cage Community Group
group for people with some depth who enjoy debating theories. if you have an opinion on anything, throw it in - works better with some good arguments to support it though :P
ok, this an old theory of mine, we're a bit short on threads so here it goes:
i'll start with the 2 most important factors in this thinking;
1 - the concept of nothing and things coming to being out of nothing; true nothing is a negation of everything so i haven't been satisfied with any explanations of how things come into being out of this, whether it be the big bang theory (where did the singularity come from?), religious angles (where did god come from?), chaos theory (chaos implies something being in chaos, where did that come from?) or many other theories that try to support these or similar as at the end they all fall into the trap of some ever existing environment which isn't logical as everything has a cause even if its in an exotic dimension other than time and space.
2 - Our true self and its purpose ; This real self is known to anyone who's practiced meditation and has also been realised by western existensial philosphers - what i'm talking about is the pure awareness that is beyond our thoughts and emotions, has no substance when you look into it and from a functional or practical point of view has no purpose whatsoever. It helps to use a combination of the eastern and western techniques of identifying this 'self' as the eastern way really helps you 'see' it by not rationalising it and western way is good for actually understanding for the purpose of tying it into other bits of logic...for me, zen is the best eastern path and Jean-Paul Sartre the best existensial philosopher (although i'm yet to decipher a lot of his old time english :/)...even Descartes ended up changing his famous "i think, therefore i am" into "I am, I exist" once he realised the true self is beyond thoughts ;)
Anyway, time for the theory; Basically, if we really think about the first factor, something coming out of nothing for no reason (there can't be reasons if there is nothing) just can't happen....but, if we're going with the concept of true nothing being a complete negation of everything then there being nothing falls short of that as we end up with 'nothing' existing!
So the only way we have a true negation of everything would be for nothing not to exist as well which can only be achieved by everything existing but that in turn has to be negated as well!...ok, i have gone completely nuts but i'll keep going :D
....now, how the hell do we get out of this funny loop? in comes the second factor, something that brings everything else into existance without them existing and doesn't itself really exist...hope you're following....
this true self of ours, its the one thing we can be sure exists but the more you look into it, the more you'll find that it lacks any substance - you can reflect on yourself and say you identified yourself but if you think about that, you're the one doing the reflecting and what you found is something you possess (similar to posessing your body but the body not really being the true you), and if you reflect on that component, you'll find the same, you are reflecting on the thing reflecting on the thoughts so you're not that thing and so on, never allowing you to actually put a finger on the real you, because the real you has no substance and hence doesn't exist....
....but at the same time it exists and is aware of these mental loops you're going through without going through them even though its you and you seem to be going through them...i love these loops but i'll jump out before i get stuck here.....
....next, this 'self' does the same thing with external entities, making them 'real' - if we were to break things down, there is basically nothing but a soup of particles (and even that is just a construct of our awareness), its us who identify these as 'my body', 'tree', 'dog', 'monitor' etc...these are simply concepts we use as part of our thought process for practical purposes and there is no reality to them without our awareness of those thought processes...
....and that awareness is not really required for those practical purposes...take for example a robot in a manufacturing line, it does its job perfectly well without being aware that its just bolted a 'door' to a 'car'....now, you might say that even though the robot isn't aware, those things still exist but that percieved existance is nothing more than your awareness of the thought in your head about their existance and that thought is nothing more than some electrical impulses based on past input from the senses which are themselves just some chemical reactions within the soup of particles out there....
....ok, starting to go on a bit too long so i'll do the rest briefly for now....basically what it comes down to is that as we all have different perspectives in life, the combined 'selves' or 'awarenesses' of us all (and any aliens out there) through all time makes it possible for everything to exist without truly existing. Some things like laws of physics and logic exist from all perspectives as they hold this artificial reality together but they don't really have any substance either (think of it as the common definition of artificial reality, the software would be its structure but software in action doesn't actually exist, its just a flow of current in circuitry and current is not software), other things like fairies and elves only exist for some perspectives as they're not necessary for any practical purpose but must exist to negate their non-existance and am sure they're as real to people who see things from that perspective as this monitor in front of me is to me but none of it is really real as the only thing that exists is nothing and for that to exist nothing can exist including nothing.......hope you enjoyed, i'm gonna go take my medication now...lol
i'll start with the 2 most important factors in this thinking;
1 - the concept of nothing and things coming to being out of nothing; true nothing is a negation of everything so i haven't been satisfied with any explanations of how things come into being out of this, whether it be the big bang theory (where did the singularity come from?), religious angles (where did god come from?), chaos theory (chaos implies something being in chaos, where did that come from?) or many other theories that try to support these or similar as at the end they all fall into the trap of some ever existing environment which isn't logical as everything has a cause even if its in an exotic dimension other than time and space.
2 - Our true self and its purpose ; This real self is known to anyone who's practiced meditation and has also been realised by western existensial philosphers - what i'm talking about is the pure awareness that is beyond our thoughts and emotions, has no substance when you look into it and from a functional or practical point of view has no purpose whatsoever. It helps to use a combination of the eastern and western techniques of identifying this 'self' as the eastern way really helps you 'see' it by not rationalising it and western way is good for actually understanding for the purpose of tying it into other bits of logic...for me, zen is the best eastern path and Jean-Paul Sartre the best existensial philosopher (although i'm yet to decipher a lot of his old time english :/)...even Descartes ended up changing his famous "i think, therefore i am" into "I am, I exist" once he realised the true self is beyond thoughts ;)
Anyway, time for the theory; Basically, if we really think about the first factor, something coming out of nothing for no reason (there can't be reasons if there is nothing) just can't happen....but, if we're going with the concept of true nothing being a complete negation of everything then there being nothing falls short of that as we end up with 'nothing' existing!
So the only way we have a true negation of everything would be for nothing not to exist as well which can only be achieved by everything existing but that in turn has to be negated as well!...ok, i have gone completely nuts but i'll keep going :D
....now, how the hell do we get out of this funny loop? in comes the second factor, something that brings everything else into existance without them existing and doesn't itself really exist...hope you're following....
this true self of ours, its the one thing we can be sure exists but the more you look into it, the more you'll find that it lacks any substance - you can reflect on yourself and say you identified yourself but if you think about that, you're the one doing the reflecting and what you found is something you possess (similar to posessing your body but the body not really being the true you), and if you reflect on that component, you'll find the same, you are reflecting on the thing reflecting on the thoughts so you're not that thing and so on, never allowing you to actually put a finger on the real you, because the real you has no substance and hence doesn't exist....
....but at the same time it exists and is aware of these mental loops you're going through without going through them even though its you and you seem to be going through them...i love these loops but i'll jump out before i get stuck here.....
....next, this 'self' does the same thing with external entities, making them 'real' - if we were to break things down, there is basically nothing but a soup of particles (and even that is just a construct of our awareness), its us who identify these as 'my body', 'tree', 'dog', 'monitor' etc...these are simply concepts we use as part of our thought process for practical purposes and there is no reality to them without our awareness of those thought processes...
....and that awareness is not really required for those practical purposes...take for example a robot in a manufacturing line, it does its job perfectly well without being aware that its just bolted a 'door' to a 'car'....now, you might say that even though the robot isn't aware, those things still exist but that percieved existance is nothing more than your awareness of the thought in your head about their existance and that thought is nothing more than some electrical impulses based on past input from the senses which are themselves just some chemical reactions within the soup of particles out there....
....ok, starting to go on a bit too long so i'll do the rest briefly for now....basically what it comes down to is that as we all have different perspectives in life, the combined 'selves' or 'awarenesses' of us all (and any aliens out there) through all time makes it possible for everything to exist without truly existing. Some things like laws of physics and logic exist from all perspectives as they hold this artificial reality together but they don't really have any substance either (think of it as the common definition of artificial reality, the software would be its structure but software in action doesn't actually exist, its just a flow of current in circuitry and current is not software), other things like fairies and elves only exist for some perspectives as they're not necessary for any practical purpose but must exist to negate their non-existance and am sure they're as real to people who see things from that perspective as this monitor in front of me is to me but none of it is really real as the only thing that exists is nothing and for that to exist nothing can exist including nothing.......hope you enjoyed, i'm gonna go take my medication now...lol
not really a question but more of a hypothesis to consolidate the 2 factors i started with, presented for discussion for proper testing, would be interested to hear if anyone can see logic flaws in it(or extension of the hypothesis maybe) so the hypothesis can evolve
will find similarities with existing stuff, as i said, i was influenced by eastern and existensial philosophies, investigating the same things people have been thinking about for ages but from my perspective.
the longwindedness...apologies to all who make an effort to read.....that's just me, happens if typing while thinking instead of after...lol
look forward to opinions on the actual theory as well as presentation issues :P
any chance we could "plain language" this a bit....
Please lets remember we are here to make one another think....
(not make each other feel stupid)
Also, I am not well today... so perhaps I am reading things that are not really there....
Is this correct?
If so, my answer would be: be
However, if we remove nothing from the equation, the answer would still be: be
Therefore, it appears to me that there is missing data in statement number one because matter and anti-matter do exist. Perhaps, there has never been nothing. If that is the case, then "What to be?" is the next most logical question to ask.
Well
When I read that question the first thing that I think of as an answer would be ....God.
I will think about it some more and come back....
i try to respond to people from an angle they're comfortable with and this might have been where i got unstuck; this post was originally a response to a discussion with a friend so it was written to match his way of thinking and when faithful mentioned he had studied philosophy classes i tried to use language that i believed would make sense from that angle in my reponse to him.
i'll try to re-write this is in a different way when i've got a little bit of time (off to work in a sec) or if you want to let me know any particular bits that were too nerd-speak, i can try to explain in a different way.
faithful - hmm, not really (ok, i'll definetely try to rewrite or break it down as we discuss), think i'll go back to the questions that got me thinking along these lines;
all - basically its the good old "where did everything come from?" and "why/what the true-self/consciousness/spirit/whatever-you-want-to-call-it?". And looking at this question while keeping in mind that all our knowladge and logic shows that everything out there is a cause/effect. this is just a theory trying to answer those 2 questions at the same time.
anyway, gotta go, but catch up with you guys later on *big huggles*
But I don't think we have enough to reference to know either, does it really not end? Or what did the big bang come from?
For a twist if I can say it right though. Chaos came from the shadow of the something, lets say maybe the wisdom of the creation process its self. The shadow being nothing realized because of its awareness that it had been made something cause of the image that filled it by the something.
Then like bunnies it reproduced!!
now that you've seen the movie, i think a line from it is very appropriate here: 'dude, god put you here to test my faith!'
'wisdom of the creation process'?!? how can something that isn't even in existance yet or has anything around it to learn from, be wise?
'The shadow being nothing realized because of its awareness'!?!?! dude, a shadow is lack of light falling on an object because something is between the object and the light-source - its not capable of anything!!
faithful - "Therefore, it appears to me that there is missing data in statement number one because matter and anti-matter do exist." - y, empty space in our universe does have the quantum potential to split into those 2 componenets but empty space is not nothing, it, together with laws of physics and quantum mechanics came about through the expansion process.
"Perhaps, there has never been nothing" - so what's at the start of the cause/effect process?
""What to be?" is the next most logical question to ask." - ??????????????? i think i'll be a duck!
forget it, i think this whole group was stupid of me to make! so was coming back to DS - here, i'm making you all admins, feel free to trash the place.
if people want to have lighter discussions, i would actually be very happy if some threads were started by someone other than me and i enjoy those type of discussions just as well - or something silly, fun, whatever.
but one thing i gotta get off my chest is that english is a second language to me and i had to put up with racist teachers who hated me for no reason and persevered and made sure that i educated myself.
when i'm in a good mood i can put up with pretty much anything, but i do get a bit upset when people imply that i'm trying to put them down just because i'm tripping out on a complex thought process or insult my intelligence with fairy-tale stories.
so, if a thread i start is not very interesting for you, please start another one and we'll chat away happily there. if you don't understand something i say, ask, nothing i like more than helping someone realise something they haven't before as the people i remember with most fondness in my life are those that did the same for me.
-cheers
I have to go, write more later