Dontaskme wrote:
But philosophy is only interested in the psychological aspect of the self..it's totally restricting from the start, in the sense that according to philosophy, reality pertains to a separate 'I' so philosophy is already filled with gaping gaps ..so why would one want to engage in a lie like that?
The nature of self is of interest to Western philosophers.Most Western philosophers will have heard of the Eastern philosophical idea that Atman is Brahman, and many have thought about it. Schopenhauer was interested in Eastern philosophy.
It seems even before a new baby is born, it's already had it's life planned out for it. It seems every new born then just accepts the world they are born into without questioning it. As soon as they're born their world is already decided for them, they are programmed to believe what every one else believes..for example..things like it's Monday and tomorrow will be Tuesday...etc etc...
I agree.
Every human baby is born as pure potential on a human level..as beings aware of themselves..but then are forced into accepting the current belief systems because they didn't know any different. They're swept along the consensus story where everyone has to play the same old story over and over again...the treadmill of human life, same old, different day..year in year out where everyone just accepts it without ever thinking whether they could actually change the variables that is human life.
Cultures of belief and practice do evolve. Whenever some big environmental change happens people are forced to think again and those who fail to do so are comparatively helpless.
That is until they do awaken to what's really going on, when they start to get glimpses of real truth of who they are, they start to think for them selves and realise they are living a life that someone else has set up for them. It's like we are born with this infinite possibility ...but then we are squeezed into tiny little boxes, sometimes we feel so crushed by this tight conditioning that our only relief is addictions...addictions to the dictatorship, we become so dependant on it, our thinking becomes unbalanced because it's all based on a ''separate self'' that believes it has to be this personal separate I in order to be successful in this world..we don't think to look beyond that arena, to the bigger picture.
I dare say that most people don't awaken to what is going on in the cognitive sense, let alone in the mystical sense. People being squeezed into tiny boxes is what good teachers , good religions, and even good doctors try to prevent.
However the details of small social encounters between individuals, their language, what they talk about and how they say it, that's to say the tiny details of a culture are how we can build up a wider picture of human groups.
When individuals understand each other better is when we can see a bigger picture.Philosophy, psychology, and anthropology are all about how individuals understand each other. I grant that mysticism is another way, however mysticism has the danger that people confuse wishful thinking, or emotionalism, with mystical experience.
We are constantly being told how to think, which we then believe actually saves us from doing the job, so we get lazy and get helplessly swept along with the tide of other peoples ideas and thoughts and beliefs which don't really serve us, but feel powerless to change, but we instinctively know that change is for our own good.
You must be reading the wrong books and newspapers! It's great to rebel but rebellion is not sufficient.
In the believed powerlessness to change the status quo, we become unbalanced and overwhelmed, we lose touch with our real potential so we just accept that this is the best we can do, and nothing is going to change.
People who live their lives like this are attending the wrong church or are otherwise enslaved ,or are psychologically depressed.
Expanding our awareness is about looking at the bigger picture and not just blindly accepting that this is the best we can do. We are pure potential and the best we can do with our time is to go shopping looking for material stuff we don't need or really want.
I agree. Who would not agree?( Damn few and they're all dead.)
You see, you can write well when you want to!