Nihilism

I have now come to the conclusion that life has no ultimate meaning, if you don't invent a meaning for yourself, or adopt someone else's meaning of life.

Life is purposeless. We will all die, sooner or later; we will not end up in heaven or hell and we will not reincarnate. There is no afterlife, I believe. This is it.

I don't mind if you believe that Jesus will save you, or Allah or Krishna, I don't mind if you believe in spirits or angels. I don't mind if you're into quantum physics or how to make more money. I don't care if you're interested in yoga, group sex or golf.

I don't mind if you try to distract yourself with alcohol and drugs, or spend as much time as you can by watching stupid stuff on TV or on the internet. This has also been my way of trying to cope.

I don't mind if you invent a meaning of life. I can understand your reasons for this. But to me has life no particular meaning or purpose.

I'm not depressed. On the contrary. I'm sometimes quite happy. But I just can't see any particular meaning behind the events.

Life here on this planet is filled to the brim with suffering, war, exploitation and idiocy. Nevertheless, sometimes many of us can have some fun.

Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

The killer ape theory

-People have been fighting barbaric and cruel wars since the beginning of history. Is this fact not evidence enough that we are bellicose by nature? Don't critizise people who go to war, to kill, rape and destroy. They simply do what they are created to do. We follow orders, also from completely mad men, because it's written in our genetic code to follow orders from strong leaders.

-Even if belicosity is in our DNA, shouldn't we try to overcome this flaw, just like when we try to find cures to inborn diseases, or give eyeglasses to our children if they are nearsighted? 

Moreover, archaeologists and anthropologists are not in agreement on the claim that humans always have been at war with each other. Many of them can show evidence that warfare began when we became farmers and permanent residents. They claim that states and warfare did not exist 20 000 years ago. Our actions and our way of being is much more influenced by culture than by nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_ape_theory

http://www.fifthestate.org/archive/381-summer-fall-2009/killer-ape-theory-disproved/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/survey-of-earliest-human-settlements-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

Scientific woo-woo

Materialism, the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements, is nowadays an outdated worldview. If we don't really know what matter is, then materialism makes no sense. Matter consists of vibrating, mysterious something. Matter is mysterious stuff that has been made tangible.

The word materialism can also mean to consider material possessions as more important than spiritual values. However, what is a spiritual value?

Originally the term spirit meant an "animating or vital principle in man and animals". (What the spirit factually is can be seen when you look at a corpse; the difference between a living wacky person and the same person when he is dead.) The Latin word spiritus is related to spirare, to breathe.

In a Biblical context the term means to be driven by the Holy Spirit.

(I have always felt that I've been driven by many different kinds of spirits, stupid spirits, crazy spirits, lazy spirits, evil spirits.)

Nowadays have spirituality and religion been separated. Spirituality has become more focused on the search for the true self, the soul, without following the rules and regulations laid out by churches or religious institutions. Religious people follow prescribed teachings. Spiritual people invent their own religions and belief systems.

What is the true self? If it's not your body and not your mind (Spirit?) with its ego, beliefs, stories, opinions, values, memories, plans, misunderstandings, follies and ideas, what is it? Which part of you is reincarnating? (or going to heaven?)

When someone has a near-death experience and observes himself or herself on an operating table, who is this someone? Is this the true self, the soul, or is this an illusion?

Nobody knows nothing about these things, though they may be deeply convinced that they do. All people are speculating their heads off. We are all out there, I believe. We are all space cowboys.

But I am not an agnostic. A label is just a label, a word, and I have nowadays stopped labeling myself.

All explanations, materialistic, scientific, spiritual, religious and ideological, are woo-woo to me. If the scientists only would speak about what they had evidence for I would be on their side, but they don't. They talk about multiple universes, the probability that there are life on other planets, that no part of you lives on after death, that life is essentially meaningless, that synchronistic phenomenons are delusions...

What is matter, really? What does it consist of? What is energy? What is dark matter? What is conciousness? What is a dream? Are there more universes than this? What is light? What is an electrone? Etcetera, etcetera.

Nobody knows.

Thought habits

Events get caught in the brain in the form of memories. Connections are formed between neurons. When a memory has been stored in long-term memory it is very difficult to get rid of. You can forget about what happened but the memory is still there somewhere and can resurface whenever, maybe even decades later.

In the same way, beliefs, ideas and quirks get wired into the brain fabric. Once you have become convinced of something, it is very difficult to change that conviction.

Somehow you may have got the idea that you are stupid, or that nothing really matters in life except money. Maybe you still believe in evil spirits.

All habits are difficult to change: thought habits, smoking habits, eating habits...   It is also difficult to change hard wired political opinions and religious ideas. However, it is possible.

Heavy smokers can give up smoking and alcoholics can give up drinking.

It is possible to leave a religious sect or abandon a political ideology.

It is possible to disentangle oneself from thought patterns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFTWfRT8_U

Psychotherapy

Psychologists have developed methods to help people with low self-esteem,
depression, anxiety and phobias.
How come they have never developed methods to treat greed, complacency,
hypocrisy and career obsession?

Get real?

“Only the now is real”, is a popular slogan. However, slogans are mental creations. The Now is also a mental construct, just like memories and plans for the future. What you can see with your own two eyes are images that are created in your visual center and the sounds you hear are created in your auditory center.

Right-wingers, left-wingers, religious people and atheists have completely different ideas about what it means to be realistic. Not even the best scientists in the world can agree on how reality really works. How can this be? They have fantastic instruments. How come they arrive at different conclusions? Well, conclusions are also made of mental stuff, like dreams and fantasies.

Is this world made of matter, spirit or energy? What is matter, really? What is spirit made of? What is energy? We're all in the dark.

Relativism is also an outdated worldview, like materialism and idealism. We're all lost. We're lost in space. No one knows for sure why we are here. How ridiculous to argue about things that we don't know anything about. We're like drunks, quarreling about whether Einstein was right or wrong about time.

So, stop arguing. Give up the fight. Stop defending your worldview. Ignore worldviews altogether. It's time to wake up now!

Rationalizations

Some people are very intelligent. They get good grades in school.

Eventually they become phDs and start to write books.

Their way of thinking is based on logic and reason

and they come up with very intelligent explanations.

The problem is that they also explain things that they don't have a clue about.

They find rational and intelligent explanations also to incomprehensible events.

They should limit their explanations to what they have evidence for, I think.

Why do you feel that you have to, at any price,

come up with a rational and intelligent explanation,

also to aphenomenon that you have no experience of?

Are you afraid that your rational world would fall apart if you can't find
a logical explanation to the inexplicable?

                                                     ***

Other people are not as clever. They did not get good grades in school

and their explanations are usually unintelligent and irrational.

They have to invent gods or spirits to explain what they can't understand.
Allah, an angel or Jesus Christ intervened in the events, they say.

Why do you feel that you have to explain synchronicities?
Why do you feel that you have to explain consciousness?
Is the brain a receiver of cosmic consciousness
or is it a computer that manufactures thoughts and a sense of self?
Are synchronicities delusions or are they strange messages from somewhere?

Why is it so hard for you to say 'I don't know' or ' life is really a mystery?