mind

Day 3074, the whole.

Daily picture, Quotes

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein

Day 3071, vague walls.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, all too Human
Man Alone With Himself

491 Self-observation. – Man is very well defended against himself, against being reconnoitred and besieged by himself, he is usually able to perceive of himself only his outer walls. The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.

Day 3064, do I open the door.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I don’t think that we have a free will. I believe it is essential that we act like we have one, and our nature and evolution have made it so that we all have the illusion that we have free will. There are many arguments against this idea, and as many in favor, I just ask you to look around and in yourself. If you look at us as a collection of inherited traits, the parts in you that come from your mother, father, and the rest of the family before them.  That’s the “mechanical” part of you, including the brain, that will do most of the work once you start living. During this living, you will be exposed to your culture and the values and morals of your surroundings. You can have a wide range of influences, but you will never be influenced by everything. You will be unique but, at the same time, a unique representation of your experiences. Your experiences will make you react to what the world will throw at you. You feel that you have decided to vote left or right, but your past, the clothes you wear, and the friends you have have already decided your path, your choice. Your choices are your surroundings reflecting in you and who you are without conscious interference.  

All the arguments going around inside you for why you choose the way you do are no explanations for why you consciously choose but for why you seem to have chosen.  Think about what you do when you lift your arm. You only see it move, but many decisions are made hidden from you. All the muscles and different signals have to start moving without your conscious awareness. You think you move your arm, but at most, you have given it an order. The thoughts you have and the words you speak are more or less like that. You only become aware of what you think after your brain has done a lot of unconscious processing. You might order your brain to think but it does most of the work for you, without you. 

We’re a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.
 Anthony Burges

 

Day 3061, divinely distracted.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morality
Preface

1. We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and for a good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how then should it happen that we find ourselves one day? It has rightly been said: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are forever underway toward them, as born winged animals and honey-gatherers of the spirit, concerned with all our heart about only one thing “bringing home” something. As for the rest of life, the so-called “experiences”—who of us even has enough seriousness for them? Or enough time? In such matters I’m afraid we were never really “with it”: we just don’t have our heart there—or even our ear! Rather,  much as a divinely distracted, self-absorbed person into whose ear the bell has just boomed its twelve strokes of noon suddenly awakens and wonders, “what did it actually toll just now?” so we rub our ears afterwards and ask, completely amazed, completely disconcerted, “what did we actually experience just now?” still more: “who are we actually?” and count up, afterwards, as stated, all twelve quavering bellstrokes of our experience, of our life, of our being—alas! and miscount in the process … We remain of necessity strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must mistake ourselves, for us the maxim reads to all eternity: “each is furthest from himself,”—with respect to ourselves we are not “knowers” …