth of the world is a different story, and is a discredit to people who do start out in shit conditions.
Good riddance.
SLI/ISTp -- Te subtype
I agree with this--some ppl do not have sufficient awareness, and thus their lives are not what they make of them.
This lack of awareness sometimes manifests in a victim mentality--whether an individual's grievances are legit or not isn't the point (at least in this particular discussion,) it's how that individual reacts, and allows those grievances to alter their lives... I saw a tv program the other day about a woman who pulled off an armored car robbery--she lived for over a decade on the run, often in horrible conditions, and awhile back she turned herself in... She's now in prison. When they asked her how she felt about her life currently, she said, "I choose to be happy." Life is what she's making of it.
As to what subterranean is saying--of course no one has complete control over their lives, and in that regard, personal responsibility is a "compromised concept." Ppl are constantly inhibiting each other, keeping each other down, and lifting each other up--this is obvious, we see it everyday, almost everywhere... To the degree that they aren't though--which is quite considerable, especially regarding one's attitude toward events, as force_my_hand has expressed well--life is what one makes of it, e.g. the aforementioned woman's 'choice.'
doesn't this depend entirely on your opinion of free will?
Oh no you don't! I'm not personally responsible for my life! I'm personally responsible for finding someone to be personally responsible for my life.
Though I suppose it comes to the same thing in a pinch...
I'm not completely cure how serious I am, and therefore I can't pick a smiley.
LII-Ne
"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare!"
- Blair Houghton
Johari
Though I was thinking... I think "make" would not be my verb of choice... it sounds like "taking life by the reigns" and "throwing it around" sort of like riding a bull... I like to go around things not really take them head on. That's it... it implies taking it all head on. But I don't wish to be blind-sided.
Back to what I was blabbing on about before... It's sort of like saying "a cucumber is a pickle". You can turn a cucumber into a pickle, if you know how and have what you need to do it... but that doesn't make all cucumbers pickles, only potential pickles. There is a state where cucumbers can be converted into pickles (the "pickling state") but it may not be so simple to achieve this state... so to say life is what you make it is like identifying with the pickles and ignoring that they were once cucumbers that only under certain conditions could they have been "forged" into pickles. Without these special conditions, the pickling state cannot be attained! So Peter Piper is then able to correctly say that it wasn't his fault that he was unable to pickle the cucumbers... his creation of cucumber bread and salad with cucumber in it are then not "failed pickles."
It's also important to remember that Neo didn't want to believe in the Matrix because he didn't want to feel that he had no control over his life. It's interesting that when you suddenly do remove control from people they suddenly start objecting and would much rather have a perceived "full responsibility" for their life and the happenings in it than none at all.
Sorry, I'm really hungry.
You don't "make" life. Life, however, has the potential to make fools of us all.
"How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
i like pickles.
Yes, that has been established.
What do you think of corn?
LII-Ne
"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare!"
- Blair Houghton
Johari
Last edited by marooned; 04-20-2009 at 04:48 PM.
Would pickled corn be any good?
LII-Ne
"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare!"
- Blair Houghton
Johari
Its the old agency vs structure debate and im always switching in my mind back and forth how i feel about it. I agree that people do have the agency to help themselves, but i also can see that life conditions can also make this a lot tougher for some people. For example my ISFj mum is brutal in her judging of ethical conditions. She basically says that Africans should stop having babies and shooting each other. She seems to ignore from my perspective the structural conditions keeping things this way for these people. If you're born seeing gunfights and terrible things you're likely to head in that direction.
Yeah i think that could be it, because i have a strong sense of community like Nikki does. I know that SLI's seem to have a strong indivdualistic stance though, they believe in taking care of themselves so it might not be all deltas.
ENFp (Unsure of Subtype)
"And the day came when the risk it took to remain closed in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anaïs Nin
I just fucking can't stand this topic because I always end up thinking of the world in a deterministic way and end up denying free-will and personal responsibility all-together. I go on to try to justify somehow that choices made are not determined by one's sentiments, and that those sentiments, out of one's control, are in coherence with the idea of free-will, a goal which I never achieve. With this I always feel like I'm just understanding it completely erroneously, or at least not in the correct context. It's an infuriating topic and I can't see how any of you come to such quick, affirmative, and, most of all, POSITIVE conclusions, that you do. What am I missing in terms of understanding?
"To become is just like falling asleep. You never know exactly when it happens, the transition, the magic, and you think, if you could only recall that exact moment of crossing the line then you would understand everything; you would see it all"
"Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child."
I'm sitting in my chair in front of my computer spending time on this forum, for reasons I don't know, something which isn't the best use of my time. There are more productive things I could be doing... like cleaning up or filling out student loan paperwork... or doing more laundry... but I don't do these things (I don't feel like it and if I clean up it'll be temporary anyway). I could go out and do something... I could hitch a ride to a neighboring town or city. I could stand by the train track and wait for a train... and then hop on when one finally comes. I could use my credit cards to buy a plane ticket to Amsterdam and say "fuck it all" to everything I'm doing now. I could do an infinite number of things. But I'm not doing any of those things. I'm sitting here typing this instead. Is this because I don't have freewill, that though there are all these other possible realities I could be creating, I can't create any of them because I'm pre-wired and pre-destined to do only what I'm doing now. Are these other possibilities simply like reflections in mirrors or mirages or things that look like they could exist in my reality but in fact can't? Or could I at any time go against the grain of what I am and have been doing and choose a different reality to create. Right now. I don't see why I couldn't. Of course if I did, you could just say that was pre-determined as well. As I see it there are infinite paths I could take... infinite turns... some of them would be really cool, some of them not so much. If I go against the grain of what is typical of me, or if I consciously and intentionally stay with the grain... if I am fully aware and awake and look at all the choices I could make and choose one with full intention, then I am practicing free will. If I allow everything else to move me along (as I am apt to do) perhaps I am not exercising my free will but surrendering it to the flow of something else. People can waste their entire life being moved along and not moving themselves. No matter what you do, life and time will carry you... but "if you don't know where you're going you'll end up some place else". I don't have any logical reasons for believing in freewill... it's more that if I do believe I have it that's the only chance I have of creating it... if it doesn't exist anyway, I've lost nothing... but if it does exist and I don't use it, I've lost everything. So it's more that I need to believe in it, not that I have logical justifications for why it exists. If I don't believe in it, I have no hope.
@mysticsonic, i haven't even started in the directions I could take this topic. However, what is the point. Is it gonna make any difference to me getting up in the morning, making my breakfast and the train being a little late as I get ready for work, etc? No..it's going to do squat. So why care about it, because if you dwell on it, it's *probably* not gonna be useful, but *probably* will make a fella feel slightly unhinged.
The way I feel about it is that there are an infinite possibilities lined up in your head, each correlating with a particular choice, but in reality you are actually on a linear, singular path, with no branches nor turns. I often think about it this way: given a situation in which I chose to eat oranges, if I were to go back to that moment with the same mental disposition as I had when I chose to eat the oranges, would it be possible for me to choose otherwise? No. But what does this say about free-will? Well, we should first consider what caused me to choose to eat the oranges. The thing that caused me to act as such was my mental composition and and subsequent disposition at that time towards the oranges. But what determined that? Was it I who choose that mental composition? Have my past choices determined my mental composition as such? No, that seems absurd. How can one possibly will their mind into desiring other than what it does? Being other than what it is? Even if that were possible, we would simply then further question the cause of those choices, and trace the choices back to birth, a time upon in which we were thrust into the world with desires predetermined and our instinctual needs grasping for what they want. Given this regression towards a state that was out of our control, it then follows that all further choices that were made were out of our control. We might have made them, but we could not have possibly made them otherwise, either.
I take this as a truth, that you can either choose to reject or accept. In either case I do not see need for loss of hope. For, even though you are not the one in control, you are still the FINAL source of your choices, and you still NEED, in order to survive in this world, act and think things through. Just because your path was determined doesn't stop the need for your to understand what path needs to be chosen and choose correctly, because otherwise you'll simply despondently linger in the despair that you have no choices, and then you really have no choices. But I guess it doesn't matter, does it? Because in this case there is no "otherwise." But...just in case...you can't give up, no matter what. Whoever said rational choices can't sometimes be the ones that ignore the harmful truths?
"To become is just like falling asleep. You never know exactly when it happens, the transition, the magic, and you think, if you could only recall that exact moment of crossing the line then you would understand everything; you would see it all"
"Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child."
maybe you're not the one missing something
I think if you could go back you could choose not to eat the orange. You may be strongly inclined in that moment to eat the orange, but I don't that means you have to eat it.
The other issue I have with determinism, is it would have to apply to everything else outside of you as well. For instance what if you were about to eat the orange, but then someone ran up to you and kicked it out of your hand and ran away with it. This means an outside force has come along and prevented you from eating the orange... but you would have eaten it had it not been for this outside force... so it's not just that your own life progresses linearly with only one way it can possibly go... but everything that interacts with you must do the same. So the entire course of everything in the universe can only progress linearly one way. I then wonder if the universe were like this, would it make sense that we could imagine possibilities? If they can never be why be able to imagine them? Would it make sense at a quantum level? I do not know. If things can only go one way why should they exist in the first place?
I think that though our choices reflect these things... and these things can reflect our choices... this doesn't necessarily mean that our choices are determined by them.
Hmm. I think my post may have come off as more melodramatic than I'm actually feeling. I always seem to word things that way (for emphasis or something). But yes none of it matters anyway because if I lingered in despair about how I have no choices, that was simply the singular linear progression I was going to take no matter what... it's a very self-defeating catch 22 sort of thing in my view...
It's one of those questions with no answer... in that people can debate it forever and still it remains unanswered.
I think I understand now why this topic frustrates you... "life is what you make it" makes absolutely no sense from a determinist standpoint. There is then no way to wrap ones head around the topic.
Perhaps people who automatically believe in freewill or don't think about it anyway can provide these quick responses. But if you don't believe in freewill... what response could you provide? It becomes sort of a non-concept that wears the dress of a concept, but when you remove the dress, there's nothing but thin air beneath it.
"I think if you could go back you could choose not to eat the orange. You may be strongly inclined in that moment to eat the orange, but I don't that means you have to eat it."
Why? I view it this way: what caused my choice? Upon analysis I believe the only answer that could possibly satisfy being the position of a cause in this case would be one's mental state. That I believe is where all choice is derived. If one's mental state is exactly the same in that circumstance, with the mental state being the determinant of your choice, then you would choose exactly the same, no? What could possibly be different?
"The other issue I have with determinism, is it would have to apply to everything else outside of you as well. For instance what if you were about to eat the orange, but then someone ran up to you and kicked it out of your hand and ran away with it. This means and outside force has come along and prevented you from eating the orange... but you would have eaten it had it not been for this outside force... so it's not just that your own life progresses linearly with only one way it can possible go... but everything that interacts with you must do the same. So the entire course of everything in the universe can only progress linearly one way. I then wonder if the universe were like this, would it make sense that we could imagine possibilities? Would it make sense at a quantum level? I do not know."
I suppose because of the fact that one has to consider it in its entirety, then one is faced with the interesting situation of determinism seeming to simply fall apart at the quantum level. Other than that one can apply determinism wholly and fully. But what does the quantum mean for determinism? Well the issue isn't really that shit is determined, but rather that we cannot DETERMINE in an intellectual manner how it was determined. "Uncertainty." But just because shit's determined randomly doesn't mean it isn't determined. Just because we can't give precise locations of electrons and know something or some shit(I've honestly forgotten what the hell the uncertainty principle was about), doesn't mean that the matter isn't already determined by something or another. It does call it into question, but I believe the rest of the universe argues in the opposite direction, so.
"I think that though our choices reflect these things... and these things can reflect our choices... this doesn't necessarily mean that our choices are determined by them."
Not by situation, but by our mental state, which I suppose in the end is part of the situation and simply a part of the causal factor. However, as far as a direct determinant goes, I think "mental states" is as exact as you're going to get without neuroscience.
"It's one of those questions with no answer... in that people can debate it forever and still it remains unanswered."
What is being left unanswered? I feel as though I have the answer. Maybe the community can't come to a decisive conclusion or reach a consensus, but I sure as hell can.
"Perhaps people who automatically believe in freewill or don't think about it anyway can provide these quick responses. But if you don't believe in freewill... what response could you provide? It becomes sort of a non-concept that wears the dress of a concept, but when you remove the dress, there's nothing but thin air beneath it."
Well it's almost like I'm going in circles. For instance, I know it's completely irrelevant to the actual matter at hand, because even though our choices are still determined, we still have them and still need to deal with them. And, yea, we ARE responsible for our lives inasmuch as responsibility simply means that we are the cause of the majority of a lot of it, but when responsibility of our choices goes on to mean that we are the source of our choices, then I disagree.
"To become is just like falling asleep. You never know exactly when it happens, the transition, the magic, and you think, if you could only recall that exact moment of crossing the line then you would understand everything; you would see it all"
"Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child."
wrong wrong wrong.
life is about waiting for death.
that's what life is.
INTp
sx/sp
Then what is death?wrong wrong wrong.
life is about waiting for death.
that's what life is.
Okay so my first reaction to this topic when I read Joy's initial post was - Why is she making this topic? Certainly no-one could disagree with that motto of "Life is what you make it." It makes perfect sense! Is she serious about Deltas disagreeing like this? I don't believe anyone could disagree with it.
And then I scrolled down and read the replies from the others and Subterranean/MysticSonic in particular.. which confused the heck out of me. I could not really understand the concepts Mysticsonic is going on about... generally it just makes little common sense to me, or perhaps I'm too dim-witted to "get it" ? =/ I dunno.
What he is saying just... it is so strange. We have no real free will? If we went back in time, we would not choose differently? Of course we COULD choose differently ... everything depends on OUR choice. I don't believe in straight Determinism. It seems like bollocks to me. Everything then would be set, like a stage, like we are puppets, mindless, moving to the whims of a "higher being" or whatever you wanna believe. How can that possibly be 100% true? It seems ludicrous to me. Just ridiculous.
However, I do believe in a different KIND of fate. This is my own personal philosophy here, so don't expect any kind of awesome insight or intellectuality. Heh. It's just that I personally believe in God, therefore I do believe in a Devil. There are forces of Good and Evil always battling eachother. Earth is the battleground. External forces DO have influence over us, ... temptation, whispers of it. But in the end, it is OUR choice to be either good or evil. How could it not be? Are you just saying that every single thing in the world happens because it was set out to happen that way? So a person that murders was just meant to be murderer... I think I'm misunderstanding you, Mysticsonic, but that's how I interpreted your thoughts.
Certain things also set off chain-reaction events, I believe. If you make the right choices, things will begin to fall into place for you. But there is always something bad lurking around the corner...
Yes, people can not control their birth at first thought... but what if we actually could? Lol, now I'm just getting weird... I am very confused with religion and spirituality still. The thought of reincarnation actually still appeals to me... the whole Eastern thing where your future lives are dependent upon the past lives you've had. I don't even know what I'm really saying.
I also believe that suffering breeds compassion. There *needs* to be struggle, obstacles, to achieve any kind of real depth... Otherwise everything is just a flat, monotonous line. I think Earth itself is just a testing area... to weed out the weak. Those who can't face up to the challenges put in their place, those who can't learn from their mistakes. We DO need to take full responsibility for our lives because if we don't, it just seems like we are shrugging our shoulders to say - "Oh well, this is what life has GIVEN me, I can't change anything, might as well just accept it." This kind of thinking doesn't get a person anywhere. No matter how messed up the external circumstances are, there always IS a way out, imo.
Yeah, that's enough for today.
@scarlet, I haven't read all of mystics posts, but in regards to having free will, let me ask you?
How do you know you have free will. Because you decide to do something yeah? So how do you decide..by thinking about it of course.
Now what caused you to think about it in the first place? What made you *decide* to think about it? You unconciously decided to think about it, it would seem you have no choice in wether you decided to start thinking about it. It usually just 'pops' into your head.
So I ask you, if it's not up to you what you start thinking about something, and it's often not up to you what or when you start thinking. How do you know any choice is *really* yours?
This makes literally no sense to me. Sure, things pop into my head. But I think about things because of events happening in my life, whatever is going on around me at the time, etc. I do "decide" to think about it. How is it unconscious? I don't get that.
Even if it WASN'T my choice to think about something, once I DO start thinking about it, I have a CHOICE to decide what to do about whatever I am thinking, etc.
Is it just me or does anyone else find the concepts espoused by the others here absolutely nonsensical? Am I missing something?
What about all the things you don't think about. When your sitting at your pc, do you think about pouring cola over it, do you think about painting it green (silly examples maybe) What I'm saying is why do you not think about these things but think about other things. There's a million things you could be thinking at any given second.
You only think about the things that occur to you. So who or what makes them occur to you? What about all the things you could've thought about, but never occured to you?
Yes..but who's planting the thoughts in your head?Even if it WASN'T my choice to think about something, once I DO start thinking about it, I have a CHOICE to decide what to do about whatever I am thinking, etc.
No, it's possible i'm insane.Is it just me or does anyone else find the concepts espoused by the others here absolutely nonsensical? Am I missing something?
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