Оf course, when we talk about conscious experience, we’re all, once again, talking about death. Because if consciousness is just arising dependent upon the brain, then death is real and every religion ever devised is false. And, needless to say, most people are walking around with an intuition ”that’s not true”, that consciousness is in some sense independent of the body. Тhere are many good reasons to doubt that intuition, of course. We know that introspection offers us a very poor view of the material basis of our inner lives. There are hundred billion neurons in the brain. Okay? Each making thousands of connections to other cells. There are more connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue, than stars in our galaxy. And yet, our inner experience offers absolutely no clue that this is the case. So we’re not just slightly out of touch with the material basis of our inner lives; we’re completely out of touch with it. I actually think about the human brain a fair amount, but it almost never occurs to me that I actually have one.
We have a very limited view of what’s going on. We are subjectively unaware of most of what our minds are doing. And yet, when we think about what matters – what matters is consciousness and its contents, оkay, consciousness is everything; our experience of the world, experience of those we care about is a matter of consciousness and its contents. So, whatever the origin of consciousness, the most important question for us is how can we truly be fulfilled in life?
How can we create lives that are truly worth living, given that these lives come to an end?
We are all in the business of seeking fulfillment and relief from suffering. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure, or the easiest possible life. Much of what we want in life, much of what we want to experience entails struggle and many of us learn to enjoy this struggle itself, in some measure. Any athlete knows there’s certain kinds of pain that are actually pleasurable. If the burn of lifting weights was actually the symptom of a disease it would be intolerable. But, because it is happening in the context of strenuous exercise, there, most people learn to enjoy it. Тhe conceptual lens through which we view, even very intense sensations, largely determines how we feel about it. And this is one of the many ways in which our thinking about our experience changes the character of experience. - Sam-Harris/post came across from Sam Harris in Philosophers Mixtape
Basic Truth: We Have a Finite Amount of Time
Basic Truth: We Have a Finite Amount of Time.
It is a basic truth that we have largely become desensitized to.
Related
Link to originalHow long will you wait before you demand the best of yourself. And trust reason to determine what is best. - Epictetus/51
