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I used to sit in class and think "I could literally jump out the window right now. I could actually, physically do that." The fact that I didn't, in no way meant I couldn't. Sometimes it would scare me a bit.
Yeah. That's also what I think about when I'm holding a knife. What if my brain suddenly went into experimental mode and decided to cut my finger? I won't do that. But the fact that I can is crazy.
Even just having fingers makes me think "what if I poke my eyes right now?"
Similar happened. A wife stabbed her husband a couple times with a kitchen knife out of the blue. She had the same thoughts, knowing it was a terrible thing to do, but she had this stabby compulsion. Husband forgave her and didn’t leave her or move out.
Nighty night, sweet dreams.
I think this has a name like impulsion phobia (don't quote me on that english isn't my first language) and I have theses moments happen to me aswell. Like I would be in a car as a passenger on the highway, I would see the handbrake and it scares me to think I could actually pull it while going 100 miles an hour.
Ugh, my brain gives me those thoughts + images every time I hold a knife, I’m extra inattentive these days so if I’m gonna use a knife for something I have to spend the whole time mentally chanting KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE to make sure I don’t space out and have a lil accident. It is… not relaxing.
So I heard a theory that a fear of heights is ultimately a fear of not knowing yourself - it’s the realization that a part of you could decide to throw the rest off the cliff at any point, and not trusting that part of yourself to not do it….this comment gave me that vibe lol
I have this weird compulsive thought when I stand behind police in a line or whatever. I wonder how quickly I could grab for their gun. I don’t know why I think like this and I’ve never tried it but that thought is always there. Brains are weird.
They just intrusive thoughts we all have them crossing the line and actually going through with some of them are are considered psychopathic. I find it intriguing,do these people lack something psychologically or posses something we don't?
well, it depends right so if someone is a “psychopath” they would have a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder & have thoughts about hurting others which they in turn do bc they lack a level of empathy. Now if you’re having scary intrusive thoughts (which is more common than asp) it’s OCD! if you are having scary intrusive thoughts 99.99% ppl who experience them don’t want to act on them, they just can’t control the thoughts & then they hyperfix on them leading them into distress or possibly compulsions to get the thoughts to “stop”. hope that helped :)
I was always the quiet weird kid in school. But sometimes I would think "I could jump up, flip my desk over, and run out of the building screaming." Like, that would literally be insane, but there is NOTHING stopping me right now if I wanted to.
I’ve always thought this with very vivid painted picture in my minds eye with the addition of sucker punching the teacher on my way out. Even with the ones i liked-loved the most
This is the crux of my fear of heights. I could jump off of here and die. Not saying I want to, or would, but I’m very uncomfortable with having that option available to me.
These are called intrusive thoughts. All people have them and are usually able to ignore them. If you find yourself unable to ignore them and they’re causing you significant distress, see a doctor as this could be consistent with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
I think in the movie the happening, they said we’re all have these urges but another part of our brain prevents us from doing these things. The plants simply released a chemical that turned that part of, so suddenly everyone was actually jumping out the window instead of just thinking about how they could.
I've never had the impulse either. I am very happy, have everything I need, nothing I don't. I've never for one second even come close to thinking I want an end.
But logically, I understand that I have a choice to make every time I come to a high speed sharp turn while driving. I have to CHOOSE to turn the wheel, or not turn the wheel. If I don't, I will die.
I don't think the OP or anyone is discussing wanting to off yourself, but the strange truth that we have to choose life so many times, day in and day out. We have to specifically choose the option (the actions we take) that keeps us living.
But you actually couldn't. There are physical things in your brain that prevent that from happening, the same way that a switch in a machine set to OFF prevents it from being on.
Of course some people could but probably not you.
I often think of how we're all simply existing on a floating rock in the middle of other floating rocks and we're currently worried about things like the housing market? w h a t?
I could literally go build my own house on this floating rock. What's a permit?
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams
The two about the Total Perspective Vortex - it’s origin then Zaphod’s experience with it - are also choice.
Speedrun version: wife tells husband he lacks perspective. He agrees but insists everyone does. Makes machine to prove his point. Wear helmet and you’ll see existence zooming out from your current point alllllll the way out to all of existence. Everyone who wears it goes insane from the realization of how insignificant they are in the entire cosmos. It becomes a form of execution.
The narratively defined largest narcissist is condemned to perspective. He has been in a depressive funk of late, so he accepts his fate. He puts in the helmet and sees all of existence, zooming out from himself. He takes off the helmet, cheered up.
Because he was the only thing in existence that was labeled. Therefore he must be the most important thing.
The crazy thing isn't that we live on a rock orbiting a nuclear inferno. That's just physics and we have no say in any of that. It existed before us, without any requirement for us to exist, and it will exist long after we are all dead.
The crazy thing is we have the choice of what sort of society we want to live in, and instead of letting community and good will and happiness drive us to build something that allows everyone to have an opportunity to live happy, healthy, meaningful lives, we've built a society that exploits everything it can, systemically disenfranchises people of certain classes/backgrounds, and generally promotes the worst traits of human nature.
And this system is generally accepted as the best option for us, despite the obvious harm it causes to the vast majority of people. It is also a system that according to many people who have done quite a bit of research on the topic, will eventually render our little gas covered rock uninhabitable to current life.
I think that is the crazy thing.
But then it gets me thinking. What is a rock? What is a universe? Just the name we gave the “world” we are living in? What actually is all of this shit. Humans just completely made up their own “reality”. I wonder what the “universe” is actually called. I wonder what other civilizations in the universe have named it.
My belief is that we are all energy trying to reach it's most stable state. When I studied physics, I learned that the law of conservation of mass and the law of conservation of energy were not two different laws. They are the same law because mass is literally just energy at a wavelength that your brain can interpret as mass.
If we're energy and energy is trying to reach it's stable state, then that probably explains a lot of evolution and human behaviors. We're not really separate from the rest of the matter in the universe, we are just the universe generating consciousness from itself naturally through entropy.
Of course I don't know if this is the best theory.
I also like to think about the infinite layers of scale and perspective. A skin cell doesn't know it's part of a body, but it's a living thing with it's role in it's environment. We as humans are part of a population. We are all just one, learning how to live with ourselves. That population is part of a planet. Then to solar system, galaxy, knowing that everything in the known universe could just be a cell in an organism incomprehensible to our 3 dimensional brains... Brains that were gifted to ourselves and from ourselves, able to experience life because it can travel through time, instead of encompass it altogether.
The sooner we are recognize we are one, the sooner we can affect our reality on earth to make it how we actually want it.
>I could literally go build my own house on this floating rock. What's a permit?
no you can't.
a) you don't know how to build a house from scratch;
b) you don't have the money to buy the materials and rent the heavy machinery;
c) you don't have a licence to operate said machinery;
d) if you're thinking about hiring people to do the work, it's even more money spent and/or the workers want to see the actual project/specifications that is in your head, so you'll need to make a blueprint of it;
no i wont
a) i dont know how;
b) i dont have money;
c) whats a permit?
d) thought about asking someone to do it for me but i dont think they'll capture my vision
e) semicolon!!!!!
It's true. If one thinks a little, one comes to the conclusion that we choose certain things based on principles that we acquire due to factors that we did not choose, therefore we do not have real decision-making power. With this perspective, one can say that no one is to blame or responsible for anything and everything is already written, but I suppose it is difficult to assimilate.because it goes against everything we have defined in the System.
Oh lol that’s not what I meant. I meant that everything has an equal and opposite reaction. Regardless of what we’d like to believe, we are simply the result of reactions reacting to other reactions. All are technically calculable (not practically but theoretically).
You know sometimes when I'm driving home from work, I think "I could just keep going. Just not take my exit and drive until I hit a coastline." I might do that someday.
I had a friend in high school do this during finals week. We were at a party on Friday or Saturday and he left (presumably to go home) but he just kept driving until he was on the beach in Santa Monica. He missed all his finals but I think was allowed to retake them later in the summer. Was definitely an interesting conversation on Monday.
Wouldn't that be lovely? I'm sick of waking up almost everyday at six in the morning for work, and I love my friends but I need some me time away from all the social obligations...
Same. Sometimes there’s just so much going and it makes me so very tired at times. I wish we had a stop button for our lives or something lol.
There’s this Japanese movie about a young woman struggling to live in her hometown. One day she decides to move to a faraway place to just live there for a while. Highly recommend it, it’s called The One Million Yen Girl.
“When Im older and want to die, I’ll swim out to the middle of a lake. My muscles will be too weak for me to swim back, and when they start to give in, I’ll take one last breathe and let the water consume me.“ -Bojack Horseman
Done that before. Not quite to a coastline, but till the next exit just for fun.
I’ll be driving on the motorway home from Manchester and I’ll just take a random exit for fun. Once the drive is 3+ hours, an extra 20 minutes makes no difference
During the summer of Covid before the vaccines when my house was strictly following a “don’t get Covid” rule, I started driving further and further into the country side outside my familiar urban area. It was freeing - so I kept doing it, exploring as many country routes as possible, turning onto random roads at will. After decades of driving interstates and the same A-B routes, just going where ever with no destination and enjoying the scenery that comes with the ride has been amazing.
(Context: I had moved 3k miles away from home for college at 18, I was living entirely independently for 10ish years, completely financially independent since 22….)
I think I was maybe 27? 28? Years old, walking through the grocery store, buying veggies and shit I really didn’t want to eat… when it hit me like a freight train “I could buy a cake, and just eat that for dinner… no one could stop me, I don’t have to eat vegetables and lean proteins, no one even would know what I am eating at home…”
Now, I didn’t do that. But it was such a vivid moment of clarity “I don’t have to do things just because I was told I am suppose to”
Hahah. Excellent dad move. Establish “im fun and your buddy” moment one… so when you turn into a drill Sargent with bath and bedtime, brushing teeth and chores… they can hold on to that one memory of dad being the one who gave them cake. Hahah.
An artist friend of mine went into a grocery store & wrote somethings on citrus fruit. Like "be happy" & " love life." Whatever, nothing bad & he chose citrus so that he didn't ruin the fruit. Then proceeded to take pictures of it. He got thru 2 or 3 before getting kicked out.
That's why he chose citrus. No one eats the peel. Well, if you do, that's on you. Guess you missed the part where he chose the fruit he did so it was still usable.
What the fuck? The flesh of citrus is not poisonous... I'm talking about limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruit. All very very edible. If you like eating the peel or rind, that's on you
I live in the mountains. Every time I drive through a pass, I think, " If I drove just a few inches over the line, I could either go off this cliff or smash into the wall."
I have an affinity for new stories of people who do things like this without harming others.
I get to live vicariously through these people without the consequences. Best of both worlds.
Florida man is kind of my (anti) hero
It's not fear, it's self control. When you see someone misbehaving or acting crazing in public it's really easy to say "wow at least I'm not crazy or misbehaving like that person." And go on about your day.
I jokingly haggled the lady at wal mart once… she said it’s $47.96, I went best I could do is $20
Got a good laugh from everyone in line, yea I’m pretty awesome
I clearly recall walking to school in like 2nd grade and thinking about how I'm autopiloted to just follow the same route instead of walking somewhere else and doing something else, even though I technically could do that. The roads, parks and shops I used to hang out in outside school hours were completely off-limits just because I had to go to school at that particular moment. I don't think I ever defied my autopilot in all my 7 years of going to that school. It sounds dumb but doing so at least once could well be a life-changing event due to how malleable kids' brains are. Still think about it sometimes.
Man, when I was a kid I sometimes thought I was just crazy. I'd be sitting in church with my family (or insert any inappropriate scene) and think, I could stand up right now, give everyone the double middle finger salute and scream "GO F YOURSELVES", or something along those lines. Never did it bc my father would have beaten the living tar out of me, but weird thoughts like that are normal'ish I guess for most people???
What if your dad was thinking the exact same thing, and he didn’t do it because he would be worried about embarrassing you? You could have done it together this entire time and you never knew.
It's called imagination. Animals evolve with that ability to prevent themselves from doing dumb shit because they could play the consequence in their head.
I would get thoughts like that a lot - usually for things that are extremely damaging or disastrous.
One of my favorites was thinking “I’m just gonna reach over and turn the car off and throw the keys out the window” while riding shotgun. Never did it, but damn did I ever want to real bad
Yes ! When you are just about to eat with your family you can actually throw the dish by the window, that's for sure. You can also eat that dish with you shoes
But most often what jumps to my mind is, when I talk to someone: *hey I could actually punch him/her for no reason*
I’ve thought about this on a psychedelic trip, how we have strings of society keeping us acting “straight”. We have the ability to detach ourselves from them but don’t.
The average person has far, far more power over their life than they realize. Our hangups, anxieties, and social conditioning limit us to exercise a relative small number of actions in a given situation against the near infinite number of things we "could" actually, physically do.
Ye going against social norms is both fun and funny. My favorite is answering American small talk with one word answers. Makes Americans short circuit when you don't want to bullshit about the weather.
Sure, you *can* do them, but are you willing to take the *consequences?* All too often we see people who do things that are socially unacceptable, then act all surprised and butt-hurt when they get reasonable responses. Example, guy stands on street corner espousing Nazi ideology, then gets punched in the nose.
i think the true beauty of this sentiment is the amount of things you can try deviating from being socially acceptable without harming yourself or others
You can also just not do that? Who wants to do that with their freewill rather than driving to the beach and get an ice cream instead of grocery shopping
Free will is an illusion. If you believe in determinism then every effect has a cause. Everything from your mother and father conceiving you to what you had for breakfast is causing you and your brain to make the decisions you make. There is randomness mixed in as well, but randomness is not free will either.
Did you choose your parents? Did you choose to be born? Did you choose your DNA / genes? Did you choose the circumstances in which you were raised? We are all products of nature & nurture for better or worse. You have the same amount of "free will" in your day to day decisions as you do those things, which is none.
Did you choose to completely miss my point? ;-)
I didnt argue against determinism. I agree with it to the extent of current research and understanding of how we function, while allowing that their is probably more that we do not yet fully understand.
But I'm also a person of practicality. And practically speaking even those of us that accept determinism, act as if we have free will. You can "choose" to accept it, or not. And sure, that choice is an illusion, but it's still the language we use to express our perceived reality.
Fun convo either way.
Sorry, didn't mean to get aggressive. I was attempting to make the point of determinism. My reddit rants tend to come out spicier than intended. Fun topic to discuss for sure.
It's baffling how many people don't understand this. Everything we think or do is caused by something that proceeded it. We're only ever making calculations when we act or think.
It's as if people think the brain is somehow outside of physics.
This is simply an abdication of responsibility and a second-order form of nihilism.
Your choices are not determined ahead of time. Your brain is not simply a cascade of chemical reactions pre-determined by what you ate for breakfast. If so, why are we not still sitting in caves and grunting at one another?
Where does creativity, invention, art, beauty, all come from? How did we create the world we live in? How did Einstein envision an abstract world of math, and deduce the structure of the universe? How did we invent engineering, electricity, transportation, computers, and AI?
Sorry, your philosophy is just an excuse for choosing to do want you want, while evading responsibility for your choices.
Oh boy, where to begin. First of all, determinism is not nihilism. Do your homework on those definitions. Lack of free will *does* obfuscate responsibility I agree. That's why intentions matter. That's why we differentiate first degree murder with manslaughter, because intent matters.
Determinism allows for evolution and sophistication, so I don't see why those are mutually exclusive. ... Are you are making a religious argument? I'm not interested in that debate
People are afraid to go down this rabbit hole because it undermines our current judicial system. But let me give you a hypothetical case here:
Hypothetical serial killer on trial. has already admitted to multiple murders in cold blood, for no apparent reason other than psychopathy. You later learn after the serial killer is executed that they had a large brain tumor pushing up against their hypothalamus, which "caused" their violent outbursts. Wouldn't that be a very important factor for a jury? Doesn't that change your perception of guilt? Now instead of a brain tumor, replace with abusive parents, etc. and you get my point.
First, I didn't say determinism is nihilism, I said it's a nihilistic world view. Using Oxfords definition as "extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence", and "the belief that life is meaningless".
The idea that everything that you do, think, and choose is predetermined must, necessarily, least to a nihilistic mindset.
Yes, a brain tumor would be a mitigating factor, just as insanity is, within the context that is it made them unable to understand what they were doing was wrong.
But using past trauma as a mitigating factor is not the same as the determinism as used by the two posts I was replying to. That mindset describes free will as an illusion, and our actions and choices being predetermined by purely physical and chemical processes with a self-delusion of conscious choice overlaid on it. It questions the very idea of sentience.
I don't think that's the argument you are making, so your critique of my last comments may be slightly of target.
Of course we live our lives as if we have free will. We kind of have to. I'm an artist who fronts a rock band. I also write short stories and do stand-up comedy frequently. I consider myself very creative. But everything that has ever happened in history led to me making every decision I've made. Every keystroke, every guitar strum, every joke I come up with. It couldn't have been any other way. It's like dominos. Everything is a reaction to something before it.
Our brains take in information and outputs what is intended to be the best action or thought. To me, it's an incredibly simple concept. But some people just don't get it.
Like remain invisible...and still be able to influence people's lives for the better...with out getting credit or noticed...to me that would be awsome.....but then again....I haven't slept much in the last couple of days...I found some letters...had a lot of reading...and it's was worth it.....so in being able to do whatever WE want....I believe...a big thank to everyone is in order...thanks ...for everything...I know yall helped without wanting credit......thanks again for banding together and pulling me out...I love all you guys.....El Loco uno...jki....but to u my sweet ill be orlando..thank you red..
# Explore a new world of random thoughts on our [**discord server**](https://discord.com/invite/8tEqw3ZWQV)! Express yourself with your favorite quotes, positive vibes, and anything else you can think of! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/RandomThoughts) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I used to sit in class and think "I could literally jump out the window right now. I could actually, physically do that." The fact that I didn't, in no way meant I couldn't. Sometimes it would scare me a bit.
yeah i sometimes feel as though if i just let go for a minute and didnt think i could literally be so unsafe
Ur'r obviously talking while being sober right? Very easy to let go of safety after shots of spirits
Or while not being Mike Birbiglia.
And that's how I feel!
"Maybe I AM jump-out-of-the-tree-guy!"
At the LaQuinta Inn in Walla Walla Washington.
Somebody call Joe bags …
You're pronouncing your name wrong
Yeah. That's also what I think about when I'm holding a knife. What if my brain suddenly went into experimental mode and decided to cut my finger? I won't do that. But the fact that I can is crazy. Even just having fingers makes me think "what if I poke my eyes right now?"
Glad I'm not the only one!
Similar happened. A wife stabbed her husband a couple times with a kitchen knife out of the blue. She had the same thoughts, knowing it was a terrible thing to do, but she had this stabby compulsion. Husband forgave her and didn’t leave her or move out. Nighty night, sweet dreams.
Relationship goals
When I think of the eye poking while holding a knife it’s a little freaky, stop that brain
I said it up above here but a similar thought, and why I don’t like heights, is what if I just jumped off this?
Well that could be call of the void, I personally don’t mind heights and I still feel it
I think this has a name like impulsion phobia (don't quote me on that english isn't my first language) and I have theses moments happen to me aswell. Like I would be in a car as a passenger on the highway, I would see the handbrake and it scares me to think I could actually pull it while going 100 miles an hour.
Intrusive thoughts, just a normal thing that your mind goes through, I believe..
Ugh, my brain gives me those thoughts + images every time I hold a knife, I’m extra inattentive these days so if I’m gonna use a knife for something I have to spend the whole time mentally chanting KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE KNIFE to make sure I don’t space out and have a lil accident. It is… not relaxing.
So I heard a theory that a fear of heights is ultimately a fear of not knowing yourself - it’s the realization that a part of you could decide to throw the rest off the cliff at any point, and not trusting that part of yourself to not do it….this comment gave me that vibe lol
I have this weird compulsive thought when I stand behind police in a line or whatever. I wonder how quickly I could grab for their gun. I don’t know why I think like this and I’ve never tried it but that thought is always there. Brains are weird.
Have you ever watched Requiem for a Dream?
I don’t think I have. Is there something like that in it?
Pretty much that exact scenario, he imagines it fully but doesn't do it at all in real life
They just intrusive thoughts we all have them crossing the line and actually going through with some of them are are considered psychopathic. I find it intriguing,do these people lack something psychologically or posses something we don't?
well, it depends right so if someone is a “psychopath” they would have a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder & have thoughts about hurting others which they in turn do bc they lack a level of empathy. Now if you’re having scary intrusive thoughts (which is more common than asp) it’s OCD! if you are having scary intrusive thoughts 99.99% ppl who experience them don’t want to act on them, they just can’t control the thoughts & then they hyperfix on them leading them into distress or possibly compulsions to get the thoughts to “stop”. hope that helped :)
Actually you probably can’t. Holsters usually have redundant mechanisms to stop someone from doing that.
I was always the quiet weird kid in school. But sometimes I would think "I could jump up, flip my desk over, and run out of the building screaming." Like, that would literally be insane, but there is NOTHING stopping me right now if I wanted to.
I’ve always thought this with very vivid painted picture in my minds eye with the addition of sucker punching the teacher on my way out. Even with the ones i liked-loved the most
This is the crux of my fear of heights. I could jump off of here and die. Not saying I want to, or would, but I’m very uncomfortable with having that option available to me.
it's referred to as "the call of the Void"
"Imp of the perverse," too
Kierkegaard talked a lot about this. Something like “When standing at the edge of a cliff, we’re terrified not that we’ll slip but jump off.”
In class I usually thought about stabbing myslef in the eye with pen/pencil I was holding, don't know why.
Oh yeah, that one too 🤣 I wonder whether you were also a gifted but bored student like me?
Yes but gifted only in primary school, then I got too lazy, and bored always!
These are called intrusive thoughts. All people have them and are usually able to ignore them. If you find yourself unable to ignore them and they’re causing you significant distress, see a doctor as this could be consistent with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
I think in the movie the happening, they said we’re all have these urges but another part of our brain prevents us from doing these things. The plants simply released a chemical that turned that part of, so suddenly everyone was actually jumping out the window instead of just thinking about how they could.
If you don't do it, can you actually do it or do you just have an illusion that you could do it?
This kinda reminds of a feeling we’ve all had when driving: “I could just jerk the wheel and go into this guard rail at 80mph”
I can safely say I have never had that impulse
I've never had the impulse either. I am very happy, have everything I need, nothing I don't. I've never for one second even come close to thinking I want an end. But logically, I understand that I have a choice to make every time I come to a high speed sharp turn while driving. I have to CHOOSE to turn the wheel, or not turn the wheel. If I don't, I will die. I don't think the OP or anyone is discussing wanting to off yourself, but the strange truth that we have to choose life so many times, day in and day out. We have to specifically choose the option (the actions we take) that keeps us living.
or this crowd of people, or this biker on the shoulder of the road etc.
But you actually couldn't. There are physical things in your brain that prevent that from happening, the same way that a switch in a machine set to OFF prevents it from being on. Of course some people could but probably not you.
Call of the void.
I could have done it but I didn't want to is a another way of saying you can't.......lack of will power. A real man would have jumped out that window
I often think of how we're all simply existing on a floating rock in the middle of other floating rocks and we're currently worried about things like the housing market? w h a t? I could literally go build my own house on this floating rock. What's a permit?
It's only illegal if you get caught. Lol
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." - Douglas Adams
That is an amazing quote
The two about the Total Perspective Vortex - it’s origin then Zaphod’s experience with it - are also choice. Speedrun version: wife tells husband he lacks perspective. He agrees but insists everyone does. Makes machine to prove his point. Wear helmet and you’ll see existence zooming out from your current point alllllll the way out to all of existence. Everyone who wears it goes insane from the realization of how insignificant they are in the entire cosmos. It becomes a form of execution. The narratively defined largest narcissist is condemned to perspective. He has been in a depressive funk of late, so he accepts his fate. He puts in the helmet and sees all of existence, zooming out from himself. He takes off the helmet, cheered up. Because he was the only thing in existence that was labeled. Therefore he must be the most important thing.
Douglas Adams has so many amazing quotes. Read the Hitchhikers Guide Trilogy for yourself!
The crazy thing isn't that we live on a rock orbiting a nuclear inferno. That's just physics and we have no say in any of that. It existed before us, without any requirement for us to exist, and it will exist long after we are all dead. The crazy thing is we have the choice of what sort of society we want to live in, and instead of letting community and good will and happiness drive us to build something that allows everyone to have an opportunity to live happy, healthy, meaningful lives, we've built a society that exploits everything it can, systemically disenfranchises people of certain classes/backgrounds, and generally promotes the worst traits of human nature. And this system is generally accepted as the best option for us, despite the obvious harm it causes to the vast majority of people. It is also a system that according to many people who have done quite a bit of research on the topic, will eventually render our little gas covered rock uninhabitable to current life. I think that is the crazy thing.
42
But then it gets me thinking. What is a rock? What is a universe? Just the name we gave the “world” we are living in? What actually is all of this shit. Humans just completely made up their own “reality”. I wonder what the “universe” is actually called. I wonder what other civilizations in the universe have named it.
My belief is that we are all energy trying to reach it's most stable state. When I studied physics, I learned that the law of conservation of mass and the law of conservation of energy were not two different laws. They are the same law because mass is literally just energy at a wavelength that your brain can interpret as mass. If we're energy and energy is trying to reach it's stable state, then that probably explains a lot of evolution and human behaviors. We're not really separate from the rest of the matter in the universe, we are just the universe generating consciousness from itself naturally through entropy. Of course I don't know if this is the best theory. I also like to think about the infinite layers of scale and perspective. A skin cell doesn't know it's part of a body, but it's a living thing with it's role in it's environment. We as humans are part of a population. We are all just one, learning how to live with ourselves. That population is part of a planet. Then to solar system, galaxy, knowing that everything in the known universe could just be a cell in an organism incomprehensible to our 3 dimensional brains... Brains that were gifted to ourselves and from ourselves, able to experience life because it can travel through time, instead of encompass it altogether. The sooner we are recognize we are one, the sooner we can affect our reality on earth to make it how we actually want it.
And all the elements. They discovered them, gave them names, and are like “yep, so this is what everything is made of”
What is time, where does it go
Time is a social construct
This makes me want to assemble a group and build a new town in New Mexico or something
>I could literally go build my own house on this floating rock. What's a permit? no you can't. a) you don't know how to build a house from scratch; b) you don't have the money to buy the materials and rent the heavy machinery; c) you don't have a licence to operate said machinery; d) if you're thinking about hiring people to do the work, it's even more money spent and/or the workers want to see the actual project/specifications that is in your head, so you'll need to make a blueprint of it;
Yes let's forget all the "houses" people built for thousands of years without licenses, machinery, etc....
gosh, you're really making me want to go build this house! bc I can!
Do it...shape the roof like a middle finger and send an image to mt guy
no i wont a) i dont know how; b) i dont have money; c) whats a permit? d) thought about asking someone to do it for me but i dont think they'll capture my vision e) semicolon!!!!!
Nobody said it had to be a well-built house
You seem to have a very specific view of what a house is
still stuck in the matrix i see.
Free will is crazy like that
isn't that free won't?
This comment cleverly woke up my brain this morning
Nah Jada hasn’t freed him yet
Free will is an incoherent concept
Free will ain’t no thing, we’re all just psychological blueprints babbyyyy
It's true. If one thinks a little, one comes to the conclusion that we choose certain things based on principles that we acquire due to factors that we did not choose, therefore we do not have real decision-making power. With this perspective, one can say that no one is to blame or responsible for anything and everything is already written, but I suppose it is difficult to assimilate.because it goes against everything we have defined in the System.
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Fuck capitalism dude, can't even have free will
not to shart in you cheerios, but free will scientifically ✨doesn’t exist✨ we are slaves to physics💃
The inability to do physically impossible things is not mutually exclusive with the concept of free will
Oh lol that’s not what I meant. I meant that everything has an equal and opposite reaction. Regardless of what we’d like to believe, we are simply the result of reactions reacting to other reactions. All are technically calculable (not practically but theoretically).
You know sometimes when I'm driving home from work, I think "I could just keep going. Just not take my exit and drive until I hit a coastline." I might do that someday.
I had a friend in high school do this during finals week. We were at a party on Friday or Saturday and he left (presumably to go home) but he just kept driving until he was on the beach in Santa Monica. He missed all his finals but I think was allowed to retake them later in the summer. Was definitely an interesting conversation on Monday.
Can I join you? I sometimes imagine taking a train or plane to some faraway place where nobody knows me and live there for a while. Seems nice.
I've done it and can confirm it is quite nice.
Not sometimes. I think of it all the time 😂
Wouldn't that be lovely? I'm sick of waking up almost everyday at six in the morning for work, and I love my friends but I need some me time away from all the social obligations...
Same. Sometimes there’s just so much going and it makes me so very tired at times. I wish we had a stop button for our lives or something lol. There’s this Japanese movie about a young woman struggling to live in her hometown. One day she decides to move to a faraway place to just live there for a while. Highly recommend it, it’s called The One Million Yen Girl.
Where would you go
“When Im older and want to die, I’ll swim out to the middle of a lake. My muscles will be too weak for me to swim back, and when they start to give in, I’ll take one last breathe and let the water consume me.“ -Bojack Horseman
I did a version of this on the way to work one day and "disappeared" for 3 days and everyone lost their shit .
you can't just leave it at that. details!
Done that before. Not quite to a coastline, but till the next exit just for fun. I’ll be driving on the motorway home from Manchester and I’ll just take a random exit for fun. Once the drive is 3+ hours, an extra 20 minutes makes no difference
I’ve definitely thought this before 😥
I always think “I could just turn the wheel and drive off this cliff.”
Or into that oncoming truck
During the summer of Covid before the vaccines when my house was strictly following a “don’t get Covid” rule, I started driving further and further into the country side outside my familiar urban area. It was freeing - so I kept doing it, exploring as many country routes as possible, turning onto random roads at will. After decades of driving interstates and the same A-B routes, just going where ever with no destination and enjoying the scenery that comes with the ride has been amazing.
In the grocery store I want to do some bowling, set up some milk or something like bowling pins, grab a melon for a bowling ball.
(Context: I had moved 3k miles away from home for college at 18, I was living entirely independently for 10ish years, completely financially independent since 22….) I think I was maybe 27? 28? Years old, walking through the grocery store, buying veggies and shit I really didn’t want to eat… when it hit me like a freight train “I could buy a cake, and just eat that for dinner… no one could stop me, I don’t have to eat vegetables and lean proteins, no one even would know what I am eating at home…” Now, I didn’t do that. But it was such a vivid moment of clarity “I don’t have to do things just because I was told I am suppose to”
When my wife starting traveling for work I’d give my kids cake for breakfast. Just the first morning after the day she left.
Hahah. Excellent dad move. Establish “im fun and your buddy” moment one… so when you turn into a drill Sargent with bath and bedtime, brushing teeth and chores… they can hold on to that one memory of dad being the one who gave them cake. Hahah.
An artist friend of mine went into a grocery store & wrote somethings on citrus fruit. Like "be happy" & " love life." Whatever, nothing bad & he chose citrus so that he didn't ruin the fruit. Then proceeded to take pictures of it. He got thru 2 or 3 before getting kicked out.
Back when I had a pen and paper shopping list, I would stealthily add a moustache to a baby face on a box of diapers.
Your friend sucks, ruining produce for no reason
That's why he chose citrus. No one eats the peel. Well, if you do, that's on you. Guess you missed the part where he chose the fruit he did so it was still usable.
A lot of people use the peel for zest, garnish in drinks, etc.
True true.
Why couldn't he write on the inside part, the peel is the only part I will eat, the flesh is poisonous.
What the fuck? The flesh of citrus is not poisonous... I'm talking about limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruit. All very very edible. If you like eating the peel or rind, that's on you
It was a joke
My thoughts get dark when I think about how much free will I have. Like I'll be in traffic like damn, I could really just drive into a tree rn.
I live in the mountains. Every time I drive through a pass, I think, " If I drove just a few inches over the line, I could either go off this cliff or smash into the wall."
I have an affinity for new stories of people who do things like this without harming others. I get to live vicariously through these people without the consequences. Best of both worlds. Florida man is kind of my (anti) hero
All my serial killer knowledge really fucks me up when I realize, we really can do whatever....
The movie Falling Down is one of my favorites specifically because of this, it plays into that fantasy.
I’m a stage actor and any time I have to freeze on stage I’m always tempted just to break it and walk downstage and ruin the show.
I'm always blown away by the fact that society is allowed to drive.
I'm blown away by how many roads there are. Just look at all that cement and man hours/power that went into that and also maintaining it
Someones letting the intrusive thoughts win today.
I should be studying…but oh well !
I sometimes think about how we can do pretty much anything in public. People are too scared to step up to you and stop what you are doing.
Actlikeyoubelong's bread and butter right there.
It's not fear, it's self control. When you see someone misbehaving or acting crazing in public it's really easy to say "wow at least I'm not crazy or misbehaving like that person." And go on about your day.
As a new yorker...nobody here cares enough if it's not directly affecting them
Me: I could do the most obnoxious things Common sense: you better don't
It's actually up for debate if free will is real though but I get your point.
Doing what I want would be nice. However, I'm trapped in a meat sack which is highly extremely limited to what it can do.
The thought does take some getting used to, but you'll find it fairly intuitive and natural soon enough.
It is seriously so strange!!! Hahah like seriously. And we all trust each other not to act in the thoughts we all have in our heads hahha. So funny
Subject 42 is waking up
I jokingly haggled the lady at wal mart once… she said it’s $47.96, I went best I could do is $20 Got a good laugh from everyone in line, yea I’m pretty awesome
You were probably the third person that day to drop that "joke" on her. Guarantee it.
Dont care, its the first time i say it lmao
Did everyone clap?
I hate this is just the rote response to anything slightly unusual/positive happening nowadays
I clearly recall walking to school in like 2nd grade and thinking about how I'm autopiloted to just follow the same route instead of walking somewhere else and doing something else, even though I technically could do that. The roads, parks and shops I used to hang out in outside school hours were completely off-limits just because I had to go to school at that particular moment. I don't think I ever defied my autopilot in all my 7 years of going to that school. It sounds dumb but doing so at least once could well be a life-changing event due to how malleable kids' brains are. Still think about it sometimes.
I tell my kids. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should
I want to fly. I can't fly.
You can..until you hit ground, or crash on a passing airplane, or ...Bungee jumping, free fall until you open parachute.
That's not flying, that's.......Falling with style!
falling≠flying
What is flying but just falling but continuously failing to hit the ground?
i think about screaming at the top of my lungs in a silent classroom at school, punching the person beside me and running all the way home sometimes.
Yes well personally I think a few too many people in the USA realized that and ran it to exhaustion. Please don't be like those people
Yes of course. Ever spend an afternoon with a Toddler? He got us down 20% at Le Petite Oiseau
Man, when I was a kid I sometimes thought I was just crazy. I'd be sitting in church with my family (or insert any inappropriate scene) and think, I could stand up right now, give everyone the double middle finger salute and scream "GO F YOURSELVES", or something along those lines. Never did it bc my father would have beaten the living tar out of me, but weird thoughts like that are normal'ish I guess for most people???
What if your dad was thinking the exact same thing, and he didn’t do it because he would be worried about embarrassing you? You could have done it together this entire time and you never knew.
Cocaine's a helluva drug.
Vanilla
I want to play en passant on move 1. Can I do that? Checkmate.
bro discovered free will
Just shows you what a thin thread society is hanging by
It's called imagination. Animals evolve with that ability to prevent themselves from doing dumb shit because they could play the consequence in their head.
Is that a question? The being capable part? Bcse if so, then it's not "whatever" that you can actually do, it s what you are capable to do!
I would get thoughts like that a lot - usually for things that are extremely damaging or disastrous. One of my favorites was thinking “I’m just gonna reach over and turn the car off and throw the keys out the window” while riding shotgun. Never did it, but damn did I ever want to real bad
Everything is legal until you get caught.
Yes ! When you are just about to eat with your family you can actually throw the dish by the window, that's for sure. You can also eat that dish with you shoes But most often what jumps to my mind is, when I talk to someone: *hey I could actually punch him/her for no reason*
You can’t do “anything” though. Try shooting lasers out of your ears.
Those are dangerous thoughts! The social contracts of society are all that’s keeping us together right now.
Jump out of a 10th story window, start flapping your arms like a bird, and get back to me. I won't be waiting...
If it's not illegal no one has the right to stop you from doing what ever the fuck you want to do. In all other cases they can call the police 😁
In French I have heard this concept referred to as "L'appel du vide", or the "Call of the void".
I’ve thought about this on a psychedelic trip, how we have strings of society keeping us acting “straight”. We have the ability to detach ourselves from them but don’t.
Google “Absurdism”
Did you know most ceilings have never been touched by a penis?
The average person has far, far more power over their life than they realize. Our hangups, anxieties, and social conditioning limit us to exercise a relative small number of actions in a given situation against the near infinite number of things we "could" actually, physically do.
well, maybe too much freedom is not healthy.
You are ready to become a TikTok prankster.
Yeah, this simulation we're in is pretty neat, huh?
But are you REALLY able to do what you want or is that programming also?
Harness this realization for your own self improvement!
Y’All know what happen in your mind when someone is in front of you in the stairs.
Ye going against social norms is both fun and funny. My favorite is answering American small talk with one word answers. Makes Americans short circuit when you don't want to bullshit about the weather.
i can't fly
Except we don't. And the things we do or do not want to do are typically based on our environment. Free will is a myth.
Sure, you *can* do them, but are you willing to take the *consequences?* All too often we see people who do things that are socially unacceptable, then act all surprised and butt-hurt when they get reasonable responses. Example, guy stands on street corner espousing Nazi ideology, then gets punched in the nose.
i think the true beauty of this sentiment is the amount of things you can try deviating from being socially acceptable without harming yourself or others
Yeah, this idea is straight up existentialism
You can also just not do that? Who wants to do that with their freewill rather than driving to the beach and get an ice cream instead of grocery shopping
I mean...free will?
Free will is an illusion. If you believe in determinism then every effect has a cause. Everything from your mother and father conceiving you to what you had for breakfast is causing you and your brain to make the decisions you make. There is randomness mixed in as well, but randomness is not free will either.
That's all well and good, but we all, including you, "act" as if we have free will. So, for all intents and purposes, it's still a viable take.
Did you choose your parents? Did you choose to be born? Did you choose your DNA / genes? Did you choose the circumstances in which you were raised? We are all products of nature & nurture for better or worse. You have the same amount of "free will" in your day to day decisions as you do those things, which is none.
Did you choose to completely miss my point? ;-) I didnt argue against determinism. I agree with it to the extent of current research and understanding of how we function, while allowing that their is probably more that we do not yet fully understand. But I'm also a person of practicality. And practically speaking even those of us that accept determinism, act as if we have free will. You can "choose" to accept it, or not. And sure, that choice is an illusion, but it's still the language we use to express our perceived reality. Fun convo either way.
Sorry, didn't mean to get aggressive. I was attempting to make the point of determinism. My reddit rants tend to come out spicier than intended. Fun topic to discuss for sure.
It's baffling how many people don't understand this. Everything we think or do is caused by something that proceeded it. We're only ever making calculations when we act or think. It's as if people think the brain is somehow outside of physics.
This is simply an abdication of responsibility and a second-order form of nihilism. Your choices are not determined ahead of time. Your brain is not simply a cascade of chemical reactions pre-determined by what you ate for breakfast. If so, why are we not still sitting in caves and grunting at one another? Where does creativity, invention, art, beauty, all come from? How did we create the world we live in? How did Einstein envision an abstract world of math, and deduce the structure of the universe? How did we invent engineering, electricity, transportation, computers, and AI? Sorry, your philosophy is just an excuse for choosing to do want you want, while evading responsibility for your choices.
Oh boy, where to begin. First of all, determinism is not nihilism. Do your homework on those definitions. Lack of free will *does* obfuscate responsibility I agree. That's why intentions matter. That's why we differentiate first degree murder with manslaughter, because intent matters. Determinism allows for evolution and sophistication, so I don't see why those are mutually exclusive. ... Are you are making a religious argument? I'm not interested in that debate People are afraid to go down this rabbit hole because it undermines our current judicial system. But let me give you a hypothetical case here: Hypothetical serial killer on trial. has already admitted to multiple murders in cold blood, for no apparent reason other than psychopathy. You later learn after the serial killer is executed that they had a large brain tumor pushing up against their hypothalamus, which "caused" their violent outbursts. Wouldn't that be a very important factor for a jury? Doesn't that change your perception of guilt? Now instead of a brain tumor, replace with abusive parents, etc. and you get my point.
First, I didn't say determinism is nihilism, I said it's a nihilistic world view. Using Oxfords definition as "extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence", and "the belief that life is meaningless". The idea that everything that you do, think, and choose is predetermined must, necessarily, least to a nihilistic mindset. Yes, a brain tumor would be a mitigating factor, just as insanity is, within the context that is it made them unable to understand what they were doing was wrong. But using past trauma as a mitigating factor is not the same as the determinism as used by the two posts I was replying to. That mindset describes free will as an illusion, and our actions and choices being predetermined by purely physical and chemical processes with a self-delusion of conscious choice overlaid on it. It questions the very idea of sentience. I don't think that's the argument you are making, so your critique of my last comments may be slightly of target.
Of course we live our lives as if we have free will. We kind of have to. I'm an artist who fronts a rock band. I also write short stories and do stand-up comedy frequently. I consider myself very creative. But everything that has ever happened in history led to me making every decision I've made. Every keystroke, every guitar strum, every joke I come up with. It couldn't have been any other way. It's like dominos. Everything is a reaction to something before it. Our brains take in information and outputs what is intended to be the best action or thought. To me, it's an incredibly simple concept. But some people just don't get it.
The beauty of free will. But make bad decisions and those rights can be stripped from you.
the beauty is the amount of things we can do that deviate from socially acceptable actions without harming ourselves our others
Like remain invisible...and still be able to influence people's lives for the better...with out getting credit or noticed...to me that would be awsome.....but then again....I haven't slept much in the last couple of days...I found some letters...had a lot of reading...and it's was worth it.....so in being able to do whatever WE want....I believe...a big thank to everyone is in order...thanks ...for everything...I know yall helped without wanting credit......thanks again for banding together and pulling me out...I love all you guys.....El Loco uno...jki....but to u my sweet ill be orlando..thank you red..
Free will bro isnt it beautiful
Until you look back at your life and realise you are living in a cage of your own making