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Post by ouroboros on Mar 7, 2018 3:58:11 GMT -5
What's weird is I genuinely don't see it like that at all. In fact I actually seem to feel more sympathy for the monkey for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on. It may just be the added image on the front of the video to be working with, rather than just text, or maybe that I'm attributing less ability for the monkey to be able to make sense out of its predicament, or to relate to the different species not interacting with it (I didn't even see whether there were other monkey's around it). Anyway I'm honestly not sure. What I am 100 percent sure about is that I see their potential to suffer as being fairly equal (although if anything the monkeys mental development cycle is quicker, albeit not so advanced in the long run - making it's potential to suffer at that stage in it's development even greater than the babies) and that I attribute no more value to the baby humans life than the baby monkey's. I firmly believe that isn't a pretence but the result of insight and compassion. And I'll go even further and say that I see the view you've expressed there as being based on the remnants of the sort of mind-set that led to the experiments being performed in the first place. Sorry if that sounds harsh, or positioning, I mean it quite objectively. There is a line from Clint Eastwood's character in the great western Unforgiven (William Money? that name comes up...)..but he is talking to the young dude who thinks himself a "gunfighter" (he later gives up the moral fight...sees how horrible killing is), but Clint Eastwood tells him: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man, you take away everything he's got, and everything he's ever going to have". So part of the sadness is those children not growing up....but of course, they might be better off dead...than carrying THAT... Ok, so I think you're saying you see the taking away of a potentially longer and more eventful life in the case of the human as worse. I could buy that.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 11:33:58 GMT -5
I'll ask you the same question; what does this have to do with spiritual thinking? It's Andrew's wording and that's how I understood it. Maybe I'm wrong. What does it have to do with spiritual thinking? (It's deja vu all over again)
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 11:53:31 GMT -5
Love and affection is great, but that's not what keeps babies alive. It's about engagement with life. And why isn't the baby engaging with life? Why is there no reason to live? I say because the circumstances are such that the the minimum requirement in terms of life quality just isn't there. And when that happens, that's what is called suffering. Is that really so difficult to understand? I'm surprised we are still talking about this. I mean I get your point about taking a step back from oversentimentality but I think you are overdoing it. It's really not that complicated. Everything comes with a purpose into being. When that purpose has no chance of being realized, consciousness withdraws and tries another approach. I wouldn't call it quality of life. The baby is stuck in a crib unable to move about, rarely interacted with, and nothing happening. That's why the baby isn't engaged with life. Without said engagement, there is no reason to live. Is that really so difficult to understand? The physical needs were meticulously provided, and we're still discussing what the non-physical needs might be. Suffering is subjective and you don't know the subjective experience of the infant, so you can't talk like suffering is a no-brainer.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 12:00:11 GMT -5
Well, what would the brown bear say here? "There is no baby monkey, there is no cage, and there is no wire mother with a bottle. There is only the always present unlimited and constantly moving vastness of space time appearing in ever changing impermanent waves of ephemeral form. There is no sad face, suffering is only an illusion created by your mind. " Never heard Smokey talk like that!
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 12:02:20 GMT -5
Right, so "if two or more are gathered together in my name", is there self awareness? I'd expect the driver to reveal Himself. Really? You mean, like, honk the horn or sumthin?
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Post by andrew on Mar 7, 2018 16:47:21 GMT -5
yeah I do agree, though I believe that there is a useful distinction to be made between animals that can consider who they are and where they come from, and animals (or plants or ameobas or electrons) that can't, because this kind of self-reflection can come with a particular kind of suffering. Making that distinction gives us something to work with in a way. Yep it's useful to take into consideration different levels at play regarding different species and their ability to make sense of things or feel things . I think however that every conscious living 'thing' is suffering even if they don't have the capacity to acknowledge it . I say that because of my understanding of what suffering is compared to not . Being oblivious to suffering doesn't at the heart of it nullify the suffering . yes I basically agree. When would you say that conscious living things suffer? Is it all the time, or under certain conditions?
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Post by andrew on Mar 7, 2018 16:58:43 GMT -5
And why isn't the baby engaging with life? Why is there no reason to live? I say because the circumstances are such that the the minimum requirement in terms of life quality just isn't there. And when that happens, that's what is called suffering. Is that really so difficult to understand? I'm surprised we are still talking about this. I mean I get your point about taking a step back from oversentimentality but I think you are overdoing it. It's really not that complicated. Everything comes with a purpose into being. When that purpose has no chance of being realized, consciousness withdraws and tries another approach. I wouldn't call it quality of life. The baby is stuck in a crib unable to move about, rarely interacted with, and nothing happening. That's why the baby isn't engaged with life. Without said engagement, there is no reason to live. Is that really so difficult to understand? The physical needs were meticulously provided, and we're still discussing what the non-physical needs might be. Suffering is subjective and you don't know the subjective experience of the infant, so you can't talk like suffering is a no-brainer. Suffering isn't wholly subjective though, our physiological requirements (both tangible and intangible) mean that there is some level of objectivity to it.
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Post by laughter on Mar 7, 2018 18:10:24 GMT -5
"There is no baby monkey, there is no cage, and there is no wire mother with a bottle. There is only the always present unlimited and constantly moving vastness of space time appearing in ever changing impermanent waves of ephemeral form. There is no sad face, suffering is only an illusion created by your mind. " Never heard Smokey talk like that! It's all super top-secret Illuminati stuff.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 18:46:04 GMT -5
Right, dream evidence. That's why I point out the limitations of video evidence. However, for the most part I'm equally unimpressed with peeps intuitive evidence. The dreamworld, or the realm of the psyche or the unknown reality as Seth sometimes calls it has little to do with what we usually mean when we use that word. What we usually refer to as dreams or dream content or dream experience is already an interpretation into the physical consensus trance format (or else we couldn't remember it). So the way Seth uses the term, it is basically what A-H call the non-physical which is basically what we used to call the impersonal. I call physicality a dream. Not related directly to the psyche.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 18:50:12 GMT -5
Yup, sick. I just hope that the fact that they called it off half way thru means the babies at least taught them a lesson. The article mentioned that it is difficult to verify where and when the experiment happened, only that it repeatedly shows up in older psychology text books. Could this mean that they've later scrubbed any evidence because it was so unethical? In all fairness, unlike the monkey experiment, what happened to the babies could be nothing more than an urban legend. I followed the link and didn't see a cite to anything corroborating the story as told by the writer. Very possible. If nobody involved was indicted for murder, it probly never happened. My first thought was that it may have been part of Hitler's eugenics experiments, but I think the article said it was done in the US.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 18:53:47 GMT -5
When you say you can't not know something, you have made it unquestionable. The only thing you can't not know is that you exist, which is something you question on a regular basis. No, you can know something unequivocally and it still doesn't mean it is true, or unquestionable, or absolute. There's a lot of stuff that you know unequivocally....that a screaming baby is suffering, that you love Marie, that Marie is perceiving. All these things CAN be questioned, but that won't change the knowing of them. In the case of 'you know you exist', the solipsism discussion has revealed the problem of not investigating this statement. After all, you would say that you know you exist, but you don't know that I exist, right? Whereas I would say that I know I exist AND I know you exist. OR I would say the knowing that I exist and the knowing that you exist is equally illusion. I don't see my knowing that I exist as more or less unquestionable than my knowing that you exist. Again, you're confusing knowing with belief.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 18:59:44 GMT -5
With the right thought, the feeling will change, because the thoughts are what trigger the feeling and hold it in place. (I'm not saying that thought will occur) If the 'right thought' occurs, it means that the feeling has said what it has to say. For example, maybe the sadness is tapering off, the anger is spent. There is no 'right thought' in the middle of strong emotion. If you find out your wife cheated on you, and in the middle of that strong emotion, you find out it was a misunderstanding on your part, the strong feeling will go away. Feelings don't have to say anything. They follow your thoughts.
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Post by enigma on Mar 7, 2018 19:07:48 GMT -5
Some critters work collectively to support the group, like bees and ants. I don't believe there's some kind of biological communication going on, so it must be happening on another level. It makes me wonder if they are somehow self aware as a collective, and this somehow translates into individual self awareness. I've talked about the starling clouds before. I don't know how it's done, but it's not choreographed by bird brains. Wonderbeauty: That is really beautiful and picking that apart by the mind would seem to miss the point. But I wouldn't underestimate the reach of the mathematicians and modeler's in this instance. There's likely a few simple rules that could explain the cloud with the right equations to fill in the details. Something like, "most birds don't want to be on the edge of the cloud and tend to follow those around them". I'm pretty sure if navigation were left up to the birds, there would be massive bird collisions and it would be raining starlings. Are you familiar with the Monarch migrations from the US/Canada to a small grove of trees in Mexico? It's 3000 miles or so and the round trip takes, like, 3 generations. Got an equation for that?
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Post by andrew on Mar 7, 2018 19:13:57 GMT -5
No, you can know something unequivocally and it still doesn't mean it is true, or unquestionable, or absolute. There's a lot of stuff that you know unequivocally....that a screaming baby is suffering, that you love Marie, that Marie is perceiving. All these things CAN be questioned, but that won't change the knowing of them. In the case of 'you know you exist', the solipsism discussion has revealed the problem of not investigating this statement. After all, you would say that you know you exist, but you don't know that I exist, right? Whereas I would say that I know I exist AND I know you exist. OR I would say the knowing that I exist and the knowing that you exist is equally illusion. I don't see my knowing that I exist as more or less unquestionable than my knowing that you exist. Again, you're confusing knowing with belief. I'm not sure we have discussed the difference between 'knowing' and 'belief' here....Can you briefly give me your definitions of 'believe' and 'know'? You 'believe' that you love Marie but don't 'know' it? Do you 'believe' or 'know' when your observe an adult human is suffering? Do you neither 'believe' or 'know' a baby is suffering when you observe him/her screaming with colic? What do you 'believe' or 'know' when you see a screaming baby?
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Post by andrew on Mar 7, 2018 19:19:43 GMT -5
If the 'right thought' occurs, it means that the feeling has said what it has to say. For example, maybe the sadness is tapering off, the anger is spent. There is no 'right thought' in the middle of strong emotion. If you find out your wife cheated on you, and in the middle of that strong emotion, you find out it was a misunderstanding on your part, the strong feeling will go away. Feelings don't have to say anything. They follow your thoughts. I have agreed that they are associated with thought, but even in that example (which was a good example), the feeling has only gone temporarily. Whatever one has strong emotion about will come up again at some point, until the feeling has been fully allowed to have its say. In this example, the feeling is likely saying something like...''I am very sad at being abandoned, betrayed and rejected''. And this goes back to the baby's trauma.
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