Originally, I wanted this article to be titled Answers to Stupid Questions #2: Do We Have Free Will?, but in contrast to the truly nonsensical concept called 'meaning of life' (Stupid Questions #1), the freedom of will cannot be dismissed a priori. Sure, if we understand 'free will' to mean I could have acted differently had I wanted to act differently, then we can reject it as a mere semantic confusion, because in this case the meaning of 'free will' coincides with that of 'will'. However, … [Read more...]
Should You Never Take Things Personally?
When someone behaves negatively towards you, there are three ways in which you can take it: Insecurity. You take it personally by default, even when you aren't attacked on a personal level. This is due to your lack of self-esteem, typically accompanied by an oversensitivity to nonverbal cues. For all you know, the other person might just be in a bad mood because he is sleep-deprived, love-deprived, angry at or disappointed by someone else, or suffering from suppressed pain—but since you don't … [Read more...]
What Do You Want? On Will and Desire
There are three common types of I want: Egoic desire: I want to be X, whereby X can be any physical, psychological, or social state.Possessive desire: I want to have Y, whereby Y can be any material possession or abstract ownership.Motivational desire: I want to do Z, whereby Z can be any choice or activity. But whatever I want to have I ultimately want because of the state I expect the possession to put me in; e.g., I want to have a fulfilling job in order to be happy, or I want to have a … [Read more...]
Plunge Your Mind in Cold Water
The Way is the flow of the universe, and Daoism teaches us to go with the flow, to be in harmony with nature. But how could we not do that? How could we ever fail to be in accordance with nature—are we not a part of it? And if we can't paddle against the stream of Life, doesn't this make Daoism meaningless? What's the point of a philosophy telling us to move along the Way if there is no way that opposes the Way anyway? Funnily enough, this apparent pointlessness of Daoism is actually its … [Read more...]
Beyond Good and Bad?
Nietzsche's philosophy 'beyond good and evil' is a refusal of religious thought and of what he calls 'slave morality'. Last week I defined 'good' and 'bad' in Spinozian terms, which already are beyond good and evil. Now we will contemplate: Can the mind venture beyond good and bad, too? Let us being with Ethica, pars IV prop. LXVIII: Si homines liberi, nascerentur, nullum boni, & mali formarent conceptum, quamdiu liberi essent. which translates into: If men were born free, they … [Read more...]
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