Six and a Half Billion Human Minds at Play?

dlamberth

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I dunno, wikipedia doesn't seem to agree. It looks like schizoids might be "genuinely indifferent to social relationships", and "impervious to others' emotions". And here's a section:
"This means that it is possible for schizoid individuals to form relationships with others based on intellectual, physical, familial, occupational, or recreational activities as long as these modes of relating do not require or force the need for emotional intimacy, which the individual will reject."
Love does not need to form relationships to effect others. Simply listening with an open heart does wonders. Add love to that open heart, and it will go even further in reaching others. Trying to find ways to reach those who seem out of reach, when done with a loving heart, will have a lot more success than if it were done with a cold hearted attempt. I'm thinking that your understanding of love is a lot limited than mine.

.
 
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tucker58

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Love does not need to form relationships to effect others. Simply listening with an open heart does wonders. Add love to that open heart, and it will go even further in reaching others. Trying to find ways to reach those who seem out of reach, when done with a loving heart, will have a lot more success than if it were done with a cold hearted attempt. I'm thinking that your understanding of love is a lot limited than mine.

.

A lot of folks consider love a weakness and if it has no power back up :) they then consider it a joke.

I think that before love for others can work that it needs a certain environment where it is allowed to exist. I could be a loving person if certain folks didn't consider it a weakness. When I am around loving people I am a loving person and I also have a tendency to get extremely protective of those people because they are a rare gift to all of us.

People who mess with them really upset me :) !

love,

tuck
 
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SithDoughnut

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Love does not need to form relationships to effect others. Simply listening with an open heart does wonders. Add love to that open heart, and it will go even further in reaching others. Trying to find ways to reach those who seem out of reach, when done with a loving heart, will have a lot more success than if it were done with a cold hearted attempt. I'm thinking that your understanding of love is a lot limited than mine.

.

Or, more likely, you're thinking of a different definition of the word love. It isn't objective, so you can't have more or less understanding of it. When it comes to emotions and feelings, 90% of the time we just make it up as we go along. And yes, I invented that statistic, but I'd be willing to bet that it's a good estimate.
 
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dlamberth

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Or, more likely, you're thinking of a different definition of the word love.
Love is something of the Heart. It can't be defined. It can only be experienced. I suspect that Poets are the best at bringing the Light of Love into the light for us to examine.

.
 
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bling

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I want to be more loving, but I do not see Jesus as the example. I don't believe Jesus was God, so I want to follow God's ways, not Jesus'. See where the problem is?

Do you see Jesus as ever being self seeking?

What do you see as the difference between God's Love and Jesus' Love?
 
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bling

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Just Love. That's all. Wanting to be this or to be that, if that's ones path, than OK. But not everyone wants to be a Christian, or a Buddhist, or what ever. But everyone DOES want to respond to Love. It's real simple.

.

Godly type Love as defined by Jesus is not logical, it is a "Love your enemy type of Love". Most "loves" have a degree of self seeking.
 
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What does that mean to you?

An alienation from their existence as human beings. A wishing they were somewhere else or something else, which is counter-flourishing and, not coincidentally, counter-happiness.

Christians are not going to be happy on this earth, but can be joyous.

One can and should have both, not make a tradeoff. It's like shooting oneself in one foot, and then saying: "Oh, but my other foot works great!"


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Glass*Soul

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No it wasn't a joke, and I wasn't trying to insult you. But I was insulting solipsism. Really, it sucks. It contributes nothing insightful. Um, sorry if you did take offense.

Well, I wasn't questioning the existence of an external world or of other minds. I was questioning our ability to discern the mental models under which others are operating. There may be any number of models that produce similar behavior.

Let me give you several examples.

I occasionally converse online with a rather brilliant person who has Asperger's syndrome. As he has described it, in a social situation he determines how to behave in response to others by quickly and dispassionately running his way through a series of carefully worked out schematics. By doing this he usually manages to appear engaged and appropriate in a manner that more neuro-typical individuals report being able to achieve spontaneously.

I have two friends who are schizophrenic. They have each honored me by describing some of the inner processes they are experiencing while appearing perfectly typical in their outward manner. My one friend has bouts of several minutes out of every hour in which all of reality shifts so that the evidence of each of his senses takes on a sinister cast. With great discipline he chooses not to react except for rare occasions in private. My other friend hears voices that tell him horrifying things. He believes what they say, but generally chooses to behave as if he did not. His friendship with me is based on the assumption that I do not know that I am being controlled by evil forces and therefore I think that I mean well. For him, if he is to have friends, that has to be enough. I simply do not experience inward states that correspond with what either one describes.

I am an extreme introvert. For me being with the people I love is painful. Every second. Every word of every conversation. It's exhausting and I am mostly angry. I doubt that more extroverted people would even describe what I feel when I interact with others as love. Maybe they would. I don't know. The way extroverted people act leads me to think they feel differently, but then I behave as if I felt differently than I actually do, so I don't know...

Yet, a stranger watching me engage in a conversation with any of the above persons might be tempted to think we are all quite simpatico, giving and gaining something similar from the encounter.

It's all a complicated dance really, our social constraints the formal steps.
 
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razeontherock

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Love does not need to form relationships to effect others. Simply listening with an open heart does wonders. Add love to that open heart, and it will go even further in reaching others. Trying to find ways to reach those who seem out of reach, when done with a loving heart, will have a lot more success than if it were done with a cold hearted attempt. I'm thinking that your understanding of love is a lot limited than mine.

You do realize that you just described elements of relationships in general? IOW, you refuted your opening statement. Very well. I would say it is not Love that lacks proper definition, but relationship. and I would fill in that blank by saying that if Love effects others, that IS relationship! (Of the best sort)
 
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razeontherock

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"Christians are not going to be happy on this earth, but can be joyous."

One can and should have both, not make a tradeoff. It's like shooting oneself in one foot, and then saying: "Oh, but my other foot works great!"

Our philosopher has a point here. I would attribute any substantiation of the first quote in this post to G-d's people suffering for a lack of knowledge. Which includes our world being in a sinful state. So the difference between happiness (root word "happenstance") and joy is that Joy endures regardless of happenstance; a purely Spiritual phenomenon.
 
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razeontherock

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I am an extreme introvert. For me being with the people I love is painful. Every second. Every word of every conversation. It's exhausting and I am mostly angry.

It appears G-d understands this! Some have worked out mathematically the space in the Biblical "heaven" (wrong term) per capita of mankind, that has ever lived, throughout all time. Short answer is, during Life eternal, we don't need to get too close to anybody, ever. [File this under "G-d has a sense of humor:" for some, being reunited w/ family would be heaven, for others it would be hell]
 
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I would attribute any substantiation of the first quote in this post to G-d's people suffering for a lack of knowledge. Which includes our world being in a sinful state. So the difference between happiness (root word "happenstance") and joy is that Joy endures regardless of happenstance; a purely Spiritual phenomenon.

I should have expected this. I should have sought a clarification of what was meant by "happiness".

I don't personally associate happiness with the brief pleasure one gets from good fortune -- which would make happiness merely a kind of fluctuating mood -- such as jumping up and down after winning the lottery. It's more like a kind of contentment with being who one is, where one is, doing what one is doing. If one can say "Amen!" (or some equivalent affirmation) to one's life, then one is "happy". If one experiences alienation from one's life, e.g., wishing that one had never been born, or wishing that one was dead and in heaven instead, then one is unhappy.



eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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razeontherock

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I should have expected this. I should have sought a clarification of what was meant by "happiness".

I don't personally associate happiness with the brief pleasure one gets from good fortune -- which would make happiness merely a kind of fluctuating mood -- such as jumping up and down after winning the lottery. It's more like a kind of contentment with being who one is, where one is, doing what one is doing. If one can say "Amen!" (or some equivalent affirmation) to one's life, then one is "happy". If one experiences alienation from one's life, e.g., wishing that one had never been born, or wishing that one was dead and in heaven instead, then one is unhappy.



eudaimonia,

Mark

Gotcha. In Biblical terms, you're describing "joy."
 
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hikersong

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I should have expected this. I should have sought a clarification of what was meant by "happiness".

I agree with Marks definition of happiness, and would suggest that joy is the more transient experience, though no less real.

There used to be an in-house christian joke in the UK about people who claimed to have the "joy of the Lord" but seemed on the surface quite miserable. It was something along the lines of "his/her joy is so deep it's invisible". I know people like that, and it is kind of sad. They will say that there is a spiritual christian joy which is beyond the comprehension of other mortals whilst finding it impossible to see anything good about the world we live in.

Personally I believe that joy exists and that everybody can experience it regardless of religious or non-religious beliefs. Joy I would define as an ecstatic sense of aliveness that, as implied in CS Lewis's book title "Surprised By Joy" can emerge out of nowhere when we are in the habit of looking in anticipation at the world around us. I've not had that sense very often at all, and never, unlike CS Lewis, when I was a christian.
 
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Joy I would define as an ecstatic sense of aliveness

I like that definition.

IMV, when one experiences life as meaningful and not standing in the way of one's purposes, then joy has a chance to emerge. To me, it's an experience of the "openness" of life to worthwhile activities and experiences.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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