nikiloadian BLOG

life passes. in times pretty fast. Some believe in an afterlife, some say that they don´t care. The ones who don´t care usually say that it did not hurt before they were born so why should it hurt afterwards. The believers find their way to the afterlife in following rules which come from a different or imagined world.

Did it hurt before? Will it hurt afterwards? There was no before. And as there was no before there won´t be any after. Pain is something felt while being. So there won´t be pain.  As there won´t be anyone to feel it.

The pain is not the issue anyway. Not to be it is. And as we are now we don´t care about the time we were not. We care about the time we will not be.

We think about not being while we are still there. We do so because we might hope to find a way out. The thing is that there can´t be a way out as whatever way out there could be would mean the end of life generally. This as there won´t be any development any more.

So we have this one chance to live and to feel alive. And to give other people around the feeling to be alive and to use this life as long as it might be. We as what we are will leave traces anyway. We are part of something way bigger than us and this something will be there and will have our traces once we are long gone. At least until the unimaginable happens and everything finally gets cold and dark.

So we got this one chance in the here and now. Even if many people before got the same chance we can still feel good about it. Life is great. Death will happen soon enough so better to fill the life with thoughts that make us feel good. In the end we probably won´t care anyway as we had a life that mattered – for whoever.

We think so we are, someone said. But what are thoughts? And even if we think are we what we think we are? Are humans as special as they think they are?

On the one side I think surely yes. As humans are the only ones who can use their mind to develop stories way beyond reality. Only humans have a thing called religion and only humans are afraid of monsters and aliens. So. yes. special.

But.

A thought seems to be something which is based on electrons moving along certain routes in our brain. Our senses are able to see the world in a certain way. Based on what the senses sense a signal is sent along a nerve until the signal is strong enough to trigger an action in the brain. No need to understand completely what happens then. The only thing we need to understand is that the thing out of our brain is a thing that talks to another thing (nerve, neuron or electron) in order to move many things (thought). So the connection is between the thing outside of our mind with a thing inside our brain. So a thing connects to a thing to trigger something we call thought. What the trigger from the outside does to the inside is based on the individual story of the thinking brain. This and the genetic coding makes the difference. Besides the genes all the rules in the brain are learned or experienced (language for example).

So a thing talks to a thing based on rules we had no control over. And all this makes then the thing we call thought.

Emergence. Of course. The outcome is more than just the sum of the parts. It is said. Emergence is only described by humans. It is the human mind that sees these things based on the ability of the human mind to fantasize. The human mind needs proper boxes with things inside to be able to function. Each box is labeled with its content like “society”, “home”, “family”. This goes well as long as nobody asks to open the box and to take a deep look inside. In these boxes there are other boxes and in these boxes there are other boxes, until nothing is left. The human mind works with labels which stand for certain ideas about something. These ideas are mainly based on the culture the mind was taught to function in. Emergence is one of these ideas. There is no thing called “society” or “religion” or “me”. All these are just labels on mainly empty boxes.

So I am sitting here and writing and saying at the same time that it is not me who does that. As weird as it can go.  It is me. But. I learned a certain language which gives me certain rules to put things into words. The style of writing is mainly owed to the authors I read before,  and same for the the knowledge in my mind. My emotional world is based on the genetic set and the mainly uncontrolled reality I find myself in. I type on a keyboard and see what i wrote. While reading another thought emerges based on what my eyes see on the screen and what my mind makes out of it. Sometimes i make a brief stop to find the words for something that i want to say. The wish to find the words for something is based on the evaluation that something is wrong or missing. This evaluation is done based on the set of rules in my mind. This set of rules says the argument needs to be logical and consistent. So it is the things in the past and the things happening now triggering certain reactions which make my hands write what I write. Still I am not a machine. At least not a simple one. And if one then a special one which changes its source code all the time.

But even if i know better, i  cannot not feel like a thinking thing. This makes things tricky.

…and the short time in between we are. There are aeons before and aeons might follow. And we did not care before nor will we care afterwards. It is said. This would mean that back then there was a me that used the senses and the mindset to realize an environment. As far as I can tell there was no me nor any sense. This argument triggers the next question: What can i remember? But first the question if we should care about what was before and what might follow.

No.

Everyone´s personal story started the moment the senses filled the mind with information. This is the information we remember or we don´t remember. The decision if there was a time which was painful or not depends on the things we are able to remember. What we are able to remember is strongly connected to working senses. The moment we are not are no working senses anymore. So the argument is nor valid as there was no me – back then.

Now we are. Now we have senses which fill our mind. And of course it is not nice to let something go as precious as this. It might not bother us once we are gone, true. But this only because we are not and can´t evaluate the situation anymore. So we tend to spend a lifetime to be bothered about this moment in which we will lose the ability to remember. And hell yeah! It is fuckin´spooky!

There is no solace to offer. There is this one life we have to live in the best way possible.