reincarnation

[wufwugy]

since theres been a few deep thinking threads recently, i would like to start another. im not religious or a hippy or anything , but I believe in reincarnation. I think everyone has been someone or something else since the beginning of time, and this raises the issue of what 'existence' means. what does it mean to exist? i cant remember when 'I' was a tree or a lizard or whatever, because it wasn't 'me' as an entity in relation to my current state, but it will be 'me' in the next life as 'I' will be existing as a conscious entity as someone or something else.

So what is 'conscience' - and why is there any link between the two 'me's' in different forms? i think the answer is hard to fathom.

id appreciate any serious contributions

the nature of the human mind is to believe in the incredible and mysterious. i think it would be really really cool to see if advanced alien life would be the same way. i bet they would. i actually bet that organic technologically advanced aliens would be very similar to humans in most ways. or maybe thats way off. but i digress

do you find it weird that you claim to not be religious or hippie yet you espouse a belief of religious origin which is maintained only by the religious/hippie mindset? the origin of the concept doesn't alone determine its accuracy, but it does lend a hand towards evaluating it wisely.

when we look at the idea of reincarnation from the perspective of logics learned via the scientific method, we see that it is purely abstract and a fabrication of our minds. except it makes so much sense since, based on perspective, it actually can be correct. we are all of the same origin and thread and cylce of life and death. in this sense reincarnation is correct, but this creates the problem of inducting conclusions. we see one thing that is correct then we jump to conclusions. we say 'not only are we all intertwined on some unknown base, but our consciousnesses are also'. the former does not entail the latter, yet we act like it does. we dont define our observations, we dont delineate premises in order to understand what exactly the truth is. we see something of a broad and non-definitive nature which we find intuitive so we create philosophies around it. this is religion. there is no inherent truth in religion. it can make so much sense yet be so wrong.

on top of that, there is no way to know and if we did know it would matter in no way. religions that espouse this ideology fabricate even deeper constructs to demonstrate that it does matter, but they're still illusions.

i grew up incredibly incredibly religious. i believed it into young adulthood. it was only when i delved into understanding logic, logical fallacies, and the scientific method that i learned that the thought processes/logics that are used to conclude religious beliefs are simply wrong. part of why its so hard to see this without extensive learning is simply because logical fallacies are all logical. they make sense, they're just not in order or aren't applied correctly.


wrt what it means to exist: i have no clue. this strikes me as a semantic issue along the lines of 'what does it mean to speak'. the spoken word is defined by the spoken word. existence is defined by existence. not much else we can do there.

the age old human inquisitions 'who are we' 'where are we going' etc strike me as retarded questions to ponder. its like a child asking the same question over and over. the child may think its doing something productive and meaningful when in reality it just simply cannot understand the answers. so 'who are we?' we're humans. 'what are humans?' humans are conscious biological organisms that breed and interact via complex social and political constructs. 'where did that come from' or 'why is that?'. its because we're human and thats what humans do. commence circular argument.

the most core questions our ancestors had about existence are not questions. they are language misunderstood and misused.


wrt conscience: i imagine you actually mean to say 'consciousness'. consciousness has to do with thought, while conscience is that thought in a moral sense.

anyways, consciousness is basically a self-awareness; we know what we're doing. we think (dont actually know) that consciousness is a product of neuronal activity. since we dont actually know since its not something we can observe impartially, we do not know if a rock or microbe or gust of wind is conscious. we have no clue what happens to consciousness upon death. this is because consciousness doesn't necessarily need life to exist. its more an idea we have about ourselves than something we can know and touch.

asking the question 'what does it mean to be conscious' kind also a semantic issue imo, but i think i can address it from a different perspective. for example: what does it mean to be electric, or to be organic? what does it mean to be evolution, or to be physical? when phrased with your intent these questions have no merit since they're not looking for any 'real' answers, and reality is the only thing we know. they're looking for the elusive, enigmatic wonderment.

electricity is electricity. it does what it does because thats how things work. physics is physics, it is what it is. this is the deepest most fundamental understanding we can have of our universe. funny how it actually doesn't provide any understanding outside of the indirect. it could be that consciousness is product of neuronal activity in the same way that sparks are products of electrical activity. there's nothing special about sparks; there's nothing special about consciousness.