Page 2 of 2 [ 21 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

NUTLOG
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 126
Location: UK

02 Oct 2007, 9:59 am

michel wrote:
Find out who you really are, and BE that person.


I fail to see how someone can't be themselves. Even if you were copying someone else directly, it's still something that you felt the compulsion to do and it must mean something to you. It's still your expression, you're still being you as far as I'm concerned, but it's all just perspective I guess. If I could be sure of just one thing in this world, it could anchor me down, give me a platform to base everything else from, but everything is disputable, objectivity doesn't exist.
I also don't understand how to find out 'who I am'. To me, that has so many implications that my mind cowers at the very mention of it. Where to begin in discovering something as inifite, complex and indeed changeable as the self? By the time I find out what I am, the discovery will have probably changed me so much as to necessitate a re-evaluation of what I have just become, creating a circular journey where each time an answer is found, it brings back the very question that it supposedly answered. Perhaps many people have an innate ability to simplify and can therefore handle these types of questions, but for me, I'm lost as soon as I take my first step forward.
I feel like I'm at the centre of a giant vortex, infinity is spiralling to me while I can do nothing but absorb it and be bombarded with contradictions left, right and centre. Trying to piece together a view or a stance towards something with an infinity of conflicting thoughts and feelings is beyond a challenge. It numbs my mind into a functionless...thing. It's like choosing a mystery prize and expecting to be content with it. I just never know what I'm getting when I form my opinions, so I can't stand by such a 'choice.' Not that I believe in choice, but I'm not getting started on that. :x

All I can do is let the stream of thoughts flow through me, I don't feel connected with them, I don't always think about them, they just appear. At best, I merely moderate them. Is it really me? It doesn't feel like it. Are these my thoughts, or just a logical reaction to the current situation and the state of all concerned? Is there a difference? I don't often let my thoughts see the light of day anymore, half the time I don't know what I'm saying or what I'm trying to say so to keep myself out of trouble I keep shtum, shtoom or however you're meant to spell it. :? But perhaps those are the most pure thoughts of all. Whatever pure is meant to mean, I do not know however.



NUTLOG
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 126
Location: UK

02 Oct 2007, 10:06 am

Noa wrote:
You have the proper temperament to become a literary scholar specializing in the Russian and French existentialists.


If that would involve reading books, you can count me out. :lol: I haven't read a book in years, don't have the attention span for that, nor the obsessive interest that may override said lack of attention.



legionnaire
Butterfly
Butterfly

User avatar

Joined: 25 Jun 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 16

02 Oct 2007, 10:24 am

I have my interests genetics, biology, physics, programming, computers to name a few but i have narrow it down and assuming i have done this and finish college and lets say i get a job. It still leaves me wondering, why? whats the point? I do all of this work and....?


_________________
Autistic
Supremacy
resistance is futil give up now


NUTLOG
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 126
Location: UK

02 Oct 2007, 10:55 am

legionnaire wrote:
I have my interests genetics, biology, physics, programming, computers to name a few but i have narrow it down and assuming i have done this and finish college and lets say i get a job. It still leaves me wondering, why? whats the point? I do all of this work and....?


Precisely! If you enjoy all of that and the very persuit of this so called 'success' makes you feel alive and justified then that's great, but none of that stuff does s**t for me. I'm guessing that you're starting to realise that this 'success' may not be important to you too, thus the question, "what other options do I have?" If you can find something that does make you happy and motivates you and you are content to follow it, then that can replace your career. Some people like doing charity work and helping other people. Some are obsessed with the environment or animal rights and ignore a traditional career to try and make the world a better place. Personally, it all seems futile to me, I don't feel for any of it. If you feel the same then I sympathise for you, but I've certainly got no answers. All you can do is search, I guess. But I still feel like there's nothing to find.

Most people seem to do all this work and career nonsense so they can have the financial security necessary for starting a family. I certainly don't want children, so that doesn't inspire me at all. All a career would give me is money, it has nothing else to offer me. But I've got nothing much to spend money on so a career doesn't appeal to me, I know I'd be uncomfortable with whatever job I had and even the lowest paid full time jobs would give me more money than I can be bothered to spend. So climbing the career ladder is not for me. Not that I'm capable of handling a job anyway.

I'm just lost and that's putting it mildly.



Spaceplayer
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 311

02 Oct 2007, 11:47 am

A lot of this existentialism goes back to the dual between Plato and Aristotle. Plato believed in a world of ideal forms, of which this material world is a crude copy. He put consciousness before existence. Aristotle did the opposite; he asserted the existence of the material world, and put existence before consciousness. Existential depression goes along with the idea of Aristotle, but with the twist of saying that, because there is no "ideal" world, as a set of instructions or guiding light, existence is absurd and meaningless. But it misses the idea that only consciousness can give meaning to existence. That existence "just is," "A is A." But man, having consciousness, has a choice to embrace that power of consciousness, and create meaning, not ex-nihilo, but out of the material world and his own consciousness. Some people embrace this and create their own meaning, some are scared of this power and don't want it, and look for others to give them meaning(communism) or look to religion, anything outside themselves as long as they don't have to make that choice.

Of course, if their is nothing out of nothing, much of our meaning has to have a basis in the physical world, and our human nature (body and consciousness, genes, etc.) play a part in determining our values. But because of the ability to abstract, we can "recreate" reality out of existing reality, new arrangements and juxtapositions that weren't there before. Or we can "rationalize" and make things out of nothing that will never exist, like non-sequiters and chesire cats.

There's a lot of power, and a lot of responsibility.