Do unto others as you would have them say unto you

There seems to be a very strange line between what we say and what we do. For years I've always been convinced that what we say is incredibly important and basically determines the outcome of any particular event or situation. Simple words can change a person's beliefs and cause people to act in a certain way. What you say can put people to tears, or make them jump for joy. Certain words contain secrets and certain words can expose those secrets. Words can be truthful, words can be manipulated and words can turn into lies. Words are very powerful and are a great tool. Some people are great with words. Some people are able to easily communicate with others. Some people are able to manipulate words to make you believe in one thing and not the other. Politicians for example are generally very good with word manipulation (maybe not George Bush though).

However, while all this time I was concentrating on what I should be saying in particular situation I kept on feeling like everyone was waiting for me to act. Everyone around me seemed to say that actions speak louder than words. And so, even though I was trying to do my best with what I was saying, I eventually had to abandon this belief and I decided that my actions had to be more important. It was expected of me. And so, in order to build my character and present myself to the worlds, I began acting in ways that were particular to the situation. I would purposefully go out of my way and do something in order to prove some point. And I though instantly, that this would then prove whatever it was that I had to say. However, again, I was disappointed and people did not respond to my actions. It felt like even though you can explain something with words and then back that up action, it is still not enough.

And so, now I'm trying to search for something that can speak even louder than actions. I'm having a hard time figuring it out. Meanwhile, I'm going back to my original belief that words are more important than actions and I'm watching very carefully what I say and to whom. It seems like information that is contained within words can often be used against you. It's the manipulation of the words that can really change certain outcomes and it needs to be controlled.

You choose, then I'll choose and we'll see which one of us it comes to

Freewill, for some unexplained reason, happens to be popularly debated. Some say it exists, other say it doesn't, others say it's just an illusion. I don't understand where all the confusion comes from. Freewill is very simple.

Freewill is simply the ability to choose from a known number of choices. It's like when a magician fans out a card deck in front of you and asks you to choose a card. You can take any card you want. You have absolute freewill (provided he hasn't tempered with the deck). You can only choose from the cards that you see. You can't choose any other card because you aren't aware of its existence in this particular situation. The magician could potentially be holding another deck of cards in his back pocket, but because you aren't presented with those choices and because you haven't been previously told about another deck of cards else where, your only choices are those of the cards in front of you. It's the same with any other situation where we have to make a choice. We can choose to do anything we want. There is nobody that can stop us, and there is nothing that can prevent us from this choice. However, from the previous entry, you'll notice that all those choices we are presented with are initiated by some influence. That's where the choices originate. Each time we learn something, we add on another card to the deck that we can choose from.

However, ultimate freewill is an illusion because we aren't able to choose from all the possible choices. The reason for this is that we simply don't have certain choices available to us, or they are unknown to us. Like things we haven't yet discovered. For example, the prehistoric men in 40,000 B.C. probably needed light for their caves so that they could move about without hitting their heads on the rocks. They were presented with this problem: How do we illuminate our residence? Well, at the time, torches were popular, wax candles weren't invented yet, neither were oil lamps and electricity and the electric light bulb wouldn't come around until many years later. So the prehistoric men had several choices to choose from: torches, small fires, carving our more windows for more sunlight. All these are choices that they could choose from, including many others. However, electricity or oil lamps weren't a choices. In fact, if you were to try and explain what electricity was to an ancient cave man, he probably wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about. This is because the thought of electrons and tiny particles moving and creating electric current is completely absurd to someone who is used to making fire from sticks and stones. Their known universe and imagination is simply not capable of understanding a concept as such, especially never having seen one in practice. So, even though we know that electricity and light bulbs exist, the prehistoric men at the time didn't have access to it, or any knowledge of it, so it couldn't be one of their choices for providing light in their caves. Even though they had freewill, it was limited due to the restrictions on their intellectual capabilities and the lack of influences they've had.

If we present the same problem to the modern man he would have many more choices to choose from, but again it won't be an ultimate selection. I'm sure there are other methods of light generation out there that we simply haven't invented or gained control of yet. I guess, we could construct a small nuclear sun in our room to generate light... Or something that I can't even possibly imagine (like the prehistoric man and electricity), so even though I feel like I have a variety of options to choose from, it will not be an ultimate choice. To me, however, it shouldn't matter, because I don't find myself at all robbed of choices. Even though I am aware of the possibility of other options existing out there, because I'm restricted (technologically, intellectually, etc..) I can't choose them anyways.

So again, this isn't to say however that the cave men didn't have freewill. Freewill is not the ability to choose from all possible choices. Freewill is the ability to choose from all known choices. You can't decide to do something you don't know. It's contradictory and illogical. In this respect, freewill is an illusion, but it's irrelevant to us. Just because there are other options out there that we are incapable of, or unaware of, doesn't mean we loose our sense of free choice. We are still free to choose from any of the choices we have (and believe me, we have plenty to work with).

Now let's take this freewill concept into a religious context (because I love to do this to prove my religious point of view). If God exists (and I'm talking about the Christian God here, for the sake of popular argument) and He is omnipotent then He ultimately has all the possible choices. He is then not limited to only the choices that He is aware of, because He is aware of all of them. Therefore, you could say that God is in fact the only being that could possibly experience ultimate freewill (that is if humans never achieve such godliness). What this means then is that God is aware of the best and worst thing to do. The reason why right and wrong things appear here (and only here) is because only when you have ultimate freewill can there be extremities like this. So essentially, in a situation where there is a natural disaster occurring that God can prevent (because He is omnipotent), He has the ability to choose a particular scenario where nobody would get injured and where nothing would be destroyed. He has the ability to prevent all innocent death and property damage in any situation. And since this doesn't happen, we must then conclude that if God does in fact exist, He chooses (from all of His choices) to purposefully let people suffer and experience innocent pain.

Now as for whether or not the world is pre-determined, I think it doesn't matter. Because again, if it is pre-determined, until we can prove it, it will not influence our choices. And if it isn't pre-determined, then we don't have to worry about it.

On this unfortunate note, I'm going to end this journal entry.

Why live?

Not too long ago one of my best friends, Jonathan Fenn, had a so-called epiphany. Out of nowhere, he said that the world doesn't matter and that nothing we do in this world matters because feelings of pleasure and pain are illusions. He asked a lot of very hypothetical questions wherein the entire world could be a part of a matrix or someone's imagination (or something to that extent) and nothing we did had any consequence or relevance because in the end we were all just going to die. Basically, it meant that our actions had no consequence and we were free to do as we wanted and nothing would matter because eventually we would just die. This renders life on Earth completely meaningless and full of deceit and illusion. I knew, as soon as I read his blog that I had to go talk to him to make sure that I was understanding him correctly and that he wasn't experiencing a severe mental breakdown. Immediately I felt like what he was saying was completely absurd and it needed to be clarified and discussed.

I think at one point in life everyone goes through this same kind of epiphany. However, it's important that in the end you draw the correct conclusion from it, because the concept that "nothing we do matters" and "nobody has feelings" is the type of methodology that murderers and insane criminals use. This isn't to say that there is a "right" and "wrong" way to think and perhaps the epiphany does have a hint of truth behind it, but I think we can all agree that living in a world where nobody has feelings and where nothing matters would be chaotic. Sounds to me like something out of the Book of Revelation, and we all know how that ended.

After a long debate, we've come to the conclusion that the world does in fact matter and it matters very much what we do and what we feel. Which gave me a sense of relief to know that I was able to talk some sense into him (although I think for the most part he talked the sense into himself). What we did was we laid out a very simple solution to the actions each person takes and then we were able to see that everything that comes before the action and everything that follows the action has a huge impact on the person doing the action and on the people that are around.

Click the image to see it full-scale:



We drew up a mental diagram, that in my head looked something like this (Fig. 1)

In this we can see that a person's actions really follow through 4 chronological steps: influences, characteristics, actions and results. The cycle then repeats indefinitely and grows in numbers of influences and in numbers of choices we have (possible actions).

It begins with an influence, which can be God, school, the science of evolution, your parents or any number of other things. You educate yourself, or get taught something, then this influence generates a certain feeling inside of you. It could be emotional, or it could be a simple characteristic. For instance, God could be an influence that would result in you obtaining the characteristic that says that you are defined by The 10 Commandments which say that you shouldn't kill. This then results in a series of choices. It means that you, as an individual, when presented with a situation, have several choices to choose from. Simply put, one could be to kill and the other could be to spare someone's life. Your characteristic (the one that was influenced by God) would then probably reason you to choose the path that would spare the individual (although this is another religious subject about God's mercy that can be discussed at a later time). This action then produces a result. In this case, you let the person live and don't kill them. So we've gone from an influence to a result via a decision in which choice we make. In Fig. 1, the example shows the influences contrasting between several choices and eventually resulting to a decision and the choice to ignore or put aside one of your influences for that particular action.

Sounds very simple, doesn't it? Well, for some reason it took us several hours to agree on this (and even still we have very opposing views when it comes to more detailed interpretations of this idea). And something that looks like common sense to me, seemed very confusing to my friend. However, you can see in Fig. 1 that certain influences will conflict with others. This is precisely what gives you the illusion of free will and choice. You must choose between going to school and not going to school. And in life you end up making a lot of choices. In this case, you simply choose to abandon one of your influences and choose to take the actions proposed by that particular influence. However, over time, when you are faced with a new decision, your original influences will still be there and you will again have to choose which one to abandon and which one to follow.

Of course it's never just that simple. It's almost never a simple choice between two things. There isn't just a wrong and a right way to do something. There is an infinite number of choices neither of which are more wrong or more right than the other. However certain ones will generate a greater number of positive results. Others will generate a lot of very negative results that will not be of much help to you or others. However, to say that there is a generic right and wrong way to do something (with a few options in between, or not) is incorrect.

So what does all of this have to do with living? Does the world matter? Is it important that we are alive? Certainly. Because if we can act and influence our environment and others through our actions, that means that there is a purpose for us being alive. Now some believe that this purpose is predefined by God, or a destiny of some sort, but I don't buy into that. I believe that the purpose is individual and could be as simple as just waking up the next day and eating breakfast. That sounds like a very reasonable and achievable purpose to me, even if it is very short-term.

Eventually of course, you end up wondering what your glabal purpose in life is. And most of the time people will either bring up religion, or some other fundamental belief system. Others will simply say that there is no ultimate purpose. And others don't know and don't really care as long as they can survive. Well, again, I really don't think that it's that complicated. For me, the global purpose is to live until the next day (it goes well with my need for food, water, and air), and learn as much as I can about our world and in that progress the human race as a whole. Now it seems like a very vague purpose, but in fact it's not. It defines very specifically what I have to do throughout my life. What it doesn't do is define specifically each of my daily tasks. This gives me a lot of room to explore and learn in my every day activities.

What's great about my individual purpose is that even if there is an "ultimate" purpose in life that was predefined by some deity, or even if there is a god, the fact that I'm doing my part in progressing the human race means that eventually we might get smart enough, or build sufficient technology to realize this "ultimate" purpose, or an "ultimate" being. So far, however, there is no reason for me to believe in their existence, so I don't have any tendency to follow them. I don't like walking around blind, or in blind faith (and with good reason). If some ultimate deities exist, then one day we will probably be sure of it, but until then, all evidence points to a world where secular humanism makes the most sense and will provide the most benefits and success. There is currently no evidence to show that a deity cannot be exposed and there is no evidence to show that a deity currently exists (more on this in future journals).

Introduction

Welcome to Recrudescence,

You are currently reading my latest blog called Recrudescence. The address to the blog is http://blog.globexdesigns.com/

Let me introduce myself. My name is Evgueni Naverniouk and I am fascinated by religion (mostly Christianity and Buddhism), philosophy and the origin of way we (humans) think. I am an art student at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design where I have been greatly inspired by John Wertschek. I am an agnostic and I'm a strong believer in secular humanism, logic and freethought. I am greatly inspired by Daniel C. Dennett, adaptionism, J. Farrell Till and consciousness science. In this blog I plan on sharing with you my journals, notes and essays about anything pertaining to the previously mentioned topics.

Before I begin making official posts I'd like to encourage everyone reading to participate in the discussions. Please let me know what you think about the issue in question and share your ideas. I'm always very interested in hearing what people have to say and a lot of the time other's opinions greatly help influence my philosophies as well.

Hope you enjoy the read.
- Evgueni Naverniouk