Monday, July 27, 2020

Why we, humans, get so accustomed with the way we live, with our cultures, self identities etc?

This small paper tries to analyse how, or on what Logic Nature have devised/schemed our lives, our personal lives as well as our social and economic institutions the way it was, and the way it is today.

Had she any role in our such routines? What caused our lives to be the way we lead it? Wasn't any alternative way possible? Our heart or sexual organs could have been in thousands of other designs and models, so some kind of 'creative choices' of designs and models are clearly evident. Dump and mute 'physical matter' (version of science) could not have been able to chose any particular design and model. There is evidently great fallacies in the conclusions of the strict followers of PHYSICALISM. Yes, nature or existence certainly had her hand behind scheming our lives and the way we lead it.

This paper was so necessary today as we exclusively spend our lives as if its core meaning has been constituted by us, by our intelligence and wisdom. Most of our philosophies and science also support such a view. We believe, history helped us to develop this better way of leading life, ages after ages. Our brain adapts such history-earned improvements and hence we have our present way of civilization, institutions and personalities.We are certainly ignorant that our 'sense of self' it self is a product of nature,or part of her scheme behind giving our particular experience of life.

Though we get so comfortable with the model in which our markets are formed and their functioning, the products we buy and use, what we post in our social media outlets, the way our governments rule us etc, the wise must see the hands of nature or existence behind all the above phenomena. But why we get so comfortable with the way we live? Why we develop own belief systems for our science, religions and philosophy? Why we are not questioning the way we form such belief systems?

Is human life,  as Darwin and others speculated, that an affair of the survival of the fittest? Should everyone strive to make own life, the best possible biological, economic and personal event? Is it an affair that our FREEWILL decides exclusively? If FREEWILL was the deciding factor, why many of us encounter and suffer diseases, accidents, traumatic events in life, untimely deaths, bodily defects etc? Were they not careful enough, less smart/adaptable in leading life? If there were any relation to own smartness, or they were less fit for survival etc, how can we explain inherited diseases? That is, someone being born with deadly diseases and body or mind-defects with NO fault of their own?

We know that when we devise an instrument to observe any physical event in universe, we make it very sure, what the instrument gives us is the most accurate data, better than our naked eyes and other sense organs. It is clear that we should be very, very careful about the information our observing tools provide us, as such data are going to define our knowledge. Hence, this study is so vital. What kind of observers are we? Do we know ourselves the way scientists know their probing instruments?

It is certain that despite all our great scientific discoveries and inventions, we have not yet learned much about the primary instrument with which we make these discoveries and inventions, that is, we ourselves. We have been not serious about studying us, the ONTOLOGY factor of who we are. We simply assumed that, our intelligence can be independent to judge and arrive at conclusions about our life and whatever we observe in nature around us. Wasn't like the judgments and conclusions of  an island of born-blind people who judge that there is nothing like SIGHT for humans? There was a fictional movie around the theme of an island with born-blind people, in one of the regional languages of India ( Malayalam)



Why we should analyse the WHY questions of life and its various sub-elements in life? 

1. Reason number one is what was given in the last paragraphs above; like the way we are careful about the tools we use for our scientific observations, we need to be very,very careful about with what sensory and other tools with which we observe life. We know that, like our other body parts, heart, kidneys, lungs, eyes and ears, our observing SELVES also was 'GIVEN' to us.We had no role in scheming or devising them. We got it ready made. If heart and kidneys have very peculiar working principles , why our observing SELF mechanism doesn't have one? If so, there would be fixed ways we get information through it! Following is a proposition/observation, how our 'sense of self' mechanism must have been formed:

http://unrecognizedobjectsofthemind.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-physics-behind-birth-of-human-self-i.html

This mechanism may be similar to how our sex organs develop into those ones when we attain age and maturity. When we were born and till we were children, they were simply used for urinating purpose. But when we got to age, these urinating organs got ready to be used as sexual organs too! Perhaps 'our sense of self' also got matured the same way as and when we grew up, under a well thought out plan.

The following inborn physical and emotional DRIVES too have started acting upon us and our behavior at appropriate ages:

http://unrecognizedobjectsofthemind.blogspot.com/2013/07/existential-drives-of-man.html

If the above 'sense of self' mechanism and the inborn drives we were born with are the cause of our particular behavior such as the 'singularity each of us experience about ourselves, our excessive urge to look after ourselves, self-express and withstand pressure and negative environment, why other moral and positive living lessons created by us/our brains need to be attributed to them? Like our body is equipped with a natural immune system that fights off external health enemies, isn't our mind-system also equally equipped with inborn energies to look after ourselves in every negative conditions?. But better we remember, our health enemies and mind enemies might have been nature created, perhaps to equip our life in a certain way as she deemed fit. In short, aren't we simply like Androids, where our sense of selves as well as our living conditions are GIVEN to us pre-planned or pre-schemed?

So, when we use our mind and intelligence to evaluate/study such natural affairs, shouldn't we be much careful to study our 'sense of self mechanism' like we take extreme care to evaluate our probing instruments in science?


2. The second answer to the 'why we should analyse the above question' is that we have a severe inner 'urge' to seek truth and actual reality about life and existence. We always want to avoid fallacies and embrace truth, what ever it is. To prove this factor might be bit difficult, as first we need to recognize certain natural pre-liking or predilections of our every sense organ.The universal liking of sweet taste by our tongue is famous. Similarly, our ears always seek to hear melodies rather than disturbing sounds. Our eyes always like to see beauty and order than ugliness and disorder.  Skin always wish to have comfortable temperature and touches.

Similarly, our not yet recognized 'sense faculty', Reason (that senses ORDER, pure SENSE, consistency) seeks justice, 'order' and 'sense' in life, as explained in the following paper: https://isreasonasenseorgan.blogspot.com/2018/11/is-mans-faculty-of-reason-internal.html (please refer subject number 4 of the paper, on the predilections of the sense organs)

Hasn't man invented 'science', compelled by this inherent predilection of his sense faculty of Reason and its pre-liking/predilection for truth and ultimate ORDER? Humans can not rest for long with their routine life affairs till they initiate research into higher and higher realms of realities, till they find out the real facts about life and existence, let it take even millions of years to achieve results.

Yes, we can not over-rule the role of our not yet recognized sense organ of reason behind our invention of science, religions and all other intellectual progress of humankind.

3.Next factor why we should urgently attend to the question referred above is that we humans tend to engage in many of our regular routines, the so called professional fields, ignoring the above questions. We tend to create meaning of life out of the said routines like our markets, mutual relations, politics, our professional fields of earning our livelihoods like jobs etc.  Life here tend to attain temporary meaning, totally unrelated to questions of spiritual or metaphysical ancestry of humans. But luckily or ominously, nature has taken care that at such routine junctures of life, everyone gets great sense of reality, as if to make him believe that such junctures are the end targets of life. We conveniently attribute all the credits of our above listed achievements to our brain and its adaptive abilities.

That was how animals might have lived here for millions of years as if their given selves were the end products of Nature, though such thoughts never ever have occurred to them. We know that the physical and emotional DRIVES that Nature has given to men and women are enough for them to lead many lives on the strength of them. The power of our such needs is so perfect, that no need of any question ever to rise. For empirical support, every community, whether humans or animals, has their histories too. Life is mostly spent without any question of SENSE, chiefly because of the support of its history of of past generations.We have learned to make sense by linking all of them to the adaptive mechanism of brain, it learning from the lessons experienced in history.

Life is authentic for everyone because one's father, mother,brother, sister and others have lived their lives here and died out. Life is an inevitable phenomenon for all.Once born, one has to live life and die.

Question of the SENSE of life, it seems, occurs only to very few among humans. Perhaps the inevitability of life was the cause for this resignation to life. If one entertains such question or not, life has to be lived. If animals lived on such a philosophy, whether they knew it or not, humans today live with the same philosophy, most of them knowing it perfectly well.

Can't lives be lived if we turn real KNOWERS (become aware of the synthetic nature of our sense of self and our life-experiences) and then engage in life with full knowledge of what we are and what we do? Will it affect the way we engage in sex, buying and selling and our social media posts? Yes, perhaps, but not them in any degraded form, but certainly with enhanced enjoyment, merriment and satisfaction. As we have seen, like our urinating organs turn into sexual organs at the maturity of time, this 'awakening' or enlightenment might take time. We can't teach these existential lessons to our wards till they attain certain age. But no doubt, such vital existential lessons when taught to matured persons in our learning centers, we certainly going to have a different society, with very different (with positive changes) institutions.

In short, question of 'why life' occurs only to a few in the beginning, perhaps because it was the way every knowledge development happen to humans and their societies.

4) The fourth point that will be discussed here is the natural way we, humans, departed from the animals lives, still living a very different life. Nothing collapsed due to this vital change. Improved knowledge only enhances the quality of lives, not create serious issues about our self knowledge or our knowledge of the external world.  What I mean to say is, enlightened humans will only enhance the quality of life here on earth and not to disturb its basic features.

Perhaps citizens may not any more stand or bear with the authoritarian and deceiving ways of our political leaders who occupy the chairs today, only to fulfill their ambitions to be like old Kings. Big moneyed industrialists perhaps will end today's trend of deceiving their buyers with false marketing propaganda. We know,how difficult it has become to read any online article or regular story, without a dozen times advertisements cropping up, blocking the page we read in, seeking (or forfeiting) our attention. Reading or using online pages has become like treading in a jungle! Enemies lurking everywhere, looking for an opportunity to pounce upon you.

Primary function of self expression has become blatant enhancement or glorification of own self, whether it is a social media post, a book authoring or a newspaper report. SELF expression might become a ore broader, sharing of the glory of the whole existence.

Perhaps, such evil trends might end once 'self knowledge' of all humans improves and they realize their integral tie with existence.

5) We have prestigious learning centers ( Universities) and philosophy and science associations and journals, but everyone follows the version of science, that fundamentally, existence is a physical affair. Humans and other living forms happen to be here by mere chance in the antiquity of time. First originated was some single cell life-form, and it developed or say, evolved into multi-cell organisms and finally into humans. As a method of critical thinking, the spirit of science deserves appreciation, but she should always introspect her base assumptions. Can't existence be a phenomenon other than what she thinks or religions think, as explained in the following work?

http://thewhyquestionofexistenceanswered.blogspot.com/2019/08/has-life-any-meaning-and-sense-why-life.html

When such possibilities exist, is it sensible that we and our knowledge systems go ahead with such closed, dogmatic, orthodox belief systems?

6)  Arriving at wrong conclusions from observed facts are common. But when we have made great institutions around such wrong conclusions, escape from such conclusions become difficult. Mention here is about the 'self-interest' conclusion of economics and our theory of Capitalism. Self-rooted  nature of humans never should have been interpreted as self-interest, and gigantic institutions built up around such conclusions. Following work delves into this catastrophe:

http://communicationonnewworldorder.blogspot.com/2015/12/an-open-letter-to-every-man-of-mind-in.html

We have analysed many points as to 'why LIFE' and why its various sub-elements we encounter in day to day life.

This author might have ignored many points, but hope he has covered few of its most relevant ones.

It analysed what were the reasons behind our leading lives the way it was in the past and it is today, totally surrendered to the myths and belief systems of our major knowledge institutions.  Will our future generations forgive us for our folly?

authored by:

Abraham J.Palakudy

He is a seeker and researcher in philosophy, especially metaphysics, Mind, Reason, Spirituality, Democracy etc.

He tweets by the name: Voice of philosophy@jopan1
His other blogs are at link: https://www.blogger.com/profile/14249415589712707293
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