• Inyenzi
    81
    Human embodiment brings to my mind an image of a man juggling, while navigating a tightrope. Each ball represents a particular bodily need (protection from illness and disease, warmth, water, food, hygiene, sex, child-rearing, etc) that progressively becomes more burdensome as it falls towards the jugglers hands. He or she (motivated by the sense of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, pain, or suffering felt) addresses and deals with the need, throwing the ball up again, buying time as the next ball falls into his hands. The tightrope has no end. Man simply juggles these balls while inching along in time, until he misses his catch, stumbles and falls to his death. Depending on his or her particular individual genetic and situational fortune, some men can throw their balls higher, some are born with less balls to juggle, some possess better skills, some have others to help their balance - others feel they have nothing to tread towards and willingly jump.

    Obviously, under this view it is an unenviable position to be stranded on a tightrope in this precarious situation. But - people might say - there are upsides to this situation. We may feel pleasure when dealing with a particular need - scratching an itch, quenching our thirst, satiating our hunger, satisfying our sex drive. We have moments when all our balls are airborne where we use the respite to pursue interests, projects, hobbies, leisure - relationships. Perhaps most meaningfully, we (although not all) don't juggle alone. We have others to help, and to help us juggle. We find company to keep, connections to make, relationships to form, love to fall in. We feel we are juggling for something, we tread our tightropes towards something.

    But is this not too, just another ball to juggle? Maintaining relationships, warding off loneliness, boredom, ennui, depression. The objects and subjects of our desire and affections must be attracted, held onto, maintained. Friendships end, relationships fail, heartbreak hurts. And as we tread on further in time, we watch ourselves and others aging, slowing, losing our abilities to juggle. Eventually (or suddenly), those we care about stumble their catch, suffer and fall to their death. And all the while new jugglers are being born into the circus, raised and trained in the art by parents, a community and wider social structure until they are skilled enough to manage their balls. Some appear to take great delight in observing and participating in this - after all, the show must go on!

    But, does it? Perhaps this is a cynical view, but it seems to me that once born we are compelled to juggle, and our options are to either cultivate better skills, throw our balls higher to find time to lose (distract?) ourselves in our interests, or willingly lose our balance entirely. Regardless, we all fall in the end. Would it not be better to close down the circus? Perhaps - but this seems impossible when the circus itself emerges as a consequence of us jugglers - the show continues as a consequence of dealing with our needs for sex, relationships, family, love, etc (which are predicated upon having already dealt with more basic needs like protection, water, shelter, etc). We aren't all going to stop juggling together.

    So what to do? I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first place.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first place.Inyenzi

    What, without asking, hither hurried whence?
    And, without asking, whither hurried hence!
    Another and another Cup to drown
    The Memory of this Impertinence!

    From birth we can look forward to being host
    To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
    Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
    And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast.

    —Omar Khayyam
  • skyblack
    545
    There is the alternative to embodiment, but one doesn't think any normal person would want/choose it, unless there is something wrong with them.
  • skyblack
    545
    I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first placeInyenzi

    Do you really? If you honesty ask yourself?

    If one takes people and society out of the mix, will you still feel that way?

    If the psyche was completely healed from the scars and made fresh, will you still feel that way?

    Edit: To be clear, i understand what you are pointing to, though.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Human embodiment brings to my mind an image of a man juggling, while navigating a tightrope.Inyenzi

    I assume by "embodiment," you mean being born. Is that correct? If so, you're just making the antinatalism argument that gets rehashed every few weeks here on the forum. Which is no reason for you not to have at it again.
  • khaled
    3.5k
    You can see anything as a curse to be alleviated or as a fun challenge. Everything you just said applies to any activity not just living in general. You juggle when you eat, you juggle when you play video games, you juggle when you do sports, you juggle when you talk with friends.

    Yet I’d bet you enjoy the juggling sometimes. And that there are often cases (I’d say most cases) where you WOULDN’T want the circus shut down. If you see a group of people playing pickup basketball do you wonder about how much they’re suffering and how basketball matches should all be closed down because they involve this juggling?

    So maybe it’s not that the juggling is inherently bad. You just don’t like the juggling of life. That’s a fixable problem. Whereas “juggling is inherently bad” isn’t. And also I’d bet money you don’t think the latter is true.

    So you can either pretend to believe the latter, in which case you will wallow in depression and make the juggling even worse, so it’s worse from both a practical and an intellectual honesty perspective. Or you can believe the former and have a difficult yet fixable problem on your hands. Your choice.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    He or she (motivated by the sense of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, pain, or suffering felt) addresses and deals with the needInyenzi

    As @khaled has alluded to above, this is categorically not the case. Humans are not motivated by sensations of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, pain, or suffering. Those are constructed emotions built as models to explain interocepted states. You have already been motivated by subconscious mental processes to deal with food, water, hygiene, sex etc. and you're trying to explain why, using narratives built from experience and cultural language available to you. You're couching these mental activities in negative terms optionally, they are not objectively negative. Even something as seemingly simple as a state of hunger is actually comprised of several physiological states, the signals for which have valence in themselves (not all negative, it must be said), you then look for cues from other perceptions and from your prior experiences, to select from available cultural narratives (like hunger, thirst) to draw together these physiological signals into a coherent story (where in reality they are often incoherent, inconsistent always variable and even contradictory).

    The problem here is not with 'life', it's with your storytelling abilities.
  • skyblack
    545
    Humans are not motivated by sensations of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, pain, or suffering.Isaac

    This is categorically untrue. Your "pursuit of happiness" originates/has them ( dis-ease, dissatisfaction, pain, or suffering) as the foundation. Which means ALL your activities are motivated by these. Not being able to see this simple fact is a case of cognitive denial/
  • Inyenzi
    81
    From birth we can look forward to being host
    To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
    Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
    And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast.
    PoeticUniverse

    Haha, catchy!

    The problem here is not with 'life', it's with your storytelling abilities.Isaac

    I mean, tell that to people literally starving to death. Sure, there is a physiological, hormonal basis to the felt sensation of hunger, but there is a difference between a bodily sensation (eg, the sensation of hunger, thirst, cold), and the needs of ones body (eg, nutrition, water, maintaining core body temperature). It is these needs that burden us (i.e. "a difficult situation or unpleasant responsibility that you must deal with or worry about").

    As @Khaled points out, we can change our attitude towards the issue (eg, "the needs of my body are a fun challenge to deal with"), but the point remains - it's still something one deals with, as long as one is embodied.

    There is the alternative to embodiment, but one doesn't think any normal person would want/choose it, unless there is something wrong with them.skyblack

    Suicide?
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    ...love to fall in.Inyenzi

    Great turn of phrase. Like a swamp!
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    So what to do? I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first place.Inyenzi

    What the hell is embodied?
  • Kasperanza
    39


    I think your problem is that you don't have anything to look forward to in life. There's no passions, no goals, no values. Instead of pursuing pleasure, you're escaping from pain. If all you do is escape, avoid, or maintain instead of pursuing, growing, and exploring, I wouldn't want to be "embodied" either.

    There's a great joy in juggling. After all, it's a circus. May as well have fun with it.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    It is these needs that burden us (i.e. "a difficult situation or unpleasant responsibility that you must deal with or worry about").Inyenzi

    Not as a given, no. 'Burden' and 'deal with' are both human cultural concepts. You might equally have to 'enjoy', 'allow', 'endure', 'relish'... There is no non-interpreted way of talking about them. You're interpreting them just by calling them 'burdens' and using the term 'deal with'. These are loaded terms and play a role in a whole narrative.

    tell that to people literally starving to deathInyenzi

    That there are sensations it is beyond our capabilities to interpret positively does not refute the fact that those within such capabilities that have such an option. Many models of physiological signals are wired from birth (or immediately postnatally) they can be very difficult to change. Your view of physiological signals like normal hunger is clearly not of this kind as most people already don't see it that negatively.

    An example might be music. There are many musical styles that people think are great or awful depending on their aesthetic preference. Such preferences can be trained, and change over one's lifetime. Our culture plays a huge role in what preferences we have. Almost no-one thinks ten minutes of discordant screaming is pleasant, it seems to breach the limits of what can be made preferable, even by long periods of cultural indoctrination. That there are limits doesn't make what we know about the heterogeneity of musical tastes wrong though, does it?
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    So what to do? I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first place.Inyenzi

    I have an insane explanation for that if it helps. I think the mind is arranged a bit like Alpha Zero. An executive system that tricks two players into thinking they are one person. The two are forced to make decisions that represent different interests. The executive system gives feedback on whether a move was good or safe. I think one side is connected to a threat response system and the other our emotional system. When under threat we either physically or chemically escape. So, when there is no positive emotional feedback we start trying to hack the system creating dangerous situations or skipping the middleman and doing drugs.
  • Corvus
    3.1k
    So what to do?Inyenzi

    I am sure it will not continue forever. The time will come for everyone, when their memories fail, their bodies ache without reason, eyes can't see properly, and sex drive not same as 10 year ago. And then they will know and tell themselves, "well the time has come, had better slow down.". They will come down from the rope, put away the balls to the drawer, and go for a walk. I am sure that is life.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I’m always fascinated by threads like this - there’s a point in our self-awareness where we ask ourselves: why am I doing this? And we find the answer unsatisfactory. That we can imagine a ‘disembodied’ existence - thanks to Descartes and perpetuated by computer science - presents a preferable option we’re unable to actualise. And the frustration as individuals is acute.

    This is an issue for dualism: the matter we embody is bound by limitations that the mind we embody is straining against. But this body was never supposed to mark the limits of our mind’s capacity. It is constructed to interact - to increase awareness, connection and collaboration - not to contain.

    Protection from illness and disease, warmth, water, food, hygiene, sex, child-rearing - none of these are ideally a solo act. The more we rely on others, the more efficiently and effectively we achieve them - whether we’re willing to admit it or not. Anyone who believes they are juggling alone is either not paying attention to where the ball goes when it leaves their hands, or not prepared to let go of the ball for long enough.

    Somebody, somewhere along the line, taught us to strive for autonomy. But the closer we come to creating this illusion, the more burdensome our life appears. No man is a solo act. The more we are connected and collaborating, the more we recognise we’re not expected to juggle alone, and the more satisfying this juggling act can be. When we stop seeing it as so many balls I must keep juggling, and start to look at it as so many jugglers working together, then this mental capacity we envisage beyond our bodily limitations makes more sense. It’s not what I must achieve as a lower limit for survival, but about what we can achieve as an upper limit of collaboration.

    That’s the way I see it, anyway.
  • skyblack
    545
    the matter we embody is bound by limitations that the mind we embody is straining against. But this body was never supposed to mark the limits of our mind’s capacityPossibility

    How did this come about? What do you think is the resolution, if any?
  • Cobra
    160
    Definitely agree. I mean what is the point to all these 130 pounds of flesh, organs and systems. There has to be an easier way to get nourishment and oxygen to the brain then all this other useless and impractical ways.

    Wake me up when we're cyborgs.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    the matter we embody is bound by limitations that the mind we embody is straining against. But this body was never supposed to mark the limits of our mind’s capacity
    — Possibility

    How did this come about? What do you think is the resolution, if any?
    skyblack

    I think the reduction of Darwin’s evolutionary theory to ‘survival value’ ignores an underlying ‘creative’ impetus of limited structural variability in all physical systems, not just in living organisms. Life individually is about limited resources of effort and attention over a duration. More broadly, though, it’s about developing and refining systems of variability, testing and adjustment across time. We’ve evolved not just to survive, but to maximise these limited systems of structural variability. Life is just one aspect of this.

    Mind/consciousness enables us to increase awareness, connection and collaboration beyond the limits of observation/measurement across time, and with imagination beyond the limits of perceived significance/value in potential. But it is our flesh, organs and systems that enable us to continually navigate an intimate, qualitative understanding of all physical systems: something a cyborg cannot replicate. This is what enables us to vary, test and adjust the efficiency and effectiveness of system structures, from the most complex to the simplest, as new information comes to light.

    Yet we focus on consolidating our position/identity as a dominant mind (destructive as we must be to sustain this), in some apparently necessary relation to a surviving body (temporary as it is), because it’s what we can be most certain of. In doing so, we strive to ignore, isolate and exclude these ‘useless and impractical systems’ that sustain us, and then complain that we are held back by them.

    While we remain enamoured by dualism, I think we will continue to both need our bodies and begrudge them.
  • Corvus
    3.1k
    I saw my father mentally deteriorating as his bodily health was failing losing memory and clarity in speech content and consciousness before his death.

    I was convinced that soul or mind as we call it, is just product of the body.
    As the body perishes, so does the mind.
    Would the soul resurrect? If the body resurrects and recovers its health, then maybe.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    We are the only animal that has the extra burden of justifying our own survival. I would ignore most posts that say something like “most people don’t think” because the fact is that every decision is it’s own micro decision. People could have done otherwise. So every waking moment we are justifying why we do anything and using all sorts of heuristics to keep the juggling going. There is no turning the juggling off until you’re dead so start liking juggling, “LIKE EVERYONE ELSE”.
  • skyblack
    545


    The "we", "us", and the "I" is the mind, or at least a major part of it, yes.
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