62 posts tagged “life”

As I sit here musing about life, I am very much aware of how little I know about it. I've dabbled in astronomy, cosmology, history, biology, philosophy, and psychology, acutely aware that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Yet, if truth be known, we all are forced to patch together such scraps of knowledge in this journey we take if we are to come to a philosophy of life. No-one knows it all, although many would have us believe that they do.. Small wonder that we pause at times and wonder at the futility of our task. Yet, now and again, we come upon some words of those who have gone before us, and are reminded that the same thoughts must have passed through their minds at some point. Yet they continued.

Having gleaned something of what Sigmund Freud was talking about, I moved on to the thoughts of Carl Jung, and I came upon this quote attributed to him, "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." With that thought in mind, we continue our journey into the darkness.

Jung was a disciple of Freud's, but they parted company because, according to Wikipedia, "Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as incomplete and unnecessarily negative. According to Jung (though not according to Freud), Freud conceived the unconscious solely as a repository of repressed emotions and desires. Jung agreed with Freud's model of the unconscious, what Jung called the 'personal unconscious,' but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one. This was the collective unconscious, where the archetypes themselves resided, represented in mythology by a lake or other body of water, and in some cases a jug or other container."

I'm not going to even try to understand what Jung meant by archetypes. My interest is more in his description of the "collective unconscious". Wiki describes it thus, "It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humanity, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality. While Freud did not distinguish between an "individual psychology" and a "collective psychology", Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal subconscious particular to each human being. The collective unconscious is also known as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species."^[1]

The collective unconscious squares with my understanding of the Id in that it is our inherited knowledge handed down to us that enables us to survive. Last week I also offered the opinion that there is more there than just survival skills. Maybe there's the key to our understanding of life.

More about that next week when we move on to a different sort of consciousness. 

No-one knows how life on Earth began. Or why. Man has created religions to give answers in human terms that humans can relate to. The religions also try to answer what happens to life after death. Again in human terms. But humans are but an infinitesimal part of the universe, so I think it is rather presumptuous for us to assume that it was all created for our benefit. But it is true that religion suffices for many in the absence of anything else that makes sense.

But does the truth have to make sense to us? Could it be that we, as yet, aren’t programmed to understand the truth? For man is still evolving. Our mental capacity must have infinitesimally increased over millennia for us to arrive at this point. One would expect that it would continue to do so, although I must admit there are times when we wonder.

Human knowledge seems to increase exponentially. One can only marvel at the progress of science in our own lifetime. What truths lay undiscovered that will be revealed in another lifetime? Men spend whole lifetimes now wrestling with the elusive Theory of Everything. And some of the propositions put forth are truly eye glazing for those of us preoccupied with the mundane tasks of survival. But we must try to get some understanding of what the cosmologists are trying to tell us if we are to continue our search for that elusive truth.

I think String Theory is the key to that truth. The video is only four minutes.

Quite a bit to absorb there, isn’t there. All this stuff going on in this Elegant Universe without us being aware of it. Or caring. But if we are to live a meaningful life, then I think we should care. Else we’ll fall victim to Thoreau’s “when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”. And just what are the implications of all this multiple dimensions stuff? It means that there are multiple universes that we aren’t even aware of. When you think about it, we can only know a universe that comes to us through our senses, and we cannot sense other universes. Could it be that there is another sense that has been passed down through our long evolution? A sense that is slowly evolving, and may yet help us to understand this bewildering universe, or universes, in which we find ourselves?

I had long wondered why we like music. Looking at the string theory video, it doesn’t seem to be too big a stretch to say that music is the language the universe uses to communicate with us. I kind of like the idea that instead of a stark, existential, universe where we have to create our own meaning, we instead have a universe that is showing us that meaning in the beautiful music that stirs the collective soul of us all. Or, as Max Ehrmann would say, “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should”. That it may turn out to be a glorious symphony of strings just seems so appropriate to me.

Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

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Structural-Iceberg

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
  - Andre Malraux

As I look at the Maslow needs hierarchy, it seems that all the layers beneath the self actualisation layer are to do with survival in one form or another. And it could be said that the Id, Ego and Superego are primarily concerned with satisfying the needs of those layers.

But what of the self actualisation layer? Just exactly what is meant by this term is a matter for conjecture. I rather lean towards this description, “This includes "the cognitive needs", where a person will desire knowledge and an understanding of the world around them, and "the aesthetic needs" which include a need for "symmetry, order, and beauty". Once all these needs have been satisfied, the final stage of Maslow's hierarchy—self actualization—can take place. “ Or, in other words, one is doing what one is meant to be doing on this planet.

And just how do we determine when we have reached this level? We feel it. We just know that this is what we are meant to do. The Id (Emotion) is in control. Something deep in our psyche is telling us that this is our meaning of life. This is why we are here. So, it is pointless to use the Ego (reason) to determine the meaning of life. That is for the Id to determine.

So, just what is going on in the Id? It isn’t enough to say that it is programmed for our survival. Something else is going on. That something determines what we mean by  “symmetry, order, and beauty.”  One could say that something is what gives us our meaning of life.

I think we are forever reaching deep into our Id for answers in our quest for “symmetry, order and beauty”. Every time I look at the stars, and marvel at this universe, I have the feeling that I am in communication with it. It always has a calming effect on me, as if to say that my earthly concerns are of no consequence. All is unfolding as it should, as Max Erhmann observed in his lovely “Desiderata”. And, as he also said,  I am a child of that universe. So, is it just possible that the universe has programmed the answers that we seek deep in the Id? Is it just possible that the meaning of life is to unravel the mysteries lurking there that have been passed down in the millions of years since the miracle of life began? Are there messages that we in our ignorance are yet to interpret? Is some cosmic joker smiling at us as we blindly stumble down dead ends in our quest for The Answer?

The more knowledge I acquire about this universe we live in, the less certain I am that I will ever understand it. My stroll through "The Elegant Universe" really knocked me off my perch. I don't think I'll ever get back on it. But one thing that experience did do for me. It made me realise that there is so much more going on than we have ever imagined. So, it allowed me to muse about some theories of my own that have been slowly taking shape. I'll never know if they are on the money or not. (or at least I don't think I will. I'm not sure of anything any more). Next week I'll muse about them. Hope you're still with me.

Structural-Iceberg

My understanding of the Id is that it carries enough information for us to survive our entry into this world. Information that has been handed down to us in our genes from our ancestors. The most obvious example that it exists is that a new born baby has the knowledge to enable it to suckle its mother. It would seem to me that our minds are dominated by the Id when we are born, and that the Ego and Super Ego develop as we mature. As I said last week in a comment, my understanding is that the Id can be equated with Emotion, the Ego with Reason, with the Super Ego refereeing the competing impulses between the Id and the Ego.

It seems to me that during our lifetime, our Ego develops our ability to Reason, which enables the Super Ego to impose reason (Ego) over emotion (Id) to influence our actions. The more knowledge our Ego acquires, the greater is its ability to reason. And as we grow, the Ego progressively tries to dominate the Id. So, with this in mind, lets take another look at our five foundational moral impulses, and which ones are more likely to be influenced by emotion (Id) as against reason (Ego).

1. • Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

2. • Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

3. • In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

4. • Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

5. • Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad. “

It seems to me that a certain awareness of the world is necessary if the first two are to have any weight. The Id has no concern for others. Its concern is for the self. So, the Super Ego needs to give more weight to the Ego’s reason if it is to allow concern for others. So the Ego dominates, which is to be expected of those with liberal leanings, if I may modestly say so.

For the next three, it would seem to me that the Id dominates, as there is no requirement for concern for others. All that is required is a herd instinct and trust that one’s betters in the social hierarchy know best. To my admittedly biased view, that is a fine description of conservative world view.

I think our lives are spent moving from dominance of the Id to dominance of the Ego. The more knowledge we acquire, the more the Ego dominates and the more we rise from the murky blue of the subconscious to the clear air of the white conscious. I think mankind is slowly moving into the white, and passing down more of that white in our genes. It’s taken quite a few million years for us to get this far. One can only imagine what this world will be like a million years from now. No doubt our descendants will smile at our ignorance, and shake their heads at our silly mistakes. But one thing they can never take away from us, and that is, without us, they wouldn't be here, just as without the first stirrings of life on this planet, neither would we. How wonderful it all is. Too often in the hurley burley of life we forget the wonder of our existence. And I have to wonder why that is. More about that next week.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)

Voltaire is right, of course, and it could be said that it is our choice in this life as to whether we settle on our certainty, or live in that unpleasant condition of doubt to which Voltaire refers. But the conscious choice isn’t really ours, is it. Subconsciously, our minds keep searching for that elusive certainty, more so for some than for others.

So, for most of us, we muddle along, making do with what passes for certainty at any  particular moment in time, but always open to new snippets of knowledge to help us along the way. We seize on each morsel like a hungry dog, gnaw on it, and worry it, until, hopefully, we wring some elusive truth from it that gives meaning to this life.

I have long been fascinated by life itself. More particularly by what motivates us as humans in this bewildering cosmos. I have explored in a haphazard way some of the teachings of religion, and the thoughts of philosophers and other thinkers who have travelled this journey we call “life”. I had settled on “survival” as our motivator, and that the Maslow hierarchy defines what motivates us in our struggle to survive. I had wondered at the roles of emotion and reason in our decision making. I had wondered aloud in setting down these thoughts in Friday Night Philosophy. And I reached a point where I felt I had nothing more to say. Not that I thought I knew it all, but that unexplored paths lay before me, but I knew not which path to follow.

Recently, I seized on a new morsel. It is contained in this post  and further elaborated on in this video.  I think Jonathan Haidt is on to something. The following is an extract from his article:

 "Morality is not just about how we treat each other, as most liberals think," he argues. "It is also about binding groups together and supporting essential institutions."

With all that in mind, Haidt identified five foundational moral impulses. As succinctly defined by Northwestern University's McAdams, they are:

• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad. “

Jonathan Haidt goes on to show that whether we identify with liberal or conservative views politically is dependent on the weight we give to the five foundational moral impulses. I think this flows on nicely from my thoughts that:

1.      We are motivated by our survival instincts.

2.      Emotion and reason are the means to that motivation.

3.      The Maslow Hierarchy sets out the levels of motivation we must satisfy to survive.

And now, I think we can add  Jonathan Haidt’s five foundational moral impulses to the above list to illustrate the options we have in prioritising our thoughts on how best to survive. If we think about it, the five foundational moral impulses encapsulate all that the philosophers and theologians have to say to us – we all want to survive, we just differ on the means. That is, we prioritise the five foundational moral impulses differently. It follows that this influences not only our political and religious beliefs, but also our philosophy of life.

But just why do we prioritise differently? We are all subject to the genes passed down to us by our ancestors. Our survival instincts have been honed over the millions of years that life has existed on this planet. Add to this mix the parental, peer, and environmental influences that shape our thoughts, and it isn’t so surprising that we differ, or that we re-prioritise our moral impulses throughout our lives. Who among us has not looked back ruefully on our youthful mistakes when our lives were ruled by fickle emotion?

It is interesting that Jonathan Haidt is active in the Positive Psychology movement, and that an early pioneer of this movement was Abraham Maslow.  whose Hierarchy of Needs so influenced my own search for truth in this life.

More about positive psychology next week. It’s nice to find another path to wander down, and new discoveries to wonder at, in this marvellous journey that we take. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever find that next path. I'm so glad I discovered it. Let the wondrous journey resume.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

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I’ve been thinking about Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. That view is a view from the Cosmic Perspective. I’ve talked about this before, and how it contrasts with the view from the Human Perspective; how our world viewed from the cosmic perspective puts our world viewed from our human perspective well and truly in its place. All our petty little squabbles suddenly seem of no account at all. All they seem to be is a waste of precious moments in this life; precious moments that could have been spent savouring the wonder of it all, the wonder of the view from the cosmic perspective.

I’ll be forever grateful that I came to this view relatively early in my life. It was Max Ehrmann’s lovely Desiderata that was the catalyst. His “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars” suddenly put everything in its place for me. I have no doubt that millions of others of my generation were similarly affected.

It was Isaac Newton who famously said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” While most of us don’t see further than others, it is true that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. To me, Max Ehrmann was one of those giants. With his gentle and insightful observations he has changed the lives of millions who followed him on this little planet. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot similarly enabled others to see life from the cosmic perspective. He was another giant.

While I have no pretensions to being another Max Ehrmann or Carl Sagan, I would like to leave behind me something that may smooth the path of others who follow. That was always the intention of Friday Night Philosophy.  I hope that in some small way I may have helped others along this wondrous journey that we take. I know that I draw inspiration from my fellow Voxers. You are my giants too.