Why is there anything? (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 27, 2011, 01:31 (4716 days ago) @ David Turell

"Why is there anything?" puts your mind on objects--but its much harder to think about nothing. Hence why I think its converse is a question that holds much more power.

You pushed me so I'll look back at this. It is interesting but I get the impression hat I always look at the positive side of life, and you the negative.

But I don't see it as negative. You worked as a doctor: you know that life is ugly. Especially in America, where we have Euphemistic language for everything.

We're born, we grow old, and we die. We don't like to think about the second and third too much, because we simply don't want to deal with them.

I'll give you that I'm more willing to look into the negative aspects of life, but for me, this practice is life-affirming, because I'm accepting life as it is--not the idealized version we see sometimes in TV or movies, or books. (I'm not taking a shot at you here, this is just how I view it...)

Working in the ER for 4 years, I witnessed no miracles. I witnessed a lot of tragedy. It underlined for me the importance of people working together, it emphasized that 95% of what I saw as important in life when I was 16 was so... irretrievably... wrong.

We're afraid of death, so we try and hide it. We try and pretend it isn't there. We hide from depression. We hide from violence. But all of these things are as much a part of life, part of our existence, part of our nature as everything else.

If I may be so bold--it's not that you're positive and I'm negative. It's a difference of what kind(s) of ways you're willing to affirm your existence. I admit that I don't think I could stand a world with no suffering--pain is simply another reminder that we're alive and that life is a gift. Have you ever stopped to wonder why in books and movies--the most tortured characters seem the most real?

I know you've seen tragedy... I'm not trying to insult you here. I just firmly believe that as humans it is imperative that we value the good as well as the bad. It's even echoed in some of our holy books... I reread Paul's letter to the Romans over Christmas break, and there is a definite admonition to take on the yoke of suffering as a virtue--and Nietzsche's great love for Judaism was that it turned the human value of strength upon its head. With the exception of the ancient Cynics, only the Jews saw strength in the poor. This notion of reversing value resulted in a shift to valuing the strong as those who should help the weak--something not done in the past.

So... I feel justified in my valuation of the "negative."

In a theological sense, thinking about nothing forces you to consider your place in a universe that suddenly seems more special. It forces you to consider that you too, could be nothing and in fact, it was much more likely that you should have been nothing.

I'm here, and I rejoice in it. Somehow it is arranged that I am here and I'd like to know why. I would never have known anything if I were nothing.

This is superficially true--The koan I've brought up before is to get you to dig deeper than that. Remember, in Buddhism, self is an illusion--the koan is to get you to dig deeper than your ego. Buddhist psychology teaches that our ego is that which tries to gather bits and pieces of what's in the stream to ourselves, it clings. When you eliminate yourself from the idea of you, what do you have left?

But even your own words echo my sentiment: "I'm here, and I rejoice in it." How is that drastically different? There's millions of possible ways that Matt Seil would never have been. How much more powerful the fact that I am?

The power of man is in the creation of value--ex nihilo.

That website I posted has made me more willing than ever in life to agree with the assertion that there must be something absolutely eternal about our universe. I'm with you, that the intelligent part seems almost absurd. But I think we align closely on this point.

Yes, there is something that is 'absolutely eternal' about this universe. Is it the material universe or the energy that creates the material universe. I'm back to my philosophy prof: matter is energy on the outside and mind is energy on the inside. Only through intelligence can we have the organization of laws governing this reality. Only an intelligence can create the super-efficient DNA code from as perfect four bases.

Your serve.....

Not much I can serve here. I don't agree that we can "spot intelligence on sight" and therefore I remain silent on the idea of a UI. We should not speak that which we do not know. To me, seeing intelligence in the universe sounds dangerously like injecting my own ego onto the cosmos.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"