I think the wrong lesson to draw for this is that it's just a systems problem. Somehow if we do a different song and dance, the outcome will be different. I've been thinking that the end state of capitalism and communism are not that different - what is the difference between wealth that you can't spend in a million lifetimes and "no" wealth at all? The endpoint is the same, the game becomes about relative power over others, in service of an unending hunger.
Capitalism is the manifestation of the aggregate human psyche. We've agreed that this part of our selves that desires to possess things and the part that feels better when having even more, is essential. This is the root we need to question, but have not yet dared to question. Because if we follow this path of questioning, and continue to shed each of our grasping neuroticisms, the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.
We will have to confront that question eventually because we will always have to face the truth.
>what is the difference between wealth that you can't spend in a million lifetimes and "no" wealth at all?
Unimaginable wealth means you live as comfortably as you want. no wealth means you are out on the streets and can't even afford the basics needed to get yourself out of the rut society threw you in.
If I'm to take this as a comparison of "wealth ends up in the hands of one", the difference with communism is that the one with the wealth still needs to distribute it, lest they are driven out by a coup or by annihilating all the power they had (the power over their people, who are now dead or fled).
Captistlism makes no such promise of distribution, and who to uprise against is much less clear. toppling a monopoly leader also doesn't necessarily destroy the institution either.
>the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.
If we give up our humanity to someone else, we may as well be. But that's not something I relinquish easily.
It isn't surprising that "phenomenal consciousness" is the thing everyone gets hung about, after all we are all immersed in this water. The puzzle seems intractable but only because everyone is accepting the priors and not looking more carefully at it.
This is the endpoint of meditation, and the observation behind some religious traditions, which is look carefully and see that there was never phenomenal consciousness where we are a solid subject to begin with. If we can observe that behavior clearly, then we can remove the confusion in this search.
I see this comment nearly every time consciousness is brought up here and I’m pretty sure this is a misunderstanding of contemplative practices.
Are you a practitioner who has arrived at this understanding, or is it possible you are misremembering a common contemplative “breakthrough” that the self (as separate from consciousness) is illusory, and you’re mistakenly remembering this as saying consciousness itself is illusory?
Consciousness is the only thing we can be absolutely certain does actually exist.
Phenomenal consciousness as being raised here, and probably in most people's minds, is probably taken to be the self or at least deeply intertwined with the concept of a separate self. The article tries to define it left and right, but I think most people will look at their own experience and then get stuck in this conversation.
"Consciousness" in the traditions is maybe closer to some of the lower abstraction proposals put out in the article.
I don't think the idea of illusory is necessarily the right view here. Maybe most clearly the thing to say is that there is "not" self and "not" consciousness. That these things are not separate entities and instead are dependently arisen. That consciousness is also dependently arisen is probably more contentious and different traditions make different claims on that point.
As a very beginner practicer i've come to that conclusion myself, but how can the two be separate? If there is no self (or at least, there is a self but it exists in the same way that a nation or corporation "exists"), how can there be something to experience being? What separates the two?
My own experiential insight is not definitely not complete, so of course the guidance of a master or of course your own direct practice should be preferred.
But to the extent I have observed awareness, the idea of an entire "experiencer" is an extrapolation and fabrication. See how you generate that concept. And then, look closely at what's actually going on, there is "consciousness" of the components of the aggregate. (Maybe not dissimilar to some of the lower level mechanisms proposed in the article).
> the idea of an entire "experiencer" is an extrapolation and fabrication
Ok, makes sense.
> look closely at what's actually going on, there is "consciousness" of the components of the aggregate
Interesting. I'll try, but i would have to wonder what it means for some sort of element of the mind that cannot experience to nevertheless have consciousness. It's very confusing, especially without a good idea as to what to look for in regard to consciousness. I'll attempt this though, thank you.
Yea it's quite confusing and subtle, but there is something there. I'm not a teacher so I don't know how to phrase this to address where you are coming from, but I will say in general, our first reaction is to impose mental frameworks and preconceptions to try to understand things. Kind of what your first inclination is ("element of mind"), and of course the article and many of the posts here.
But I think it is all talking in circles, when the experiential truth can be directly observed (through practice). So I absolutely want to encourage your seeking.
Personally I differentiate between 'awareness' and 'consciousness' and that makes it a bit clearer for me. Awareness of the 'suchness' of existence is what you're saying is the only thing we can be certain does actually exist. All the other "consciousness" things--self, self-awareness, thoughts, feelings, desires, even the senses themselves--are deconstructible into illusions.
Ehhh subtle but I'd say it's the suchness itself is what is guaranteed to exist. Awareness of the suchness falls into your latter category of "just a mental object."
> Consciousness is the only thing we can be absolutely certain does actually exist.
Unless the "consciousness" that you're talking about is the same as the suchness? Is the distinction that the suchness is somehow conscious/aware but not "conscious of itself"?
Okay, I think that's basically the distinction I was making between 'awareness' vs 'consciousness'. I guess it's not workable, since 'awareness' does not seem to communicate that concept well even to someone who knows the distinction.
Yeah sure, it's irrelevant to my actual question which is whether GP thinks consciousness doesn't exist or whether they're mistakenly replacing consciousness for self.
There's actually a decent amount of work recently in this space, some of it motivated by the wildfires.
Here's another recent paper with similar findings.
The persistence of smoke VOCs indoors: Partitioning, surface cleaning, and air cleaning in a smoke-contaminated house
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10575580/
A web of potentially interesting data is presented, but no rigorous reasoning is involved. A lot of words to assert confirmation bias of “Asians are conformist”.
>He acknowledged and disavowed his writing under the pseudonym when it was reported in 2023,[5][4] although a number of journalists note that Hanania continues to make racist statements under his own name.[3][7][4][6]
In America? Have you been paying any attention to how insane the American right has become? We’re about to have a dude who fucks porn stars as President. Again. Oh and an insurrectionist.
>Have you been paying any attention to how insane the American right has become? We’re about to have a dude who fucks porn stars as President. Again. Oh and an insurrectionist.
The "the American right" isn't a monolith. So far as I can tell, he doesn't condone whatever trump did or the capitol hill attacks.
Yea, I don't think he's reached a point where he's seen the territory apart from the map. His post is still a lot of confusion running in circles in the space of concepts and mind.
When it is seen clearly how the mind is delusion, then the rest of the teachings fall naturally from that observation.
I don't mean to belittle RMS's achievements, but as a general point, I don't think that simply adhering to conviction is courageous. It's the easy way out. It's the way that doesn't address the greys in reality, for the sake of simplicity of what you believe in. You are not tested in your decisions, because you have already refused to make any.
Socially speaking, I find it's easier to see gray. When you run into somebody in a social situation who knows you see him as heinously immoral, or maybe just a little bit of a sleazebag, there's tension. The tension is likely to get to him, causing him to needlessly bring up the issue in some contrived way. At that point, there's a magic phrase to completely banish the tension: "Well, yeah, shit's complicated." Suddenly you can be best friends.
I learned this trick when I was a strict vegetarian. I wasn't eager to confront people about their meat-eating, but when you don't eat meat, people pretty quickly jump to the conclusion that you think they're morally wrong to eat meat. The tension bothers them, so they bring it up in some awkward way. When my girlfriend's father did that (and later at one point her boss, at a company barbecue) I didn't want to get into the details, so I just said, "Well, it's a complicated issue." It was an honest statement, and I really had no idea exactly where I stood on eating meat, but I was so impressed with how completely it put them at ease and averted all conflict that I stored that memory away. Since then, I have used it many times dishonestly to avoid conflict with people who had power over me, my friends, or my family. Seeing gray is a "get out of conflict free" card.
I think the only time it takes bravery to see gray areas is when everybody else sees black and white. Otherwise, the "ability" to see gray helps you paper over disagreements and maintain valuable relationships with people.
Also, it usually isn't correct to think that a person avoids addressing gray areas by being black-and-white on a certain question. I am single, and for me, sex is an endless gray area. I have a conservative Christian friend who doesn't see any gray at all when it comes to premarital sex, but not because he's stupid or unthoughtful. He has to deal with gray areas in other places, such as divorce and state-mandated immunization against HPV. (His daughter will be immunized, and he thinks that's okay. He has friends who think it's not, and who are shocked by the fact that he doesn't resist in some way.) RMS sees gray areas in the use of non-free technology, and he makes concessions to reality. He's proud of his ability to use a completely free computer system, and he understands that it isn't practical for everybody, and he knows that even his success is limited to a very small portion of the technology that contributes to his existence. That's a gray area! I can understand where he's at. When I was a vegetarian, and now as a near-vegetarian, I know some people might think I'm being black and white to subsist on beans and potato salad at a catered barbecue lunch, but I think I'm being plenty "gray" by eating beans from a barbecue joint without asking why they taste so darned good. Everyone's thinking is gray someplace; the perception of "black-and-white thinking" is created by an observer focusing in on a certain place where he expects to find gray and is surprised to find black or white instead.
I seriously feel there should be a way in HN to save / bookmark comments that we like. Currently we can only save the main story thread.
Now I have to add this comment so as to bookmark your comment.
I agree, as a general point. When you are completely dedicated to an ideology, you don't have to worry about how it affects real, actual people. You don't have to morally weigh the consequences of your actions because you've already decided a priori which actions are right and which are wrong. Perhaps that's the difference between conviction and fanaticism.
Capitalism is the manifestation of the aggregate human psyche. We've agreed that this part of our selves that desires to possess things and the part that feels better when having even more, is essential. This is the root we need to question, but have not yet dared to question. Because if we follow this path of questioning, and continue to shed each of our grasping neuroticisms, the final notion we may need to shed is that we are people, individual agents, instead of nonseparate natural phenomena.
We will have to confront that question eventually because we will always have to face the truth.