This quote comes from Blaise Pascal's Pensées, accessible here.
"That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"
That has a lot of resonance for me. In this modern age, we are all kings, and there are vast industries to save us from ever being alone from our thoughts.
For December, I quit sugar, social media, and video games. It's been really interesting to notice what state I'm in when I go to reach for those things. Sometimes it's just habit, but often it's because I'm uncomfortable or in distress and want to avoid those feelings. But indulging in those things often just kicks the problem down the road.
Indeed, breaking my social media habits reminds me of Oscar Wilde talking about cigarettes: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" The same for me is definitely true with Twitter and Facebook. An infinite feed of shiny, entertaining, funny, and outraging things, but almost nothing that's ever satisfying.
How helpful to have a person who knows nothing about my situation police my behaviors because of a vague congruence and an apparent desire to score internet points.
No, for the purposes of what I'm doing, HN was not included in that. From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way. No personalized, UAM-optimized algorithmic feed, no infinite river of small content bites, no rich mechanisms for interaction. And, very importantly, it has the noprocrast feature, which I long ago set to low usage levels.
And as others point out, it's not like I took some sort of vow of internet chastity to a god who will now smite me because I looked at HN. The point was to partially undo some bad habits that had built up during the election cycle. I'll often make some 1-month change at the beginning of the month. For me it's valuable mainly as self-experiment and a way of getting back to some baseline.
"From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way."
I mean, it's fine that you feel this way, and you are probably correct - it wasn't designed for it. But I suspect for a lot of us , me included, it serves that exact purpose. I post so that strangers on the internet read it and give me likes. I compulsively check my comments section on my account to see how many upvotes my comments have. Every time I see my total Upvote count go up, I get excited and I rush to see who has agreed with me again. If it goes down I immediately get angry and defensive that someone is downvoting what I said. And surely, you participate in the same process, even if you don't feel as strongly about it - otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
It might not have been designed this way but it's exactly what it is. And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
>And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
You can actually observe this in this very thread so far: while people express opposite viewpoints at this moment none of the comment are in the negative. I'm sure that on Reddit the hivemind would've decided what the Right Opinion(tm) would be and people disagreeing would be sitting at -200 comment score.
Maybe the system could be pushed further and hide the scores even for your own comments though, removing all gamification. I don't know if it would improve things but I'd be curious to see how it would impact the quality of the discourse.
>otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
I mean even on forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/BBSs/imageboards without scoring system (or even publicly identifiable accounts) people would do the same thing, so I think that you overestimate the influence of the scoring system. I guess the closest equivalent on these other forums in general is getting "replies", i.e. engagement with your content, which I suppose is what we really crave in the end. We want people to listen to us.
Beyond that HN does have a few huge quality advantages over other social media. A big one is that the focus is still on textual content, not images and videos which means that you have to take some time to digest every story instead of mindlessly scrolling through the main page one gif at a time.
>This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with. //
Disagree, a lot.
I've railed against it, but pg (the site owner) noted that voting as a proxy for like/dislike was not improper use on HN, much to my chagrin. In the early days (of my use, back on my first HN account) voting seemed mostly to be done to move a comment to it's "proper place".
Nowadays very good comments get greyed to non-readability. I find myself so often vouching for things I disagree with because comments that add well structured, logical, or interesting thoughts get voted out of view because they go against the group norms.
> This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
A lot of people seemed to have liked (do like?) the system that Slashdot came up with: choose a random group of people every day and give them moderator posts to police the discussions. However, if you post in that day you lose your moderator points.
They seem to have gone with a wisdom-of-the-subset-of-the-crowds instead of a wisdom-of-the-entire-crowd/mob.
News readers had scoring. Neither the NNTP protocol, nor NNTP servers, had a scoring mechanism, and certainly not one that was distributed over the world-wide Usenet infrastructure.
If you think otherwise, can you point to (e.g.) an RFC where it is documented?
I didn’t use newsgroups a huge amount, but certainly some, and none of the clients I used ever had scoring. So to me, newsgroups were completely devoid of ranking.
As mentioned earlier, engagement seemed to be the goal. And the newsgroups I frequented were usually about getting help with a tech problem, or helping someone else out, which has largely been replaced by Stack Overflow.
> And surely, you participate in the same process, even if you don't feel as strongly about it - otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
Why not? Do you not value discussion, hearing new ideas, learning new concepts, having a soundboard for your thoughts? I also like sharing knowledge and participation in the process of humanity developing its collective memeplex (or at least fooling myself that I'm doing that). The fact that I'm not going to meet the people I discuss with has no bearing at all.
While what you describe in your comment is a factor, I cannot agree the rush is the dominant factor for commenting for me.
>>Why not? Do you not value discussion, hearing new ideas, learning new concepts, having a soundboard for your thoughts
I do, but ultimately, I post because I want someone else to read what I said and comment on it(good or bad). It triggers the same release of oxitocin in my brain that seeing likes on a post does.
Sure. I agree it has addiction potential, which is why I have the noprocrast feature turned on, and have for years. And clearly a lot of people get there "someone is wrong in the internet" fix here. But it wasn't a problem for me in the months of the election, so I didn't have the same need to quit it. Ergo I didn't.
As to the design question, I think the biggest things it's missing for me versus modern social networks in terms of addiction potential: 1) river-of-content setup; 2) algorithmic feed with personalized engagement; 3) images; 4) video; 5) wide topic variety; 6) follow graph; 7) real-world social connections in the platform; 8) on-platform notifications; 9) on-phone notifications.
> why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet
For me this platform is as close as I have to discussing things with my profession. So both with my professional Twitter account and this account, I see it as an opportunity to influence my field a bit and support younger colleagues where I can. Were it not for that, I'd just consume it in a read-only way, as over the years I've come to see on-line argumentation as unhealthy for me.
> clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason
It encourages and prominently displays good quality comments, and discourages and buries poor quality comments. It's not a perfect system as a lot of people vote based on whether they happen to agree rather than based on a comment's quality, but it's much better than nothing.
> It encourages and prominently displays good quality comments, and discourages and buries poor quality comments. It's not a perfect system as a lot of people vote based on whether they happen to agree rather than based on a comment's quality, but it's much better than nothing.
Mostly. There is an unconscious hive mind on HN too, and it downvotes when you disagree with it. It just happens that most commenters belong to it, at least most of the time.
I don't see the numbers on HN? Which is why it is less addictive to me than Reddit.
I also lurked for nearly 2 years, as I was concerned about diluting conversations with low quality, unnecessary posts, which are far less frequent on HN than Reddit.
edit: Now I see the numbers. The quality of posts is still far better than Reddit and the interactions less addictive, at least in my experience.
There's still value in knowing the scores though. When it works, it encourages better conversation, and this effect might be weakened if you couldn't see your comments' scores.
Slashdot's approach is to have different kinds of upvote (Insightful, Funny, etc) and different kinds of downvote (Off-topic, Flamebait, etc), and scores are clamped, iirc the lowest value is -1 and the highest is +5.
> otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
The act of writing out your thoughts gives them added clarity. This holds for long(er)-form comment-based sites such as HN and Reddit, not so much for FB and Twitter.
I also left every social media stuff behind. But I consider being on HN and reading some comments here and there as practicing basic human behavior. Its the same in real life, I cant just leave all human interaction behind. I must be able to deal with people. I think I can practice this a little.
I realized the aforementioned, checking my points and who responded what to my thoughts. I actually made an adblock rule to block out my points. So I dont get that rush, because I realized that too, that everytime I arrive at HN, I just checked my points, and if it were more than before, I felt the rush. And I just knew it was bad, and that is not indeed what I come for to this site.
Didn't know HN could lead to this type of addiction.
I use it only as a news delivery system, and in there there's already pathological signs - for instance I rarely skip reading anything that pushbullet displays. And if by accident I "brush it aside" (literally), then I open the app and recover the link.
Kudos for your self-awareness. Have a squirt of dopamine^W^W^W upvote. ;)
I have noticed the same reactions myself, and dislike them. I am slowly and gradually learning to be able to deflect that angry defensive reply impulse. Simple awareness seems to be the first step. I don't know yet what to do about the upvote thrill.
HN is addictive for me, similar to Instagram and TikTok for others.
business only policy, during 9-5. no news/socialmedia, cannot discuss irrelevant issues with my cofounder. Otherwise, I can go into rabbit holes for hours to research certain topic if my brain thinks that it is interesting.
HN is for me in a sense the "front page" of the internet. I'll call it the thinking persons social media. Social? Check. We are here interacting. Media? Check. It's HN's raison d'être. Additive? Check. I check my up-vote score several times a day.
I'm not trying to be judgmental, but I believe it might be worth it for you to re-evaluate some activities to assess what they really are at their core if you're pursuing mindfulness in time spending. Not acknowledging things for what they are can hold you back.
Just because HN doesn't have formal attributes of addictive social media like tailored feeds, shiny pictures, endless scrolling, etc., it doesn't mean that it's very different. I'm saying that, because I managed to get rid of almost all addictive sites, but HN sticks, and I still spend far more time here than I'd like to admit. If you look at it closer: this is an _endless_ list of _news_ with _a lot_ of _comments_ from your _peers_ that you _engage_ with. If you take words in italic it's obvious that this is exactly what makes other social media addictive. "News" and "peers" are the most important words here of course.
In a way, I believe sites like HN are even worse than others because they are somewhat disguised. I shrug FB, twitter and instagram easily (never actually even got into them), Reddit was harder but their stupid redesign made it much easier, HN sill stands for me.
So let me get this straight, you 1. Come in bragging about how self-disciplined you are for not using social media on a social media platform and then 2. Get very defensive when someone points it out to you and 3. Assume the only possible reason anyone could disagree with you is that they’re trying to get internet points?
I think you may need to add a few more months to this social media cleanse...
HN to me at least is an place I actively go towards when I have the time and I want to. I don't believe in dogmatism, if you want to reduce the impact social media has on you, just reduce your usage. You don't have to become a recluse and you won't become a heretic for going to social media once in a while, if you make it a conscious choice.
Just like that if you want to eat less meat because of the environment, just eat less meat. If you eat selected meat once in a while on selected occasions this won't make you a heretic, because you are still reaching your goal of reducing your impact on the environment etc.
The people who say "if you want to reduce X you are a heretic if you don't abstain 100% from using X" are projecting their own lack of dicipline onto others — they feel they wouldn't have the discipline to do it, but also realise it would be good for them to have it. So they have to invent an excuse why this is a goal that cannot be reached, not worth reaching etc.
Being a free thinking and acting person fundamentally means also to notice when you are manipulating yourself by making your thinking fit the image you already have of the world. I for example often fall into the trap of "if I can't do it perfectly it might not be worth doing at all", and because I know that, I try to work against it.
So what your comment does here is undermining another people's effort to be in control of their social media environment. Why you deem such an act necessary should be something you should know yourself.
People have tried to define what social media is. Rather than responding immediately I tried to think about what makes places like Facebook and Twitter so toxic.
For some context I don't consider things like forums to be social media. As an early internet denizen I had lots of thoughtful discourse with folks that reminds me of what I experience at HN. I continue to use IRC, which I also don't consider to be social media.
So what makes them different? I think it's the underlying technology. The graph, our ability to search it and correlate immediate (mostly irrelevant) commonality is what makes things dangerous.
Humans are full of dumb or awful thoughts. They'll combat these ideas or thoughts with alternatives regularly which end up referring to as cognitive dissonance. The result is that these lesser ideas widdle away or drop off completely. On social media, the graph doesn't forget and continues to tie you to people, ideas, and thoughts that are increasingly useless. While this sells ads and generates interest in new products it doesn't align well to the way humans have discourse, socialize, or just relate in general.
The articles and the conversations are better quality than on any other social media with the added bonus that what I read is relevant for my daily job and career.
At the same time, it's still distracting, I almost never finish an article and go straight to the comments, thinking "entertain me, comment section". I feel productive, but in reality, it's superficial knowledge, and spending time here is time I don't spend on actually working on my goals.
In the end, it's all about balancing the pros and cons. For Facebook, Instagram, it's easy, I don't use them. For Twitter, I focus exclusively on tech so that I don't end up in a pointless yet vicious fight. For HN, it's spending 10 minutes on the top articles, keeping up with important industry news every second day.
Does it need to be a "direct" benefit? I think sometimes the things we do out of our own volition shape ourselves not only directly but also indirectly.
As a personal example, I have noticed how my way of discussing heated topics has changed based on discourse I have seen here.
And this would not have happened if I didn't invest time similar to yourself.
Yes in your case you identified a specific way to improve your communication skills by immersing yourself in the HN environment.
This is a hit or miss though, because you either identify specific ways to improve or not, and you may or may not actually improve those identified skills by reading trough the comments (and not taking action).
If improvement is the goal, then there are more efficient ways to eg. learn better ways to discuss heated topics (like reading a specific book on the topic, or attending a "Nonviolent Communication" workshop).
The more I think about this the more HN only seems like a place to get a specific flavour of entertainment (which I personally like), but nothing more.
At some point I decided that abandoning social media as a whole would be a tremendous task because of years of being 'trained' by tech... Now I separate useful and useless social media. Shaping my perspective this way helps regulate my Internet use a lot.
I think if you're disciplined in your HN use - like, check the front page twice a day, not a few times an hour - then it's basically a community-curated newspaper. And while newspapers may not be particularly healthy, they're probably better than most social media.
HN content tends to be longer-form which I feel is quite different from the typical infinite scrolling for quick dopamine hits on sites like Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.
Isn't reading a book the same, by this definition? You could say that when picking up a book you do control the topic (while in social media it is others), but this is an illusion if you do not read that book for the second time.
Less so now but the whole site used to be a filter bubble of people in tech/science or with tech/science interests. It was actually a fairly positive filter though since it resulted in some very interesting content being surfaced. It still stands head and shoulders above the rest but there has certainly been some decline in recent years. In its early days, Reddit was much the same but suffered a massive decline after becoming the "front page of the internet". All "free as in beer" communities seem to follow a similar progression, those with stronger gatekeeping tend to last longer but no site can survive an overwhelming influx of new users without a proportionate increase in the ability to educate those users in the norms of the group they are joining.
How did you know that XorNot replied to your previous comment?
Notifications, addictive design and gamification are really bad practices that we should try to avoid - but the underlying drug of social media is that someone noticed and reacted to your content, and HN provides that just like Facebook or Twitter.
I think all three of you are actually hitting the nail on the head. Large headed nail I suppose ;) Take ne as an example. I could've had a really low user number on Slashdot if I had registered right away. I never actually did but I read Slashdot for many many many years.
I turn off notifications on my phone for almost any app. It's just way too annoying. I'll get to it when I get to it! I guess I'm part of that minority mentioned above but as you say I do keep coming back too. It's not black and white but we can stay on the healthy side.
If I try to find an analogy, it's the difference between sitting by the fire in the evening and chatting with other people vs. spending the entire day running around listening to and actively spreading rumors.
I don’t consider HN to be social media anymore than a discussion forum on gardening is social media.
HN is not a SV startup selling ads spying on you manipulating your behaviour to sell crap or breaking democracy or depressing teenagers into suicide, it’s just not comparable and these false equivalences are just so tiring. Stop trying to bring other people down.
If you go online you can probably find a Jesuit retreat centre not too far from you where you can spend (say) eight days in total silence and seclusion; you can optionally (though recommended) talk with a spiritual director once a day to help you sort through anything that bubbles up during your stay.
The BBC had a short doc where a bunch of random men and women went through the exercise (episodes are available online if you search):
Perhaps worthwhile, even if that is not your particular worldview.
(This is separate than what monks do, which is seclusion from the world.)
Most faiths in the world have spiritual traditions where silence and reflection are done. Probably possible to find similar retreat centres following their traditions. It seems that it is only the modern secular worldview that hasn't adopted something (yet?). I think this is something most modern philosophical worldviews (especially in the materialist bend) overlook: human 'spiritually' (for lack of a better word).
Thank you. I have had friends, none Buddhist, attend Vipassana retreats that are similar. No phone, computer, media, or conversation for a week or a weekend, just a focus on silent meditation. And an absence of religious trappings, so suitable for both devout Christians and atheists.
They all told me it is very challenging and a good look at themselves and their cravings for interaction. I don't doubt it.
> That has a lot of resonance for me. In this modern age, we are all kings, and there are vast industries to save us from ever being alone from our thoughts.
> The same for me is definitely true with Twitter and Facebook. An infinite feed of shiny, entertaining, funny, and outraging things, but almost nothing that's ever satisfying.
Facebook has been making it pretty easy for me to quit - it's mostly been an unending stream of boring advertisements with maybe one or two meaningful posts from friends.
Definitely, but they're commingled with the other change I made: minimum 10k steps per day. My mood and energy levels have been much better. I also find myself getting more done, because instead of turning to some disposable distraction, I'll get usefully bored. E.g., things around me are cleaner, I've read more long-form stuff, and I've called more friends on the phone than I otherwise have lately.
I want to pay $20/month for something like highscalability.com
It hits 80% of the stories I cared about during the week and I get them in 30-40 minutes on a Friday. I don't think this type of service exists because it would have to intentionally limit the growth of the company. When someone asked for a daily update / hourly update / or news feed you would have to say no. And a competitor may emerge that makes more money and eventually tries to buy you.
Just a bit more on why Pascal thought even a king is unhappy when he thinks about himself:
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good
things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position
in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure
he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and
reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he
will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which
may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he
be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy
than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts,
are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or
that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the
hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek
that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy
condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the
bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that
the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure
of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest
source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly
to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the
king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king
though he be, if he think of himself.
This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves
happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men
unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would
not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not
screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which
turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
As a Muslim, I pray five times a day, and of late I have begun to perform it "better", as in unshackling myself from worldly thoughts and other mental distractions. I attach zero importance to them and I remind myself that this صلاة (prayer) that I am doing alone deserves any importance, to the exclusion of all others. Thoughts used to come to me to try and induce panic in me, but overtime they have become so feeble that I am no longer aware of them.
And talking about the kings, one of the pious said : “If the kings and the children of the kings knew what [felicity] we are in, they would fight us over it with their swords.”
I don't think what Pascal is trying to get through is that we should numb ourself to inner thoughts. On the contrary, to acknowldege them and if anything, spend more time contemplating. That is when we can learn about ourself, others, and the universe, if I may say.
Working from home this entire year, I have tried to practice taking at least 15 minutes everyday, couple of times a day, laying down and just listening to my thoughts, understanding my anxieties. Trying to understand why I feel the way I do, instead of running away from them by distracting myself by various means.
This new habit of mine truly has been a life saver in this year.
Pascal is throwing light and expounding upon a weakness found in (most) people, that of depending on distractions to prevent themselves from dwelling on thoughts which remind them of their mortal nature.
I didn't read his works enough, none apart from the above quote in fact, to comment on whether or not he recommends acknowledging our inner thoughts and contemplating on them.
As for me, I feel real and lasting relief from worshipping Allaah. It's something very tangible and enlightening. It might seem counterintuitive, but it does boost my productivity a lot, even though I ignore thinking about work during prayer.
Now, having belief in Allaah has its manifest benefits. I am happy as I write this. I am able to keep afloat a bit in trying times. I was able to come out of depression (and quite a few other mental illnesses). None of it I could achieve except by Allaah's help.
When I used to go to hospital for psychiatric treatment, the doctor used to advise me that whenever I feel anxious, I lie down on a bed, relax and think of some beautiful place, in order to ward off the bad feelings. So, even the best advice the doctor could give me was this.
And what better place to think of than Paradise?
What Pascal was explicit in saying is that there is no inherent happiness in material possessions. But if you know that there is a life after death, that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that there is a Merciful God who, if you believe in Him and obey Him, will reward you for you good deeds and forgive your bad deeds, you will be humble, you will be hopeful, and you will be happy.
"the Paradise I am talking about, you don't die after entering it"
Not every religion considers eternal life desirable. In some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, the ultimate goal is to leave the cycle of death and rebirth.. not in to paradise, but in to nothingness.
The truly vast amount of literature on both Buddhism and Hinduism argue to the contrary.
Also, the ultimate reality in Buddhism, Hinduism, and (incidentally) mystic forms of Islam, is often described as being beyond words and even beyond conception, so there is a limited amount that could be said about it in ordinary language -- though that hasn't stopped people from trying.
In Buddhism one often hears the teachings described as the finger pointing towards the moon. Language may be inadequate to describe ultimate reality, but it can point to it.
As a Muslim, I can assure you there’s no such thing as mystic Islam. Islam is foremost about clarity, simplicity and straightforwardness in its message of pure monotheism. It does not seek to lure people by mesmerising them with incomprehensible riddles. It hides nothing.
The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions. In fact, many of the famous ancient sufis have roots in India, where paganism and idol worshipping was and is still prevalent. Hence sufis are adored by Hindus.
Who decides what orthodox Islam and what is heresy?
You'll find Sunnis who think Shiites are heretics, and Shiites who think Sunnis are heretics, and both are major branches of Islam.
Of course you'll find both Sunnis and Shiites who think Sufis are heretics, and Sufis who think Sunnis and Shiites are heretics (or at least don't understand the true or secret meaning of the Koran or of Islam).
And does the Koran have a secret meaning, or only a surface meaning? This important question itself is also a matter of opinion and will differ based on who you ask.
There have also been mystics in Islam apart from the Sufis: Avicenna, the Ismailis, and Alawites spring to mind.
As a non-Muslim, when I see the members of these sects disagree with one another as to who is a "true Muslim" or what is or isn't Islam, what reason do I have for believing any one of them over the others?
Their appeals to scripture, lineage, famous commentators and the like are not very convincing both because as a non-Muslim I have no reason to believe in any of them and because you can easily find other people who claim to be Muslims making pretty much the same appeals in support of completely different conclusions.
At this point in my life, anyone who considers the Koran their central scripture is a Muslim in my eyes.
If you have a better definition that doesn't rely on appeals to scripture, to lineage, nor to the authority of some person, I'd love to hear it.
You are correct in assuming that whoever takes the Qur-aan as the central scripture is a Muslim. That’s really all that is to it. I will just add a bit of a historical background. You can read the Prophet’s history to best judge what Islam he brought.
I will start from the basics:
The fundamental word of Islam, the one word which differentiates between who is a Muslim and who is not is the well known Kalima (كلمة) of Islam, La ilaha illallaah. Which translates to there is none worthy of worship except Allaah. This statement encapsulates the entire monotheistic creed of Islam in it. It is the pivot of any Muslim’s religion. A Muslim strives to preserve this statement in his heart while believing in it. He does this by trying to ensure harmony in his speech and his deeds.
One who lacks firm belief in his heart in this word, is a weaker believer than one who has firm belief, even though both might utter the word in the same manner.
Though we can’t see what the heart contains and hence we can’t normally judge a person’s level of faith, his outward actions, to an extent, do communicate his level of belief. So much about this word.
The one who brought this word to the people was a man called Muhammad (upon him be peace) over 14 centuries ago. The people who he first invited to his religion were the people of of his birthplace, the city of Makkah. His people were originally on the religion of Abraham, worshipping the One God of all that exists, Allaah. But in due course of time, they forgot the truth and started worshiping idols.
So Muhammad (upon him be peace) was sent to them as Messenger by Allaah, just as Messengers from among men were sent by Allaah to earlier people, in order to warn them about the consequences of idol worship and to call them to the worship of the true God, Allaah. Some Messengers which were sent before him were Noah, Lot, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, all mentioned in the Bible and Qur-aan.
Muhammad (upon him be peace), warned the people of eternal hell if they did not believe in his Message and desist from idol worship. And he promised Paradise for whoever believed in him and acted upon what he commanded.
His Prophetic Mission lasted 23 years, of which the first 13 were spent in Makkah and the last 10 were in Madinah. He was made a Messenger at the age of 40, and he dies at the age of 63.
Throughout his mission, Allaah sent the Verses of His Book, Al -Qur-aan to guide him and his followers, gradually teaching them the rituals of prayer, charity, pilgrimage. As the Messenger (upon him be peace) and his followers were the subject of great deal of ridicule and torture, Allaah, in these Verses, also supported them and encouraged them. Allaah also taught His Messenger how to present his Message to people in the elegant way.
>The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions.
This illustrates that you have a fundamentalist streak in you: you've described a form of Islam you don't like as being "deviant". You're gatekeeping Islam.
I kept reading your comments above till reach here. Your knowledge about Autism is pretty narrow and region-centric. No one considers taking drugs and shaking as Sufiism. It's opposite of that. Sufism is all about self discovery and connecting to God with Dikr. The Dikr as described as in Quran as satisfaction of heart.
LOL. I loved it when ppl assume others are ignorant. Why and how did you assume I haven't? I have read multiple, in Urdu And english. You didn't read what I said. Your knowledge of Suffism is narrow and wrong. No point arguing with you unless you get to know what Taswwuf is.
It is worthy of mention that the Buddha was a prince, destined to be come king, yet his father tried to lock him up in his golden palace with nothing but entertainment.
Eventually the prince does come into contact with suffering, and leads to him trying to find an end to suffering.
It is useful to add that even distraction and entertainment are suffering and unfulfilling in that they are impermanent, illusory and essentially devoid of meaning. All things have "equal taste", good or bad all comes to us through the senses which only produce a reflection of the world in our mind. Even our perception of our own inner world is an appearance of the same sort in consciousness. This shouldn't excuse inaction or wrongdoing or lead one to apathy, however, our actions in the world are still important and have consequences but we should be mindful that this is a condition we are all subject to, a reason for greater empathy and care and a motivation to improve the lives of others as much as we seek to improve our own.
"It is useful to add that even distraction and entertainment are suffering and unfulfilling in that they are impermanent, illusory and essentially devoid of meaning."
This doesn't fully make sense to me.
Sure, at some point your pleasure will end, but do you have to judge something by its end? Why not judge it by its beginning or middle instead?
It's like saying "don't enjoy your meal, because at some point later you're going to get hungry".
That makes no sense to me.
Also, regarding the lack of meaning of distraction and entertainment, it's not like "nothingness" (which Buddhism tries to put in its place) has any meaning either. So I'm not sure why one should seek to put one meaningless thing in the place of another.
Would you enjoy your favourite meal if it were the only thing you could eat for the rest of your life? If not, is it the food you enjoy or the variety, novelty and choice? After a strenuous workout would you prefer to sit down to a heavy meal or have a glass of water? The pleasure you derive from something is not an intrinsic property of that thing, the sense of pleasure comes from within your own mind. That is why pleasure is illusory, it is a state that exists only within your mind. The idea behind a practice like Buddhism is not to nullify everything, it is to draw the attention to the fact that all we know of the world is an illusion produced by our senses, we can never truly know the world outside of our consciousness since no matter how closely we examine it we are really just examining its representation within our own mind. It is meaningless in that all of these sense perceptions are essentially the same, the meaning we assign to them is once again something that originates from within us. This doesn't negate the external world, it is just a different way of viewing it and a useful one because it puts into perspective many of the frivolities and aimless paths we trace through it. You don't have to be an ascetic but you don't have to let the world subsume you completely either.
the day you can sit for hours without doing anything, you've attained the state of self-realization – self-love free from all conditions. The conditioned mind is no longer there, the thoughts no longer bombard you, the emotions no longer disturb you. You enjoy the deep peace, contentment and bliss of your infinite self. Then you can truly contemplate deeply on anything you feel important, then the deep mysteries of existence shall open up to you. Then, you see the truth, of life, existence and the universe.
> Then, you see the truth, of life, existence and the universe.
Pretty words, but do they mean anything? For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing? I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
I'm interested in meditation to learn more about my own body and mind, maybe improve my life somehow. But IMHO the discussions around it could do with less of this type of mystic woo.
FWIW I have a friend who is deep into spirituality, still works at a FAANG but definitely feels like he can attain higher states of awareness in his meditations. I don’t see him active on social media, he leads a reasonably ascetic life and so on.
This person doesn’t have much success in making others believe. At best, he gets ‘hey, I am happy that you’re happy’ from folks like me, most feedback is around ‘mystic woo’. I have another friend deep in this world, but she balances it with real world and doesn’t really proselytize.
I think it is very much a catch 22. You won’t believe it unless you’re doing it. So if belief is required for you to give it a shot, that’s a non-starter.
I would say try it out and make up your own mind! What do you got to lose anyway - stay away from holy men who make you uncomfortable, start with books or YouTube!
Just a comment regarding belief in the context of learning: a lot (in fact almost all) of learning is through our innately held beliefs. Without having beliefs we would be no different than an ML model, which just keeps adjusting weights according to the data it receives. Each of us has some beliefs, which "seems right" to us and this is what shapes our understanding of what we see around us, no matter what the "data" says.
If the belief is weak (or false), it might lead to confusion and distrust, which will make it impossible to learn anything.
Also, experiencing heightened states of awareness is not necessarily beneficial, people on drugs experience it routinely.
Are you sure that our beliefs aren't "just" (the appropriate equivalent) of a stimulus or data point that has really high weight, e.g. because it was created during childhood and constantly reinforced?
Take the biases that we've heard about in image recognition where these ML models misclassify black people. If a person had done that you would accuse them of racist beliefs.
Why is the computer model so different? Because you don't want to believe that computers can reach consciousness? (I don't either at this point but time will tell. We don't really know enough - or I don't - about what consciousness is and how it works.)
Well, what about Gebru's findings? Data in and of itself is not beneficial, we do have certain underlying beliefs about appropriateness and goodness. There is an element of innate belief at play.
Otherwise, chatbots are very good at learning abusive and racist language. It's due to our belief that it's not right and decent that we train them using a bias. And it's only due to beliefs that we rein in the rogue AI which misclassifies black people.
Edit: If you still want to think of belief as an input node whose link has weight, then set the weight to infinite
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
Well, they have, but nobody believes them :)
In any case, I understand your attitude to the mystic woo. It used to put me off a lot when I started meditating.
Now I take it as simply something that's there. They are statements that someone makes. If they're talking about states that someone could reach and they also give instructions, I might consider trying them to see what happens.
In any case as a programmer and scientifically minded meditator, I encourage you to pursue your interest in meditation. Try different techniques until you find something that works. Take it easy, take it slow, cultivate play and joy in your practice. If you manage to do that, you'll reap the fruit of your practice.
> For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing?
More-or-less. You do get the punchline, and the joke is quite good.
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
They have, over and over and over again. However, it's not something that fits in words. You have to stop wording in your mind, and know. Literally the first line in the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
Meditation sans "mystic woo" is like using your car only to drive from your garage to your mailbox at the end of the driveway to get your mail and back. You might learn a little more about your own car, and maybe improve your mail-retrieval somehow, but you're not really going anywhere, eh?
Here's an opinion from a deeply cynical person who's also 15 years deep into this mysticism rabbit hole.
My takeaway is that there's something in this meditation thing. At the very least, concentrating on a static imaginary shape activates some kind of drainage system in the brain: for a few minutes you feel what a clogged pipe would feel when it's being cleaned by a powerful water stream. That effect alone seems valuable.
Regarding the meaning of meditation, my conclusion is that it's a whistle. Just like you'd produce a certain whistle to summon an animal or a bird, you'd sharply imagine a certain shape or symbol to summon ideas or certain effects. The former is how you get inspiration. "Mysticism" begins when you are able to produce this whistle the right way and when you know which thoughts or symbols to target.
The most comprehensive explanation of meditation that's available in English is probably lamrim, volume 4 (500 or so pages, described by its author as a brief summary of key concepts from canonical sources that an interested reader should read himself).
That's basically how they con you into it. Using pretty words which appear to have "deeper" and "transcendental" meanings. They entice you with words like mystery, truth, existence, universe, but the TLDG (Too long didn't go) of this rabbit hole called meditation is (wading in) occult practices.
You first need to get yourself free of the opium of Islam. The unoriginal religion made up by stealing lots and lots of ideas from Judaism and Christianity, themselves sources of much suffering for humankind.
The hell and heaven are not of any next worlds but are what you create for yourself and live inside, here on this very Earth. And look at the hellish and backward state of most Muslim counties and their people: People trapped in ignorance, prejudice, poverty in a never ending hellish cycle. If your ideas and beliefs have made this world a living hell for you, how do you expect to die and then wake again in a heaven? The guys that told you so, were really swindlers.
You need to first rid your society from the actual opium and its derivatives. It’s very convenient to throw the opium of the masses on Muslims, when the masses in your society have puncture marks.
And yes Marxism has died. Communism is dead. It’s just a name for brutality and dictatorship.
That's wrong, though. Occultism didn't have the evil meaning until very recently. That's similar to how nazis have changed the public image of swastika: before them it was an Egyptian symbol of light or something of that sort. "Occult" merely means hidden from plain sight. Coincidentally, the most occult thing out there is hiding in plain sight: it's electricity.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've read the the free kindle sample now, which is already a couple hours of reading. I found the introduction and and overview very difficult to get through, even to the point of falling asleep. But the "first interlude" and "stage one" captured my attention better.
Although a bit verbose and repetitive at times, I liked the exploration of the concepts of attention and peripheral awareness. I may give the "stage one" instructions a try, and buy the rest of the book if it goes well.
This book may have value to learn something about meditation, but it also has exactly the kind of "mystic woo" I was talking about.
In the first few sentences it talks about the "soul" wanting to return back to it's source, the "supreme consciousness". Then a couple pages further, a statement about reincarnation:
"If you don’t believe in rebirth then this book will be of little use to you. As I said earlier, meditation to me is the most powerful tool to harness and channelize the restive and other tendencies of the mind we’ve been carrying with us over lifetimes."
Thanks, I've read the start and found that Harris does a good job of explaining from the outset why a non-religous, mysticism-averse person would still want to explore this type of spirituality. That part wasn't very clear to me in the introduction of "Mind Illuminated".
There is no legitimate platform for such a person to report back to. There have been many holy books over the years insofar as religions are centred around them.
Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity. We are merely animals. Nothing more. Nothing less.
"Published in science journal PLOS ONE in March 2013, the study documented reliable core body temperature increases for the first time in Tibetan nuns practising g-tummo meditation...
"The researchers collected data during the unique ceremony in Tibet, where nuns were able to raise their core body temperature and dry up wet sheets wrapped around their bodies in the cold Himalayan weather (-25 degree Celsius) while meditating. Using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings and temperature measures, the team observed increases in core body temperature up to 38.3 degree Celsius..."
If it’s scientific then it must be well understood in terms of cause and effect. In which case, it is like any other physical phenomenon, nothing special.
And if it’s not scientific, rather if it’s a mystery, then scientists will have to take a call on what is.
Science is not as black and white as it's made out to be. In this particular case, the observation seems to have been made with scientific rigor, so this part is definitely scientific. As for the parts of the causal chain that are not fully understood, these will be subject to further inquiry. It would be fair to call those parts "a mystery", but that doesn't imply them having any "mystical" properties. "Mystical" to me would mean "fundamentally outside the realm of scientific inquiry", not just "we have not gotten around to it yet".
Everyone born before 1600? Or maybe anyone who has done winter survival training. Hunger and cold have been with us since the beginning. The spiritual and meditative practices we’re talking about here were developed when these things were just daily facts of life and like other animals we’re adapted to deal with them as a matter of course. Modern humans live lives of luxury unknown to even the wealthiest and most fortunate people in the past. If you want a concrete modern example I’d offer Wim Hof.
This was the original statement "Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity".
It was more about questioning the relevance (and authenticity) of "deep mysteries" and "existence" etc. It was not about whether or not human beings can train themselves to endure such difficulties. Which they can, apparently.
When you said "it would be a cake walk for an ascetic" I thought that by ascetic you meant one who is into meditation and all such "deep realities". Not Wim Hof.
Nevertherless, I personally don't see any virtue in being hungry in -1 degree celsius, if I have food and a warm home. Except in case someone is making money out of it, like Wim.
The fact that we are even discussing such issues shows that we are indeed more than animals.
And yes, many such seemingly alluring but deceptive mysteries fall apart much before the onset of difficulties like the one you mentioned
Perhaps thats is because ants and amoebas have to find food in a bid to continue thier existence. Its safe to asume that for them to be satiated (not just resting) is to die.
Indeed. I read a book called The Songlines which was about Australian aboriginals and nomadism in general. It qouted Pascal and proposed that the solution is to walk and to wander. That's what we are made for. The solution to the problem of sitting in a room is not to sit in a room!
It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.
I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
There's a German standup comedian (Volker Pispers) who did a bit about this. It goes a bit like this: People always think that nature is so efficient. But nature doesn't optimize. Nature is lazy and does as little work as possible. You'll never see a lion hunt down a zebra and then go like "Okay, that took me 30 minutes, so I could do 10 more zebras today before dusk". He'll eat part of the zebra, leave the rest for the hyenas, and then spend the rest of the day basking in the sun.
> It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.
Agreed.
> I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Generalizations about foraging populations are fraught with problems because there was a lot of diversity among them and its not possible to study them in a "pure" (untouched by agricultural peoples) setting.
>The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself.
This is really interesting from a modern perspective. I'm an audiophile - I've spent countless hours just sitting in a chair in front of a stereo system I've spent a couple thousand on. If I ever lapse into non-attention to the music, I try and get back to the music. It's like mindfulness meditation, but unlike the monk, my mind is focusing on a sense, not emptying itself.
On the other hand, I can't lie in bed for more than two minutes without deep introspection - my morality, arguments for and against all positions, what projects I want to work on, the papers I've read, etc.
But before writing some comments on this website and elsewhere, I'll have a deep think about what I'm arguing, and why. Other times I'll just jump at it for the engagement, the thrill of refreshing in the morning to check the Hacker News Engagement Number, whatever else. I've tried to make an effort to not read outrage-bait on Reddit, I've deleted my Twitter account years ago, I've done countless things. This i my third HN account.
The best part of my day, after work and my energy is exhausted? Gaming. I only play one game - online and multi-player, with an Icelandic man I've never met. It's all a distraction. Why continue learning piano, Japanese, philosophy, literature, introspection, when I have this pleasure right here? Where will I be in 30 years? 20 years? Even writing this comment sadness comes over me.
To think that in the 19th century, there were men being compared to Hegel and Feuerbach at age 21. What the hell am I doing?
I wouldn't take comparison to Hegel as a great compliment. That said, the magnitude of knowledge and knowledgeable people in the 21st century (and onwards) will far outnumber the 19th century. So that what made one appear as a genius then would make them look ordinary now. I'm not asking us to see people of bygone eras differently than they're written about—I'm asking that we revere them, but with a healthy dose of skepticism which prevents us from seeing ourselves and times as failed in comparison.
What game is it? I've been looking for something to play in the last few days. I've got my mind just racing with ideas for projects and things and I'm always feeling bad about not getting into it and then I'm not able to truly relax.
Not who you replied to, but in my experience, if you play Factorio, your mind will be racing with ideas for projects and things you can do in Factorio.
"Modern humans spend virtually no time on "inward-directed thought", and not solely because we're too busy: in one US survey, 95% of adults said they'd found time for a leisure activity in the previous 24 hours, but 83% said they'd spent zero time just thinking."
I think Pascal was correct because at least those people I know well enough to discuss such matters with tell me they don't spend much time thinking or contemplating about much at all. This is a bit strange to me as I've always thought about things—mind you, not necessarily things of great importance but about things in general. It's dead easy for me to daydream time away (unfortunately). (When I was at school one of the punishments was to be sent to stand in a corner and stare at the wall. It used to send some kids almost crazy but never bothered me much—all I had to do was to go into daydream mode to pass time away!)
Since reading this article it's occurred to me that those people who've really struggled with the isolation of COVID-19 lockdowns and who continually seek the company of other people are perhaps those who suffer this 'inability to sit quietly in a room alone'. I mention this because during earlier posts on the topic of large numbers of people who were not coping with the enforced isolation, I said that for me, if anything, the enforced lockdown was a blessing as I wasn't continually having to deal with people I'd rather not deal with. Similarly, I find noise and activity distracting, even annoying at times.
No doubt when COVID-19 is over and the postmortems begin in earnest, this connection will be researched.
Another afterthought, perhaps those best suited to interplanetary traveling will be those who do have a good ability to quietly contemplate things (after all, it's likely they'll be forced to do lots of it).
I find it disturbing the way a trait that seems to be very common among humans is being framed as a problem.
External stimulus means you’re with other humans that you can cooperate with. That you’re sharing stories and learning. That you’re hunting for food. That you’re building a shelter. All these things are necessary for survival. It seems possible that being sociable and industrious might well have been bread into us at some point. And it’s probably the reason we aren’t like big cats in Africa, just hunting and then resting to conserve energy.
We should not be suggesting to people that their instincts are a moral failure to be cured.
It's a problem. That's why doing it (mediation, mindfulness, prayer, sitting zazen, ...) helps!
Watch animals: they meditate instinctively. Dogs, cats, birds, they all do it.
Just like animals all stretch instinctively. (We had some chickens for awhile this year and they stretch too. It's funny: they stretch the wing and leg on one side together, then the other side.)
What I'm saying is, "yoga" and "meditation" are necessary for survival. You gotta remember civilization is only 12K years old, that's nothing in the biological scheme of things. We should be spending a lot more time napping and "zoning out".
Postulating that basic instincts are problematic is too cynical. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. You certainly need somekind of external stimulus to react to the surroundings (e.g fight or flight response). Inward introspection is great but it's just another tool at the end of the day.
I've heard of stone cities in Southern Africa that are believed to be older than 100K years, but that's not part of the known archeological record.
Some would argue, and I'm inclined to agree, that civilization could be considered to date to the beginning of the Stone Age, which "lasted for roughly 3.4 million years" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Age
The 100K years timeframe is more believable than a random cutoff 12K years B.C. Humans are way too advanced species to progress from monkeys to what we are now in just a few thousand years. I'd say it's taken close to 18 millions years since humans were advanced monkeys, but even then the difference between a "regular monkey" and an "advanced monkey that can make tools for hunting" is massive and needs an extended period of prehistory.
Of course the need for external stimuli is a universal and important human need. The question is merely whether 100% of one's waking moments must serve this need, or whether one has the ability to spend a percent or so of one's time not satisfying this need:
> …that people detest being made to spend six to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think – even to the extent of being willing to give themselves mild electric shocks instead.
Simply pointing out the importance of external stimuli is like responding to an observation that many people cannot hold their breath for 30 seconds (say) by pointing out the importance of breathing.
The problem is that we live in a society where one is constantly being bombarded with stimuli all the time. Because people cannot be in silence, you have to endure constant noise.
I began a new job recently and was shocked to find out they have a speaker system that plays music everywhere in the building including office areas. On my first day, they were playing gangsta rap all day long...
So now, in order for me to focus and do what I'm being paid to do, I have to separate myself from the environment by either working from home (in silence) or using ANC headphones all day, which is not pleasant.
The problem, in my opinion, is that/when those things are done compulsively. If you're hungry it's fine to have a compulsion to get food, but as a human you should also be comfortable doing nothing, otherwise you're essentially seeding misery.
Not everyone frames it in a judgemental fashion. Some people simply decide to see what happens when they decide to go outside their comfort zone.
The tendency to not explore these spaces seems to be one of the reasons why they are occulted.
I always find this percentages puzzling. I reckon people busy thinking are too busy, or simply never get requested to fill in surveys about how they spend their idle CPU brain time.
Thinking is the last remaining freedom, as long as you don't say all the things you think of out loud. :)
The modern world is also set up in such a way* to preclude such activity because we are surrounded by stimuli and activity that distracts people and gives them things to do and think about. I noticed this when I became more interested in quiet contemplation. Its not easy for everyone to allocate uninterrupted time for such activity.
* the modern world emergently selects for these interruptions, I'm not suggesting an anti-mindfulness conspiracy. Its why Buddha is sometimes depicted with lions and tigers. The legend is that when a meditating practitioner is near to enlightenment, he or she will hallucinate ferocious beasts and those are illusions that come about as he nears enlightenment in order to distract him or her.
"...to preclude such activity because we are surrounded by stimuli and activity that distracts people and gives them things to do and think about."
You're right. In my opinion, one of the best examples of this is to be seen in our films, videos and multimedia presentations, etc. With very few exceptions, extremely tight editing is now the norm, scenes are cut to within an inch of incomprehension and there's rapid switching from one scene to another and back again. We now have the ridiculous situation where scene switching is so rapid that the set designer's work is in vain as the viewer has hardly sufficient time to comprehend the foreground material let alone the background scenery. (You can easily test this by recording some typical video then playing it back and asking typical viewers to explain what they've seen. It's devastatingly informative in the negative sense in that they miss almost everything!)
From my observation, this fast, ever-changing stimuli is harmful from the perspective that people now have a shallower grasp on reality/everyday things around them than they once did when times weren't quite so fast. What's more troubling is that there seems to be no attempt to make people aware of the fact.
This is some helpful insight. Anyone who plans to edit video in the future should contemplate it. We need more longer, slower shots. Rapid cuts - like high notes for a singer - should to my mind be used more sparingly for greater impact.
>When I was at school one of the punishments was to be sent to stand in a corner and stare at the wall. It used to send some kids almost crazy but never bothered me much—all I had to do was to go into daydream mode to pass time away
Me as well. I wonder if it is the upside to having near-crippling ADHD.
I suppose defaulting to daydream mode is moderately useful for the large portion of the prison population with ADHD.
Always been afraid of my terrible impulse control sending me to prison for one reason or another but never considered that I could just daydream the time away. Good to know.
To add another anecdatapoint, I had exactly the same thought. It kind of makes sense; I think of ADHD as being a matter of intrinsically-driven attention rather than motivated attention.
Fellow physicist? No, more engineering but the username was inspired from distant memories of having to get my head around the mathematics of David H's famous space! And I've always been a fan of Douglas Adams and the similarly-inspired Red Dwarf (right, that's a category and now I'm classified). ;-)
What helps me is to walk, instead of sitting in a room. When I walk, my fidgety body is kept busy, and leaves my brain in peace, not even costing any brain-cpu cycles.
Then, it is a lot harder to reach to your cellphone when you walk. So it helps me get rid of 2 major distractions, body and phone, with very little effort. Now I can think.
This. Unfortunately it's much harder in winter due to short days where I live (currently 7 hour days) but in summer it's great.
I find audiobooks and podcasts are also great for walking. Popular science and good self help is interesting but the best ones for a quiet state of complementation are thoughtful interviews, biographies and story driven intellectual books (Yuval Noah Harari is particularly excellent). In some ways they are another distraction but I like to listen for a while then take off the headphones and think on a section while I walk another mile.
Sorry to nit, but aren’t the podcasts distractions?
And tangentially: I listen the the ambient album Weightless by Marconi Union when I want to think but also drown out outside noise.
You got me searching and I have found their 5.7 years long song: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws. Years! I am not sure it’s real but it was entertaining to think about long songs.
Walking helps me too. Long walks rather than short/brisk ones.
I think this has to be about the 'diffused mode' of the brain- they talked about in the course 'Learning How To Learn'- as opposed to the focused mode.
Though you mention that walking is what helps you keep distractions under control, I like to go walking while listening to history/science podcasts, since it helps me understand the content a lot better.
The act of walking is said to be greatly beneficial for thinking in its own right [0].
So when I get an idea, I usually drop everything I'm doing and go for walk. And my anecdata can only confirm that it's beneficial.
This is why I am so excited about the idea of working remotely using AR glasses. Just imagine going hiking through the mountains while checking your emails or being on a conference call – only taking breaks to type out some code on a portable keyboard.
Regardless of the cognitive performance boost this would give you, it would also mitigate a lot of the health issues we humans have started accumulating since we started sitting down all day.
Of course Einstein also famously claimed to have only moved to Princeton for the walks home with Gödel [1].
[1] I would have to do some digging to find the original phrasing (Einstein is often misattributted), so take it with a pinch of salt. But there is an entire book who's title alludes to this :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Einstein_Walked_with_G%C3...
I completely agree here. In "Think Fast and Slow" the author talks about how much more productive and clear his time was when he took his thinking time and walked for it.
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Ecstasy. This dude knew how to meditate. A lot of people think meditation is just an exercise in patience and self discipline to stop the chatter of the mind, and that that is the end in itself. They are unaware of where meditation can lead.
When the central channel (referred to as sushumna in yoga) is open and energy flows freely, you can feel ecstatic sensations in the centre of the brain as the upper centres become energised. It's important to relax the body, including the eyes, head and brain itself.
I feel it like a sort of exhilaration, like the first time I went on a rollercoaster or cycled my bike fast down a hill etc. It's an electrically alive feeling.
I hear this is just the start: what starts as a trickle becomes a torrent, apparently.
Do you have suggested reading for how to learn about this effort? Most meditation and yoga related content I find is geared toward the woke soccer mom, not those looking for acutely reflective time
This is one of my study interests and hence i can offer some suggestions. Read up on "Kundalini". These models are explained in the school of Indian Philosophy called "Tantra" and its derivatives. They have been popularized under the practices of "Hatha/Laya Yoga". The entire subject is quite extensive and fascinating. However, there is a lot of Junk/BS/new age woo-woo out there which you need to avoid.
For authentic sources, start with the book The Serpent Power by Arthur Avalon (real name Sir John Woodroffe). He was a Britisher who was a High Court Judge in Colonial India who was so fascinated with the entire subject matter of "Tantra" that he studied Sanskrit under native Indian scholars and translated a lot of Tantric texts into English. For a nice picture book with rare photographs on the same subject matter, see Kundalini: The arousal of inner energy by Ajit Mookherjee.
The above will give you a solid foundation after which you can move on to other original texts.
I found The Serpent Power of fashioned and archaic. There are far better more recent introductions IMO, but an in depth knowledge isn't required. I'd recommend starting with something simple like the AYP lessons which are more experientially oriented and leave the details for another time. Too much knowledge, not to mention the discrepancies between authors, can be confusing.
Old fashioned and archaic? You realize this subject is centuries old and there is nothing new? It is important to study the original texts to get the real "kernel" of the subject before practice (lacking an accomplished Guru). It is the "modern" authors who are responsible for muddying the waters of this subject since most of them have half-baked knowledge and then market their "experience" (a lot of which is frankly fad/hyperbole/BS) to the gullible. Other than a few scholars like James Mallinson, David Gordon White, i wouldn't trust anybody else's translations/interpretations/websites.
PS: I took a look at the AYP website. It is junk and i wouldn't trust it. When the author is advertised as "Yogani, is an American spiritual scientist" and equates "Tantra == Sex" it is nothing but a marketing scam. Stay away and read the original texts and form your own interpretation.
My post was intended to point people to the authentic sources of Tantra/Hatha/Laya Yoga. If you have a different opinion, that is fine.
Leaving aside the fact that the language of The Serpent power is NOT difficult, two of the three people i have mentioned are Britishers while one is an American. Thus all of their writings are comprehensible to a westerner though the subject matter is complex and takes some time to comprehend.
This is only an alliteration, but I think it's like watching the debugger window attached to yourself. All the things you were previously unaware of (but still, happening inside your own system) become accessible and visible.
This suggests connecting neural network inputs to the middle of another (or the same) network - essentially exploring own architecture
IANAScientist, but FWIW, I think it might be (metaphorically or literally) like an "infinity shot" when you point a video camera at a live monitor of its own output.
More than likely something is going on from the changes to the active neural circuitry. Usually the "Default Mode Network" is active. When this is quieted down, which is similar to what happens when you're on LSD, it's possible that very unusual states of mind and body (the "currents" mentioned, which I've experienced as well) can arise.
That's a really good question and I worry about that myself. I think it might be incorrect to think that there is a "true self" inside you. More realistically I think there are many autonomous modules in your mind that run when needed or called. Your ego is one of these modules. This fear of losing our drive is probably the ego doing self-preservation (for itself).
Meditation helps you to see when these different modules are acting "illogically". Being run or called when unnecessary. A good example is the fear of public speaking. Whichever module is running is based on instincts learned millennia ago. Now it merely hinders us. I very strongly believe that meditation will make you (anyone) more happy and content. I haven't gone as far as I'd like to with it because of this same fear of losing my drive.
I was looking at this quote for a long time. I forgot who it was from, and only remembered it paraphrased. Thank you.
To also contribute to the discussion. I often joke that it takes effort to mess things up. You could instead lay on the beach enjoy the evening breeze than putting in that effort. So before you delve into that process, take a step back and think carefully what you want out of it.
I like long walks accompanied by music (ambient music). Walking can be a deeply meditative experience, just pick terrain that won't give you trouble (no high traffic streets, no steep hills etc) and just go. Walk until your body starts doing it mechanically, and don't focus on the destination nor in search of stimuli.
Maybe because walking exerts energy, it can be more effective than just sitting or laying down - when you are really energetic and not tired. Maybe because the scenery changes and it acts as a context switch to our minds.
It has been both effective as a form of emotion regulation, coming up with novel solutions, and just feeling more in sync with myself.
Why is it, that sitting alone will have me ruminating, thinking negative thoughts whereas when I'm moving my legs thoughts seem to be more positive or productive?
If you let your car sit for a month, the battery may drain and the car might not start. They were designed in part around the assumption of regular use.
So too has evolution - through the happenstance and accidents of natural selection - ended up relying on the movement and use of the human body to regulate hormones, neurotransmitters, and who all knows what else. Exercise can help release endorphins, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin...
Unsuprisingly, when we muck with that, there are problems. Not needing to move to avoid danger or to collect nutrition for basic survival is an extremely recent thing on evolutionary timescales, so this wasn't a problem before.
Just my interpretation (of the Pascal quote), beginning with the full quote.
> When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.[139][#201908302349]
This quote is often summarized roughly as: "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." (i.e. the title of this post). Taken out of context, this would seem to suggest (to me) a belief that if we could simply meditate and avoid external distractions (a commission in the army, conversation, games, Pascal suggests), we might find happiness.
However, a reading of the full passage reveals that "on further consideration" he thinks the reason for this is that if we were to sit with our thoughts, the "natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition" would drive us to despair.
He thinks that someone who truly understands the human condition would do everything they could to avoid sitting alone with their thoughts ("there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil") . We seek diversion because if we didn't have any distraction, we would end up dwelling on the miserable human condition (selfish, pre-occupied with self-gratification, sensitive to the opinion of others, judgmental, etc. - basically, 'sinful').
In the end, he suggests that we should look for happiness externally, in God, which he then talks about a lot.
[#201908302349]: Blaise Pascal (1958): _Pascal's Pensées_, New York: E.P. Dutton.
Thanks. I was reading this thread thinking that sitting alone with your thoughts does not necessarily bring you peace. It can often do the opposite.
I take time and pray to God each morning. I find that this gives me peace. I feel better prepared to deal with the day when I pray.
My routine is focused around praying the Lord's Prayer, as in the prayer Jesus taught. Praying this prayer over years has enabled some truths to sink in. For example, the first part of the prayer is not about us, it is about God. I think it is good to start the day with the understanding we are not the centre of the universe. Secondly, I have been struck by how the Lord's prayer does not start at the place of forgiveness. Whether that be seeking forgiveness or asking for forgiveness. This gives me peace in the knowledge I don't need to have it all together before I engage with God in prayer.
A buddhist, occultist, or existentialist might suggest Pascal just didn't explore this space far enough. Those with the courage to question even the existence of God and meaning might find more rewarding insights or experiences.
With all the sociological data we have now, it’s almost certain that Pascal’s wager has never been more true for those looking to lead a meaningful life.
That doesn't have much to do with the wager itself as it is concerned with a potentially infinitely negative or positive outcome seen through the lens of belief in an afterlife of some sort.
If we are merely concerned with life in itself, then religious belief is redundant: you can indeed strip its useful aspects through careful study but leave the actual belief aside
I think you will find most theological traditions aka religions have a lot of common ground. So much so that you can actually abstract out lot of the ancient wisdom from the religion itself.
The book "Happiness Hypothesis" by Johnathon Haidt examines this in detail if you wish to purse it further.
My understanding was that Pascal's wager implies the prospect of eternal damnation or some infinitely negative consequence. Therefore the choice of religion is probably of great import if we enter the logic of the wager.
I used to have a close friend who was constantly getting into trouble (and calling me to bail her out, sometimes literally). Minor run ins with the police, car accidents, making shady deals or getting into debt to random lowlifes she just met. I always used to say that I wished she would just stay in her room and sit on the bed. Save both of us so much trouble!
This was in the days before social media, otherwise I'm sure she would have done plenty of damage from her room.
Makes me wonder what the reality is with kids nowadays that are right there under their parents nose noodling around on their phone. Are they getting into less trouble, or more trouble?
Modern phones have done a tremendous job of taking the thrill out of various troublesome activities.
You could let someone else play a game, you could let someone else risk STDs, someone else do the risky heists and killing etc all while watching from the comfort of your couch, living your life as a voyeur.
IMO that definitely means folks are getting in lesser trouble: I think it draws a lot of poison out.
Now is that a good thing: I don’t know. I like the above benefits, who wouldn’t appreciate a docile community! I don’t like the fact that it is drawing away the youth from action. Yes it went wrong in oh so many places, but it is what brought us here. I hate stagnation. Anyway - just me rambling.
I really liked Konrad Lorenz's explanation of this. He said that every innate ability to learn has a corresponding innate "teaching mechanism".
For example, an animal like a duck won't necessarily reason "hmm, is this a safe spot? Maybe I should find an area with more protection from [predator]", instead it will have an innate anxiety that it feels when it is in an unsafe place, and that anxiety will drive it to find a different spot.
This was really an a-ha moment for me. Where I previously thought that anxiety and "depression" (not clinical depression) were mysterious unexplainable side-effects of evolution, now I see that they are probably innate mechanisms that spur us to go out, learn more, find opportunity, exercise, meet people etc. Our bodies know when we are stagnating before our minds do.
The fact that we can override those innate mechanisms and sit alone in a quiet, empty room at all is what is really impressive.
Indeed. Reasoning based on intelligence came much later into the evolutionary scene. Emotions form a part of the optimization process for animals, creating shorter feedback loops. We feel pain because we won't attend to the injury if we didn't. The evolutionary significance of most emotions can likewise be reasoned about. (I've found relatively less for explaining jealousy in what I've casually read).
Yes!! This is where our modern society has gotten off track in thinking emotions such as fear are “bad”. That’s like saying skin is bad. It’s simply there to protect you. Unlike skin, sometimes our emotions try a little too hard to protect us but we can practice noticing that and in doing so the mind begins to learn better what should and should not be feared.
This quote has fascinated me for a long time. It seems that this is a skill that can be sharpened with deliberate practice.
I went to a 10 day silent meditation retreat (Vipasana) abs felt I got much more comfortable sitting by myself just observing my thoughts. The practice part was difficult, probably one of the hardest things I have ever done. 10 days of no talking/reading/writing, sitting in a room, observing your sensations, for hours on end, punctuated by 5 minute breaks. I felt the world temporarily go from HD to 4K after a couple of days.
Anyways, this really made me reconsider my relationship with thoughts. I feel I can separate the sense of my being from my thoughts some times. This helps me with my anxiety.
I've done a variety of meditation techniques and certainly appreciate the benefits they may offer.
One thing I'd say is that it's not always the techniques that feel the hardest that actually offer the most benefits. I believe Buddha's term "middle way" referred to a way that was in the middle between extreme privation/altered consciousness and the ordinary world. I think those interested in meditation techniques should consider this.
And in terms of long term silent retreats, I had an old friend who's schizophrenic symptoms were intensified by retreats of that sort and meditation in general isn't a thing that's riskless - I recall the possibility of serious reactions to meditation and intensive meditation in particular has been documented in a number of articles.
This is the opinion of an amateur, but I think this is where "skillful effort" comes into play. A retreat like that will be less strenuous if you already have a daily meditation practice.
I wouldn't describe a weeklong meditation retreat as the "extreme" side of the Buddha's middle way. That would be more like starving yourself in asceticism. With the right practice/preparation (IE a few months of daily hour-long sits), I think a weeklong retreat would be beneficial and reasonable for most people.
Of course, getting to the point of a daily practice is pretty challenging itself, but not too much more than the average workout routine in my opinion.
Yeah, the point isn't that any given thing is hard but that throwing yourself into the practice that's really extreme for you might not be the best to start mindfulness.
In Qi Dao, our approach is based not on going beyond a person's comfort zone but extending their comfort zone.
Most people sit all day looking at a screen, then they spend a large part of their free time also sitting to watch TV series (generally ~40 minutes long) and films (~90 to 120 minutes long) so spending 1 hr sitting without a distraction hardly seems extreme in comparison, though I wouldn't call it particularly useful. Like physical exercise, you'll probably get more benefit from many, smaller but intense reps than large one off attempts.
I read that the 'middle way' was as opposed to practices mortifying the body, eg starvation, self flagellation etc, which were popular at the time the Buddha was around.
I also attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat (the Goenka one) three years ago. I'm an atheist. I learned a crucial life skill at the retreat: awareness of my mood and thoughts. It's like adding realtime metrics to my emotional core and consciousness core. My state became observable. Since then, I've built a habit of checking those metrics and taking actions to improve my wellbeing. My life has gotten a lot better.
This separation of "sense of being" from thought also has been expressed in the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Sri Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. The writings of Nisargadatta are especially helpful in shedding more light on this phenomenon.
A very very corny way I like to think about this is the separation of the init process (being) from other processes (thought, sensation etc.). I know this is a very superficial interpretation, but I find it helpful.
Another corny metaphor I use for my mind is: Most of my thoughts are runaway processes that are just burdening my system. You don't want your CPU going at 100% for extended periods of time, same for the mind.
This is why I think it is important to understand and practice meditation and prayer. Maybe most don't understand the psychology behind it but dedicating some time during your day to sit and think can be surprisingly beneficial.
The thing that’s been on my mind lately is that the definition of our human sentience is that a thought about a thought is itself a thought. We to some extent have solved the halting problem. Or rather it doesn’t apply to the way our programming works, if you will.
Don't think about the thoughts, just feel them. If you burn your hand, what comes first, the sensation of pain or thinking about it? Just be with the sensation, and don't drop into more thoughts about thoughts.
> I feel I can separate the sense of my being from my thoughts some times.
This is key. Too much importance to thinking and thoughts otherwise all around. See even during "meditation" we tend to talk about "watching thoughts" like they are something special worth that attention.
On this face of it and without reading any of the other writings, this just sounds totally meaningless to me. Is the belief that true meaning or purpose in life can come only from within? What about your own thoughts are so sacred that everything else should be considered a distraction from them?
To add onto this, what do you think you're doing when you're not in a room all alone with your thoughts? You're still thinking. It's not like I can't watch a YouTube video and think to myself at the same time.
I think the aversion I have to being alone with my thoughts is the feeling that doing that won't help me. It's sort of like a neural network that I'd alone with its weights with no inputs to process except itself. I feel when I think to myself alone, I can't make any decisions because what I know is already what I knew before I started thinking to myself. Yo make decisions, I need external answers to questions. I need new information and evidence to start me to some conclusion.
Which is just depression. I don't think about dying, unless its the topic of conversation or whatever. I think about living. There's no real point in dwelling on the other.
I think there's a lot of merit on dwelling on death.
Death can put your current life in laser like focus and perspective.
Is what you're doing now really important?
Is that what you want to do if you only had 1 year to live?
Are you spending enough time on the things that are really important to you?
All of these questions became clearer to me once I started realising and contemplating death regularly.
I appreciate what you're saying, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone lived as if they had only one year to live. Most institutions are already waaaay too focused on short term profits.
You do not need death, just discount rate preferring near experience to far. Thinking about what if you only had 1 year to live just encourages short-term gains to long-term ones.
For me it's definitely more that I have a smartphone which facilitates easy access to a socially accepted addiction - sitting alone might make me passingly think about some eventual demise but it certainly doesn't dominate my thinking. Wasn't this the basis of Terror Management theory ? I'm not sure that ever had much evidence for it, other than in some extremely general sense.
While still of course afraid of actually dying, instead of being perennial fearful of death I am instead now grateful for being alive this day. Try that change in perspective.
Background anxiety about our "eventual demise" is the consequence of false entitlement to life and health. Young and healthy people imagine good life without end, the dying and people who've lost health and ability often know better.
This change in perspective also helps you make the most out of each day, because those who make a point to remember that their good days are finite will not want to have spent them in waste.
For me it worked to stop identifying "me" with the physical person or my consciousness, instead to identify with my hereditary line - as if I'm only a carrier for information that gets passed on. My reasoning being - natural selection is the only game I can't not play, so it gives me a fundamental goal in life to do well at it. Also helps with avoiding hedonism / addictions.
When I successfully reproduce, I will stop fearing death.
> Your < reason maybe, not mine or the one of many others. The fear of death is tied to your culture/education, many people aren't anxious when they think about death
And more fundamentally, the fact that we aren't essential pieces of the universe in our human forms (we are as energy.) Because if we were, wouldn't we be immortal? ;-)
For virtually everybody, that quiet room is not a given, but has to be acquired and maintained. How can you sit in that room and give yourself to silence if you know deep down that the silence is a temporary illusion? You have to leave that room and either defend your wealth or acquire the means to be able to return.
Additionally, the experiment doesn't measure what it wants to measure:
>people detest being made to spend six to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think
The participants hadn't chosen to sit in silence. They chose to participate in an experiment. Sitting in silence for somebody else is not the same as sitting in silence. A better setup would have been a space where sitting in silence would have been one option among many.
Sitting in silence allows your brain to change, such that back outside you are more resourceful.
If you accept that premise, the a journey begins how to guide the time in silence such that your life quality "in noise" actually benefits well from investing into silence.
Notice that this has absolutely nothing to do with finance, material wealth, neither as precondition nor as outcome.
In one experiment, kids were allowed to play all the arcade games they wanted. They played endlessly.
Another set of kids were paid to play video games for hours. Those kids cheated and were found to slack off when viewed in a hidden camera.
This is one example of why I think people are essentially anti-authoritarian.
We know it, too: According the the research, it's the electric shock.
The difference is the alignment with your desires. If somebody else tells you to sit in silence then it is most likely not the activity you would choose on your own. So you have an inner conflict which you have to handle in one way or another. Distracting yourself with some pain is an option.
I don’t like this gatekeeping philosophy. I feel that this line of thinking discourages self reflection because the first thing we usually notice when we look honestly at ourselves is what we don’t like about ourselves, but that is just a small part of who we really are. Discomfort from self awareness may be the first step to self improvement. Instead of (falsely) equating mental discomfort with causing “all problems”, we should instead work to understand our imperfections and work together to correct them.
The point of the quote is that people use distraction to mask the discomfort of sitting alone with their thoughts and that this distraction causes problems. It’s not saying that the discomfort is a problem.
Distraction isn’t the problem, the inability to face one’s self is the problem, and distraction is the solution. However, even with distraction, there is still insight. It just comes indirectly.
Sure. I believe distraction is a solution for many because it allows them to discover the self at their own pace. It’s a more indirect route that may take longer, but which may be less psychologically jarring compared to direct introspection. For these types, self discovery might involve something as simple as watching a film and identifying with both the hero and the villain, something which hadn’t happened heretofore in their development. The film was intended as a distraction from the self, but the self is not avoidable; we constantly compare “not self” to “self” and update our world view based on these comparisons. Distractions may help people cope with their unavoidable development. In trying times, more of us may need more distractions because we are developing at a breakneck pace. I disapprove of shaming people for coping with their growth using distraction, because that’s how they prefer to learn.
I'm not convinced anyone is. Full objectivity is hindered by our minds ability to guess and rationalize.
Personally I find all attempts at self-knowledge are just a constant game of trying to sieve truth from rationalization, and I go back and forth on which is which constantly. Ultimately I cannot tell the difference within myself, and I cannot trust that anyone else can either.
I wasn’t speaking to a philosophical maxim, but rather practical application. Self-awareness is a real thing that can be objectively measured comparative between different people.
What's your method for measuring that? The general personality models that I've seen really only seem to be testing for a minimum amount of self-awareness.
> Full objectivity is hindered by our minds ability to guess and rationalize.
One of the main claims of some meditative traditions is that with enough practice you get to experience the workings of the mind. Once you get to experience them directly, you can see that they're projections and you can see through them.
Don't all of human achievements also come from this inability? The curiosity to find what's out there, and to explore the environment? I think this quote needs a lot of context to be useful - it makes sense to balance seeking stimulation with inward exploration. But to ban it outright is also flawed. Take time off to be with yourself, but don't renounce the world.
Why would you sit quietly alone in a room when you could be enjoying a sauna, soaking up the sun at the beach, or picnicking in a park? I don’t think the problem is sitting alone with one’s thoughts - but rather that an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment. At least it isn’t as undesirable as an airplane seat though.
Okay as a personal example I like to take warm showers - they’re extremely comfortable and relaxing - essentially a makeshift sauna. I find that if I’m not deliberate enough about actually completing the shower, I can get lost in my own thoughts and spend over 30 minutes showering. Now I’m certainly more introverted than average, but I would guess that a lot of other people can likewise get lost in their own thoughts in a sufficiently relaxing environment.
There is some stimulation there, and you have a task to accomplish even if you don't go about it very steadily. I'm comfortable going for long walks outside alone with my thoughts, even if its far too cold. But the cold, or the sunlight, or the breeze is all stimulation. Being alone in a room for a period with no task to accomplish - or to not accomplish - without stimuli is definitely less comfortable.
In a room was the setup for the alleged experiment, therefore not irrelevant.
I'm wary how quickly the writer jumps to the conclusion that it's thought avoidance and not, possibly, just the fact our minds seek stimulation
Before small screens and walkmans, millions of people flew every day in an airplane seat trapped with their own thoughts. For many, it was probably the only time they experienced this.
I actually get comments from other passengers now how I can sit and look out the window for hours without music, movie or book.
In their rooms, they have other venues and probably less fear of negative self-conscious thoughts (too fat, ugly, whatever for the beach).
I wonder how many Hikikomori are in their own thoughts vs escaping into online venues.
Somewhat, mostly crosswords and then vocal frustration when the travel mag crossword was already filled out.
I can think of half a dozen very personal conversations with random seatmates about their lives and problems. Something about opening up to strangers, and am pretty sure it wasn’t my personality or looks. Now that doesn’t happen anymore because you’re never trapped together with no outlets for hours on end.
One of my writing ideas (probably not original) was a retired psychologist who just flew on random flights and talked to whomever they sat next to. Now that plot would make no sense.
I don't understand. Most of the time you decide to go to sleep you are alone with your thoughts without any distractions. It might only be for a brief time, but it's still true, no?
Picnicking is doing something. Saunaing is doing something. Lying on the beach is doing something. They're all activities driven by desire, and the desire exists to distract you from inner contemplation.
When you're finally just thinking about yourself, your "desirable surroundings" will disappear. You'll be trapped in the discomfort of your mind. You'll then try to escape these thoughts by focusing on the picnic, sauna, beach.
Sitting in a room alone is just a metaphor for only thinking about your inner self. You can do that anywhere. And most people can't stand it, so they do something else. So, your conclusion is right, in that people would always prefer to do anything else other than focus on their inner thoughts. Like being in a place that distracts them.
But you're always "doing something" no matter if it's at the beach, in a room, laying on your bed, or in a solitary confinement prison. We are always cognizant of the fact that we are in some environment unless we are sleeping. But then when we sleep, the mind conjures up all sorts of scenarios and crazy environments without giving us a cohesive chance of actually "thinking".
That’s absurd. To take it to extremes, for example, if you made someone sit alone in the freezing cold and they complained, the environment is the issue not their ability to live alone with their thoughts.
But why "take it to extremes"? Yes, if you're sitting next to a volcano or on a glacier then outside conditions can affect your ability to think. Obviously.
However the OP said "an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment" - and that actually is absurd. If you need to be in a sauna or on a beach then you're already too distracted by the environment to be able to think deeply.
I would assume the room is an average room, in contrast to a warm you could swim in, trampoline you could play on or similar physical outlets.
The key thing, I would claim, from a "whole person" perspective, is that the contrast is "sit quietly, forget your body entirely and think" and "get stressed by bodily tension and start an uncontrollable argument with yourself" where "bring your mind and body into harmony through movement" isn't an options.
I know there is an activity center in the center of the brain, which randomly fires impulses in all different directions of the brain.
It is keeping the brain from shutting down itself.
Brain neurons are connected the way that a thought needs to start from somewhere.
No induction/initiation - no involuntary thought.
The associative thinking seem also to start as a cause of that activity center, when two or more random independent thought chains are being randomly initiated and come together eventually, at the bottom of the chains, causing cross-thinking.
This gives me a nice excuse why I'm restless and need to think all the time.
I cannot close eyes in a dark room and have no thought.
My brain is just working as usual -- I like it so.
Trying to not have a thought is one of, in not the biggest misconceptions about meditation. You can’t turn your brain off. It’s going to think. That’s what it does. The point is to notice those thoughts in a nonjudgmental way. See them for what they are: ephemeral and passing. Practicing that has a great many benefits, not least of which is an increased sense of well-being.
Do people here feel the same way? That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything? I, like most people I guess, am easily distracted with various things like reading HN or fiddling with whatever is on the table. When given the opportunity to sit down with nothing with my thoughts however, I always feel very enjoyable. It is definitely nothing I would think about as uncomfortable.
>That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything?
I do like not doing anything, particularly not having to do anything. Perhaps over a longer time period I would think differently, but so far I haven't felt it. However, not doing anything is a waste of time. It doesn't really give me anything and excessive wasting of time has negative consequences on life. If I were wealthy enough then I'd probably do it way more.
> do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything?
I don't. Although if reading qualifies as "doing something", I guess I'm almost never not doing anything, because if I don't have anything else to do, I almost always read. Of course I've always been careful to have plenty of reading material on hand; one nice thing about a smartphone is that you can carry a whole library around with you wherever you go.
In situations where I genuinely have nothing to do, not even read, I might get bored if I can't come up with something to think about, but I wouldn't say it's uncomfortable for me to not do anything. It's just a situation where it's on me to come up with something to think about.
Yeh and to think society rewards extroverts as leaders but often introverts make the best leaders as in they take long periods of time to think alone and often avoid many pitfalls by doing so instead of moving fast and breaking everyone and everything along the way.
To be a good leader, you have to be willing to confront AND navigate conflict within a group setting in a productive manner that ultimately achieves an agreed upon goal. One of the defining traits of an introvert is avoiding conflict. Thus, no, introverts don't INHERENTLY make good leaders. If you've ever dealt with even a moderately diverse group of individuals due to their capabilities (not in the sense of level of skill, but range of skills), you'd know that the motivations of individuals vary wildly. Even if they are similar, they're oddly unique in their own ways at their own times. Regardless of your unicorn-fart fantasies, extrovert personalities are better equipped to handle groups with varying motivations to achieve the same goal. Not to say introverts can't be good or even great leaders. To name one, Eisenhower was an introvert and he is regarded as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century for a multitude of reasons. Leadership takes intent and purposeful practice/training for them to achieve. The absolution concept that they're the "best" just means you've never been in even a mild range of real world team projects. You would have seen many easily fall apart in the midst of dealing with somewhat strenuous situations. It's an easier absolution that extroverts make the best leaders, yet even that is untrue. It just takes extroverts less practice to achieve "great" than it does for introverts since they already possess a lot of the skill sets that introverts are lacking. Ultimately, leaders are made, not born.
You are right, i have seen my introvert boss, taking verbal damage, hold his anger and his words for 5 seconds and unleash a devastating speech that made the other guy walk away.
He also took leading part in many high management meetings without any social fear.
I am about the middle and i hated working under an extrovert manager, all chatting, big words, self promotion stories, useless long meetings, fake friendly attitude that turned into professional talk when shit got real etc.
The difference between an introvert and an extrovert is best displayed when there is a lack of incentive.
Introverts can readily step into an extroverted role when it's necessary and aligns with their goals.
Introverts are not going to toast at a large party without good reason(improving speaking skills, impressing a guest, etc) whereas an extrovert might give a toast for fun.
Does your blood settle in the top or lower part of your head?
> One of the defining traits of an introvert is avoiding conflict.
Where do you get this idea from? The introversion/extraversion scale is commonly taken to represent whether (and to which extent) one is energized by solitude and drained by socialization and vice versa. It has nothing to do with conflict avoidance.
As evidence for this, check out the Big Five personality model, one of the golden standards on this topic. There conflict avoidance is taken to be mostly related to the agreeableness factor, which is orthogonal to the extraversion factor.
What's really interesting is that it's not so clear cut. Introverted leaders tend to outperform when they lead extroverts and extroverted leaders tend to outperform when they lead introverts[1].
When you start talking about introverts and extroverts you would first have to state to which ideas behind those concepts you subscribe to. If Jungian then you can be both introvert and extrovert in the same time.
If by wikipedia then you think they are exclusive and might even think that introverts are people who just want to sit at home.
Not wanting too much company can also be associated with highly sensitive people and not necessarily introverts. About 30% of highly sensitive people are in fact extroverted.
And there is no single trait or concept that makes someone a good leader but rather a mix of lot different psychological and biological setups.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually quite like being able to sit alone with my thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts are not good, but most of the times its just about something that's been troubling me and I haven't figured out what the solution is. When I was in education I had to take a 1 hour bus each way for 8 years, before we had the whole internet in our pockets, so maybe thats why.
I do actually meditate as well, but the meditation I do is where you try to be thoughtless, not to ponder whatever thoughts are on your mind.
Are you me? I have a similar story - studied before smart phones were a thing. I eventually grew tired of my iPod, and the 2 hour commute both ways to and from school led to some deep transit thinking. Being able to just sit and gaze at passing trees for hours on end really teaches some finer meaning of life. I cannot really explain what that meaning is, but I can attest that I'm ready for whatever lies ahead, good or bad.
My favourite Christmas activity is a 7-day digital detox. A weeklong solo offline retreat in a cabin. I do it during the holidays because it is the easiest to block off the calendar.
The retreat it self is not very "exciting", but the effect on mental clarity around the 4th day is profound.
Out of curiosity, do you do any journaling/writing? I’ve found that time thinking is great (running, biking) but it’s when I start writing that thoughts/solutions really start solidifying.
I like to say, most people are afraid of being alone with themselves in their head.
It's just practice. Most folks don't know what to do, so when they find themselves alone with their thoughts they instantly decide to leave that state. Its a sort of Attention Deficit thing. With practice you can figure out something to think about when in this state. Review, question, or just observe. Anything can be interesting if you invest it with value and do it deliberately.
Another related quote from Pensées: "The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is distraction, yet that is the greatest of our wretchednesses. Because that is what mainly prevents us from thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to damnation. Without it we should be bored, and boredom would force us to search for a firmer way out, but distraction entertains us and leads us imperceptibly to death."
Famous British philosopher Andrew Zaltzman put it like this: if you leave a man alone in a room an electric socket he will eventually try to stick his dick into it.
I know it's might seem like unrelated topic, but I encourage you to read Branko Milanovic's view on success and failures of COVID19 strategis in west vs east.
The public, and thus I think, the governments were unwilling to take the East Asian approach to the pandemic because of a culture of impatience, of desire to quickly solve all problems, to bear only very limited costs.
I could happily sit in a room alone for days. That's the problem. My internal world is so rich and alluring that it distracts me from reality. I easily spend half of my waking hours staring off into space while daydreaming.
TBH I probably find myself spending about an hour+ a day just thinking. I'm not sure that that, in the isolated pandemic situation we are in now, is the best thing for Mental Health or celebratory. It depends on the person. If you've been talking to people all day, an hour+ just thinking to yourself can obviously be excellent and useful and allow you to process stuff. But if you're lonely, you're not going to be wanting to do that: thoughts will often be unhelpful or negative and you would almost literally be better off not thinking them.
When I was happier pre-pandemic, thinking to myself would be great. When I was 17 doing my first philosophy classes my head would just be abuzz with questions, e.g I'd be in a corner store and be almost stuck there for 5m thinking about what Plato/Aristotle would think about me buying a bar of chocolate that I didn't necessarily need.
Not to digress, but I imagine further that it's dependent on your occupation and life. If you're doing menial 9-5 stuff, you're obviously not going to be thinking heavily about job related stuff and will be too tired to consider questions. If you've just started a start-up however, your mind will continuously be abuzz (hopefully) thinking about what you're gonna do etc etc.
I think we all crave to be engaged in something. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to not be able to sit in a plain room doing nothing. We have an innate desire to create, to solve problems, to interact with others. That doesn’t mean we don’t think and can’t be preoccupied or entertained by our thoughts. I think most of us just tend to be engaged in something mindless like showering, walking, or driving while we do our thinking.
It's a funny thing. Most of us have no trouble driving a car for an hour without any further entertainment, and letting our brains wander freely in the meantime. Most of the driving we do on auto-pilot. (Spoiler: Much of the thinking, too, actually, it turns out when you look closer during meditation).
But put the same person in an empty room and the same task of letting your mind wander becomes odious.
Indeed, and maybe most would prefer to have something playing, but my point was that most wouldn't have any trouble spending an hour driving without it, even through driving is a fairly "mindless" activity.
I remember seeing an experiement where people out for a walk were asked to solve a maths puzzle. The first thing they did was stop walking while they considered it.
That is so bizarre for me to read this:
"83% said they'd spent zero time just thinking"
I struggle to turn down my inner dialogue, because I enjoy being in my head juggling with ideas, and I thought I was the weird one for doing it. What is hiding in those people's head that they are scared of being alone in it ?
I feel like I need to post this video of Jblow where he talks about focus because the quietness is not necessarily about decibels, but about uninterrupted time.
My daily morning exercise is running, 20 to 40 minutes, sometimes longer. No headphones, ear buds, etc. Just me, my mind and the rhythm of the run. To each his/her own, but I believe more people would benefit from disconnecting when they do such things.
Probably I'm in the minority, but I have no problem lying in bed just thinking.
Probably people who like camping are similar: just lying outside staring at the sky while crickets chirp, the wind rustles the leaves or grass, the fire crackles and not a human says a word. Soaking in your surroundings and thinking about your place in the universe - how insignificantly small we are in the vastness of space that surrounds us.
It's humbling and helps me with self reflection. What have I done wrong? What have I done right? What are my plans for the future? How can achieve them? What can I do to better myself, the people and the things around me?
That's much more preferable than being shocked and 15 minutes is really nothing...
My “inward-directed thought” happens while hiking alone. It’s been very therapeutic and helps me retain a lot more information by replaying a day or class’s events in my head. Some people think I’m weird for doing it, but I think they are weird for not.
I’ve seen mention elsewhere in the comments how this article is flawed because, in essence, if distraction is endemic to humans, how can it be bad? I think the intent of the article is to highlight just how much we are distracting ourselves and in this we’re missing out on a very valuable facet of our lives which is our own thoughts. Taking a distracted, nonjudgmental view of our own thoughts can be powerful.
Distraction from time to time is fine but that’s not what we’re doing. We’re in a constant state of distraction. We’re missing out on one of the greatest resources available to us: our own minds.
I like music. I find almost all forms of music entertaining and sometimes quite moving: rock, pop, jazz, hip hop, country, classical and even occasionally opera.
However, there is one common form of music I can’t tolerate, background music. Such music seems to prevent really deep thinking in me. Music with lyrics interferes with my ability to write and any music slows my ability to do mathematics. I’ve mentioned this to my friends and coworkers, and they always give me this look like they can’t understand what I’m talking about. I suppose I prefer to sit in a quiet room alone.
> ... asked students to entertain themselves with nothing but their thoughts in an "unadorned room". Most said they found it hard to concentrate; half found it unpleasant or neutral at best
Yes, humans occasionally differentiate ourselves from arbitrary chunks of hydrogen ice. This puts us in the distinct minority in the universe, but vive la différence, as the monk said to the nun.
I think people who can keep themselves mildly distracted with whatever, are in a far better position than someone who keeps "dwelling on the inside". It is very easy to say that "you don't need to believe your thoughts" , but is it practical (think inception)? In my experience, no. Needless to say, the thoughts and their impact differ from person to person. And unless we can prove that it is more likely to benefit than harm from these thoughts, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Recently I was having a debate with a friend who said "you thought about this lot" in a mocking tone, and I suddenly realized how strange it was that that phrase is used so commonly as an insult.
Solid thought isn't just good but necessary and we're seeing the symptoms of this everywhere.
The person's point is likely that you spent a lot of energy on something that probably doesn't matter. This might be subjective, of course, but it is possible to think about something for longer than you should.
Navel-gazing isn't a virtue. Though ideally you probably want to be with people who think that the same stuff is important.
Longer than you should? There is no such thing. Of course it's possible to spend thought without resulting in any new discoveries but that's not really a problem because thoughts are interconnected and build upon each other to create better mental models for other situations. It doesn't matter how petty or insignificant the topic is, it's the act of thinking deeply about something that's important.
Anyway, I understand the social context of the phrase, but my point is that it's used so often in place a real argument and is a sign of the greater superficiality of most discussions today.
Overthinking and dwelling on things is a real problem, particularly for people with anxiety disorders. And the suggestion that you can’t think about something for too long is ridiculous.
Clearly a disorder is something else other than healthy deep thought. Overthinking, dwelling (and brooding as the other commenter said) isn't the same as contemplative or investigative thought about a topic. Rather, it's the opposite and isn't very thoughtful at all.
Too long is so long that time spent thinking on the thing disrupted or took away time from some other higher priority thing / task / whatever. Or so long that it delayed the decision / outcome / whatever enough that it had materially negative impact compared to making a suboptimal, but earlier decision.
But brooding for a long time is not really healthy. I don't know the exact issue on which you got mocked, but there are these unproductive loops of thought into which you can slip into, spending many days. It takes some other pressing issue to snap out of this.
Everyone has spent a longer time than necessary thinking about something that is subjectively useless. Mocking someone for doing so demonstrates nothing more than a lack of self-awareness.
Immediate action isn't a virtue either, and trust me, I grew up with people who think their immediate action is virtuous enough, and no, you're not gonna get much community from that in the last resort as reassuring as it appears in real-time; most people do not recognize their own anxieties spurring them into some form of immediate action or other.
Also, we don't know what the subject was between OP and whoever, so its kinda hard to gauge what kind of lesson to derive from it
And Jobs spent too much time on calligraphy than he should.
And yet, that experience was tinder for the start of font rendering in computing. Whether it is naval gazing or creating unique insight, it's only known in hindsight.
Right, but sometimes it is. Strategic apathy is the dumb debate tactic of the moment and in that capacity I'd call it anti-intellectual.
It's hard to watch gel-haired youtubers going back and forth trying to out-apathy (and thereby out-cool) each other and come away with the idea that they are actually having an intellectual meta-debate about the allocation of time and attention. It seems far more likely that they saw someone win a debate by staying cool and projecting apathy, copied the behavior, and have spread it so far and wide that the tactic is now regularly played against itself with farcical results.
Science itself involves climbing many wrong ladders to verify that they are indeed wrong. Some things you can't know beforehand.
Not everything needs that level of dedication, but also, how confident are you that said ladder is wrong unless you've climbed it yourself or have extensive, reliable reports from others who have done so?
It's also easy to be like the fox in Aesop's Fables that declares grapes to be sour, untasted.
In your analogy, the climbing is what's important, not which ladder. Learning how to climb well is applicable regardless of which ladder you encounter in the future.
I don't think the problem is people can't be alone with their thoughts. I think people know that essentially all our lives are mundane. But that's not what we want to look like. We want to do things, or at least look like we are doing things. And to be alone and sitting in a room is not something you can broadcast to the world, or even explain to most people. When we seek to please no one but ourselves, being alone is actually rather fun.
All _solutions_ stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. I mean, it works for me. Who said 'In all truths, their opposite is also true'?
Maybe one needs to dig deeper - all problems stem from our hunt for resources. This seems to be hard wired into life - man and single-celled organism alike.
Is this all there is? A never-ending search for resources, and the dopamine reward that comes after?
A post-scarcity society doesn't make things better. Nor will ascension to a type I civilization for that matter.
We need to be something different in order to behave differently. I have no idea where to begin though.
> people detest being made to spend six to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think – even to the extent of being willing to give themselves mild electric shocks instead
I must be weird, because I don't connect with this at all. I can easily spend hours in daydream, introspective pondering, world building, or creative thinking.
Surely I'm not the only one that finds this article inapplicable?
When I was young, my father, who was in his 60s and retired after a heart attack, would spend a lot of time sitting in a rocker on the porch, doing nothing. I couldn't think of anything worse. Now, I'm in my 50s and find that sitting out on the patio alone and watching birds go by is actually a pretty good way to spend some time.
As someone who loves sitting quietly and thinking to the point where when I get too busy, lack of it is what first starts to impact me negative emotion wise, I have to question what can be taken away from that study.
I can safely and easily sit quietly at home. I can't safely and easily electro shock myself at home. It's something I'm curious about and would try. You'd need to have me come back a few times and see what I pick when the electroshock option is no longer a novelty. Even then, you're going to have to be careful that there's no way this could turn in to a competition of sorts where I get the idea to try to outlast the other participants or even just myself seeing how much I can take.
This would be like determining that I prefer my burgers to have weird chutneys and exotic ingredients on them because that's what I order at restaurants given the option. No, plain cheeseburger with maybe some tomato or pickles is way better. But I can and do make that myself, often, and imo better than must restaurants do. I'm ordering something different that I don't do at home, not picking my favourite choice.
Or "here's your favourite movie you've seen a ton of times and have on your hard drive. Here's another one you've thought about watching, haven't bothered to, but if you don't watch it now you'll probably never have another chance; which one do you want to watch?" Pick the latter and they clap themselves on the back for their miraculous favourite movie changing ability.
This article and these comments make me feel like a human surrounded by aliens. This discomfort with one's own thoughts, this inability to sit alone, this irritation with being is an aspect of life I identified and seriously attacked in my pre-teen years. I foresaw that aspect of life as an exploitable weakness, and a weakness exploited everywhere - religion being #1 abuser of this weakness, but it's shadow used to sell products and politics and all using fear of self as it's key mechanism.
I started reading the literary classics early, like 3rd grade. They were far too mature for me, but that information at that age was a crash course in the true nature of this world and life itself. I started meditating in 5th grade and continue to this day - not the pop culture meditating I see sold today, but some old Indian guy I purposefully located with zero ego that taught me to calm and just be.
Do people not read to locate themselves in history? One of my earliest intellectual activities was locating myself in my cultural heritage, my place in society's hierarchy and how that level and those above and below me operate. Are you adrift in an ocean deep society you do not understand?
The time I am not working or supporting my family, I am continuing to research and learn how our society and world operate; it is deep complex and in many aspects hidden in legal terminology intended to confuse. But it is essential.
We do not live in a physically dominate world, our world is dominated by ideas and those ideas dictate everything that is and everything that will be. Until one is comfortable with their "most feared" thoughts they are candidates for exploitation with "scary possibilities of death and an after life".
I've been sitting quietly in a room alone for months, it will likely be a year before it's done. I'm able, I'm OK with it. The Daoist/Bonpa[1] base qigong I've studied, along with other practices (Alexander technique, self-hypnosis, NLP, etc.etc), has prepared me for this. But it hasn't solved all my problems, I wouldn't expect it to and I have a hunch that this kind of simplistic formula is something like a weakness of the "Western" (philosophical) outlook.
I understand that the "inability" stateme involve an effort to cast a spotlight on many people's inability to attain something like a "meditative mindset". If that's all you want to do, fine. But you houldn't take awareness, a contemplative mindset, and so-forth as the answer to everything. It's much closer to starting to explore the question, having sufficient tools to explore human existence, etc.
Indeed, I'd say "humans are capable of sitting alone quiet in a room alone and it is the ignorance of a given person that prevents this. But to overcome your ignorance, you probably have to leave your room".
TL;DR; this kind of claim is more like taunting the unenlightened than helping.
"under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being."
It was Eckhart Tolle who wanted to be able to just sit motionless on a park bench and still enjoy life. In turn that spurred him to write The Power of Now. While new-agey, it actually employs some techniques that are very similar to those used within cognitive therapy.
The article argues that we have an innate desire to be distracted from our thoughts. I agree, insofar I may generalize from my own experience. In my experience, being alone with my thoughts is depressing. I can't focus anyway.
We got rules and maps
And guns in our backs
But we still can't just behave ourselves
Even if to save our own lives
So says I — We are a brutal kind...
--James Mercer
Has there been studies to check if this effect is more pronounced in people with aphantasia? My thoughts are usually rich with visualizations and I have no trouble sitting in a room and thinking.
This is kind of where the phenomenon of "shower thoughts" comes from--because the shower is the one place where it's more difficult to distract yourself from your own thoughts.
That's a bold assertion. Also a huge oversimplification. How do not some but ALL problems that exist stem from this? How about the problems that have nothing to do with man?
I don't think it's anything human specific, any caged animal needs something to occupy its attention and stimulate the senses otherwise it will suffer the huge stress and with time start developing health issues - whether it's a mammal or bird or even a fish. It seems much more like an underlying neurological limitation of some kind, than just some high-level philosophical/existentialistic issue specific to us humans.
True, and with enough training we can, that's what meditation is basically - just like we can learn to control our instincts like hunger or sex drive, but still it's not the normal state, it requires a focused mental effort. On the basic level we're social animals and we're probably hard-wired to need the presence of others, and also to seek places that stimulate our senses, as that is where the food is. Being strongly driven to sit in some deserted cave with nothing to eat or do in it wouldn't be a good evolutionary adaptation to any organism - so we surely have an instinct to avoid it - just think of horror movies, how they imagine really scary places? Dark, empty, deserted - low stimulus and it scares the hell of us.
Hate this tiresome retreading like some literary diarrhoea. Some late middled aged white man quoting some dead white men back when white men held all the aces through physical means. The future is women, if we are to exist beyond 2100.
At least, after referencing a load of men, the living middle aged man suggests a woman at the end.
Learn about the thoughts and ideas of men through the ages, yes, essential. Put their concepts in context, to do so is now very easy. We have history on our side, but not endless time. We are stagnating. We need to consider why historically there is obscene inequality and it cannot be clearer than the disparity between sexes.
We aren't stagnating. We're moving dangerously fast: in the past century we've made more technical progress than in the past 10 thousand years. If anything, I'm worried that we'll make more progress in the next 50 years than we can handle. Where we're lacking is the moral side of things.
However I don't buy into your inequality talk. It seems a regressive ideology that replaces merit with physical attributes of human body. This is literally one step away from dark cults that worship human body.
If anything, the today's environment is the most favourable to women. The only reason why this safe playground exists is the shell that protects it. That shell is the army & navy made of very aggressive men who keep countries like China, Russia and Iran away. If you figure how to break this shell, you'll get to meet the rough reality.
The constructive way to promote equality would be to highlight capable women that write books, make music and so on.
> Yet even in 17th-century France, apparently, people hated being alone with their thoughts so intensely, they'd do almost anything else: play boules, start the Franco-Spanish war, and so on.
Is that a bad attempt at humor or sheer ignorance?
Usually it isn't too quiet for me, I don't even have time to read. I used to read books on the toilet in my youth. Now it's pretty quick (early 30s.)
Plus sitting on a toilet too long gives me pins and needles in my legs. And I hear it can cause blood clots. I suppose it depends on how comfortable one's toilet is, and whether you use one of those foot stools?
Pascal was tongue-in-cheek alluding to the ability to deeply analyze problems. In any case, solutions are often better with human interaction. I like to think of Bourbaki as an example.
Preface: I am not nor have I ever been diagnosed with any personality disorders or mental illnesses.
When I was a catholic, I prayed and read scripture daily, about 45mins to an hour, for ~10 years straight. Another 10 minutes for nightly prayers as well. Unfortunately all I can say is it honestly has transformed me into a schizoid. It has developed myself into being far more comfortable alone than with others. I've gone weeks without talking to people. I've learned solitary coping mechanisms. I've basically been able to perform therapy on myself and manipulate me individually in a way so that I can achieve desired results. I often feel like it's other people who bring about negative results in my life more than the other way around.
I also recognize I'm "wrong" socially in a way that's completely abnormal. But, having tried numerous times to be social, I always end up in the same scenario going back to what I know is tried and true. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has lived a similar way.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" --George Bernard Shaw (b. 1856)
I can sit quietly in a room just fine. My problems start when I start talking with other people - I then realize how many of them are idiots and assholes.
"That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"
https://books.google.com/books?id=KezeDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=P...