Is humanity a superorganism that crosses the barrier of time?

Landon Caeli said:

This is purely false. Nowhere in scriptures can we find this, so it's not Christian... And it's not controversial science either, so it has no place here on this forum.

I can understand doing that once in a while, like while letting go and breaking free for a minute, but nobody can *stay there*. We have to be mulit-faceted in this life if we want to experience life to it's fullest.

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When you watch a movie, you are engaged in the present moment. When you fall in love, you are engaged in the present moment. You are happiest when you are engaged in the experience in front of you. It is mental gymnastics to dwell and find one's abode on the past or future. It stunts one's growth and progress. Animals may not be intelligent like us, but they live practically by instinct. They can teach us something about living.

Landon Caeli said:

Please don't tell me when I'm most happy, that's not for you to decide.

It's *MY* life..! Not yours..!

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I may not know you, but I know what humans are like, because I am one.

Jonaitis said:

We can only be aware of the present. We can only remember the past and guess what the future holds. To be more like God is to take advantage of the now instead of trying to control what you can't change or stop. It is letting go of our grasp on anything but the present moment.

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I understand the sentiment but the present and by extension the past, has repercussions in the future. Thus making them all important.

Jonaitis said:

I may not know you, but I know what humans are like, because I am one.

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Then you would no that there is much diversity in how we think, how we perceive, how we are motivated. For example, to take the example objected to by @Landon Caeli , I may certainly experience great happiness when engaged with something I like. But in other instances, say a challenging event, I may experience panic, or fear, or confusion at the time and only after the challenge is met does the happiness emerge as I reflect on the experience. That single example invalidates your blanket, exclusive assertion as to when humans are happy.

Ophiolite said:

Then you would no that there is much diversity in how we think, how we perceive, how we are motivated. For example, to take the example objected to by @Landon Caeli , I may certainly experience great happiness when engaged with something I like. But in other instances, say a challenging event, I may experience panic, or fear, or confusion at the time and only after the challenge is met does the happiness emerge as I reflect on the experience. That single example invalidates your blanket, exclusive assertion as to when humans are happy.

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Peace is found in the quiet of panic, fear, and confusion, inferring the fact that peace is inherently our true nature, and that much of our idea of what makes us happy is simply that, a constructed idea of the mind. You live in a world of concept invented by men no different than me or you, and live your life relative to them.

Jonaitis said:

Peace is found in the quiet of panic, fear, and confusion, inferring the fact that peace is inherently our true nature, and that much of our idea of what makes us happy is simply that, a constructed idea of the mind. You live in a world of concept invented by men no different than me or you, and live your life relative to them.

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As best as I can tell from your well structured sentences and elegant words is that you prefer not to acknowledge that your assertion was flawed. That barely impacts me, but does harm you. That's the price of having the right to an opinion.

Ophiolite said:

As best as I can tell from your well structured sentences and elegant words is that you prefer not to acknowledge that your assertion was flawed. That barely impacts me, but does harm you. That's the price of having the right to an opinion.

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How is my assertion flawed, and in what way have I spoken with "well structured sentences and elegant words"? All that I was saying was that the present moment is where happiness resides. If we live in the past, there is regret. If we live in the future, there is worry. The present moment is not fixed on anything, but is always being entertained. It is the present moment that our focus is fully engaged. It is the present moment that the realm of possibilities exist. The present moment is joyful, but we spend most of our time wandering in the narratives of our minds. Happiness can be found in the here and now, we just need to let go of trying to resist what is and let it be.

Jonaitis said:

All that I was saying was that the present moment is where happiness resides. If we live in the past, there is regret. If we live in the future, there is worry. The present moment is not fixed on anything, but is always being entertained. It is the present moment that our focus is fully engaged. It is the present moment that the realm of possibilities exist. The present moment is joyful, but we spend most of our time wandering in the narratives of our minds. Happiness can be found in the here and now, we just need to let go of trying to resist what is and let it be.

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Earlier you said this.

Jonaitis said:

We can only be aware of the present. We can only remember the past and guess what the future holds. To be more like God is to take advantage of the now instead of trying to control what you can't change or stop. It is letting go of our grasp on anything but the present moment.

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What comes across loud and clear is that you think we are at our happiest only in the present. You insisted on this, doubling down on the point when another member noted this did not apply to them. I gave you a specific example that refuted your assertion. You simply repeated it. That's not a meaningful way to conduct a discussion. If your argument is refuted you need to either acknowledge you were mistaken or provide evidence or argument to justify your position. Instead you just repeated your original (now refuted) assertion.

I bring this up, not to disrupt the thread, or be argumentative, but simply because I think speaking absolutes is very often an error, one that should be avoided.

Jonaitis said:

How is my assertion flawed, and in what way have I spoken with "well structured sentences and elegant words"?

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I have explained earlier why it was flawed.
As to the second point, do you feel you did not speak in "well structured sentences and elegant words"? Seems odd to worry about a compliment.

Ophiolite said:

Earlier you said this.


What comes across loud and clear is that you think we are at our happiest only in the present. You insisted on this, doubling down on the point when another member noted this did not apply to them. I gave you a specific example that refuted your assertion. You simply repeated it. That's not a meaningful way to conduct a discussion. If your argument is refuted you need to either acknowledge you were mistaken or provide evidence or argument to justify your position. Instead you just repeated your original (now refuted) assertion.

I bring this up, not to disrupt the thread, or be argumentative, but simply because I think speaking absolutes is very often an error, one that should be avoided.

I have explained earlier why it was flawed.
As to the second point, do you feel you did not speak in "well structured sentences and elegant words"? Seems odd to worry about a compliment.

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The specific example you gave me was this:

"I may experience panic, or fear, or confusion at the time and only after the challenge is met does the happiness emerge as I reflect on the experience."

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Then you went on to say this:

"That single example invalidates your blanket, exclusive assertion as to when humans are happy."

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You haven't actually demonstrated anything, but you already assume that you are right and that this refutes what I am saying.

Let's use your example.

The reason you experienced panic, fear, or confusion during the challenges you faced is because you adopted the challenge as a mental obstacle to your happiness. The human psyche is powerful, and you can trick the brain to reconstruct its reward system. So the feeling of happiness after the challenge was met is the same thing as not having a challenge at all. The challenge was a game your mind played to achieve fulfillment, because your mind devised and defined the conditions that the feeling of fulfillment could be met. Our greatest desire, in truth, is to be free of desire. Fulfillment is just that: freedom from unceasing desire. Your example shows more to prove my point than refute it. We long to be in the present.

Jonaitis said:

How is my assertion flawed, and in what way have I spoken with "well structured sentences and elegant words"? All that I was saying was that the present moment is where happiness resides. If we live in the past, there is regret. If we live in the future, there is worry. The present moment is not fixed on anything, but is always being entertained. It is the present moment that our focus is fully engaged. It is the present moment that the realm of possibilities exist. The present moment is joyful, but we spend most of our time wandering in the narratives of our minds. Happiness can be found in the here and now, we just need to let go of trying to resist what is and let it be.

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For what its worth, I totally get what you're saying here.
I can only support what you're saying however, from my own personal experience.
What I also know, (and acknowledge), is that many other folk won't have had that same experience.

Also, in my own case, that light-hearted feeling, experienced only the present, took a lot of work to understand how to achieve that state of mind. Completing attachments to past experiences is key to getting to that place, (again, only from my own experience).
Distinguishing what creates attachments to the past, (and the concerns they raise the present), is also a fundmental for achieving presence of mind. Learning how to do that, is a very specially acquired skill, yet is available to everyone, IMO.

SelfSim said:

For what its worth, I totally get what you're saying here.
I can only support what you're saying however, from my own personal experience.
What I also know, (and acknowledge), is that many other folk won't have had that same experience.

Also, in my own case, that light-hearted feeling, experienced only the present, took a lot of work to understand how to achieve that state of mind. Completing attachments to past experiences is key to getting to that place, (again, only from my own experience).
Distinguishing what creates attachments to the past, (and the concerns they raise the present), is also a fundmental for achieving presence of mind. Learning how to do that, is a very specially acquired skill, yet is available to everyone, IMO.

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Well, my point was that we all experience the present moment every day. I gave the example of entertainment, which can be engaged almost involuntary, because it is focused on the present circumstances. Entertainment is treated as a luxury, but also a drug. They have even found a correlation, which should be plain to us all, between education and entertainment. Elon Musk tried to make that point in a couple interviews. The present moment is the key to progress. It is the reason challenges exist, as I pointed out in the other member's post. We do not really progress by thinking about the past or future, but about looking for happiness in the present moment through a game of hide and go seek.

Landon Caeli said:

Or is it that we've been in the present for a long time... Millennia, actually.

Throughout life's presence here, I would assume the vast majority of life forms with a brain don't have the capacity to consider the past or future.

...So living in the present is a basic animal instinct. Yet, we are capable of doing more.

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Or, we are capable of creating more mental obstacles to self-fulfillment as a species, because we have built society on a system of concepts to make the idea of happiness some pursuit in life. Happiness is free and available to everyone, we just got to stop believing the narratives that it is not. That there is something you need to do to get it. Then we will see true progress, albeit a different direction than the one that we've been on, for our species.

Jonaitis said:

Well, my point was that we all experience the present moment every day. I gave the example of entertainment, which can be engaged almost involuntary, because it is focused on the present circumstances. Entertainment is treated as a luxury, but also a drug. They have even found a correlation, which should be plain to us all, between education and entertainment. Elon Musk tried to make that point in a couple interviews. The present moment is the key to progress. It is the reason challenges exist, as I pointed out in the other member's post. We do not really progress by thinking about the past or future, but about looking for happiness in the present moment through a game of hide and go seek.

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Perhaps the reason why movies work is because anyone who goes to experience one is, at some point, prepared to suspend their disbeliefs(?)
Beliefs encumber the present but humans spend, what, about 99.9% of their lives dwelling on the past .. as though the past is the present .. and then they take that past into the future which then becomes a so-called 'vicious circle'(?)

To emphasise the almost hilarity of that latter notion, (as well educate others) Werner Erhard once illustrated this in his rather cryptic, (but not for someone who gets his drift of living in the present), short essay of:

'HAVING: THE ONLY THING THERE IS TO DO TODAY IS WHAT YOU DO TODAY' (link here):
'The only thing you are going to do today is: what you do today. Therefore, the only thing there is to do today is: what you do today. That’s all there was to do when you started no matter what you thought or think'.

Jonaitis said:

The specific example you gave me was this:

Then you went on to say this:

You haven't actually demonstrated anything, but you already assume that you are right and that this refutes what I am saying.

Let's use your example.

The reason you experienced panic, fear, or confusion during the challenges you faced is because you adopted the challenge as a mental obstacle to your happiness. The human psyche is powerful, and you can trick the brain to reconstruct its reward system. So the feeling of happiness after the challenge was met is the same thing as not having a challenge at all. The challenge was a game your mind played to achieve fulfillment, because your mind devised and defined the conditions that the feeling of fulfillment could be met. Our greatest desire, in truth, is to be free of desire. Fulfillment is just that: freedom from unceasing desire. Your example shows more to prove my point than refute it. We long to be in the present.

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I prepared a detailed draft dismembering your argument, but decided to go with the executive summary: verbose, pseudo-intellectual balderdash.

Landon Caeli said:

If you think about the systems of governance and law that began in ancient Greece, and Rome, and the agricultural and farming techniques of ancient Samaria, and then the trade techniques of Asia and later the Netherlands, and then the technological innovations of the 20th century that built the foundation of industry... It seems that our predecessors have been paving the path that we now travel on, and which we contribute to in our time, and which future generations will contribute to as time carries on.

What separates humans from leaf-cutter ants, it seems, is that the ants operate in the "now", whereas humans operate collectively across time, spanning hundreds or thousands of years, working on a much larger, more advanced project... And it appears it's our ability to document information in books and through oral speech that allows us to cross over time, like no other.

...I wonder if it's agreeable as a concept that humans have evolved to become a superorganism that crosses time.

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I agree... on a macro scale, we are the sum total of all those that passed before. Ultimately this is a downward trend in most ways. Humanity is not getting better. It is just waiting and looking for opportunities and ways to regress. Today that manifests under the guise of "freedom" and "human rights." Technology contributes to this by providing a medium to facilitate and normalize any negative feature. Normalize is the key word. Trends which are verboten in one generation become normalized the next. The bar is lowered and the next generation looks for other steps downward. Positive trends are rarely perpetuated. Each generation becomes less civilized than the previous. Much of this "progress" occurs because of the principle of cultural indulgence. We can afford for people to act in this manner. So we let it go. "Live and let live." One of two events will occur. Either the human "culture animal" collapses from within, having no principles to sustain, or a great calamity occurs that either wipes them out or destroys the indulgence factor, hence resetting the human animal back to a state of quasi-innocence. Amazingly, this downward trend and ultimate failure is obvious to all who see it coming, yet they are helpless to prevent it. In many cases, knowledge of the impending collapse will hasten that end. With a vengeance. The are going to "party like it's 1999."