I had this realization over a year ago. Couldn’t stop crying or having panic attacks. Being conscious is such a cruel thing, it’d be easier to have never been.

Well the problem is that what I’m likely to do in the future is not what I currently want to in-the-future-do , and in the later future not what I will want-to-have-done.

I don’t see how that’s not “a problem”?

Schopenhauer & Synchronicity

I am reading Schopenhauer's Parerga & Paralipomena (translated by E.F.J. Payne). I am going to put forward that the essay, simply titled (😉) Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual. is a precursor to Carl Jung's notion of Synchronicity. This isn't to say many other authors didn't do this, or this topic regarding Schopenhauer hasn't been exhaustively discussed previously, but I was taken aback by Schopenhauer's tentative, almost apologetic tone. Because I just ploughed through some 200 pages of Schopenhauer's vitriol towards his contemporaries, the switch in delivery was very noticeable.

I'll try not to cloud this issue with misrepresentations of Schopenhauer's main philosophy, but forgive me if I do & try to look past this to my point regarding Synchronicity.

I'll use S for Schopenhauer from this point on. S was a determinist very much immersed in the Newtonian view of cause & effect, indeed very impressed with the scientific advances made in his lifetime. As a self-professed Kantian he agreed in main with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He regarded perception as the basis for knowledge & further that our perceptual apparatus provided a "template" to organize & filter these perceptions. Space, time, & causality were a priori, in other words, built in conditions for our perceptions. These 3 conditions could not be overcome & science was a systematic discovery of the consistencies of our perceptual world - not an unraveling of the mysteries of the universe.

S posited a loophole: we have a unique experience of something within ourselves. He called this the Will. He comes close to ascribing this to our experience of emotions. Although unaware of Darwin's theory of evolution, S also argues that other life indicates a advancing development of perceptual ability & complexity in general.

Despite arguing the the Will is unknowable, S tells us quite a bit about this Will. It is the foundation of the universe, the basis for life, an incomprehensible presence outside of space, time, & causality. Here is where one can point out this is similar to Carl Jung's collective unconscious (or other accounts of psyche, élan, spirit, noosphere, etc.)

S fought the hook he caught himself on - a hook made of the deterministic universe of Newtonian physics & an unknowable basis for this universe that was not deterministic. Here is S fighting the hook in his essay: "Although the ideas to be given here do not lead to any firm result, indeed they might perhaps be termed a mere metaphysical fantasy, I could not bring myself to consign them to oblivion …"

In the essay S examines historical accounts of coincidences within individual lives that challenge the concept of causality. S, of course, predated Quantum Theory, so he didn't have this avenue to explore & possibly make a convoluted argument to account for these mysterious coincidences. He instead is forced to give arguments of cause & effect chains beyond our perception or understanding, but the fact remains he presents circumstances which could be viewed as synchronicity including daimons, psychoids & archetypes. S mentions fate, destiny, second sight, soothsayers, & so on. S really goes out on a limb here especially considering the thrashing he gave. earlier in the work. to Fiche, Schelling, & Hegel.

I'll forgo a quote where S gives an account of one of these coincidences. I'll go out on a limb myself & state the reader has experienced such occurrences themselves, so such a quote would be redundant. Instead here is some of what S thought about this:

"... a subjective connection that exists only in reference to the individual who experiences them."

"Now those two kinds of connection exist simultaneously and yet the same event, as a link in two quite different chains, …"

"It is the great dream that is dreamed by that one entity, but in such a way that all its persons dream it together."

I felt a mental shove to post this. I have been reacquainting myself with Jung as well as Schopenhauer. So here is a possible synchronicity for me: in his essay, S references a work by Jung-Stilling (1740 - 1817) called in translation, Theory of Pneumatology. Given that I was reading about Jung & S, this reference stood out. Surely this wasn't an ancestor of Carl Jung? It bothered me so I did some searching online & concluded there isn't any relationship. But it was a meaningful connection to me. Blame this event for this post. 😊

>most people feel as if their current self-image is how they will be forever

This explains a lot about why people are so okay with their flaws. Everyone is flawed, but if it can be fixed, fix it. You can stop when you die.

>Your comment is one way to interpret this writing. It is highly pessimistic and reads like you lack comprehension skills... I say this as an English major.

Thank you for beginning your response with an unnecessary, meaningless personal attack. I've been on the receiving end of a rather surprising amount of hostility and overly condescending comments after I posted mine; which I find pretty ironic, given that it's coming from people who purport to be enlightened, which in large part is supposed to make one's mind more or less immune to all-too-human emotional attachment to schools of thought and tribalistic thinking. The irony is palpable.

​

>I suggest you reread it or dive deeper into Alan Watts or Carl Sagan, both of which are mentioned in the writing. They each have wonderful outlooks on life and the human experience.

I have actually listened to a fair bit of those guys' material; and although they don't really belong in the same category, they did share this poetic view about the cosmos and reality in some ways, but their metaphysical convictions actually differed greatly, as Carl Sagan was an atheist, naturalist, scientist and Alan Watts was effectively a Buddhist; and in a hypothetical debate where the two get to the nitty-gritty of their respective philosophies, I'm sure they would end up disagreeing with one another strenuously on a fair amount of crucial points, but nonetheless, I do appreciate both.

But once again, regardless of the aesthetic qualities of these ideas and these "spiritual" experiences, I happen to believe they are highly dubious and not to be relied upon for discerning the nature of consciousness or whatever.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I've yet to be presented with a clear argument, or anything for that matter that isn't just another way of saying "You just don't understand it you lowly stupid peasant! You lack the capacity to even begin to fathom the sheer profundity in all of this!"; which I would say is indicative of a superiority complex more than anything.

Username does not check out, JOE.

I didn’t realize people found 12 step programs “despicable” I understand they’re not for everyone but they have literally saved my life and the lives of people I love.

I think the early AA stuff unintentionally hit on a lot of what is only now being understood.

>That means, you are observing something without the added distortions of the mind.

That is an unfounded assumption. There's no reason to suppose that. Why couldn't such an "observation" be the result of yet another distortion that actually evokes the feeling that there are no distortions?

Sounds like a more plausible hypothesis to me, given the profound susceptibility of the human mind to error at every level of cognition.

​

>You can either learn to appreciate such experiences as being glimpses of unfiltered truth

Once again, you've failed to substantiate why such experiences are "glimpses of unfiltered truth", and that thus remains a mere claim and nothing more.

​

>You'll shed tears if you ever end up having such an experience.

Sure, I might very well end up having a similar experience at some point, one that I would describe as life-changing, and might ultimately be compelled to conclude that they are in fact informative of some deeper reality, but that won't mean anything either, I'm just another person, with the same mental and intellectual deficits that plague everyone else.

There are people, on this planet, right at this moment, who are having what they would describe as profound spiritual experiences which are actually suggestive of mutually-exclusive worldviews.

Someone right now is likely talking to Jesus (or so they imagine), or Muhammad, or Mahdi if they happen to be a Shia Muslim say. I've actually met some of these people firsthand and they are 100% convinced of what they saw, and what they think what they saw meant, yet as a matter of pure logic, at least some of these people have to be experiencing some form of delusion, they can't all be right.

Therefore, you can't look at this phenomenon (of spiritual experience) that manifests itself in radically different ways, and lazily conclude that whatever an individual instance seems to suggest on the surface must be true because it simply felt profound, or that you ended up crying because of how intense it was.

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I’m an average Joe that philosophizes mental illness.

I think that twelve step programs can be a powerful tool for a person seeking to change their mind, reframe a worldview and disrupt problematic behaviors. It is not perfect, it certainly can be problematic for some people and is generally oozing with cringe, especially if you have not personally known an addict.

I like your assessment of the serenity prayer and i think the power of some of the common mottos are underestimated from a psychological perspective.

Related to the post the phrase Just for Today similarly helps resisting temptation by setting a smaller obtainable goal 'i don't have to quit forever, just for today' which relieves a lot of pressure but it also has another effect, a sort of psychological trick in that every day is 'today'.

Yep. If there’s one line of speech that sums up what depression feels like, it’s “There is nothing I can do.”

Source: Am a physician and have suffered from depression

the volume of profanity in the opening paragraph makes it hard to take seriously.

You can disagree with the premise, but this is the philosophy that underlies most of scientific method today.

Science is a series of propositions that happen to be useful. Gravity is a name: we can model in different ways. In one case it's an ever-present force emanating from a mass, in other cases it's a geodesic in spacetime. These are models to put our observations into simple elegant pictures.

Reality is composed only of instances of observations: not theories (and so, not forces, laws, particles, etc.). Theories are just a net we throw over observations to give them a gestalt overall picture: but it's not real, the same way constellations aren't real. It's a picture connecting dots.

People living in cognitive dissonance are depressed, bipolar

The side effect of cognitive dissonance is depression.

I disagree entirely about the base premise here. Science is all about discovering what is actually there, by eliminating the flaws and biases inherent with our position as conscious observers. The entire premise assume that something IS there that awaits discovery. Newton didn't invent gravity, he just discovered an equation that governed the way it works, and created the name.

I think being more self-aware of them helps us to compensate. But I'm not sure being inconsistent is a problem unless we're talking about a preference for certain ethical principles.

I’ve actually seen and felt proof of things that we don’t have normal explanations. There’s definitely more than meets the eye.

> ''i know this is 'bad' but i do not care, everything is 'bad' after all'

Or, as we call it in AA, "the f*ck-its". As in "my wife hates me, f'it, let's drink", or "Or I've been sober for six months but I've had two drinks. F'it, let's drink". Certainly got the best of me for nearly ten years.

Growth and acceptance definitely lead to the resistance of temptation, but in personal experience the path is not immediate. It isn’t impossible to hit further fragmentation on the route of trying to change yourself.

People tend to not like heretics. Resisting a temptation that is socially normalized will lead to people giving you shit for it. Your very presence now fragments their mind. Some people do not want to have to think about all the ways they can be changing themselves.

A classic example is how often people get peer pressured out of maintaining sobriety.

Verification of general principles needs us to go through for every instance of an event and check that it's true! The idea is that any theory we've got is only assumed generalizable until falsified, it can't be *true* for every domain for all time.

Hume explored it like this: Say we observe A causing B. It happens repeatedly, even when we kick off A ourselves. Is this enough to say A is always followed by B? We might say: yes, because past evidence has pointed at A->B. But why do we think past evidence means the trend will continue? We'd have to say: because past evidence has pointed at continuing trends in the past. But this argument is circular, so it can't work.

A sillier version of this argument: Descartes' evil demon. Let's say an Evil Demon has just been deceiving us with evidence at every turn, and in actuality they can stop at any time and reveal our generalizations to be poor matches for a non-Demon world. We can't be sure theories are true always (we can't do induction based on empirical fact)—we can only stick with a theory until it's falsified.

What do you think about dynamic inconsistency of preferences?

I think that accounts for/describes at least many kinds of what is called “temptations”, though maybe not all.

If you look at our cells in our body, together they form this individual. Tons of cells are born and die everyday, that does not mean the individual ceases to exist.

Maybe higher complex thoughts are surrendered at times, but at its core where matter forms connections together is still there.

If the statements are empirical, (based in fact, fact being credible data, data being information gained by direct observation) and scientific (based on logic which can be experimented on repeatedly with predictable outcome) then it absolutely may be verified. The best context for this depends on your intention.

Science deals with the act of falsifying, however it also accepts things which have not, or are not easily falsified, as building blocks.

We know Einsteins theory of time dilation based on speed to be true, because we tried GPS without it and it failed drastically within seconds. Once we plugged in the equation, we got GPS.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-dictionary-by-goog/mgijmajocgfcbeboacabfgobmjgjcoja?hl=en

Great chrome extension, double click on word and the definition comes up. I had to use it for that banana.