Posts by Sandra Murphy33

ruggedraven36 said:This isn't even a philosophical debate—it’s a historical one. It’s like asking someone to pick out the single most important idea from British Empiricism.

What do you mean by that? 🙄

I interpreted the question as an inquiry into what the primary focus of contemporary philosophy ought to be.

Aha...

Well, if things have actually reached that point, you can always just drop it in the comments section. 🤷
In fact, you could go ahead and explain exactly why all the responses were so poor; that might actually serve as useful feedback.

Honestly, I’m still convinced they have to be joking. 😁
I really want to believe that's the case,

(Though, at this point, should we just start placing bets? 🙂)

:no_emotion_set_possible:
😂

I suspect he was just joking, but since he’s always so poised and formal, it isn't exactly easy to tell, is it? 🙂

(See, Sandra Murphy33!! This is why you should probably stick to avoiding those emojis altogether 😬 😛 .... )

Voting for yourself is a total waste of time!!!

Just stay home and cast your vote within your own four walls
🙂

ruggedraven36 said:Shame on you for mocking my suggestion. I'm being serious here, and you're just laughing. You remind me way too much of those Nietzschean "last men."
The two of you can stop addressing me—directly or indirectly—and I'll do the same for you. I have zero respect for you.

😂

Jonathan Brooks8 said:I am formally requesting that the administration here at the forum acquire a software tool capable of implementing the Single-party proposal.

Poll responses—beyond the standard (multiple) choices of this—that should definitely include:
1. I have no idea, and this is my final word
2. I have no idea, but I might give it some thought...
3. None of the above
4. None of the above except for my own, provided I haven't already stated otherwise
5. Not in a million years
6. Love you all
7. I’m retracting my vote; I want to cast it again

🤣

I’m inclined to agree.

The older elections will likely carry more weight now, which might actually allow us to integrate some fresh perspectives into the mix👍

Festina lente

( ... though I’m skeptical that this approach will actually help us become more multi-faceted on the platform😉 ... )

steelridge58, my congratulations to you too 🙂

Forgive me for the oversight; I tend to drift right past formalities... and rituals

Aha 🙂
Thanks

I’d like to pose the one question actually worth asking right now (honestly, nothing else is coming to mind...) and that is: what is it that everyone on this forum fears most? I mean it—describe your deepest, most paralyzing fear, for those of you who actually know what it is and aren't too afraid to share it....

(And if this question doesn't pass muster because it isn't "philosophical" enough or whatever, steelridge58, feel free to come up with something else 😛 )

It all comes down to a fundamental lack of curiosity and imagination. 😢
The reality is that neither option A nor option B offers any actual value—not in a literal sense, and certainly not metaphorically...
We are left with a binary choice: either we are merely firing neurons (as much as mainstream academia insists), or we choose to believe we are something more, which leads us directly into the realm of believing in God (as various churches and traditions maintain):

Terry Martinez10 said:Someone mentioned earlier how neurons somehow "know" what they're supposed to do... well, they know because they communicate through the exact mechanisms described above.
If we stick strictly to hard science and the facts we can definitively prove, then we are nothing more than those very same neurons, and we have to accept that there is absolutely nothing beyond this life. Period. Full stop.
Any other interpretation falls squarely into the realm of faith and nothing else.
But, having seen enough children and young people suffer and pass away throughout my own life, I find myself preferring the idea that there might actually be something more significant out there than what current science is capable of grasping.

I hope Terry Martinez10 doesn't take offense at my decision to use her example. I only used it to illustrate that rigid, digital way of thinking that seems to plague us all in one form or another. Terry Martinez10, your quote was selected simply because it aligns perfectly with the scope of our current discussion.

steelridge58 said:Man, if there were actually any angels watching over me, my life story would probably be a whole lot more wholesome than this.

So, one summer I was traveling along the coast with a close friend, and we weren't just staying in one spot; we were constantly on the move, hitting different towns. One particular morning, we had to head out super early to stay on schedule, and while I can't quite remember if I actually set my alarm, if I did, it certainly didn't do its job.

Instead, someone—or something—decided to wake me up by literally yanking on my hair.

😉

It was a real tug, you know? Not enough to hurt, but definitely enough to snap me awake. My first thought was, "Oh, okay, my friend is just being aggressive about us getting moving," but when I called out to her and turned toward the other bed where she was still fast asleep, I ended up waking *her* up, and she looked at me with this totally annoyed expression:
"Are you insane? Why on earth would I pull your hair like that?"

Hmmm... anyway, regardless of the mysterious hair-pulling phantom, it was definitely time to get up so we could get back on the road and make our trip on time.
..

I suppose those are what people call "spontaneous guidance" or synchronicity.... 👍
Personally, for years now, I’ve been waking up naturally at the exact moment I decide before bed (though I still set an alarm clock 😁 just in case).
Sometimes, I'll go down to the local DMV to renew my driver's license, and while waiting in a massive line outside, I'll randomly sit next to some woman who explains that I won't be seen for another five hours, then shows me an app on her phone where I can track the queue numbers—something I had absolutely no clue existed. So, I download it, saving myself hours of wasted time. My initial instinct (my old 😬 self) was to dismiss the whole thing, thinking apps and digital nonsense were useless and that I'd just wait until the crowd cleared out...

But then, where do all these convenient little synchronicities come from?

Thanks for the new link. 🙂

Terry Martinez10 said:@Nea When you’re actually in the middle of learning something, there are these functional shifts happening within specific synapses that essentially ramp up the electrical responses in the receiving cells. It’s basically just repetitive use—meaning, if you keep firing that synapse, the connection between those two cells gets stronger.

I suppose you could visualize it like a trail worn through a thick forest: the more people walk it, the more accessible it becomes—it's easier to find, and navigating it becomes second nature. But, much like any path left untended, it can also overgrow or disappear entirely once it stops being useful.

The same logic applies to the brain—picking up new skills carves out new connections, though if they aren't utilized, the system eventually breaks them back down. The brain naturally gravitates toward what it already knows, which means it tends to filter new situations through old patterns, potentially leading to a skewed interpretation or an incorrect conclusion.

That's true enough.
However, what I experience feels more like being nudged to do the least likely thing, or something I would normally never do—essentially being guided toward a completely new path or something atypical for my personality. Is the brain creating those new synapses and neural pathways in response to that nudge?
It's possible I won't fully grasp the mechanics of it until much later. 😎

James Lee77 said:We can get even more creative here: if everything materialists say is true—that our thoughts and experiences are "really" just electromagnetic patterns in our neurons—then why couldn't electromagnetic patterns somewhere else be thoughts and experiences too? Like, why couldn't the electromagnetic patterns of the Sun actually be the Sun's own thoughts and feelings? And if that's the case, maybe the Sun is basically some kind of solar god influencing people on Earth through the Earth photon path?

Alright, come on, give me something way more imaginative than that.

🤣

If we’re saying EM waves equal thoughts, then that isn’t "imaginative"—it’s just a fact, right? 🙄
Ever since I read Drago Plečko’s theory about how you can't actually produce a thought if your jaw is completely relaxed (déjà vu, I know, I think I’ve mentioned this before...), I started testing it out. Now, I literally feel sudden bursts of thought-sentences firing into my brain like an (unwanted) EM surge. It doesn't even have to be a negative thought; it just feels like a sudden strike, complete with all the physical stress markers—heart racing, blood running cold, the whole deal.

The interesting thing is that these clear, sentence-like thoughts usually hit during those brief moments when I'm confused about something; they arrive as suggestions or instant solutions. I listen to them because, frankly, I don't have much choice, but later on, it turns out they were just some kind of "sacrifice" or the path of least resistance. They aren't the actual solution...

Am I just stuck with a clueless guardian angel?... 🤔

What truly keeps me up at night is the growing possibility—and it’s looking more plausible with every passing year—that humans aren't actually at the top of the food chain. I suspect there might be species, likely invisible to the naked eye, that subsist on our emotional energy.
In this scenario, they would essentially trigger the very manipulations we see playing out in society every day, even if we can't identify the true source.
Most of these entities would likely feed on negative frequencies, specifically fear and anger.
It’s as if we were biologically hardwired to exist in a state of perpetual anxiety. We start with a primal fear of death, and from there, we spend the rest of our lives constructing a million different, highly imaginative phobias that build upon that initial dread. It creates a feedback loop where we constantly generate new anxieties, effectively fueling ourselves indefinitely. It's a strange paradox: we strive to do good, yet we end up committing wrongs we never intended. Quite a fascinating split in the human psyche, wouldn't you agree?

Given how insane things have become lately—where we are essentially watching the most absurd sci-fi novels and graphic novels come to life in real-time—this concept doesn't even sound that crazy anymore.

In that case, you probably wouldn't be able to handle reading Bramley's Gods from Heaven...
😎

The spiritual realm should never have been allowed to become secularized.
🧐

Why did God permit this to happen?

🍿

You missed the mark.
A person doesn't find themselves through God, but rather through other people, through their work, and through the external world..

😲

I honestly can’t see how you’re trying to link those three points to Christ's Second Coming.

Reading the stuff above is actually more exhausting than trying to decipher an ancient, dead language.

There is one single shred of insight here:

The ultimate religious deception is the Antichrist's ruse—this hollow, pseudo-messianic fraud where humanity ends up worshiping itself instead of God and His true Messiah who came in the flesh.

- because there is a clear connection to dialectics. It boils down to the idea that one can only perceive their own essence indirectly. Following that logic, both God and man attempt to perceive themselves this way. The Abrahamic God of the church, given the title of Father, is positioned as the ultimate Being, but he functions more like a cosmic babysitter. He ensures humanity never truly matures so that he can maintain his role as the eternal shepherd to an eternal flock—it’s purely a question of Power.
In short, when man begins to worship himself, he enters a closed loop. We need to be climbing the spiral staircase of the evolution of Self-awareness. 😉

What’s your take on this?

And how does that square with the whole concept of the Second Coming? 🤔
(If people actually still buy into that dogma... honestly, the state of the church seems just as chaotic as the rest of the world 😎 )

Joseph Murphy10 said:@Nea
Treaty or no treaty—this guy’s just fishing for likes at this point 👍🙂

I'm glad you enjoyed it. 🙂

lonegardener said:@Nea, why on earth would you actually "change your pessimism" if you were absolutely certain about eternal oblivion? What’s the logic behind "trying to find something interesting in everything"?

It feels like the exact opposite to me: if I knew for sure that eternal oblivion was a fact (and honestly, I'm about 99.5% convinced right now, lol), I’d become even more pessimistic. I certainly wouldn't feel like looking for the silver lining in anything.

That said, we should probably point out a bit of ambiguity in the Freudian question. When he asks "what would you change about your life," it isn't clear if he means changing things *now*—from the moment you "realize" eternal oblivion exists until you die—or if he means looking back retrospectively, like "if you could be reborn with that knowledge from the start." It seems like you're interpreting it in that second sense, which is why you mention "youth," but even that feels backwards to me: you can't turn back the clock. No matter how I spent my youth, my "now" remains the same. Of course, that assumes we ignore the actual consequences a certain lifestyle might have on your current situation—though I think you've overlooked that too. You seem to be focusing strictly on experiences or "missed opportunities," rather than practical things like, well, "if I had saved more money, I'd actually have some cash now," lol.

The logic is that I would be more exposed—more vulnerable, less shielded (granted, being shielded is an evolutionary illusion that serves our nervous system and is necessary for its development 😎) so that bliss—which is the only thing in this world that justifies itself—could exist. Instead of just surrendering to negative and unwanted experiences, I would be attempting to see or invent even the tiniest glimmer of light to follow amidst the general despair...
(Because once you surrender to despair, you lose the will to follow anything or go anywhere... so pessimism is ultimately a loss of the will to live and an acquisition of the will to cease existing; will is always present, it just depends on what it’s directed toward)

It seems to me quite the opposite: if I knew for sure about eternal oblivion (though even now, I am about 99.5% convinced, lol), I would become even more pessimistic and have even less desire to find anything interesting in anything at all.

That somewhat explains your tendency toward sensationalist oddities.
😛

One has to mention a certain imprecision in the Freudian question: when he asks "what would you change in your life," it isn't clear if he means "change NOW," as in from the moment you "learn" about eternal oblivion until death, or if he means "in retrospect"—like, "if you could be born again, but with that knowledge from the start" lol.
It seems you interpreted it in the latter sense, which is why you speak of "youth," but to me, even that feels backwards: you can't turn back time.

In reality, it seems irrelevant whether we are changing something in the past or the future; it can be understood either way since it's all just a hypothesis anyway. Eternal oblivion isn't a categorical fact here, just a proposition.
And propositions and hypotheses exist to give wings to the imagination. 🙂

No matter how I "spent my youth," NOW would remain the same (assuming, of course, we ignore the actual "consequences" that a certain lifestyle in the past has on the present—but I think you ignored that too, aiming exclusively at experiences or "missed opportunities" rather than things like—well, if I had saved money, I'd actually have some cash now, lol).

I was actually aiming for that sentiment of, "...if only I had been this wise back then!" 🤣
- which is inherently absurd, considering that this very "wisdom" and these insights were forged specifically because I lacked them at the time. It’s just the standard process of learning through trial and error, isn't it?

By the way, experiences are everything we actually want and truly possess. They aren't like money, which people squirrel away just to spend again later, or leave behind for an heir to blow through shortly after. Money and material goods are strictly linear (diachronically 😁) and, as far as I can tell, don't exist outside of our 3D reality (synchronously). You can't extract wealth from the constraints of space and time, except perhaps as a conceptual idea within the mind. Experiences and lived moments, however—those are the only things capable of being shared and carried beyond the bounds of space and time (if anything can be,
).