Your Facebook Friends List's Idea of Humour

[redbreegull]

[redbreegull]

[teh b0lly!!1]

i feel those too much to laugh :/

[redbreegull]

The Picard quote actually really speaks to me because I constantly neurotically engage in this magical thinking nonsense where I feel sorry for myself and ask over and over what did I DO to deserve this? Where did I fuck up? Who did I wrong that the universe did this all to me?

and really the answer is I did nothing wrong, I just got hit by life. but that is hard to accept and in a way makes one feel even more powerless

[reprise85]

we've been talking about the evolutionary origins of religiosity/spirituality in my evo psych class

basically the prof thinks we have it because we have theory of mind. because we know we do things for a reason and other people do things for a reason we are wired to assume everything happens for a reason. and because we attribute reason to purpose, we assume there is a reason that tree fell on my car besides 'the wind blew it down and my car happened to be there at that moment'. that's basically the short of it.

[teh b0lly!!1]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

The Picard quote actually really speaks to me because I constantly neurotically engage in this magical thinking nonsense where I feel sorry for myself and ask over and over what did I DO to deserve this? Where did I fuck up? Who did I wrong that the universe did this all to me?

and really the answer is I did nothing wrong, I just got hit by life. but that is hard to accept and in a way makes one feel even more powerless

pretty similar to my own process. even though it varies between that, and torturous feelings of guilt from any bad thing i've ever done in my life, that make me feel like i deserve it, or am being punished for past mistakes

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by reprise85

we've been talking about the evolutionary origins of religiosity/spirituality in my evo psych class

basically the prof thinks we have it because we have theory of mind. because we know we do things for a reason and other people do things for a reason we are wired to assume everything happens for a reason. and because we attribute reason to purpose, we assume there is a reason that tree fell on my car besides 'the wind blew it down and my car happened to be there at that moment'. that's basically the short of it.

This makes sense. It also seems to me that the universe is comprehensible to us when it works like us. We want the universe to be guided by (moral) rules which are possible to divine and understand because that would make us powerful and secure, versus being microbes spinning through space in some insane accident.

My parents, although non-religious, both tend to immediately explain things this way, as if things happen to us to teach us specific lessons or set us on specific paths, and that might be part of why I am so tortured by this thought process even though I try so hard to expel it from my mind.

[teh b0lly!!1]

i'm not religious, but looking at the universe as something devoid of any purpose, sense, reason, and even morality, is just mind bogglingly, blackout-inducing depressing.

[redbreegull]

Rousseau said that we seek spiritual fulfillment because it is a biological need like eating or drinking. It's what keeps us from going crazy, from destroying ourselves or others. I think to some extent this makes sense and I actually consider myself a fairly spiritual person although I don't believe in magic or God. I recognize that even if it is just in our heads, there is a realm beyond the physical which we experience. I have a framework through which I view myself in relation to the universe and a framework for how to treat others and why this is a "good" thing to observe.

my problem is that all these other spiritual beliefs creep in insidiously or are hiding in dark corners, and it's really hard to toss them out to make room for the logical, analytical relationship I want to have with the universe. It's weird but in a way it is a conflict between what I intuitively believe and what I logically believe

[reprise85]

It's easy to be a logical athiest, but much harder to live that way intuitively. We want things to make sense and we will default back to wishing it to be so. And as shitty as it is to believe, many people only act morally because they believe some human-like god with extra special powers is watching them.

It's like, Genesis is self awareness. Knowledge of good and evil. We ate the fruit or whatever and developed consciousness and now we are forever existentially damned or something. But that's how it is. Consciousness is apparently an emergent process of the brain when it gets to a certain complexity. And that is all there is to it.

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

i'm not religious, but looking at the universe as something devoid of any purpose, sense, reason, and even morality, is just mind bogglingly, blackout-inducing depressing.

I dunno, it's kinda better than thinking there's some fucked up god letting all this shit around us happen isn't it

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by reprise85

It's easy to be a logical athiest, but much harder to live that way intuitively. We want things to make sense and we will default back to wishing it to be so. And as shitty as it is to believe, many people only act morally because they believe some human-like god with extra special powers is watching them.

I'm not sure I really believe that. Although I think there are probably some people who are actually held back from doing bad things by fear of Hellfire or whatever, deterrence isn't generally a very powerful device to control people. The same way shitty people will use religion to justify doing shitty things, harmless people use religion as a justification for not hurting others. But I don't think most of either of that actually comes from whatever some religion tells you to do. When you look at great ape behavior, they do kill and harm each other sometimes but there seems to be a strong biological factor in forming communities and observing general order versus chaos. It's utilitarian for us to have moral rules, and I kind of think this is an evolutionary substructure to spirituality and philosophy and religion.

[reprise85]

Yes there is a great need for order but I think it's an evolutionary necessity more than an innate unwillingness to harm other individuals. If there weren't societal pecking orders and great apes didn't have social hierarchies there'd be constant infighting. It's like if every day we all went into work and had to fight over who was the boss. It's a much greater benefit to everyone if we just think out what would happen to its logical conclusion instead of everyone losing resources trying to be the top dog.

AFAIK only humans and chimpanzees murder each other, with humans the only ones doing it on an individual basis.

[reprise85]

Sorry I had a point but I lost it somewhere

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by reprise85

Yes there is a great need for order but I think it's an evolutionary necessity more than an innate unwillingness to harm other individuals. If there weren't societal pecking orders and great apes didn't have social hierarchies there'd be constant infighting. It's like if every day we all went into work and had to fight over who was the boss. It's a much greater benefit to everyone if we just think out what would happen to its logical conclusion instead of everyone losing resources trying to be the top dog.

AFAIK only humans and chimpanzees murder each other, with humans the only ones doing it on an individual basis.

I agree with this. I think I took your statement too literally before. I think we're actually saying basically the same thing.

[reprise85]

oh i see you must have edited or i just missed it somehow.

i guess my point was religion has nothing to do with being a good person and everything to do with making yourself feel better by creating meaning where there is none, which makes sense from a survival standpoint. and if it makes any amount of people not hurt others when they otherwise would i guess it's doing its job but really the more i learn the less and less i believe in anything spiritual

let's be good to each other now eat good food and have good sex and feel emotions and move our bodies and take substances and plant trees and make art and forget about shit that doesn't really exist basically is my platform

[redbreegull]

yeah that's about what I have figured out so far. To me though, there is a great deal of spirituality in embracing that meaning comes from us and not from the outside. It's ok that we probably have no free will and that the universe is random, that we are amalgamations of our experiences and our consciousnesses go out of being when our bodies die. All this shit still exists and somehow I am experiencing it regardless of all that, and that's really just the craziest most out there thing I can think of.

[teh b0lly!!1]

re: people fearing doing bad things for the wrath of a powerful sky man.

i have this recurring thought that everyone is their own god. like, when it's all over, deep down the "god" inside you (which is really just YOU, or perhaps the most morally pristine incarnation of you) knows if you'd done your best, and tried as hard as you could to improve as a person, to be good to others and yourself, to be the kind that spreads kindness. at least that's what guides me through my internal battle of "why not just be a fucking asshole like everybody else". i don't want to have anybody else telling me what it right or wrong and coerce me into cookie cutter, senseless pagan behavior - i know what's right and wrong. i'm definitely not always good and i make mistakes but i try to let nothing take me off that path that i believe in, which is just to be genuinely as good as you can.

this probably reads like "profound", morally condescending stoner talk. but i don't know how else to put it

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

re: people fearing doing bad things for the wrath of a powerful sky man.

i have this recurring thought that everyone is their own god. like, when it's all over, deep down the "god" inside you (which is really just YOU, or perhaps the most morally pristine incarnation of you) knows if you'd done your best, and tried as hard as you could to improve as a person, to be good to others and yourself, to be the kind that spreads kindness. at least that's what guides me through my internal battle of "why not just be a fucking asshole like everybody else". i don't want to have anybody else telling me what it right or wrong and coerce me into cookie cutter, senseless pagan behavior - i know what's right and wrong. i'm definitely not always good and i make mistakes but i try to let nothing take me off that path that i believe in, which is just to be genuinely as good as you can.

this probably reads like "profound", morally condescending stoner talk. but i don't know how else to put it

Reprise can probably tell us which psychologist I am thinking of, but this reminds me of a theory by *insert psychologist's name* that there are different levels of moral reasoning, and IIRC people who think like this are already at the highest one because they feel an obligation to live by a personal moral code that comes from a sense of doing good versus doing harm. The level below that is reasoning based on "the rules," e.g. "I feel bad for illegal immigrants but what they are doing is still wrong because it is against the law." And the lowest level is reasoning based on whether or not you will be caught or held accountable by people who have a problem with what you are doing, e.g. "I took the last cookie from the jar because I knew no one would see me."

Conventional religious moral reasoning seems mostly based in the middle level, that God is like a head of state and he makes the rules and essentially you follow them because they are the rules of the guy in charge.

[reprise85]

No it doesn't seem that way. There is goodness in the world and it's important to me as well to be as genuinely good as I can be. I do think however we get lost in our own narratives and at least for me, I don't think I'd ever be able to see outside myself enough to really be sure if I did the best I could. Like I'm inclined to say of course I haven't done the best I could have but you know, shit's hard for everybody out there. If we're our own judges that just kinda helps the shitty people doesn't it? I'm sure there are people who strive to be moral and realize it in themselves but it seems like most of 'us' don't think that highly of ourselves, as a symptom of that high moral standard - you know what I mean?

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Reprise can probably tell us which psychologist I am thinking of, but this reminds me of a theory by *insert psychologist's name* that there are different levels of moral reasoning, and IIRC people who think like this are already at the highest one because they feel an obligation to live by a personal moral code that comes from a sense of doing good versus doing harm. The level below that is reasoning based on "the rules," e.g. "I feel bad for illegal immigrants but what they are doing is still wrong because it is against the law." And the lowest level is reasoning based on whether or not you will be caught or held accountable by people who have a problem with what you are doing, e.g. "I took the last cookie from the jar because I knew no one would see me."

Conventional religious moral reasoning seems mostly based in the middle level, that God is like a head of state and he makes the rules and essentially you follow them because they are the rules of the guy in charge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawren...al_development

[reprise85]

I mean broadly we can group people into:
1. those who legitimately want to do their version of 'good'/moral
2. don't give a fuck
3. actively only care about themselves

unfortunately that puts lots of suicide murderers in category 1 and babies in category 3 but, que sera etc

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by reprise85

No it doesn't seem that way. There is goodness in the world and it's important to me as well to be as genuinely good as I can be. I do think however we get lost in our own narratives and at least for me, I don't think I'd ever be able to see outside myself enough to really be sure if I did the best I could. Like I'm inclined to say of course I haven't done the best I could have but you know, shit's hard for everybody out there. If we're our own judges that just kinda helps the shitty people doesn't it? I'm sure there are people who strive to be moral and realize it in themselves but it seems like most of 'us' don't think that highly of ourselves, as a symptom of that high moral standard - you know what I mean?

hm, and I think that many if not most people who do vastly terrible things truly believe they are doing it for the greatest good, or because they are making things the way they should be. Does Dick Cheney really just love to kill people because their suffering brings him pleasure? Probably not, he most likely is operating at the highest moral level according to Kohlberg, or so I would guess.

[teh b0lly!!1]

yeah i was going to say my theory doesn't really take into account people with an inferior moral compass (i use inferior mainly in reply to the dick cheney reference).

it's just my own inner logic to myself i guess.

[reprise85]

There are certainly people who just want to fuck up other people for the thrill of it, though. I don't think Kohlberg takes those people into account, honestly I'm not sure.

But yeah the majority of people think they are doing the right thing, or think they want what is the must just thing to want, and are operating based on that. It's good to always remember this. Actually a lot of people aren't in a well off enough position to even think about this shit in between shellings and malnurishment so... there are plenty of people who would see all of this as a masturbatory exercise and honestly it's hard to think of it as much else when you look at in in context. But ah, the curse of consciousness makes us all doomed just by having it... (only slightly joking really)

[redbreegull]

[FoolofaTook]

that's pretty racist

[FoolofaTook]

that "Jewish deity" is gonna fuck you up son

[vixnix]

If people really believed in sin and the Jewish Deity, they wouldn't still be such a tiresome group of pubic hairs IMO

[vixnix]

They say they believe, but they don't. If they believed, they would live differently.

Just....let's all drink the kool aid and leave the planet to whatever life forms are left after we went ahead and crapped all over it.