Is loneliness actually a feeling - or something more fundamental about how we experience reality?

[AuthumBreak]

You asked if there is value in the owner of experience, or in the experience itself. And you said that without an owner, there is nothing to value.

I sat with this for a long time. Here is where I landed. When I try to find this "owner" – not in theory, but right now, in the actual feeling it is not there. There are thoughts and there is a body. There is a sense of "I am". But as soon as I try to grasp this "I" as a thing that owns something, it slips away. Only process remains. Awareness that did not choose itself. It simply happens.

Then the question about "owner's value" becomes strange. Because there is no owner. There is only a certain density of presence. If it is high it seems like there is someone suffering from loneliness. If it drops there is no one to suffer. But the presence itself does not go anywhere.

You suggested God as a fixed point, around which the "I" can gather and I understand. But let me note: even God in this role is a form. A relationship to Him as support. And a form, no matter how holy, remains an interface. In time, it cracks. And again you want to hold on.

What if there is nothing to hold? And no one to hold it?

Let me return to where I started. I said: "If 'I' is just a focal distance through which the Universe watches the sunset, then loneliness is not a mistake. It is the focal distance."

You answered that this is beautiful, but unclear. Let me try simpler.

A lens does not choose to be or not to be. It does not say: "I am sad that I refract light." It simply is. Its way of refracting is not a defect. It is its anatomy. If you call this lens "I", then loneliness is not a feeling I have. It is how I am built. The distance between me and the world is not a breakdown needing repair. It is my optics.

And here is what I noticed. When you cease trying to remove this distance to fill it with people, God, meanings, work – it suddenly stops hurting…It does not disappear. It becomes neutral. Like air temperature and you notice it only when you start to fight it.

So, back to your question about the value of the owner: perhaps value is not in who looks, and not in what they see. But in the fact that looking happens at all. And that it has no master…

Then loneliness is not drama and not a mistake.Just anatomy? And when you see this – not with the mind, but with the whole body questions fall away. Silence remains and a strange, quiet permission to simply be this lens.

[Immanuel Can]

You asked if there is value in the owner of experience, or in the experience itself. And you said that without an owner, there is nothing to value.

No, I didn't actually say that. My words were, "If there's no person-experiencing, there isn't an experience or an awareness for us to value." That is to say, "experience" and "awareness" are things we can only attribute to a person. We can't have an "experience" that has no "experiencer" attached to it. (But the reverse, obviously, is not true: we can have a potential "experiencer" who is not, at that moment, having the particular "experience.")

Let's put this in concrete terms, so it becomes perfectly clear. AuthumBreak can have an experience of eating ice cream. But if there's no AuthumBreak or anybody else present, we cannot speak of "an experience of eating ice cream." Experiences must be associated with an experiencing person, or the idea makes no sense. However, we can speak of AuthumBreak existing in a state in which (he/she?) does not presently experience the eating of ice cream. That's not a difficult concept.

So experience is impossible without an experiencing person, but persons are possible while not-having-experience-X. This makes the concept "person" primary, and the concept "experience" derivative of, or dependent on, that concept.

I sat with this for a long time. Here is where I landed. When I try to find this "owner" – not in theory, but right now, in the actual feeling it is not there. There are thoughts and there is a body. There is a sense of "I am". But as soon as I try to grasp this "I" as a thing that owns something, it slips away. Only process remains. Awareness that did not choose itself. It simply happens.

I don't think that's surprising. "Self" is a dynamic concept (for human beings), in that it both remains stable and shifts.

That sounds contradictory. But let me clear it up.

If I take a picture out of my wallet and hold it up before you, and say, "That's me," and you look at it and see the picture of an 8-year-old child, am I lying? Not really. I was once 8 years old. I'm not 8 now, though. The "self" in the picture is genuinely me; and it's the same me that exists now, and yet not the same.

"Self" is a dynamic concept, you see. The person you are at 8 is both you and not you, at the same time. It signifies the same individual, but at a different stage of the process of being a "self." But the same is actually true of ourselves at every point in time: the "self" I was five minutes ago is both the same and different from the "self" now. There is no lie in saying my identity both five minutes ago and now was "Immanuel Can." But it was not quite the same stage of Immanuel Can's "selfing" in each case: it was a different phase.

And this is why "self" seems to get away from us in the way you describe. On the one hand, "self" is a stable concept at any given point in time -- I can pick out any picture of myself at any stage of my life and authentically say, "That's myself," and mean something real. At the same time, my "self" is dynamic, so I'm never exactly the same "self" as I was before.

Now, here's the killer question: in all this dynamic working out of the "self," is there a version of me that I am teleologically intended by my Creator to become? It there a best, most authentic, most valuable self that I could be striving toward (or, on the other hand, resisting becoming)?

You suggested God as a fixed point, around which the "I" can gather and I understand. But let me note: even God in this role is a form. A relationship to Him as support. And a form, no matter how holy, remains an interface. In time, it cracks. And again you want to hold on.

I don't see that this is the case. If God is the eternal and unchangeable One, He's surely the only fixed point in a world of fluidity. And my relative coordinates cannot be located in relation to constantly-changing "others," but only in relation to such a fixed point.

What if there is nothing to hold? And no one to hold it?

What if there's no God, you mean? Yes, that is a postulate that skeptics do try. But the result is this drifting in a total void. There will be no orienting of self in such a universe, for sure. And that explains the angst and confusion of the Existentialists -- with the notable exception of Kierkegaard, of course. (His exceptionality is, of course, not by accident. He believed in God.)

Let me return to where I started. I said: "If 'I' is just a focal distance through which the Universe watches the sunset, then loneliness is not a mistake. It is the focal distance."

Interesting how you're forced to lapse into anthropomorphic language regarding the universe, even to have such a question, isn't it? You're solving the problem by positing the existence of a kind of "god" without naming God. You call it "the Universe" and attributing to it a "watching."

But surely these are terms that can only refer to persons,or more precisely, to that Person, except when we are speaking merely poetically.

You answered that this is beautiful, but unclear. Let me try simpler.

A lens does not choose to be or not to be. It does not say: "I am sad that I refract light." It simply is. Its way of refracting is not a defect. It is its anatomy. If you call this lens "I", then loneliness is not a feeling I have. It is how I am built. The distance between me and the world is not a breakdown needing repair. It is my optics.

Again, we have anthropomorphic language. You suggest "I am built." A lens has been built by a person. It has been created for a purpose. And you are right: its function is its meaning, in a sense. But for a lens to BE a lens, there would have to be both a "lens-maker," who intended it to be a lens, and a "watcher" who looks through the lens at the distance it clarifies.

But if we are in a universe with no God, there is no teleological or purposive "intention" in our existence. We weren't created for any purpose; we exploded into being by accident. We don't have a purpose. We might make one up, in the hopes of consoling ourselves about that, but it would be a fraud, and the Existentialists would accuse us of having a loss of nerve. Afraid to face the inherent meaninglessness of existence, we were faking ourselves a meaning. But we're lying, and refusing to face reality as-it-is.

Maybe this is why Bertrand Russell wrote, "...only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." Of course, Russell was being silly to assert that such a view offers any "safety," or that it can be of utility to a "soul," since in Russell's own worldview, no such things can be secured. But you get the idea, I'm sure: the secular Existentialists want us to think that in embracing things like meaninglessness in the universe and absurdity in our condition (as well as total fluidity in our state, perhaps) we can become some kind of "heroes." Camus certainly thought this.

But all we can become is meaningless atoms drifting through an indifferent and unstable universe. We aren't even "lenses" in such a place. We're truly ultimately nothings, accidents. There's manifestly no place for selves, souls, safety or heroism in the world conceived in their way.

And here is what I noticed. When you cease trying to remove this distance to fill it with people, God, meanings, work – it suddenly stops hurting…It does not disappear. It becomes neutral. Like air temperature and you notice it only when you start to fight it.

What you'll have to ask yourself is whether this neutralizing effect is the result of it having actually stopped being the case, or a result of becoming thoughtless or indifferent about it.

So, back to your question about the value of the owner:

Not quite what I said, you'll note. I spoke of the value we attribute to the experience, not to the experiencer. But I think we've cleared that up, have we not?

Good thoughts. But in sum, let me suggest that we can't speak of any "lens" or any purpose for our "selves" in which we can rest neutrally, unless we also suppose the existence of a Purposer. And that could only be our Creator.

[Walker]

Relationship and Isolation
https://kfoundation.org/krishnamurti-re ... t-freedom/

“Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti

Comment: Relationships are with people, places, things (animals too) and thoughts. Understanding of relationship is why philosophy folks are drawn to relationships with concepts. It's in their nature. Relationships with people are for people persons. Arthur Miller and Marylin Monroe. Arty Shaw and Ava Gardner, Dick Proenneke and human beings. One could make a list of relationships that go against the grain and create conflict.

[Impenitent]

if you want to find the "owner," look no further than the user of language...

everyone says "I" but it means something different every time it is used...

especially when used by the same speaker... the I that typed this message is not the same I after you read it...

-Imp

[Immanuel Can]

... the I that typed this message is not the same I after you read it...

-Imp

Exactly so.

And yet, it is the same "I" that is predicated. So even there, we see that it both is, and is not, the same entity. After all, to say that "I" changed from one "I" to the next "I" does not mean that "you" or "Fred" or "Matilda" or anybody else suddenly was substituted for the "I."

It was I: and yet, it was not I.

We might say, everybody has two "I"s.

[Impenitent]

... the I that typed this message is not the same I after you read it...

-Imp

Exactly so.

And yet, it is the same "I" that is predicated. So even there, we see that it both is, and is not, the same entity. After all, to say that "I" changed from one "I" to the next "I" does not mean that "you" or "Fred" or "Matilda" or anybody else suddenly was substituted for the "I."

It was I: and yet, it was not I.

We might say, everybody has two "I"s.

only on a ship Cap'n

-Imp

[Walker]

Lonely Avenue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhzFOYs ... oh&index=3

[popeye1945]

There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to subjective consciousness; perhaps loneliness is the sense that one's life is meaningless when one does not have those relations with others. We could say that a human being is its own object in the world and thus can bestow meaning upon oneself, but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps loneliness in subjective isolation is to increase one's vulnerability and, on some level, feel one's mortality closing in on one. Historically, if one was ostracized by their community, it generally meant death one way or another. Something I have learned in my own life is that one can be surrounded by people and still be alone. There is a sense when living in the big city that one is surrounded by human objects, as you are an object to them. It definitely is a feeling and not a good one. Loneliness is to feel lost in a world in which you do not fully belong. Loneliness is not feeling embraced by a community of one size or another, and this is perhaps a stimulus for the subject not to live by the standards of the said community that does not or cannot value its existence. Keeping company with one's own echo has a hollow, cold effect upon the soul.

[promethean75]

"What if loneliness is not something we *feel*, but something more like a structural feature of experience itself?"

There's the existential isolation that comes with the terms and conditions of our existence, yeah. Mortality, alienation, the impossibility of someone feeling your pain, the relativity of values, and the conflicts that result from all that. Metaphysically, we are not social animals at all but ghosted strangers wandering the erf for a few years and then disappearing forever.

And we're not really even biologically social creatures. Most of that shit is learned, and there are sociopaths who feel nauseated around other people and can't get far enough away from them (when they aren't murdering them, i mean).

[Impenitent]

depends on the "social"

one isn't born and then a sudden adult...

at birth, one is dependent upon a mother to survive...

-Imp

[Lacewing]

I think it's both.

Even animals get lonely if separated from their desired companions (yes?).

Connection seems to be one of the most meaningful experiences of individual entities in physical form.

At the same time, we humans can bestow and withdraw 'meaning' in whatever ways suit us -- and this imagined 'meaning' has the capability to blind or ensnare or torture us. The few times I've felt most lonely in my life were when I was with a partner who was oblivious of me.

It has been helpful to discover how to appreciate/enjoy as much as possible (in this temporary Garden Universe) without becoming too intoxicated or dependent -- rather, dancing with or around things as I feel inclined with even more joy. My long-term partner truly appreciates this about me; he and I live in separate houses so we can ensure being and expressing our most authentic selves, amidst our differences. Everybody deserves to have their own experience of life. Sharing things together is more treasured now.

[Dubious]

Loneliness, or more accurately stated, solitude, functions as a lens toward one's inner being. Self-examination requires magnification; For some the experience amounts to misery; for others release in having to live with oneself...the difference and distance between the conception of you and the real you if such can ever be thoroughly discovered.

It's that internal core which makes everything external relative to oneself...light resolving itself into a spectrum of colors or what we consciously describe as experience or qualia radiating outward.

[promethean75]

"Connection seems to be one of the most meaningful experiences of individual entities in physical form"

For that period of dependency until late adolescence, yes, but only superficially... not in some deep philosophical way.

Later in life, circumstances may occur that prevent connections from being made with people without putting one's self at risk of being despised and rejected in the cruelest undeserved way.... or, alternatively, accepted but with pity and loathing. If this happens, not only are connections not meaningful, but they are actively avoided.

When this happens to someone and they don't feel depressed, drained, and apathetic, but on the contrary are in great health, then you know connections are not at all necessary or meaningful.

Now, if this is true of at least one person, who is abnormal... him or the billions of others that find connections incredibly meaningful? What if there's something superficial about those billions of connections that the others think they're making, but they lack the insight to understand why? What if they're all unexamined lives full of prejudices and secret corners that not even they know about themselves? What if everyone but the solitary man is a charlatan?! Or worse, a farm animal!

[popeye1945]

Loneliness is the cold internal knowledge of a lack of meaning to your life. There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself but only in relation to a conscious subject. One could say that we are our own object in the world; thus, we can provide meaning to our own existence. Sounds feasible, but somehow just doesn't cut it. I think in some psychology books the cold emptiness that comes from a lack of meaning in your life is degraded to immaturity, an infantile sense of abandonment, kind of kicking you when you're down; now you can feel ashamed of yourself for this cold, unbearable feeling that feels like death warmed over. No, don't be ashamed. As well as feeling that unbearable emptiness, you're a social creature and need others in your life to feel worthy of existence; if no one values you, you're in the wrong company. Also, there is no compassion for another where there is no identification with oneself in the self of another; this, I believe, is why some people tend to be cruel to animals, though it might extend to their fellow creatures, that an entirely different problem, me thinks, psychopathology perhaps. Life just isn't worth living as an island in a vast ocean of indifference; no, we need each other; together we can have meaningful lives.