UKC

Yeah we all remember Yoda's insistence that it isn't .

Its just quicker , easier and more seductive , but really , is it ?

Do nice guys finish last?

Ultimately in a universe without morals or objective emotion, surely being out for oneself would make a certain amount of logical sense.

Is there any advantage to being altruistic ?

I'm not picking any side here just wondering and musing on this for a Friday morning .

I'm sure some of UKC might have something to say on this . Although I can't see anyone admitting to being a selfish git or extolling the benefits of being a sociopath/psychopath/narcissist in general.

Do you have to be these things to be self centred and  on the dark path ? 

or have we got it wrong and it isn't the dark path ? its the right path and altruism is the dark side.  Maybe our thinking is wrong .

Interested to hear peoples take on it 

TWS

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

One thing to remember - given exactly equal theoretical day and night lengths the Light will win.   Light can refract/diffract and therefore reach round the earth making the day linger.   Darkness, being the absence of light, cannot.  Therefore Light Wins!

Unless it is all a Huge Lie and the Darksucker Theory is real!

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I've often thought about this (being a nice guy ha-ha-ha). I think they can lose out at work by giving way or not being aggressive enough in workplace struggles. But ultimately in the wider picture of the whole of life I think no, they do not

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I would expect the number of people who think they are on the dark path and yet pursue it anyway to be vanishingly small and limited to, as you allude to, a small minority of sociopaths, psychopaths and those somewhere on that spectrum.

Humans as a species are successful primarily due to their adaptability but also down to their ability to work together as a species for their common good ("The greater good"). Trampling on others to get what you want may get certain individuals to places of higher attainment, but if everyone did it we'd be f*cked (we may not be far off f*cked anyway). Guilt and shame for breaking spoken and unspoken social rules I assume is an emotion humans have acquired that, although misused by religions and certain cultures, has helped humans keep that social cohesion for the most part.

I can be assertive and even aggressive when I want to be, but for the most part I choose to be accommodating, friendly, sociable and try to make other people happy. I think a key to contentment is feeling like you have agency and that you have, to a large degree, choice about what happens to you. You can choose to use that agency for common good or narrow self-interest, but I've always found sharing, emotionally and materially, more fun.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Being selfish gives the individual advantages.

Being altruistic gives the group advantages.

However, being seen to be selfish tends to give the individual disadvantages, as others tend to resist you or work against you - and being seen to be altruistic gives the individual advantages as others want to help you.

So those who do best are probably the selfish people who are really skilled at making  others believe they should like them, or the selfish people who are skilled enough to overcome others' dislike of them and force them to do their bidding anyway.

Society is probably at its best when it creates a situation where the smartest, most driven pschopaths are best able to meet their own desires by making things better for the masses, too - a kind of synthetic altruism, where doing good serves the objectives of people who might otherwise be very bad indeed. This is probably why democracy, coupled with proper scrutiny (e.g. free press), more or less works.

And that breaks down when those at the top are able to convince most of the rest that they're acting in their interests, when they are not.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I think as humans we often forget that we are basically animals, the (somewhat artificial) distinction has been perpetuated and codified over the millenia through communication, social development, religion and philosophy. We have the same instincts for survival at an individual, pack and species level as a pack of hunting dogs on the veldt.  This leads to a confusion of imperatives as both selfish and altruistic behaviour brings benefits. These contradictions unsettle us, nuance , paradox and inconsistency fail to give us the comfort of absolute truths. So I think we evolved religion, ethics and morals to bridge this gap between our animal instincts and our socially developed self. Yoda and the dark side are the most facile example of this need for clarity and contempt for nuance I can think of in popular culture. 

I'm not advocating ammorality, I'm pleased we have developed structures to live by, but I think any of us are a lot closer to having the conscience of a Hyena than we might be comfortable to admit to, even to ourselves. 

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:

Unfortunately for us, they all ended up in the current government.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

We have embraced a system that has powered the twins of greed and fear, both have a more immediate urgency than reason and altruism and a great deal more time and money girected at how to harness it.

The devils bagged the best tunes

In reply to jethro kiernan:

Ergo the Glen Etive schemes get the go ahead 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I see the dark side as a large scale force and it is stonger across the macro scale (it drives corporations, governments and the psychotic rich and powerful (with some exceptions: its a general rule) which is why we are f*cked and why most of the world has lived in fear and hunger. Altruism works best on a small scale level, in families, between friends and self-identified groups.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Altruism wins out in group politics. We are essentially a tribal species and altruism is the currency of groups, in order to facilitate social cohesion, group planning and defense. Of course you do find self serving individuals in groups but generally it is covert behaviour.

This does not apply to "out" groups though. As rules that apply to the group do not necessarily apply to other groups. So for instance murder within the group is condemned while murder of the out group may even be encouraged (think war).

One of the actual benefits of religion is that it enabled very large "in" groups to form that crossed tribal and even national boundaries. Leading enevitably to ideological wars (By religion I mean any group binding ideology such a communism where a clear distinction is made between those who do or do not follow the "faith". It has even been speculated that capitalism falls into this catagory)

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I am a believer that the light side will always win, in the long run.

Also a believer in karma.

You could say I'm a believer

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

I tend to find it all balances it out. When in competition with others, (in business or social hierarchies for example) then you do have to be pretty ruthless, you beat your competitors before they beat you. The result being everyone tries hard and the standards all round improve. 

Being altruistic can in its self be advantageous as it can improve your standing in people's minds, in business the upfront costs of giving to charity and being seen as "nice" publicly can pay off with increased sales, and likewise in your social life, having all the money, success and confidence counts but if you're also an arsehole it may lose you the shot with the woman of your dreams.

But make no mistake, if you don't stand up for yourself whether it be in business or your social life you will be beaten by your rivals who want what you want but are prepared to fight for it. There is no point being all nice and gentle and polite all the time if you still live in a bedsit with no friends and no job because you're not prepared to go out and claim what you judge to be your rightful share.  

 

In reply to Chive Talkin\': Is the dark side stronger?

Yes otherwise Tibetan Monks would be running this Planet.

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Bored at chapel I used to read Kings I and II during interminable sermons.

it always struck me that the Good Kings, who followed the Lord and pulled down the temples of Baal had rather shorter lives on average than the Bad Kings. 

Make of that what you will.......

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Essentially we are all one consciousness that is a collective so we are one and the same. To see ourselves and any other manifestation of life as being separate from you is ultimately an illusion.

I like the analogy that some zen master used when he seen a very high waterfall and stated that each water droplet that gets separated from the river above is like a life insomuch as it is temporarily separated from the stream of collective consciousness and appears to be individual, have its own separate existence but in reality it joins back to the collective stream of consciousness at the bottom of its fall. 

The dark side is embracing the illusion that you are separate from all others. 

In reply to Pefa:

Not if it splashes aside and lies there soaking some feldspar crystals, hydrating them and so forming clay minerals.

Or if a plant absorbs it and consumes it during photosynthesis, stripping its hydrogen and discarding the oxygen as unwanted waste.

Or if it evaporates and is split in the atmosphere by radiation, followed by the low-density hydrogen rising and escaping the Earth entirely, leaching off into space.

In reply to skog:

The mind (ego if you like) needs to be seperate to feed the illusion which obscures the reality that we are all pure consciousness.

Connected to everyone and all life but the mind (ego) will get to work to fight against this truth. 

In reply to Pefa:

That's all very well when you've dropped multiple tabs of LSD, but when it wears off, by far the most compelling story is that we're animals with brains that generate consciousness as an evolved mechanism that allows us to navigate our complex social environment. So my consciousness is separate from yours, and is very different to a dog's; and the universe itself is just a bunch of atoms obeying physical laws with consciousness confined to complex nervous systems (other versions may exist elsewhere too).

I will go one step down your road though: the element of consciousness we experience as the self (or ego) is pretty flimsy. But just because it's possible to disintegrate the sense of self, this doesn't imply anything magical about the structure of the cosmos. It just means your consciousness is organised in way that best allows you to navigate the world.

As for the 'dark side'. What measures of success are we talking about? If you want to make the most money then being dishonest and treating others like shit (while hiding what you're up to) is obviously by far the best strategy. If your measure of success is having well-functioning relationships and a general sense of ease about yourself and your life, you're probably best off not being a total dick. Just consistently doing everything for the sake of others might work for some people, but I reckon most of us would end up feeling tired and bitter after a lifetime of this, being constantly shat on in return. As such we'd most likely be better off aiming for a balance of making sure we do enough to make ourselves comfortable and enjoy ourselves, while showing generosity to those around.

That said, everyone's different. I'm sure there are plenty of people who've consistently lied and trodden on others to get to some high-status position with a massive house and five sports cars who just don't ever reflect on the fact that they've been a wanker from day one. People can compartmentalise and post-hoc justify pretty much anything so many of these people are probably completely unaware. But the second you recognise or admit that you're lying and shitting on others, it becomes a non-strategy, as whatever you gain from it is going to be tainted with guilt and self-loathing. 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I presumed that Zen master had not scored LSD as I don't recall any dealers recounting tales of Zen masters hanging around their areas late at night looking for "Some psychedelics man".

Just funning. 

You don't need mind altering plants to experience what you are tbh when the constant chattering of the mind becomes less. 

" by far the most compelling story is that we're animals with brains that generate consciousness as an evolved mechanism that allows us to navigate our complex social environment. "

I would take out the word "consciousness",  there and use the word mind as every living being has a degree of consciousness or awareness but do not have a developed mind. 

In reply to Pefa:

Yes, most people who are really interested in the insights gained through the psychedelic experience tend to get into meditation and find the same kind of thing via that route.

It's a philosophical question, what is conscious and what is not, and neither of us know the answer. You can't just state that "every living being has a degree of consciousness" as if it's a fact, because it's anything but. In fact, it's a quasi-religious statement of the way you like to see things, but there are no reasons to believe that an amoeba has any degree of consciousness. And besides, what qualifies as a "living thing"? Is a virus conscious?

youtube.com/watch?v=QOCaacO8wus&

 A slightly more compelling view (because it's logically consistent, rather than being a particularly good explanation) is that consciousness is embedded at the very fundamental level of particles and whatnot, rather than appearing at the level of life (whatever that is).

In reply to Jon Stewart:

If you were to see reality not as it is but how you want to see it then you would not be experiencing reality as any Zen master would tell you but i am no Zen master all i know is what i have experienced directly.Perhaps i should not be putting a label like consciousness onto all living things although all living things will have an awareness that other inanimate objects will not have even though these inanimate objects do have a presence and are made up of the elements that we and other living things are. Does a water drop feel itself run down a leaf ? No but a leaf will feel water running down it.

It must have a level of consciousness just like a flower or plant so i would say yes.

>  A slightly more compelling view (because it's logically consistent, rather than being a particularly good explanation) is that consciousness is embedded at the very fundamental level of particles and whatnot, rather than appearing at the level of life (whatever that is).

Maybe. We are all a part of everything else at these levels that boils down to mostly empty space which is a reflection of the experience by advanced meditators. 

The mind is constantly chattering and focusing our attention always outward and never inward as focusing awareness inward silences the incessant chatter of the mind and brings the person to the present moment, which leads to the great insights of our existence that have been passed down for thouands of years from those who looked inward as much as looked outward. 

In reply to Pefa:

How do you know? Meditation and Buddhist teaching might make you think that the leaf can feel something, but that's not sufficient reason to say that it's so. A plant may have some elementary form of consciousness, or it may not. We don't know.

Why must it? It's a bit of DNA in a protein coating. What makes it conscious? In what sense is it alive?

I agree that exploring the nature of consciousness through meditation can bring about deep insights into the nature of ones mind. I just don't buy any of the religious bollocks about reincarnation or the conscious awareness of bacteria. Something being ancient and handed down through traditions doesn't mean there's any reason to think it's true. 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I was using my mind to answer that one as i don't know of any Buddhist insights which say anything about that question.

Again im using my mind here and not Buddhist insights or teachings

I don't remember seeing any Buddhist masters say anything about the "conscious awareness of bacteria", so why do you say they do ? 
I was refering to the old sages whose insights led them to live a life devoted to spreading the noble teachings of compassion and love-because that is our true nature- as well as exploring the process of life, the suffering ,the emptiness, the conditioning,the pain and the messages of hope that sources of pain or truama are not us, they are temporary and our true real being is beyond duality.

PS. Have you ever had what some may call a spiritual experience ?

In reply to Pefa:

Nor do I - I know very little about Buddhism. I thought that one of the core beliefs was about not harming living things, and so maybe there was a Buddhist view that all living things have some consciousness.

However, I don't think "I used my mind" is a valid way of answering questions such as "does a plant feel a drop of water".  The mind is the what the activity of the brain feels like from the inside. You can get deep insights into the mind by introspection, but you can't get answers to questions about the character of other things in the world that way. There is no way for the information to come from outside and just appear in your consciousness. Whatever appears in your consciousness does so because of the neural activity of the brain - it doesn't tune in to signals from the cosmos revealing truths about the nature of the world.

Because you said that all living things were conscious (which is something no one knows), and I thought this might come from Buddhist teachings.

All that sounds fine - although I don't buy the bit about compassion and love being our "true nature" - these are qualities that we have potential for, much like the potential for rape and genocide. It's certainly a good idea to try to cultivate the positive qualities rather than the negative ones, and if meditation is an effective way to do so, I'm all for it. That said, we're primates and have within us plenty of monkey-like qualities, which is why the world is full of racism, war, greed, exploitation, etc. There is nothing intrinsically "good" about people - like everything else in nature, we just go about our business according to our circumstances and history.  Sometimes that's baking a lovely cake for grandma, and other times it's killing someone's daughter as an act of revenge. That's just what people are like, I'm afraid.

Probably.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

You may not think it is a valid way to answer but I used my reasoning mind and not any insights I have gained through meditation practice to do so, therefore I may not have given an answer that is as detailed on that point as it is more a scientific question.

Now this point I can confirm through direct experience gained in meditative practice but I also see what you are getting at as obviously we have the capacity to hurt others. 

Firstly going deeply into long meditation sessions the incessant monkey mind as some Tibetans call it becomes a distant broken up noise like a barely audible TV in a flat nearby. It is not relevant anymore, you are getting present, in the sensations of this body which then also become distant and not relevant until you are left with the essence of what you are, you are fully in the now. 

This essence is pure consciousness/awareness which is spacious, vast, ancient, timeless, does not have any duality or material or non-material qualities, is pure experience of knowing the truth of existence under all the illusion of conditioning and duality. 

In this experience you now know that you are connected to every other material and non-material thing, this you know. Which means the duality of love or hate are seen for what they are but only one is our true nature that emminates from inside us. Yes we can commit hurtful acts but they come from conditioning and the mind/ego not our essence. 

If you know you are the same as and a part of everyone and everything else then deep down hurting another is hurting yourself. 

Do you see what I mean? 

This is a universal truth that doesn't come from a feeling or from any thing external(cosmos) it is a realization an awakening a knowing that is recognised when you peel away all the layers to your core essence and has been shared by all those who have looked inward intensely over thousands of years. Ie your individuals like the Buddha , Jesus, Miester Eckhart the old Christian mystic and various other people from many other traditions who have done the same. Our essence our true nature is enlightened beings but we cover it up in worldly outward looking duality, mind/ego. 

The message of love and compassion comes from our true nature of being one with everyone. 

In reply to Pefa:

Thanks, this is an interesting topic!

I'm interested in the mystical experience, but my perspective is a western scientific rather than eastern traditional one. From what I've learnt (from youtube, but these people are talking about their own research and knowledge of the literature), it seems that the brain has evolved ways that we recognise ourselves as a thing separate from others, and as a thing that remains constant through time. We can't navigate the world without this sense of self, we evolved it for a purpose. The physical neural system in the brain that is wired together to create this sense of self, the Default Mode Network, can however be disrupted or quietened down - through psychedelic drugs, or through the practice of meditation.

So, when you reduce the activity of the Default Mode Network, you can experience a loss of the sense of the self as constant through time (just pure experience of the present) and the boundaries between you and other things dissolve (feelings of interconnection and oneness with everything).

Your view seems to be that this experience reveals some ultimate truth, and the normal function of the brain with the DMN active is an illusion. I'd say that neither are "real" or "true" - they're just different states of the brain with an associated conscious experience. But one (in which the DMN is active and we retain our sense of ourselves as discreet from others and persisting through time) is normal - it's the state almost all our brains are in almost all the time, because it's evolved to be useful to us; while the other (ego-loss) is exotic - it takes a great deal of practice (or chemical interference) to achieve. 

Kind of. I think you're taking a real, mental phenomenon that's caused by a particular pattern of brain function and loading it with meaning which is entirely culturally constructed. It's very ethically useful meaning (if we applied it the world would be a better place), but I don't think it's an accurate description of what's actually going on.

If the state of ego-loss is somehow more "truthful" than the normal state of being a discreet self in time, then why did we evolve the Default Mode Network in the first place? Just a mischievous trick of nature's to make us deluded and miserable? And if the mystical experience/ego-loss reveals the fundamental truth, then why is humanity set up so that few people ever even experience this exotic mental state at all? 

I think we have different ideas of what "true" means. To me, something's "true" when it accurately describes some aspect of external reality. I don't believe that the view that we are all one corresponds meaningfully to anything in external reality. But I fully accept that it can feel true from the first person perspective. But so can the existence of the Christian god, or whatever else people might believe in without (what I consider) good reason.

Clearly we don't see thing the same way, and that's fine. We have different criteria for what constitute good reasons for belief, and so we end up with different beliefs and each consider our own to be well justified. As such, I'm not trying to convince you of anything - it's just interesting to see how someone else views the world.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Hi, 

I will go into detail after a night's/days sleep - I'm nightshift - but would like to point out that this so called DMN is not developed in a new born baby so it is created from conditioning which shapes a malleable brain through many years, developing parts that are forced to work. So does that constitute evolution or just a conditioning process that builds matter and tissue through constant work? 

I must also point out that when in deep meditation it is very simple to function ordinarily by for example doing physical tasks, asking a question to your deeper self or seeking an insight into past actions. Answers(insights) do appear spontaneously at times but you are not in some sort of hypnotic trance that means you cannot function normally in fact functioning properly as in being 100% mindful of the here and now no matter what activity you are doing could not be any more normal.

Since in actual reality the future doesn't exist and neither does the past the ONLY thing that does exist is the present moment and by being in mindfulness you are living in reality.Whereas chasing away down side roads into thought patterns using an uncontrolled mind that shoots into the future and past is more "exotic"  than the oftentimes mundane here and now. This incessant chattering monkey mind also feeds off negative traits driving people to despair and all manner of suffering which create ever more cycles of suffering. 

But the way to see this for what it truly is is not some elitist or " Exotic", process that takes years to attain or is only accessible to a few. You are that already you just have to tune into it by using effort, determination, devoting time everyday and listening to some of the many people who speak directly from that place we all have in ourselves. 

You mentioned that you have probably had a spiritual experience and of course you have as You are a spiritual being the same as any Buddha. 

I'll get back to this wee thread later on, thanks for taking the time and effort to reply. 

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

Yoda, facile? Taken the dark path, you have. 

In reply to Pefa:

I don't buy that, except in such general terms that it becomes meaningless. We are animals, and like all other animals are individuals shaped by our genes, because it is individuals that procreate and die and are thus the subject of Darwinian selection (competition and selection operates at lower levels, e.g. a cancer cell vs. the body or jumping genetic elements vs the rest of the genome, but selection above individual level is highly contentious). We are individual, disposable somata for our germline, and it is the invention of sex that kills us in the end.

We have evolved our mental facilities not for some overarching purpose or according to some plan, but because it worked and enabled our ancestors to have more surviving progeny long term than others. This includes our ability for love (shaped in evolutionary terms by an arms race between parents and offspring), cooperation, and altruism.

This needed no be inevitable, think of related species pairs following different strategies, e.g. chimps vs. bonobos, or rabbits vs. hares.

The evolutionary derived package we have inherited clearly includes our ability for introspection, e.g. by meditation, which also helps mood control. While the evolutionary benefit and the relevant selection pressure is not quite clear for this, it is much more obvious for religion, which appears to be a by product of a selection for attributing agency (if a twig cracked behind you in the forest it was safer to think "bear" than to assume the twig broke just so. Hence, if you hear thunder, someone made that thunder...).

CB

In reply to cb294:

Meditating on impermanence, past actions etc could be labelled "introspective meditation but not all meditation is introspective as mindfulness brings you to the present moment in anything you are doing which does not have to be inward looking.

Tbh I'm not selling it. I'm stating what I have experienced directly through deep meditation practice and since you do not participate in meditation you probably cannot know what I mean. If i try to explain to someone an experience they have never had then that is difficult for the one who has not experienced it and the one trying to explain it, especially when it is so profound.

I could speculate until the cows come home as to how we evolved our mental faculties but that is just the mind thinking. Meditation goes beyond that and tunes into the part of you that observes the mind thinking and knows you are not the mind. 

In reply to Pefa:

Hi, I have nothing against meditation or prayer (which I have both tried for a bit in my youth) or other mental techniques like visualization and autosuggestion (in a sports context) which I have much more experience with. 

If these techniques/practises/rituals work for you, they work for you.

What I disagree with (don't buy as I phrased it before) is that they offer you a spiritual (again, whatever that may be) connection to other living beings. Whatever you perceive and feel during deep meditation or prayer happens internally in your brain, which has been shown beyond any reasonable doubt by modern biomedical imaging techniques.

In my previous post I wanted to highlight how he ability of reaching down to parts of our brain we do not normally have conscious access shows just how flexible our brain architecture is in the way it has been shaped by evolution. Essentially what I object to is the esoteric packaging, not the content.

CB

In reply to cb294:

I've spent a while looking at this and will have a desperate try at describing Pefa's comments from a western perspective.

Since we were zero (or probably before), we have progressively developed a frame of reference in order to describe the world and be in it. It is totally pervasive and we are mostly unaware of it. It describes what is a table, which way is up, how to get mummy to come, how to be a good employee, and so on. No doubt some of that was "inborn" etc, nature not nurture, but it's all in there.

What meditation and other eastern mystic practices try to do is to dismantle that frame of reference, the idea being that then you may obtain a different perception of the world. This is a scary process, and difficult to do, however if you achieve even partial success, you begin to realise how addicted we are to that reference frame, and how it alters our perceptions. Clearly we cannot exist without it, however we can develop a keen perception of the ways in which it misleads us, rather like hearing voices from outside the 'echo chamber' of our existence. Secondly you begin to realise how much hard work you have to put in to maintain that view of the world, how much 'chatter' goes on in our head which can distort and hide what is really going on.

It can mislead us because it is a model, a way of describing the world. All models are inaccurate - that is their value and their great power; they are a simplification. However we have a tendency to believe that they are The Truth, for reasons that I hope I don't need to explain.

If you stop believing that the model is the truth, you come to realise that all the distinctions we make like raindrops, love, hate, the clouds of matter we call humans, the Light and the Dark, are all things we have created to simplify our lives; but fundamentally they are illusions. Mystics believe that by side-stepping these illusions they can gain a greater connection with the world and their life in it.

So as you can see: there is no Dark Side really.

In reply to cb294:

Hi I must have phrased that wrongly as it isn't exactly what I mean so I will explain. When I say you are connected to everyone and everything it doesn't mean I feel connected to people near me or can feel what they feel or pass things onto them or notions like that but that I know, I experience that we are all connected and I have tuned into a part of me- that we all have - which shows this. It is very hard to describe tbh as it is experiental. 

Also I have during one meditation experience of mindfulness seen my awareness go from my head and down into my heart area which was like nothing I have ever experienced before in meditation or anything else. 

So your point about meditation being a brain function well that time it was not and it was very distinctly in my heart area with no awareness in my head at all. 

In reply to freeflyer:

Spot on ! 

In reply to Chive Talkin\':

in the absence of consciousness / morality then the Dark and the Light are both the same

It depends entirely on your level of the aforementioned as to how you perceive darkness or lightness

This is a very interesting thread

edit- pretty much what freeflyer said

In reply to Pefa:

On spot!

In reply to Pefa:

on spot ?