Philosophy Now Forum

I want to put a couple of my favourite quotes out here for discussion. Feel free to give your thoughts on them, as you wish. I'm curious to see how you view and interpret them. I realise I've posted elsewhere, but never invited commentary.

If a desert island is no tragedy, why is a deserted universe?

If existence is so great, why is merely existing not enough?

A desert island may not be tragic, but certainly is rare on this planet.
Maybe in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption the new island is deserted: about three days before it's completely cooled, some little fungus or lichen will start colonizing it - and they'll find bacteria already in residence.
Life likes itself; wants to continue; will strive against all odds.
Existence is enough for most life-forms. Once that's taken care of, the clever ones crave happiness. The few that are too smart for their own good then ask "Why am I?" Now, you've got tragedy!
Fortunately, in the inhabited universe, there plenty of desert planets of varied size, composition, colour and extreme temperatures.
Something for everyone.

Yes, high conciousness does add tragedy to existence, IMO. The lower levels of conciousness are still tragic, in that they have no point in existing, though they blissfully don't consider it.

The first one is what Christ calls a lamp on a lampstand. It's like this one: the right way to view an inconvenience is as an adventure; the wrong way to view an adventure is as an inconvenience.

I suppose the pleasentness or unpleasentness of merely existing or doing nothing in particular is largely influenced by our default emotional content. Without being rude, I'd like to share that there are often times when I am just allowing my mind to flow with thoughts, that it feels more than enough.

When nothing hurts, existence can be bliss. But you don't know this unless you've experienced pain and can appreciate the absence of it. If you've never experienced pain, you may be happy, but don't know there is any other way to be. A creature that's happy and doesn't know that it could be miserable annoys the hell out of the miserymongers.... who will then make it their god-anointed mission to add suffering to your experience.

I think humankind makes much of it up as it goes... deciding what means what, and how that's "supposed to" feel, or what response that "deserves". And the creative mind seems inclined toward spinning dramas and stories that back all of it up... so much so, that we really lock in on it and forget how much is made up. Even though it's OKAY to make stuff up, we don't think it's okay to be based on that, and so we resist admitting to such a thing, which clamps it down even tighter. (If we could admit to it, maybe we could defuse it before we blow things up with it.) We may also be terrified of some gaping emptiness beyond our stories, when actually the opposite is true (I think). Our made-up bubble world is what keeps us separated from MUCH that we could have access to and ride on.

Perhaps we fear being ultimately insignificant, isolated, and separate... and yet, that's what our thinking does much of the time during our lives: separates things. When we realize that we (and all else) are part of a larger flow... and that our thinking is only static on top... then the stories become less intoxicating and rigid, and it seems we are more likely to experience all kinds of new connections and possibilities beyond the very mechanical/automated human level (which is really more scary than anything, I think).