Maybe Humanities, but in an effort to use S&A for it's full scope (read: more than just sex), here is the topic.

I have a big problem with accepting the un-authentic. It's one of my problems; I won't accept anything but the best.

Probably the biggest of these "unauthentic" things is thought; specifically, emotion. Basically, I believe (and have seen proven enough for me to believe) that all of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations etc etc etc are basically: neurochemical interactions in our brains.

I'm sure you can see why this is a depressing thought.

Because it means that everything that we feel, the highest highs, the lowest lows, are all fake. I know they are real enough, but they're still fake. They all serve one over-arching purpose: perpetuation of the species. And I hate it.

Discuss.

Yes.

Hehe, I used to think like this, as well. Then I decided to understand, really, what an emotion is compared to what I wish it were.

I couldn't define a single thing, because emotions are what they should be. A chemical reaction is real. It's not fake.

Love might be a reaction created by the releasing of a certain combination of chemicals, but that doesn't mean that it's anymore fake than anything else we experience.

In the end, you'll have to understand that nothing in life is real, if you move far enough away from what is normal to you. In the end, you'll have to either learn to accept it, or try and change it.

The latter isn't a path I'd suggest to take, seeing as it's a never ending spiral of love and hate, pain and pleasure.

I'm speaking from experience, here, of what little I have in this matter.

You need some comparison material. Try some altered states. You sound ready for moderate drug experimentation.

quote:Originally posted by deadlycindy:

You need some comparison material. Try some altered states. You sound ready for moderate drug experimentation.



Been there. Done that. It's all still chemical reactions, and no matter what I feel at the time I feel the same once I'm sober. Drugs are now only for my personal pleasure. That's what I do everything for now; my pleasure. Not that I didn't before, I'm just acknowledging that I do everything for pleasure now. And acknowledgement of facts is strength.

Sorry. Waxing philosophical/apathetical tonight.

Maybe it's just because I had a good fuck, and a nap, along with new madden 2005, but this post has too many big words.

quote:Originally posted by deptstoremook:

I have a big problem with accepting the un-authentic. It's one of my problems; I won't accept anything but the best.

Probably the biggest of these "unauthentic" things is thought; specifically, emotion. Basically, I believe (and have seen proven enough for me to believe) that all of our thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations etc etc etc are basically: neurochemical interactions in our brains.

I'm sure you can see why this is a depressing thought.

Because it means that everything that we feel, the highest highs, the lowest lows, are all fake. I know they are real enough, but they're still fake.

It's depressing because you've gone stupid in a special kind of way that comes to people who think too much but not quite enough. Is illumination fake because it's produced by electrons flowing through a hot wire? Are pain or heartbeats fake because they are the result of neurochemical impulses? Is 2 + 2 = 4 fake because it was done on a cheap calculator?

Many people believe that there's the body, which handles most of life's work, and a soul sort of inhabiting or hovering near the body that handles miscellaneous ill-defined duties such as being smarter than animals and preserving your essence after you have died. Never mind that the soul works its mysterious ways so that it can never be detected.

Then there are strict materialists - people who believe that if you're talking about something you can't touch, taste, smell, see, hear, or extrapolate from experimental data, it doesn't exist. There's a strong tendency to reductionism here -- "I don't see a forest or trees, just a bunch of atoms." It sounds like you've momentarily become one of these people and are sad that you are made out of meat and disgusted at your delusions of meat-emotion.

I believe that humans are more than "mere" meat. I also believe that the meat is where everything happens. I believe that if I could be duplicated down to an atomic level, the duplicate would be just like me up to the point our shared experience diverged.

Consider a chess-playing computer. Where is the chess-playing soul of this machine? You could say it's in software instructions. But every part of the software, from the highest level of abstraction to the lowest, needs to run on physical hardware before it can do anything. Electrons must flow, or photons fly, or mechanical relays clack. There's always a tie back to the concrete, physical world. But since the chess-playing ability is not tied to any one physical device -- the software embodies abstract concepts that work on many different sorts of real machines -- we can also consider the high-level meaning it contains. We momentarily ignore its low-level operation on a specific piece of hardware.

Humans have broadly similar yet unique bodies. We can discuss and share emotions and more abstract thought despite our differences. Our emotions and thoughts take place always within the corporeal self, but dismissing emotion as not real enough because it's based on chemical impulses is ridiculous. Arrangement of impulses is more important than the mere existence of impulses. You can tell the difference between white noise and music. Don't try to pretend that you can't or shouldn't, or that music is meaningless because it reaches you as sound waves (oh noes, the physical world again!)