Requisite Monthly Update
So, it's been a while again, hasn't it? I only seem to get out about one of these per month anymore. There isn't really much to say. For those who are interested and/or haven't yet gathered, I'm mostly a broken person these days. Just the usual alienation, dehumanization, helplessness, and hopelessness. For the past month or so I've only slept 4 or 5 hours a night, except on weekends or the days I call in "sick" where I will sleep through the afternoon. My employment is purely a means to the end of prolonging my rather pathetic survival and I derive nothing but frustration and despair from my time spent at 'work'. I work so that I can afford a place to live, food, and the internet. Fiction and games are most of what I have to keep me going these days, and when I take a step back that usually doesn't seem like very much. Escapism at best. Social interactions are generally few and far between and I find myself with less and less interest in dealing with people as time passes. The vast majority of my interpersonal encounters involve me putting on a mask and playing a role; whether with the people who call at work, the other employees, the people I walk past in the streets and sit with on the subway, or the clerks I buy food and supplies from, it's just easier to act normal and pretend things are okay. I enjoy the company of my friends when I have it, but those times feel so disconnected from the rest of my experience that they seem like some sort of strange dream - another manifestation of the same basic escapism. I also often feel guilty because I feel that I'm bad company.
Thought for the day:
I don't think I believe in choice or free will anymore. I think the "folk" interpretation of the debate between causality and free will can be mostly summed up as the view that the world is basically deterministic but that conscious/human beings are some sort of magical exception that is able to make choices free from the brute causality that surrounds them. I'm leaning towards the opposite view: The world itself is complete chaos on a fundamental level and human consciousness is the continuous and futile struggle to make sense of the randomness around us. Consciousness is an experience of permanence and stability and, since we are inclined to believe that the data of our senses is much more reliable than it actually is, we mistakenly attribute that stability to the world around us. We are not "free" in the sense that we normally understand the word; we just do our best to follow along in the currents of a stream we cannot possibly comprehend, doing our best to hold off the inevitability of sinking under and drowning.
This is less about ontology and metaphysics and more about having a sense of control.
Thought for the day:
I don't think I believe in choice or free will anymore. I think the "folk" interpretation of the debate between causality and free will can be mostly summed up as the view that the world is basically deterministic but that conscious/human beings are some sort of magical exception that is able to make choices free from the brute causality that surrounds them. I'm leaning towards the opposite view: The world itself is complete chaos on a fundamental level and human consciousness is the continuous and futile struggle to make sense of the randomness around us. Consciousness is an experience of permanence and stability and, since we are inclined to believe that the data of our senses is much more reliable than it actually is, we mistakenly attribute that stability to the world around us. We are not "free" in the sense that we normally understand the word; we just do our best to follow along in the currents of a stream we cannot possibly comprehend, doing our best to hold off the inevitability of sinking under and drowning.
This is less about ontology and metaphysics and more about having a sense of control.