So football teams don't remember what they did last time they ran a play? I call bullshit. If you don't remember what you did wrong, then you can't learn.
And vice versa, if you don't remember what you did right, then it's a new play every time.
Is there life after death?
- Thread starter Ryndanangnysen
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And vice versa, if you don't remember what you did right, then it's a new play every time.
Once again, if you think its all about the player's memory, why have a coach?
If the players can't remember what they did, then how does the coach teach them?
Then again, what does any of this have to do with life after death?
Just to know that that is the mechanism might be sufficient, possibly not, but basically anything from which you can actually start to establish the rules - if there indeed are any - rather than merely guess at them, would be a start.
Culprit of what, exactly? You seem to be asserting a certain worldview on the matter, and if so is that not somewhat premature? Further, there is a world of difference between desire while in ignorance, and desire made after obtaining knowledge. One may not be immediately liberated by knowledge but one can at least start to make educated and informed decisions.
I'm assuming nothing of the sort. I'm merely assuming facts inform our choices. Some make certain choices despite the facts, and will continue to do so. But it is still better to be informed than not if there is a long-term goal. Otherwise we are stuck on the merry-go-round with nothing but blind luck as our guide off it.
It may not make sense to you, admittedly. My point is that if we could only play a computer game through once, with one life, how differently would we play it than if we knew we would get multiple lives? How differently would we play a sport if we knew we could pick the ball up? Knowledge informs our actions and behaviour. Guesswork can do the same, especially if one believes it to be knowledge, and then perhaps we can all start playing versions of Pascal's Wager.
Maybe in your worldview. Are you now assuming that the rules of the game are that we live multiplie lives etc? The lack of memory forces us to live each life in utter isolation of any previous one such that it is identical to the individual as if there is only the one life. That is what lack of memory does. It is thus that lack of memory which would enslave us to such repetition, not desire. One's attitude toward desire is an individual matter within the specific life you currently lead, whether that be the one and only, or merely one of many. Without memory each is treated as if it is the one and only - unless you get lucky and your guess at an alternative turns out to be correct.
It doesn't make that assumption at all. Luck can be the result of internal and/or external factors.
Not sure how that is relevant to the issue of memory retention from one play-through of life to another?
It might be available if only one had memory of previous versions. We don't. What we have is a one-off game with no identifiable rules or objective other than those we define for ourselves. If we happen to guess at a rule book that matches the underlying reality then great - but we'll never know if we do or not - because if we have the viewpoint that this is our only play through then, given lack of memory, when we start our next game we start from scratch again. And if we have the viewpoint that we play multiple times then once you get through to the next game your memory will again be gone, you will start from scratch, and reach almost certainly a different viewpoint. Unless your viewpoint is that each playthrough you start to hone in on the truth... in which case you're advocating the retention of memory, subconscious or otherwise.
Just because birds don't fly all the time doesn't make them any less avian.
So no actual rebuttal from you, then?
You merely talk of the human condition - and there are as many viewpoints on that as there are grains of sand. But if you think it relevant, care to shed light on how you think the issue of suffering speaks to the question that is actually being discussed, notably whether there is life after death?
The very fact they are getting taught via a repetitive manouver under the presence and direction of a coach tends to indicate that there is some perceived benefit to doing it in the absence of a coach. If the players can (accurately) remember what they did, what is the requirement to be obedient to an overseer in the first place?
What would be the benefit? What would the coach be able to tell them that they couldn't collectively work out themselves?
It was brought up in response to the proposed problem that reincarnation simply offers an endless recycling of essentially the same scenario. The question is at what point are events being fruitlessly recycled. At the point of lifetimes or at the point of moments or manoeuvres within each lifetime? If a team repeatedly loses every season, where does the act that establishes such an outcome occur?
Your suggestion is that such a repetitive cycle in sports training is broken by the player's memory. This doesn't tally with the observation that practically every professional athlete, first and foremost, has a coach. And furthermore, the coach tends to focus on the repetitive performance of manouvers (micro cycles) as a means to establish the outcome of grander cycles (namely not losing the game or the season).
Sorry to have to be a bit longwinded, but it seemed that the cycle of our back and forth was becoming repetitive.
It is precisely because they can remember from game to game that a coach is of benefit. Imagine trying to be the coach of a team that had amnesia after every game, and you have to start from scratch every time. And where the coach had amnesia as well. All you can do is coach them through that particular game... and then it's gone. And that's even if you, as the coach, actually have knowledge of what you're coaching rather than just confidence in whatever it is you claim to be coaching.
All of this is of benefit precisely because of memory. If an athlete is unable to remember anything, consciously or otherwise, then coaches are irrelevant other than for the single game they play. After that the benefit is gone.
Unless you are advocating some form of retained memory? But this would surely speak to the importance of memory, as being argued.
Sort of like the idea of reincarnation.
Seriously, the coach analogy is one of the worst I've ever read. And all the philosophical naval musings are still nowhere near evidence of life after death.
Its plain you like what you know and know what you like. No getting in the way of progress.
Obviously. I mean like how many like buddhists are there like playing like professional football?
Its like, duuuhhhh!!!
Its precisely because the individual or collective powers of memory of the players is not sufficient thay the services of a coach are employed. If they could "see" what they are doing incorrectly, they wouldn't require someone to tell them what needs to be done.
This simply raises other questions, does it not?
Without a memory of the game you may or may not be playing, who is to say that the coach is any more enlightened as to the rules, purpose and game-playing state than anyone else?
Which coach should one turn to, assuming one accepts that there is a game to be played?
Should it be the rugby coach, the football, the basketball, twiddly-winks, skiing, swimming?
All you seem to be doing is justifying the authority you have adopted.
Having picked a coach to act as your guide, you are extolling the virtue of the guide, with no actual knowledge of whether the guide is teaching you the right rules or not, or even if there are any rules to follow.
It is simply an appeal to authority, is it not?
Where is the breaking of that cycle, and how does this lead to the issue of whether there is life after death?
Is it because your particular coach is telling you that there is?
It's kind of important that this is cleared up at the start (in the name of chasing the right thing up the appropriate tree). In what ways would it be sufficient? In what ways wouldn't it? (If you don't want to answer in confidence to one or the other)
Action, for better or worse. Desire provides us with action (either gross action with the body or subtle action with the mind). Action gives us consequences.
You doubt desire directs people to think and act in a certain way and its this action that dictates their station in life?
Or do you doubt that desire has a malleable nature, born of a combination of the performer and the environment they perform in?
So what does a smoker need to "know" in order to give up smoking?
In one sense you are right, knowledge does grant greater choices, but if one's activities are in ignorance, that can limit what one can know.
Sometimes knowledge has a prerequisite on the field of action.
Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Alot depends on desire. (Since action takes form via desire). Alot can also depend on things like propaganda too. Its nature and nurture. The notion of us being some sort of individually passive non-identity that can access some uniform body of facts to chalk out a path in life is completely unrealistic.
Commonly they do it by saying it is not the fact.
The fact that you can't get two people to agree on an any exhaustive list of facts tends to indicate there are inherent problems in establishing exactly what is a fact. This is a fact.
When you talk of goals supported by facts (as if there is a single list of facts one can consult to establish goals), it gets complicated.
Some facts are required to be acted on in order for further facts to be understood or revealed (applied knowledge). And, alternatively, some thing which one acts on, under the impression it is a fact, may greatly reduce the opportunity to make informed decisions.
Alot of it boils down to what one concludes is one's long term interest and what is one's short term interest.
In other words, most of the time, we arrive at our goals well before we arrive at the facts.
Interestingly, the notion of playing a computer game requires that one have recourse to a superior existence, and that we suspend our disbelief to "enjoy the game". Of course we don't suspend it completely, but imagine playing a computer game where that belief was absolutely suspended, so much so that one completely forgot that one merely playing it.
Something like that. The lack of memory empowers a sense of immersion in temporary identities that arise from successive waves of (false) egotistic desire. The lives wouldnt exist completely in isolation, since the activity of one life sows the seeds for the next (for better or worse).
The beginning cumulative benefit of proper action would be a type of fatigue with temporary immersion. Anything less is simply grist for the mill.
In the matrix, the knowledge of the "real world" came outside the system of illusion. An effective system of illusion rules out not only any opportunity of getting out by luck but also getting out through ones own powers. To get out requires assistance from outside the system of illusion.
Yes, exactly. This is the prerequisite condition to be a sincere, willing and complacent participant. This establishes the dominant mood of the population. This is the crowd or the season that enables a soccer hooligan to do his thing with full confidence.
I am suggesting the progression comes via desire, and that it is the sum result of what we appear with (nature), and how we interact (nurture).
Desire can swing back and forth like a pendulum, shoot up like a j curve or even come the full reverse like a bell curve.
One important symptom of getting the correct source outside the system is that one is satisfied in the self without the need to seek validation in name, fame, wealth, adoration or distinction. To seek validation in temporary things is literally perpetual hard work to no end.
Proper work is just like eating food. You don't require someone to come along and give you a certificate to prove it.
Then what of birds that don't fly at all? At the very least, they are not flocking with the ones in the sky, despite their feathers.
For an illusion to be effective it requires that not only that we don't see at as such but also that we don't see others who don't see it as such.
Nothing is worse than trying to watch a movie while sitting next to a guy saying "That didn't really happen. They're just actors. He didn't really die etc etc"
To say that there are many philosophical positions doesn't make for any case .... unless you are trying to say that philosophy is subservient to psychology or secularism (which would be weird)?
If one is not convinced to some degree that this existence grants suffering then one is not in a position to even begin to withdraw one's focus from illusion. This is first base. It doesn't matter how much one is or isnt religious or professes belief in whatever.
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Alot of this I covered in my reply to sarkus. Just a few copy/pastes to save both my time and yours ....
One important symptom of getting the correct source outside the system is that one is satisfied in the self without the need to seek validation in name, fame, wealth, adoration or distinction. To seek validation in temporary things is literally perpetual hard work to no end.
Proper work is just like eating food. You don't require someone to come along and give you a certificate to prove it.
.... and for the necessity of having a dominant option of being coach-adverse ....
Then what of birds that don't fly at all? At the very least, they are not flocking with the ones in the sky, despite their feathers.
For an illusion to be effective it requires that not only that we don't see at as such but also that we don't see others who don't see it as such.
Nothing is worse than trying to watch a movie while sitting next to a guy saying "That didn't really happen. They're just actors. He didn't really die etc etc"
....and also maybe this is relevant, since without it, you are not even in the running for understanding the need for a coach, much less working out whether they are effective or not ...
If one is not convinced to some degree that this existence grants suffering then one is not in a position to even begin to withdraw one's focus from illusion. This is first base. It doesn't matter how much one is or isnt religious or professes belief in whatever.
According to who?
According to which worldview?
How do you know that this is the correct worldview?
And how does it have any bearing on the question of whether there is life after death??
What would be even worse is for there to actually be no illusion and for the person sitting next to you to claim that that is exactly what it is, that they somehow know it is etc.
And, again, how does this have any bearing on whether there is life after death?
Are you claiming that existence granting suffering is somehow evidence of life after death?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I'm just gonna say what 58 years of life on earth has taught me so far.
Yes..there is life after death. But only in the sense that there is life after being a sleeping fetus inside a sloshy womb for 9 months. The kind of experience open to us after death is hard to describe in our present bodily terms. Thoughts and feelings will connect us to others as immediately as sound and light. Time will be totally different. Past and future will fuse together in one world. Loved ones will be there, but they will be on a journey of their own beyond their mere lifetime on earth. No God in the afterlife. A sort of diffuse universal light that empowers us with the sense of what is true. That's my humble opinion. I'm not here to argue about it. Just offering my 2 cents.
To offer an equally valid yet opposing view...
No... there is no life after death.
One's self. If one requires a certificate after eating, they probably haven't eaten or are deranged in some way.
According to the worldview that a temporary identity with temporary attachment grants constitutional problems. Its kind of like the notion of balancing, precariously over a cliff automatically poses a problem that is at hand.
Because taking pleasure in things that will shortly cease to exist tends to foster a false world view that exacerbates the problem of things ceasing to exist.
Not at all. If there is no project that requires the suspension of belief, one would just continue engrossed in things. It would be like the person sitting next you is just some part of the movie one is 100% engrossed in.
Existence that grants suffering is evidence of core problems with existence. If one doesn't see that as a problem, one doesn't really have a platform to go forth from.
If one is in a slaughterhouse holding pen, but is too engrossed in a mouth full of hay to notice or care, one doesn't see the form of a problem, much less a solution.
The very beginning of any solution is to see the form of a problem.
Given that you didn't have the same brain when you were 5 years old, yet you never refer to yourself in third person, there are obvious problems with this outlook.
This would have to be 58 years of totally wasted effort with a piss poor teaching or pupil
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
This would have to be 58 years of totally wasted effort with a piss poor teaching or pupil
Interesting. So how does one's belief in an afterlife mean their life has been a "totally wasted effort"? Effort to do what? "Piss poor teaching" by whom?
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