Yesterday, I went to bed depressed. I had been depressed for a while. Today, I woke up non-depressed. I'm not sure what changed. I tried some mental technique before going to bed, but I often try various mental techniques. I seem to recall this technique having something to do with letting my mind go, so to speek, allowing for gross or disturbing imagery to enter my mind, if that's where my mind goes -- and it did -- and at some point, when it had run it's corse, I kindof imagined crystalizing it all, and melting it into the sun.
But I feel like there was some realization that I'm missing. One thought I had last night was that my baseline was depressed. It felt like a new realization, acknowledging that I keep coming back down whenever I get optimistic and excited about stuff. But, I thought, why should my baseline be low? What is special about being low? If my baseline can be low, why can't it be high?
Anyway, I don't think I've solved my depression. I think I'll be depressed again, maybe even soon, but it's good to not be depressed sometimes to realize what it's like again, and to give me hope that I can get here more often.
I think my optimism also stems from some successes today. I feel like I made some progress in meditation and hypnosis and also in dancing. Progress feels good. I'm not sure progress is sustainable. Sometimes I won't make progress. But, today, I also remember lying down and at some point the idea came to mind "I'm blocked in meditation, and I wrote that I should read something about it. Maybe I should read something about it." And then I had the thought, "here is some motivation to do something, I should probably follow it, since I haven't been very motivated lately." And that turned out to be the right decision.
7/5/12
dancing for exercise
At some point in grad school, I started dancing for exercise. I would go into the basement of my dorm, which had a dance room with a wooden floor and mirrors. I would go there at 3am, so that nobody was awake, so nobody would accidentally walk in and see me. It was so embarrassing that it was hard even to watch myself in the mirrors. But eventually I got over it, and it became a very enjoyable way to exercise. To date, this is the only form of exercise I've been able to keep-up -- everything else I've tried has been too boring. Though I have had some success with listening to music on an elliptical machine, and walking in time to the music.
- Thu July 5 : 30 minutes (notes: pretty good -- I feel like I refined some of the things I did yesterday, though I'm a bit worried about how to create new stuff. Maybe I need to listen to dramatically different songs -- I do feel like different beats spawn different ideas in my head of how to dance to them, and a lot of the music I've been listening to has essentially the same beat)
- Fri Jul 6 : 30 minutes (notes: still good -- I listened to Lana Del Rey, and that seemed to have a different beat, and I think I came up with something different for that.. so exploring different beats seems good.)
- Sat Jul 8 : 30 minutes (notes: I had wanted to practice particular songs for tomorrow, but the 30 minutes went by so quickly.)
Anyway, I want to keep track of my dancing/exercise because I haven't been doing it often enough, and keeping track here seems to be a good way.. so:
- Wed July 4 : 30 minutes (notes: usually I just improve for myself. This time, I spent some time imagining dancing with a partner. This was pretty helpful, I felt like I could improvise more freely than when I actually dance with my instructor. I discovered that what I've been missing is allowing for more simple and controlled moves, and really feeling the music with my partner.. I'm excited to keep practicing like this in preparation for my next lesson.)
- Thu July 5 : 30 minutes (notes: pretty good -- I feel like I refined some of the things I did yesterday, though I'm a bit worried about how to create new stuff. Maybe I need to listen to dramatically different songs -- I do feel like different beats spawn different ideas in my head of how to dance to them, and a lot of the music I've been listening to has essentially the same beat)
- Fri Jul 6 : 30 minutes (notes: still good -- I listened to Lana Del Rey, and that seemed to have a different beat, and I think I came up with something different for that.. so exploring different beats seems good.)
- Sat Jul 8 : 30 minutes (notes: I had wanted to practice particular songs for tomorrow, but the 30 minutes went by so quickly.)
7/4/12
meditation 6
The saga continues. I said before that "Maybe it is time to read something about meditation before my next attempt." So I did. I looked up "meditation" on Wikipedia. In the section "Meditation, religion, and drugs" I saw a reference to The Master Game, by Robert S de Ropp : "the 'door to full consciousness' can be glimpsed with the aid of substances, but to 'pass beyond the door' requires yoga and meditation." I then tried to find The Master Game online, which I did here: http://selfdefinition.org/psychology/Robert-S-De-Ropp-The-Master-Game.pdf. I read maybe a third of it, skimming a bit.. I stopped at the section talking about "The Silent World", where it seems to talk about some early stage goals of meditation, where one main goal is stopping thoughts.
Now, I had said before that my impression of meditation was to "clear the mind", and I had been heading in that direction, but upon reflection, I think my issue was that I didn't understand why I would want to clear my mind. It seemed like the greatest hope of this would be to essentially relax, and I guess I'm just not that interested in relaxing in a really hard and boring way.
But, the author of The Master Game seems to suggest that a higher state of consciousness lies beyond the normal thoughts that occupy our minds on a day to day basis. That is to say, the point of meditation is not to clear the mind, but rather, clearing the mind is a tool for arriving at a higher state of consciousness, and that does seem more interesting.
So this time I meditated for 10 minutes. I upped the time because I felt I could go longer, now that I had a good reason to quite my mind. I remember at first being concerned about the loudness of a fan that was on, and I almost decided to turn it off, but then thought "I feel like I should be able to stop attending to the fan as I stop attending to other thoughts." And I did, I had forgotten about the fan by the end.
I feel like the experience is going to have fewer and fewer things to say as I continue. First, because thinking of things to say goes contrary to "quieting the mind". And second, because I've been led to believe that a higher state of consciousness is indescribable. Though, I'm never convinced of statements like that. I think the true nature of an experience is indescribable, but I think it's always possible to say something about it. After all, The Master Game itself is a description of such things. So, we'll see.
..after writing all that, I meditated again for 10 minutes. I read it is good to do this often. It is difficult to really truly let go of my thoughts. I feel like I need to really not be attached to the cares of the world, and I feel like one challenge I need to overcome is getting sidetracked by ideas and insights that come to mind while meditating. I feel like they are really just a tool my brain uses to trick me into caring about stuff again. I guess I have a deep-seeded hope that eventually, following this path will shed some insight that I can explain and that will be valuable to "conventional reality", but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that the higher state of consciousness accessible through meditation has very much to do with humanness. I feel like consciousness itself transcends humans. I feel like humans are a fluke, if you will. Humans are the size and shape of organisms that happened to evolve here on Earth, at this time, which is a very small place and time in this universe. Humans happen to be conscious, but I feel like consciousness itself is more fundamental and interesting in its own right, separate from humanness.
Now, I had said before that my impression of meditation was to "clear the mind", and I had been heading in that direction, but upon reflection, I think my issue was that I didn't understand why I would want to clear my mind. It seemed like the greatest hope of this would be to essentially relax, and I guess I'm just not that interested in relaxing in a really hard and boring way.
But, the author of The Master Game seems to suggest that a higher state of consciousness lies beyond the normal thoughts that occupy our minds on a day to day basis. That is to say, the point of meditation is not to clear the mind, but rather, clearing the mind is a tool for arriving at a higher state of consciousness, and that does seem more interesting.
So this time I meditated for 10 minutes. I upped the time because I felt I could go longer, now that I had a good reason to quite my mind. I remember at first being concerned about the loudness of a fan that was on, and I almost decided to turn it off, but then thought "I feel like I should be able to stop attending to the fan as I stop attending to other thoughts." And I did, I had forgotten about the fan by the end.
I feel like the experience is going to have fewer and fewer things to say as I continue. First, because thinking of things to say goes contrary to "quieting the mind". And second, because I've been led to believe that a higher state of consciousness is indescribable. Though, I'm never convinced of statements like that. I think the true nature of an experience is indescribable, but I think it's always possible to say something about it. After all, The Master Game itself is a description of such things. So, we'll see.
..after writing all that, I meditated again for 10 minutes. I read it is good to do this often. It is difficult to really truly let go of my thoughts. I feel like I need to really not be attached to the cares of the world, and I feel like one challenge I need to overcome is getting sidetracked by ideas and insights that come to mind while meditating. I feel like they are really just a tool my brain uses to trick me into caring about stuff again. I guess I have a deep-seeded hope that eventually, following this path will shed some insight that I can explain and that will be valuable to "conventional reality", but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that the higher state of consciousness accessible through meditation has very much to do with humanness. I feel like consciousness itself transcends humans. I feel like humans are a fluke, if you will. Humans are the size and shape of organisms that happened to evolve here on Earth, at this time, which is a very small place and time in this universe. Humans happen to be conscious, but I feel like consciousness itself is more fundamental and interesting in its own right, separate from humanness.
Mormon errata
...just thought I'd fix the Mormon religion real quick:
1. the devil
fix: The Devil and Christ had different plans for man. The Devil wanted people to gain understanding without experiencing hardship. Christ didn't think this was possible. God also didn't think it was possible. The Devil and his followers were afraid to experience hardship, so they didn't enter mortal bodies, and they're waiting around until they overcome that fear.
2. atonement
fix: Christ suffered all the sorts of things that people suffer so that he could understand people when they prayed, otherwise people might be like "you're a God, you don't understand what I'm going through." There's no such thing as being impure. God is infinitely understanding.
3. after-life
fix: Spirits are learning all the time -- sometimes inside of mortal bodies -- and as they learn more, they get more power as a natural side-effect of their increased understanding about how things work. If you're like the Devil, saying "I don't want to suffer at all" then you're limited in how much you can learn, but you're not trapped forever. Spirits can always learn and progress.
4. faith
fix: It's hard to be sure that any particular feeling came from God. Brains are tricky. Even after extremely powerful feelings, if people reflect on them honestly, they may doubt their supernatural origin. However, religion is not about faith, it is about hope. Faith is easy to put in the wrong place, acting as a trap where people get stuck believing something that isn't that great. Hope is free to explore, and discover how we truly wish the universe was, given the experiences we've already had. This exploration is the true quest for God. And I submit that it isn't easy. It is hard to come up with a good way for the universe to be that accounts for all the negative experiences people have had so far.
7/3/12
lies
False high-level impression: Lies are good. High-level impressions are good. They convey information quickly, and they are memorable.
True low-level details: Distorting the truth can be a useful tool for painting a high-level picture of an idea. One risk is that people will believe falsehoods. On the other hand, it may be better for someone to believe one lie and nine truths than to gain nothing at all.
I often fall into the trap of telling the truth. In a previous post, I talk about a conversation I had with my mom about religion. The post is a bit long and dry. I feel like that post should read something like this:
I want to lie more. Though, I want some way for people to know I'm lying. Like an impressionistic or abstract painting, that people never confuse for reality.
True low-level details: Distorting the truth can be a useful tool for painting a high-level picture of an idea. One risk is that people will believe falsehoods. On the other hand, it may be better for someone to believe one lie and nine truths than to gain nothing at all.
I often fall into the trap of telling the truth. In a previous post, I talk about a conversation I had with my mom about religion. The post is a bit long and dry. I feel like that post should read something like this:
I often argue with my mother about religion. Usually I tell her that it doesn't make sense, and she tells me that it gives her hope. My comeback is: I would rather live with the truth than hope for a lie. However, this time I realized that her faith wouldn't even give me hope. I fear her faith. I hope is isn't true, because it judges people for eternity based on an astronomically short period of time over which people have no real control. Maybe I don't care about the truth. Maybe I too just hope for a lie.This impression of the situation is a lie, but I think it does a better job conveying the core thought that was running through my head. It is a better meme. This story has a better chance of surviving and reproducing, because other people can understand and relate to it more easily.
I want to lie more. Though, I want some way for people to know I'm lying. Like an impressionistic or abstract painting, that people never confuse for reality.
video games
Games I love for the story and/or ambiance (in reverse chronological order):
Bastion : love the voice acting. love the story telling technique, though the story itself was a bit disappointing somehow. love the use of color manipulation in the dream sequences, making all the colors become more saturated.
LIMBO : love the stylized greyscale art and general ambiance, though the story didn't feel as solid as Braid.
Machinarium : great art, cute story. I lost patience with many puzzles and looked them up -- this happens to me with adventure games. They have puzzles to keep you from moving through them too quickly, but the puzzles often amount to just trying to do every possible thing, at which point I look them up.
Portal and Portal 2 : omg, what a great game. great story, combined with humor. I wish the story was more meaningful in the multiplayer part of Portal 2, though I understand why it isn't, since many people won't be able to play it, lacking a partner.
World of Goo : great bridge-building puzzle game with art that conveys a story.
Psychonauts : omg, wow. I played this before portal, but it is similar in that it has a great story, told with a great sense of humor, along with great gameplay.
Braid : fantastic. braid is like Mario Brothers for adults, where the story is as deep and meaningful as the puzzles. I love the stylized nature of the story, where the story seems real, even though the puzzle levels themselves are not taken to be stuff that the character in the story actually did.
The Longest Journey and Dreamfall : the longest journey is perhaps my favorite game of all time -- definitely my favorite adventure game. I love it for the story. The puzzles were too random and hard for me, and I think I looked up answers online. But the story was awesome. Dreamfall is good. not as good as the longest journey, but continues the story, and I will play the next game if it ever comes out to hear the end.
Grim Fandango : second only to the longest journey -- and I'm not sure it should be second. great humor -- one of the best intro-cutscenes ever. I played this with my sister. we didn't look up any answers.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars : classic adventure game. very good, though if I had to rate them, I'd put King's Quest 6, Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey all above this one.
Myst, Riven, and Exile : I don't actually think the story was that great in these, but they were beautiful with good puzzles. I think I beat Riven and Exile all on my own, but I had seen some people play Myst before playing it myself.
Bastion : love the voice acting. love the story telling technique, though the story itself was a bit disappointing somehow. love the use of color manipulation in the dream sequences, making all the colors become more saturated.
LIMBO : love the stylized greyscale art and general ambiance, though the story didn't feel as solid as Braid.
Machinarium : great art, cute story. I lost patience with many puzzles and looked them up -- this happens to me with adventure games. They have puzzles to keep you from moving through them too quickly, but the puzzles often amount to just trying to do every possible thing, at which point I look them up.
Portal and Portal 2 : omg, what a great game. great story, combined with humor. I wish the story was more meaningful in the multiplayer part of Portal 2, though I understand why it isn't, since many people won't be able to play it, lacking a partner.
World of Goo : great bridge-building puzzle game with art that conveys a story.
Braid : fantastic. braid is like Mario Brothers for adults, where the story is as deep and meaningful as the puzzles. I love the stylized nature of the story, where the story seems real, even though the puzzle levels themselves are not taken to be stuff that the character in the story actually did.
The Longest Journey and Dreamfall : the longest journey is perhaps my favorite game of all time -- definitely my favorite adventure game. I love it for the story. The puzzles were too random and hard for me, and I think I looked up answers online. But the story was awesome. Dreamfall is good. not as good as the longest journey, but continues the story, and I will play the next game if it ever comes out to hear the end.
Grim Fandango : second only to the longest journey -- and I'm not sure it should be second. great humor -- one of the best intro-cutscenes ever. I played this with my sister. we didn't look up any answers.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars : classic adventure game. very good, though if I had to rate them, I'd put King's Quest 6, Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey all above this one.
Myst, Riven, and Exile : I don't actually think the story was that great in these, but they were beautiful with good puzzles. I think I beat Riven and Exile all on my own, but I had seen some people play Myst before playing it myself.
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 : this is the closest I ever got to playing Dungeons and Dragons. note that I never beat Baldur's Gate 2. not sure why. I remember choosing a male character in BG2 specifically because there was a female character that the game would let your main character fall in love with. She was evil though, so I had some moral qualms being evil enough for her to fall in love with me. I forget if I succeeded. I think I failed.
Exile : a low-budget share-ware tile-based rpg. I loved it though. I loved the mystical eastern-inspired people with the brightly colored baggy clothes, and wave-blades. I never beat it though. I think it was too hard. The way these games go, you sometimes need to level up your characters quite a bit to beat the foes further in the game, and I wasn't that into "grinding". I wanted to go as quickly as possible through the main plot-line. I think this may have hurt me in Baldur's Gate 2 as well. I think the reason I got through the original Baldur's Gate is that summoning creatures was broken -- I would just summon a crap-load of creatures, and the foes couldn't get to me.
King's Quest 6 : this was my first introduction to adventure games, and I fell in love.
StarCraft and StarCraft 2 : I'm not sure I beat either of these, but I played them both a lot online. I was never that great, though I did get into a "gold" league in StarCraft 2. My strategy was generally: 7 roach rush, and then mutalisks. On a side note: I played StartCraft 2 a lot while finishing my thesis. Thankyou StartCraft 2!
Command & Conquer, and Red Alert : I remember thinking these were both a poor-man's version of WarCraft, but they were fun in their own right, and you could select any number of units at once. I played both of them all the way through, waiting for StarCraft to come out. I remember waiting so long for StarCraft.
WarCraft, WarCraft 2, and WarCraft 3 : I remember the first time I saw WarCraft at a friends house. My friend clicked a guy, and told him to go chop wood. And off he went with some cute remark, "o-kay..". I was in love. Multiplayer was also great, though I feel like WarCraft and WarCraft 2 were both broken. WarCraft was broken with Daemons. They were unstoppable. WarCraft 2 was broken with blood-lusted ogres. They were unstoppable. I never got too into WarCraft 3 multiplayer -- I didn't like trying to micro-manage my heros.
Dune 2 : this was the first real-time strategy game I played. You could only give commands to one unit at a time, but it was amazing. especially the wave-tanks.
Plants vs Zombies : I usually don't go for these "time killer" games, but I played this one all the way through. good game mechanics. I felt like I could "be creative" in how I beat the levels.
The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 : all amazing. I bought it because it was sooo popular, and I didn't understand why. I'm not sure I could explain it even now, but I love designing the house and making it pretty, I love designing a good looking sim, I love the cute animations, and I love watching them succeed. Note that some of the career paths require having lots of friends. In the Sims 3, you can get lots of friends by throwing a party. That may have worked in the older sims, but not for me. What I would do instead was, every day I would invite the person who hated me the most and get them to fall in love with my sim.
Exile : a low-budget share-ware tile-based rpg. I loved it though. I loved the mystical eastern-inspired people with the brightly colored baggy clothes, and wave-blades. I never beat it though. I think it was too hard. The way these games go, you sometimes need to level up your characters quite a bit to beat the foes further in the game, and I wasn't that into "grinding". I wanted to go as quickly as possible through the main plot-line. I think this may have hurt me in Baldur's Gate 2 as well. I think the reason I got through the original Baldur's Gate is that summoning creatures was broken -- I would just summon a crap-load of creatures, and the foes couldn't get to me.
King's Quest 6 : this was my first introduction to adventure games, and I fell in love.
Real-time Strategy Games (in reverse chronological order):
StarCraft and StarCraft 2 : I'm not sure I beat either of these, but I played them both a lot online. I was never that great, though I did get into a "gold" league in StarCraft 2. My strategy was generally: 7 roach rush, and then mutalisks. On a side note: I played StartCraft 2 a lot while finishing my thesis. Thankyou StartCraft 2!
Command & Conquer, and Red Alert : I remember thinking these were both a poor-man's version of WarCraft, but they were fun in their own right, and you could select any number of units at once. I played both of them all the way through, waiting for StarCraft to come out. I remember waiting so long for StarCraft.
WarCraft, WarCraft 2, and WarCraft 3 : I remember the first time I saw WarCraft at a friends house. My friend clicked a guy, and told him to go chop wood. And off he went with some cute remark, "o-kay..". I was in love. Multiplayer was also great, though I feel like WarCraft and WarCraft 2 were both broken. WarCraft was broken with Daemons. They were unstoppable. WarCraft 2 was broken with blood-lusted ogres. They were unstoppable. I never got too into WarCraft 3 multiplayer -- I didn't like trying to micro-manage my heros.
Dune 2 : this was the first real-time strategy game I played. You could only give commands to one unit at a time, but it was amazing. especially the wave-tanks.
"Other" (in reverse chronological order):
Plants vs Zombies : I usually don't go for these "time killer" games, but I played this one all the way through. good game mechanics. I felt like I could "be creative" in how I beat the levels.
The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 : all amazing. I bought it because it was sooo popular, and I didn't understand why. I'm not sure I could explain it even now, but I love designing the house and making it pretty, I love designing a good looking sim, I love the cute animations, and I love watching them succeed. Note that some of the career paths require having lots of friends. In the Sims 3, you can get lots of friends by throwing a party. That may have worked in the older sims, but not for me. What I would do instead was, every day I would invite the person who hated me the most and get them to fall in love with my sim.
One Must Fall: 2097 : the only fighting game I ever got into. You could upgrade your robot, and change it's colors. I learned all the moves for my favorite robot type, and I could beat all the special players that would show after winning tournaments.
Ultima Online : my first introduction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. this game had such a big impact on me that apparently I wrote a post about my experience.
SimCity 2000 : oh my freaken god, this game was unbelievable. My sister invented a technique of terraforming the land before starting a game, so that you didn't have to pay for the adjustments. She would plan out each city block, complete with a pond in the center of each one, so she could place pumps next to it to supply water to that block. Later, a cousin discovered a waterfall mountain, allowing for a mountain of hydroelectric dams -- as cheap as coal, but they never blow up.
Console Games (in reverse chronological order):
Ultima Online : my first introduction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. this game had such a big impact on me that apparently I wrote a post about my experience.
SimCity 2000 : oh my freaken god, this game was unbelievable. My sister invented a technique of terraforming the land before starting a game, so that you didn't have to pay for the adjustments. She would plan out each city block, complete with a pond in the center of each one, so she could place pumps next to it to supply water to that block. Later, a cousin discovered a waterfall mountain, allowing for a mountain of hydroelectric dams -- as cheap as coal, but they never blow up.
Console Games (in reverse chronological order):
Mario Kart 64 : this is probably the only racing game I ever beat, and the only multiplayer console game I ever enjoyed.
Mario 64 : when they started making 3d games, I thought they were actually less fun, and less good-looking than 2d games. Mario 64 was an exception. I loved it. I got every star, though I had a magazine telling me where they were. It was hard enough to get the stars even knowing where they were.
Sonic the Hedgehog : best platform game since Super Mario Brothers. On my birthday, I beat this game, while getting all the chaos emeralds.
Tetris : if you get a high enough score, it shows the kremlin with a rocket off to the side, and the rocket blasts off. The rocket gets bigger and bigger the higher your score. One time, I got a really high score, but the rocket reverted back to the smallest rocket. I was a bit disappointed, until the kremlin itself blasted off.
Zelda : I did not find everything myself. I would get hints from neighbors and friends. But at some point, I mapped out every screen and every dungeon using graph paper. After that, I put away all my maps, and I beat the game beginning to end without dying in one sitting. I think it took me six hours. I'm surprised my mom let me do it. Usually we could only play nintendo 30 minutes a day.
Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3 : perhaps the defining video games of my childhood. while playing the original Super Mario Brothers, I thought to myself, "if I was in a little box floating in space forever with just this game to entertain me, that would be fine." I don't think I ever beat Super Mario Brothers 3 by playing through all the worlds in one sitting, but I did beat every level, and I could beat the whole game in 18 minutes using warp whistles. I recall one level that only my sister could beat for a long time. It involving holding B to run, and pressing A while still holding B.
WORK HERE : add games from glittle.org here
WORK HERE : add games from glittle.org here
judgment
I went home this weekend for a funeral. I stayed with my mother. We spent one evening talking about religion. She is Mormon, and I am not. We've talked about this before, many times.
I feel like I've given many reasons to many people about why I don't believe in the Mormon faith. In a previous post, I cite various reasons along the lines of: what we know about the brain doesn't jive with what Mormonism says about the spirit; I don't want my friends to go to hell; and I can't trust my feelings, e.g. "feeling the holy spirit", so I need the religion to make sense -- which it doesn't, to me.
However, this conversation brought to light a new reason. This reason is along the lines of "I don't want my friends to go to hell". More specifically, I don't want to go to hell, or be to judged at all.
She asked why I don't want to be judged. My answer was: "because I do evil things." I see other people do evil things and think, that's not right. I don't understand how they could do that. And then later, I find myself doing one of the same evil things and think: "oh, now I understand how someone could do this." My conclusion then is not "it's ok to do this", but rather "I shouldn't judge people for doing this." And I suspect this applies to everything. I think for every evil thing, if I was in the shoes of the evil-doer, I would do the same thing. Hence, I feel like I can't judge people.
But I don't think God can judge people either. I think even if God was in an evil doer's shoes, not knowing He was God (since evil doer's generally do not know that), and having the same knowledge and emotions of the evil doer, that God would do the same things that the evil doer did.
So judging people and sending them one place or another seems bad, even for God.
Of course, another way of stating my objection is that I don't believe in free will. More specifically, I don't understand what free will is. I feel like brains have a set of desires, and they try to meet those desires, and they might make compromises between conflicting desires, and they might accidentally do something that doesn't meet their desires by mistake, but brains are not capable of deciding to do things that don't meet their desires. I feel like someone reading this might slap themselves in the face and say "Ha! I did something that didn't meet any of my desires." However, I would say to that person, "you wanted to prove me wrong -- that's the desire you were satisfying when you slapped yourself in the face, and you wanted to prove me wrong so badly that you compromised your desire to not hurt yourself."
Anyway, I don't know what it would even look like for an entity to make a "free will" decision that wasn't based on any desires. Why would they have made that decision and not some other decision? If they can't answer that question, I think the decision was random, not free. If they can answer the question, then the real question becomes, did they make a free will choice to have that value system for comparing decisions, rather than some other value system? If so, we ask "why did they chose the value system they chose?", and we apply the argument recursively. If not, then the freedom seems to end there.
I think humans are born with a set of desires that they don't chose, like wanting food and air and love. I think other desires are logically derived from those, e.g., I want to go to school, so I can get a job, so I can earn money, so I can buy food.
Incidentally, I do believe in jail. If someone does something bad, I don't believe in "judging" them in the sense of thinking "shame on you! you evil person!", but if I think they'll do it again, then I'm afraid of it happening to me, then I would like them to be prevented from doing it.
I feel like I've given many reasons to many people about why I don't believe in the Mormon faith. In a previous post, I cite various reasons along the lines of: what we know about the brain doesn't jive with what Mormonism says about the spirit; I don't want my friends to go to hell; and I can't trust my feelings, e.g. "feeling the holy spirit", so I need the religion to make sense -- which it doesn't, to me.
However, this conversation brought to light a new reason. This reason is along the lines of "I don't want my friends to go to hell". More specifically, I don't want to go to hell, or be to judged at all.
She asked why I don't want to be judged. My answer was: "because I do evil things." I see other people do evil things and think, that's not right. I don't understand how they could do that. And then later, I find myself doing one of the same evil things and think: "oh, now I understand how someone could do this." My conclusion then is not "it's ok to do this", but rather "I shouldn't judge people for doing this." And I suspect this applies to everything. I think for every evil thing, if I was in the shoes of the evil-doer, I would do the same thing. Hence, I feel like I can't judge people.
But I don't think God can judge people either. I think even if God was in an evil doer's shoes, not knowing He was God (since evil doer's generally do not know that), and having the same knowledge and emotions of the evil doer, that God would do the same things that the evil doer did.
So judging people and sending them one place or another seems bad, even for God.
Of course, another way of stating my objection is that I don't believe in free will. More specifically, I don't understand what free will is. I feel like brains have a set of desires, and they try to meet those desires, and they might make compromises between conflicting desires, and they might accidentally do something that doesn't meet their desires by mistake, but brains are not capable of deciding to do things that don't meet their desires. I feel like someone reading this might slap themselves in the face and say "Ha! I did something that didn't meet any of my desires." However, I would say to that person, "you wanted to prove me wrong -- that's the desire you were satisfying when you slapped yourself in the face, and you wanted to prove me wrong so badly that you compromised your desire to not hurt yourself."
Anyway, I don't know what it would even look like for an entity to make a "free will" decision that wasn't based on any desires. Why would they have made that decision and not some other decision? If they can't answer that question, I think the decision was random, not free. If they can answer the question, then the real question becomes, did they make a free will choice to have that value system for comparing decisions, rather than some other value system? If so, we ask "why did they chose the value system they chose?", and we apply the argument recursively. If not, then the freedom seems to end there.
I think humans are born with a set of desires that they don't chose, like wanting food and air and love. I think other desires are logically derived from those, e.g., I want to go to school, so I can get a job, so I can earn money, so I can buy food.
Incidentally, I do believe in jail. If someone does something bad, I don't believe in "judging" them in the sense of thinking "shame on you! you evil person!", but if I think they'll do it again, then I'm afraid of it happening to me, then I would like them to be prevented from doing it.
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