Meaning Index

May 1, 2021, 12:39 AM So, I think starting with an axiom of "minimize suffering" as a good place to start building a new value system. I think there is a danger in this axiom that can lead you down a slippery slope to antinatalism though. I think the danger is in only seeing the universe thr

Lessons from Jordan Peterson 1. PURPOSE: If you are looking for purpose in life, start with the reduction of suffering - suffering speaks out to everyone as an irreducible truth. No one can deny that suffering is bad, so start with that. 2. AIM: We need to have an aim - it's psychologically nec

My method of motivation-enhancing meditating 1. Get ready to be comfortable for the next 20 minutes. 2. Close eyes, focus on breathing for a second to relax and focus 3. Imagine my brain as a maze of memories, values, ideas and motivation. 4. Repeatedly ask myself questions about the s

I grew up religious, and so I was constantly praying. In retrospect, prayer seems like a type of meditation that reinforces neural pathways based on the contents of the prayer. After leaving my faith, I stopped praying, and therefore seemed to have lost access to that tool for manipulating my ne

Nihilism - "There is no objective meaning of life, and we should be sad about that." Existentialism - "There is no objective meaning of life, but we can create our own subjective meaning, and be happy about that." Absurdism - "There is no objective meaning of life; reality is absurd, so we should

I feel like the atheist perspective is more sad than the Christian perspective at first, but I believe that is because our brains (that were programmed with Christianity from our youth) aren't adjusted to the atheistic paradigm. Now, after processing and internalizing the atheistic paradigm, it seem

New psychology study provides insight into why religion boosts meaning in life (psypost.org) https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/new-psychology-study-provides-insight-into-why-religion-boosts-meaning-in-life-62534?fbclid=IwAR2JvEUeGkAlWhLeLW9aNI8XAcV6nHhFeE8gzio1rLvBJ5SoAX53CDsTLZ4 "‘If God didn’t exi

"One must imagine Sisyphus a hero." The Sisyphus within each of us may become weary at the prospect of an endless repetition of toil and travails in the face of an endless supply of chaotic entropy that repeatedly attempts to undo our progress. But for each of us, a bigger game is at stake than ou

https://www.facebook.com/groups/philosophyknowledgethoughtexistence/posts/5496053303771771/ QUESTION: "I'm a 16 year old teen [from Taiwan] who is thinking about my future. Most of the careers are trying to solve the challenges, improving techniques, but few of us think about the major part, which

"You know people want to be good, the person who's willing to die for their beliefs and live for God - that person is a sincere person who wants to be good and they want to see a better world, right, it's just that their view of reality is so limited and immature that they wind up causing harm by tr

“The word sin is derived from a Greek word and is actually an archery term - it means to miss the bullseye, and that's a that's a lovely metaphor for sin, I think, because it's associated so tightly with the idea of goal direction and aim. Because there's a metaphorical idea that's embedded in that,

The behavior-adjusting psychotechnologies involve cognitive shifts that allow one to accomplish behaviors originally not possible. Since behaviors are outputs from psycho-motivational landscapes, in order to output a new behavior, the psycho-motivational landscape must be changed. A psycho-motiva

“Do you think suffering is fundamental to happiness?” https://youtu.be/P-2P3MSZrBM “Suffering is the result of caring about things that you cannot change. And if you are able to change what you care about to those things that you can change, you will not suffer. Well then, would you then be able

LOVE For the past two years, I have spent an large amount of time watching Chinese dramas that are usually heavily romance themed. I've never been particularly interested in the romance genre, but it was a good way for me to practice my Chinese listening skills. My mother began to really apprecia

Moral Axiom - Life is good; on average, it is better to be born than not born; the pros generally outweigh the cons. Metaphysically pro-life. Moral Standard - Moral conclusions cannot violate moral axioms. P1) Causing suffering is bad P2) Eating meat causes suffering C1) Don't eat meat P1) Caus

By: Seth Garrett Abstract Job highlights a toxic Judeo-Christian principle - you don't deserve family, health, or happiness. If you lose family, health, or happiness, you are supposed to be content because you didn't deserve that stuff in the first place. Maybe if you grovel before the God who is a

Optimal Suffering - Ideological Deadlock Our modern era seems locked in an ideological deadlock - stuck between two extremes, caught between two ideologies. On the one hand, we have the remnants of the traditionalists who view the world from the perspective of a dogmatic theist. In their e

Dialectics are based on the concept that everything is composed of contradictory forces and that change occurs when there is a "dialogue" between those opposing forces. Put more simply, the dialectic is basically the idea of something new coming out of the process of conflict between opposites - a

"As Hegel puts it, the result of the dialectical process is a new concept but one higher and richer than the preceding—richer because it negates or opposes the preceding and therefore contains it, and it contains even more than that, for it is the unity of itself and its opposite." "Hegel’s dia

https://youtu.be/DcA5TotAkhs - Starting at minute 21 - “If there is no objective standard of reason (above us), if everything is just matter, how can we think?” It is within evolution’s interests to make us think. Game theory is the objective standard above us that guides everything. “If I s

Tragedy reminds you how how deeply you loved the things you have lost. The pain is evidence of the existence of something beautiful and good - pointing you to true meaning and purpose in life. Perhaps the message behind the sorrow is that some things are beautiful enough to fight for preserving.

If causal determinism is correct – 1.       “Then everything that happens couldn't have happened any other way.” 2.       “Then beliefs about everything are strictly determined.” 3.       “Then moral responsibility would also technically be gone.” 4.       “Then why do anything at all? Telling someo

The problem with the words subjective and objective is that these words have multiple valid definitions. There is subjective truth, subjective epistemology, subjective ontology, subjective morality, subjective experience, subjective grammar, subjective politics, subjective agency, subjective probabi

Often philosophers waste lots of time arguing distinctions between the subjective and objective. Perhaps a word with a transcendent definition can help organize our thoughts into an ontological compromise? Transjectivity - transcending the distinction between subjective and objective, or refe

POST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/neoacademia/posts/10159588802818042 INTERLOCUTOR: Some ideas about Lao Tzu and the Tao. I think we can agree that Lao Tzu is hard to understand. One reason for this is the archaic Chinese, which is abbreviated and often vague. But another reason is that transla

Inspired by the following video: Around 500 BC, Confucius was teaching an "order" based philosophy during a period of declining unity which erupted into the "Warring States" era. As the "Warring States" era continued on for a couple centuries, Daoism evolved out of this period as an antithesi