Ask Lemmy

I don't believe in free will meaning that what ever you did you could not have done otherwise. We live in a deterministic universe and all events are part of a causal chain

Treat others how you would like to be treated. Adress others the way you want to be adressed.

Optimistic nihilism has always been a favorite. While there may be a purpose to existence, there is no concrete evidence of it. But if indeed life has no meaning, that's not a big deal, because humans are creative and can create our own.

Hard determinism. Everything is a number and has already happened. Also, one electron universe.

This too shall pass. Enjoy what you can, but don't get attached to it. You can even become deeply involved in something or with someone, but always be emotionally and mentally prepared for the day when it or they are no more. Expect it.

Optimistic Nihilism.

Consciousness is an accident, the universe is an emergent property of physical laws, and there is no purpose to any of it; no gods, no guiding intention, no natural morality, no afterlife. Just entropy.

This is a good, positive thing to understand.

If there is no intrinsic morality, then we are free to define morality for ourselves. This is a burden, but it something that we can recognise and think critically about, rather than just taking whatever tradition we were raised in, and picking and choosing as is convenient.

If there is no afterlife, then every act of alturism, every kind thing we do we can do because we want to. Not because we are afraid of damnation, but because we decided that it was the right thing to do.

If we leave nothing behind but dust, then we must be aware of the impact we have now, because our time is limited and brief.

If we are a random collection of atoms, a brief coherent pattern among the chaos, then we can recognise that every single other person is the fundamentally the same.

The philosophical position I hold is that solipsism isn't true. Because to ask yourself if others exist requires language, which we all learn from other people. We can doubt our senses without language, but this is psychosis, not philosophy.

And I think most Western people haven't really solved the question of solipsism and still live in the Cartesian theater. And that this is a major reason why we're mindlessly killing the planet (and ourselves).

1. Humanity is living in an (almost) endless painful cycle of civilisations rising, prospering and falling, like a phoenix rising from its ashes, only to burn again. No civilisation, nation, or idea can escape. Some might be able to avoid destruction for longer than others, but they will eventually meet their end.

2. Death is and should be inevitable, and it's a good thing. I have gotten over the fear of dying when I was eight, yet so many people, (way too many of them are adults) seem to treat death as a sensitive and even taboo topic.
   I find the thought that I'll most likely be able to rest peacefully either in a state of non-existence or some sort of afterlife to be calming. I tend to think that the acknowledgment of our own mortality is the only thing that makes us truly enjoy life, as we know it won't last forever. This is the reason why people talking about technology that could make immortal people without thinking about the downsides enough really concerns me. Humans are supposed to be born, to live and to die.

3. If we want to define whether an action is immoral or moral, then as a rule of thumb, it is moral as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. (yes, this includes non-human animals) There are a lot of exceptions of course.

4. Humans are not superior to other animals. The reason I think that, in general, killing another human is worse than killing another animal is not that human lives matter more than lives of other animals, but instead that you shouldn't kill your own species.

I think as renewable energy gets cheaper and we move away from scarcity in society, we will stop looking at ourselves as brands. Instead, personal conduct, or the appearance of such will play a much larger part in our public lives and place in society. This will provide a lot of privacy issues.