Greta wrote:Plato's stepchild wrote:Personally, I don't know what to believe. I'm inclined towards hedonism; but, for me, pleasure blends seamlessly into cruelty.
Agree. I enjoy the honesty and perceptiveness here and can relate to what you say. Cruelty is shockingly easy to fall into because when someone/thing interferes with our flow they can become objectified, becoming "impediments" rather than beings with interests as valid as our own. No one's perfect, and we can only aim towards improvement.
Plato's stepchild wrote:This can't become a universal ethos, however with everyone hurting everyone else. We must live by a moral code, whether or not administered by a cosmic judge. Maybe this means we should accede to belief in God, however we choose to understand Him. But, wouldn't this also mean we'd need to pretend there's a heaven? Hence the angst. The one thing I'm sure of is, the price we pay for our humanity is an unrelenting uncertainty about our last breath. Yeah; it sucks.
It doesn't make sense to put aside so much subsequent learning to embrace ancient doctrines. The morality lessons of the famous religious texts were absorbed and learned long ago - basically exhortations to be civilised and not behave like wild animals. The fact is, as you say, we simply do not know what happens. There are some clues, but they are not "proved" and far from universally accepted.
My guess is that our sensory limitations and multi-layered existential situations confuse us. You are not just "you". You are also an entire world for your trillions of microbes and cells (and many of them will play home for benign viruses). You are also a portion of numerous connected groups - family, friends/peers, workmates, subculture, city, region, nation, species, life itself, the entire world, the solar system, the galaxy and so forth. So I expect that what happens during the state transition of the body will be a surprise for us all.
You're right:
you are always more (and less) than you appear to be. There are just too many ensembles-of-me for
me to even know
which one I'm talking about. So, when I said that (for me)
pleasure blends seamlessly into cruelty, I'm wondering which
me is involved. To say that
I am cruel is irreducibly complex and ambiguous. If I'm brutally honest, and admit that cruelty is my highest pleasure, the
simplicity of my honesty immediately gets lost. If I
were to believe in an afterlife, which
me gets to live it? Moreover, if there
is a heaven, will it be an orgy of cruelty? After all, it
is my highest pleasure. And,
if there's a hell, which
me suffers, and will that
me become the brunt of the cruelty
I have enjoyed?
Two houses, side-by-side are in the direct path of an impending tornado. One house is obliterated, while the other is virtually unscathed; but, why? This is what insurance underwriters call an
act-of-God. Two people are stalked by a serial killer; both are in equal danger. One of them is brutally attacked, while the other remains safe. It seems to me that this kind of
honesty is a poignant reminder of how precarious, of just how
scary life is. Our daily
survival is an act-of-God. I'm frankly surprised that
more people aren't cruel, because cruelty so clearly
mimics our daily survival. As is true of
life, a connoisseur-of-cruelty is
never indiscriminately
cruel; the pleasure is heightened by a neat, surgical
rage against some unwary lamb.
I am
more, and I am
less than I appear to be. The same must therefore be true of all my experiences,
including the pleasure I get from being
cruel. I believe the logic is sound; but, I don't know how to process such a
devastating truth. Cruelty just seems so immediate, and so personal. Yet,
I'm somehow sharing this
immediate and personal experience with a myriad-of-ensembles of
me! This cheapens any hope (or dread) I might have of surviving death. I don't even want to be a
drop-in-the-ocean, because there's absolutely no difference between a
drop, and being
me. It's all one-and-the-same cluster-****. Basically if I can't own the intimacy of my pleasures in
life I don't want to own them in some
after-life.