The meaning of life, conciousness, and the soul; a look inside my head
Today was the first day of school, which was great. I love middle college because they kind of ease you into the routine of school; this week I have classes from 9-12, and we don't do much actual work in them.
When I got back I started playing around with music for Project Aqua, a game a bunch of guys I know are making. I love the process of composing; its very rewarding. Here are some of my ideas/ramblings/themes that I'm expanding on for the piece: http://home.comcast.net/~larry.welsh/Title_Theme.mp3 (And yes, I know that the first couple of bars sound like halo; that was unintentional and has been fixed, but I dont care enough to convert it to mp3 and upload it again).
When I was in class we were given a list of questions to answer; with one of them being to describe your faith, or something along those lines. In any case, I got into talking about the origin of the soul and the meaning of life. Its something thats been on my mind for a while now.
I began to develop this view by looking at the causes of things in the world. Every single instance in the world has a cause, from the blooming of a flower to the presence of a speck of dust on my monitor. Furthermore, all of the causes of those things have a cause of their own. Take the speck of dust. Hypothetically, lets say the speck of dust was floating in the air before it got hit by a wind current moving it towards the monitor. The cause of that wind current was me walking up to my computer. The cause of me walking up to my computer was that my mom had asked me to find a date and time of some event for her. The reason she asked me that was because she didn't have a pen when she was given the date because she had let my brother borrow it to sign a card for my cousin's birthday which occured because her parents had a little too much to drink one night, because it was a friends last day in town because he had quit his job. A man quitting his job forty years ago in a city thousands of miles away from me now was indirectly responsible for the speck of dust resting on my monitor.
I figured that this was interesting and all, but what is the cause of thoughts? However, if you look at it, thoughts progress in the same, mechanical fashion. It doesn't seem like it so much because such a wide range of inputs could trigger a thought. You could smell something, see something, taste something, etc etc. Even though it doesn't seem like it in your day to day life, if you remove yourself from your mind and, in a way, watch your mind think, you will see these connections.
Now we come to the interesting bit: If your mind is as mechanical as everything else in the world, then why do we have a conciousness? It is not neccissary for us to be aware of these forks in our train of thought, as we have no control over them. They are controlled by our environment alone. Theoretically, the world could be filled with people who are in no way aware of their thoughts, and absolutly nothing would change. Nothing would be different. So, I've been asking myself, why?
Through this I have come to believe that the soul is just that; something watching the train of thought carreen on down its path. The interesting consequence of this is that I am not my body; my brain, my heart, my flesh and blood. I am simply watching "my" body go about its buisness from the most intimate vantage point avaliable. But where is that vantage point? It doesn't seem to be a biological thing; there isn't a lobe in the brain that watches all the other lobes work. It isn't in the network of switches in my head which govern my actions.
The question then also arises, where did it come from? I have no memory of anything before I was born, but then again, if I am correct above, the soul cannot think or remember. It can only observe. Perhaps there is a great mass of these souls in some alternate plane of reality, each one attaching itself to a brain when it develops and leaving it when it dies.
Another interesting consequence about this is the idea that, perhaps, everyone is the same; a carbon copy of every other soul out there, the only thing providing a distinction from one to the next being the body it is inhabiting at the time. Or perhaps I am the only one, living in my own personal world. I don't like going down this path, it makes me feel lonely.
The soul couldn't have evolved, as there is no state of simply "kind of" observing thoughts. Furthermore, there is no reason that having a soul provides any advantage.
The frustrating thing about thinking is it never creates answers, only questions.
As Nick put it so well in one of his past entries: "Welcome to my mind. Feel free to stay"
When I got back I started playing around with music for Project Aqua, a game a bunch of guys I know are making. I love the process of composing; its very rewarding. Here are some of my ideas/ramblings/themes that I'm expanding on for the piece: http://home.comcast.net/~larry.welsh/Title_Theme.mp3 (And yes, I know that the first couple of bars sound like halo; that was unintentional and has been fixed, but I dont care enough to convert it to mp3 and upload it again).
When I was in class we were given a list of questions to answer; with one of them being to describe your faith, or something along those lines. In any case, I got into talking about the origin of the soul and the meaning of life. Its something thats been on my mind for a while now.
I began to develop this view by looking at the causes of things in the world. Every single instance in the world has a cause, from the blooming of a flower to the presence of a speck of dust on my monitor. Furthermore, all of the causes of those things have a cause of their own. Take the speck of dust. Hypothetically, lets say the speck of dust was floating in the air before it got hit by a wind current moving it towards the monitor. The cause of that wind current was me walking up to my computer. The cause of me walking up to my computer was that my mom had asked me to find a date and time of some event for her. The reason she asked me that was because she didn't have a pen when she was given the date because she had let my brother borrow it to sign a card for my cousin's birthday which occured because her parents had a little too much to drink one night, because it was a friends last day in town because he had quit his job. A man quitting his job forty years ago in a city thousands of miles away from me now was indirectly responsible for the speck of dust resting on my monitor.
I figured that this was interesting and all, but what is the cause of thoughts? However, if you look at it, thoughts progress in the same, mechanical fashion. It doesn't seem like it so much because such a wide range of inputs could trigger a thought. You could smell something, see something, taste something, etc etc. Even though it doesn't seem like it in your day to day life, if you remove yourself from your mind and, in a way, watch your mind think, you will see these connections.
Now we come to the interesting bit: If your mind is as mechanical as everything else in the world, then why do we have a conciousness? It is not neccissary for us to be aware of these forks in our train of thought, as we have no control over them. They are controlled by our environment alone. Theoretically, the world could be filled with people who are in no way aware of their thoughts, and absolutly nothing would change. Nothing would be different. So, I've been asking myself, why?
Through this I have come to believe that the soul is just that; something watching the train of thought carreen on down its path. The interesting consequence of this is that I am not my body; my brain, my heart, my flesh and blood. I am simply watching "my" body go about its buisness from the most intimate vantage point avaliable. But where is that vantage point? It doesn't seem to be a biological thing; there isn't a lobe in the brain that watches all the other lobes work. It isn't in the network of switches in my head which govern my actions.
The question then also arises, where did it come from? I have no memory of anything before I was born, but then again, if I am correct above, the soul cannot think or remember. It can only observe. Perhaps there is a great mass of these souls in some alternate plane of reality, each one attaching itself to a brain when it develops and leaving it when it dies.
Another interesting consequence about this is the idea that, perhaps, everyone is the same; a carbon copy of every other soul out there, the only thing providing a distinction from one to the next being the body it is inhabiting at the time. Or perhaps I am the only one, living in my own personal world. I don't like going down this path, it makes me feel lonely.
The soul couldn't have evolved, as there is no state of simply "kind of" observing thoughts. Furthermore, there is no reason that having a soul provides any advantage.
The frustrating thing about thinking is it never creates answers, only questions.
As Nick put it so well in one of his past entries: "Welcome to my mind. Feel free to stay"