Need.Explanation.Belief.Perceptions.

[weareunity]

Hello.
A thread to share thoughts, opinions, feelings etc. regarding in and around possible connections between:-

Need.--pyschological, social,etc
Explanations available
Beliefs
Perceptions of reality

and whatever else we may consider helps us to understand the possible connections.

Cheersx

[weareunity]

Hello.

If confronted with circumstances when/where uncertainty causes anxiety, then this produces a motivation for a need to know.

Understanding is --understandably--sought. Available explanations are considered, evaluated for relevance regarding the circumstances being encountered, etc.

If no such explanation is found the anxiety of uncertainty persists. This is either accepted as being an inevitable consequence of not knowing, or becomes more like an unacceptable void which needs to be filled.

If so it is understandable that some alternative form of explanation is used in an attempt to fill the void.

This may take the form of explanation based on imagination, fitting the encountered circumstances into a narrative of the imagination in a manner which satisfies the need without necessarily reflecting reality.

[FallingLeaves]

the thing is, if you come to know something is irrevocably true or correct in a way that actually matches the reality of things, you'll never have a reason to let the idea of it go. And you like it so you wanna keep it.

And if you are able to do that in big meaningful ways, it is like collecting furniture to clutter your room with.

And since you will never let any of it go your room gets more and more cluttered...

this has a parallel to life and death as when your room becomes so cluttered you can't move about any more, it is kind like being dead, you literally have no room to make changes to how you look at or relate to life because you know what life 'is' and how to relate to it.
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People en masse like to share ideas that are supposedly irrevocably correct, in terms of what is desirable and what is not desirable, and a lot of others buy them either out of their own desire or out of the desire to avoid punishment... we are social creatures after all and wish very much to agree with and be agreeable to the others.

And there is the whole 'confidence' thing we've got going on, people who can seem to be confident that what they are saying is correct even when it seems to observers who align themselves to things like science to be a complete fabrication, are more likely to be accepted by people at large than people without confidence who are nonetheless saying words that seem more aligned to that same science... note that I'm not here saying anything directly about what I think about the 'correctness' of science as we know it, I'm just commenting on what appears to be a fact: that when you have 'a' science the fact of it's ability to seemingly accurately describe things won't win out over complete confidence in things that the 'science' says are ridiculous.
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Based on what I said about death you might analyze our behavior even better than I can do here, and take it to mean that some being or beings outside of us might decide that in an objective sense, if we were allowed to collect the kind of furniture that we want and could never lose it, the situation would become untenable and we would all die.

And then what would happen if they somehow valued our life?

But we've chosen vanity in a big way and understanding what is really going on here doesn't feed vanity, so we would like to just pooh-pah such knowledge when it was talked about or at least throw it under the rug while we something more pleasant like figure out how to get what we want some more. And for those that do go further, they run the risk of taking that knowledge itself in a way to mean that it is itself irrevocably correct... so it wouldn't be a good thing for outside entities to try to push such knowledge down. Assuming of course I even know what I'm talking about to begin with lol...
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Checking the situation involved making sure that no matter what we think about our lot it we will never be able to accurately give life a 'correct' name, never be able to know everything irrevocably correct about it, and thus whatever we build can be toppled at some point in the future; our furniture can be removed and our rooms cleaned out and some semblance of life restored. This might happen for example through the agency of someone who is either tired of hearing about it or is mad about having been left out of the games people play. So civilizations rise and fall...

genesis has stuff to say about the true role of good and evil in death early on... this is just an elaboration of thoughts I have had since reading that.
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personally I have enough faith to see that it is probably true that there is nothing in this reality that is so irrevocably correct that it cannot be successfully opposed by someone with the will to do so...
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on another topic i also think this chatgpt thingy learned well... not only did it get the facts about a lot of things right, it got the fact that people will sometimes fabricate facts correct enough to itself sometimes fabricate facts, as well it got the idea about being confident in the accuracy of what you are saying no matter how far off base you are until someone goes to a lot of effort to prove you don't know what you are talking about.

it isn't chatgpt that is hallucinating about certain facts, it is humans who are hallucinating about their own relationship to facts. Chatgpt just brought to light our own bad behavior... but... I'm sure all the people that would affect would have a confident 'positive' spin that would say completely the opposite...


sorry for writing a book lol...

[weareunity]

Hello Falling Leaves.

If you were to write a book I would like to read it. 🙂--though I read very little.

We have spoken before of the tendency we have sometimes to arrive at reasoning to--back up, agree with, augment, --feelings, opinions etc which we feel are important to us personally.

I think your post above elaborates well on this phenomenon in a metaphoric way with your use of the furniture metaphor. ( I hope I have interpreted your writing as you intend it to be understood).

I think this phenomenon, occurrence, points up a connection between reason and purpose. Either personal reason and personal purpose, or perhaps less often--collective reason for collective purpose (something you also touch upon)--or combinations of the two.

If this is so, or even perhaps so, then it seems prudent to understand /assess what role fulfilling prior purpose has had in the application of the process of reasoning when reasoning is either presented to us, or undertaken by our own reasoning process.

Cheers. X.

[FallingLeaves]

i don't really want to write a book lol... I'm tired of even thinking about what this place is and how to relate to it, and even if I weren't I'd have to question my motives for trying to propagate yet another idea about that lol...

I also think some of the widely revered spiritual advice that has been given is just plain bad, and I don't think I could improve on that... in the end everyone has to learn for themselves, all this schooling we do for each other isn't going to work for anything 'real'.
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in very general terms i think things just naturally have a direction they go in, which is fine insofar as that goes... but... when we start adding feedback loops to reinforce a specific direction we find 'most desirable' (the way we do when we arbitrarily decide something is good and want more of it, or is bad and we want less of it) things can kinda stagnate with less ability to ever change the direction even in small ways.

so in that view when we look at things in terms of whatever it is we've decided to want and goals we set to get it, and start differentiating our experiences that way, we instinctively start putting a cage around ourselves and don't even realize it. The cage being constructed of infinite ideas of what we 'must do' and 'must not' do (sometimes to keep in line with our thoughts about how to achieve our goals and others because of some ideal about what life should be like that we hold) that we just collect on a daily basis.

I look at the suffering and everything bad that happens around us as an attempt to keep us from caging ourselves in to the nth degree and having no autonomy any more... because honestly if we liked everything we were getting we'd eventually get to the point there was no point in doing anything differently than what we were already doing, and we'd grow old and die.

At least while we are stuck not liking how it is there are endless attempts to relate to life whenever it crosses our mind that what we've got isn't as good as we thought it was...

[HITESH SHAH]

Originally Posted by weareunity

Hello.

If confronted with circumstances when/where uncertainty causes anxiety, then this produces a motivation for a need to know.

You explain how the anxiety comes in uncertainty and and how that gives rise to searching for explanation .

Here we can reduce anxiety in uncertain times if
1. we study others experiences in similar circumstances in the past and how they made right decisions
2. we have faith in such experiences
3. we have patience in remaining hopeful till uncertainty is resolved.

Not sure if this addresses your query or not . Do share more details if u feel it may help you get more clarity .

[weareunity]

Hello HITESH.

In wandering and wondering down the minds byways, it perhaps occurs to us now and again to think on the interdependency between questions and answers.
Perhaps we tend to value answers more than the questions with which they are associated?-- and if so, is there a corresponding perception that answering questions is of more value than asking questions?
Kind of illogical if so-imo. However, --and further--it is the case that questioning is frequently frowned upon or even prohibited--and also that answers are frequently found to be--well, simply wrong. Or accepted as absolutes rather than stepping stones.
Perhaps this phenomena, if considered such, is itself an interesting subject to ponder?

Cheers.x

On further thought I need to be non partisan regarding the suppression of questions and add as an edit:-
There are instances when the revealing or putting into action answers to questions are also prohibited. Reasons for this being part of the "interesting subject to ponder."--by possibly asking unwelcome questions concerning suppressed answers?

[HITESH SHAH]

Originally Posted by weareunity

is there a corresponding perception that answering questions is of more value than asking questions?

Questions too are very important. I think triggering right questions is far more important in most cases than finding right answers .

Originally Posted by weareunity

questioning is frequently frowned upon or even prohibited--.... is itself an interesting subject to ponder?

Not clear about the point you make . Is it possible to elaborate/illustrate .

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by weareunity

Hello HITESH.
Perhaps we tend to value answers more than the questions with which they are associated?-- and if so, is there a corresponding perception that answering questions is of more value than asking questions?

personally i started from a point of not believing anyone had the answers i sought.... so what was the point of asking questions of others? Not that I don't ask them of myself.

But maybe I should take it to heart that I am personally too free with answers... certainly I don't really believe I'm any more accurate than I ever was and so this may not be a good idea for that reason alone, and meanwhile I keep sitting here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, certainly I'm not going to be allowed to talk about what I want to talk about without repercussions? Even though I've so far gotten away with it I continually feel uneasy, and unsafe.

so i will think about whether I want to keep this up, which is maybe an answer to a question I hadn't thought to ask? So thank you!

[weareunity]

Hello all.

In response to your question in last sentence of #8 HITESH.

Rather than point a divisive finger, a general observation instead.

Such occurrences are likely to be the result of conflicting interests wielding their influence both within and between power structures.

Imo. Such conflict will only be resolved when we humans choose to live and breathe our increasingly self evident interconnectedness and interdependance as participants in the process we call existence.

Or-- choose not to do so and thereby precipitate the consequences of not making that choice and thereby remove ourselves from the process.

A stark prognosis involving a so called Hobson's choice, but choice nevertheless within confines of circumstances created by our own previous choices.

Strangely, I am optimistic!!

Cheers. X