Life Plan

[Korpo]

What if the lesson of suicide is that quitting the game before it has a chance to be played out fully is a mistake, and that it isn't a good idea to keep hitting "reset" when things seem to be completely out of control?

Can you give me an example?

Oliver

[Caelrie]

If you must insist that we chose our lives in advance, then can you really prove that despair leading up to suicide is not simply one more possibility which has also been selected in advance ... ?

I think that's definitely possible. If a soul wanted to experience suicide, it would be necessary to map out a life that led to that end. Such a life might well be beyond the coping ability of the vast majority of people, by design.

[Korpo]

If a soul wanted to experience suicide, it would be necessary to map out a life that led to that end. Such a life might well be beyond the coping ability of the vast majority of people, by design.

Do you think there are souls who do that?

Oliver

[Caelrie]

If a soul wanted to experience suicide, it would be necessary to map out a life that led to that end. Such a life might well be beyond the coping ability of the vast majority of people, by design.

Do you think there are souls who do that?

Oliver

I do, because it's something I would do if I wanted to experience it. In fact, I probably did it somewhere along the line. What better way to understand the experience than to suffer through it? I'm not the type to let silly cultural taboos stand in my way. So I figure if I'd do it, so would some others.

[rapidlearner]

Korpo: There are two points that I wanna address:

1st of all, you are saying that there is no lesson to be learnt from suicide and that its a failure of such. What if suicide was inevitable to save others? Say, if a plane was hijacked and the pilot decided to crash the plane in the middle of a field rather than in a packed residential city thus, killing himself and the people on the plane. What if someone was kidnapped and was told that if he didn't kill himself, the kidnappers would kill his family?

2nd of all, The scenario about someone being born into a cult and joining them for mass suicide is not over simplified at all. Their circumstances led them to be impressionable people. You only have to research the Heavens Gate mass suicide to understand that these people genuinly thought the world was going to be destroyed and that they would join Jesus on a UFO behind a commet. They wasn't depressed or looking for an easy way out. They thoguht they were doing the right thing for their soul. Could they use free will to NOT commit suicide? No. Their past experiences and circumstances created a mind set that meant suicide was the only choice they would make. Free Will to choose not commiting suicide exists only as an illusion as they will never choose that route.

We can't escape our circumstances. Our circumstances derive from choices we make that were biased by previous cricumstances.

Oh and thirdly, I don't think you could go out and commit a capital crime tomorrow. Your mindset doesn't allow it, due to your upbring or moral stance which all derives from your past experiences. Even if you think its a possibility, its actually a fake one... Unless... external circumstances cause you to do so, which wouldn't be free will.

All our choices are biased. And our current mindset that derives from biased choices and experiences in the past will always overall the illusion of free will. It may seem like we are making choices freely but biased thinking means we're not.

I'm really starting to talk myself out of believing in free will here.

[Korpo]

2nd of all, The scenario about someone being born into a cult and joining them for mass suicide is not over simplified at all. Their circumstances led them to be impressionable people. You only have to research the Heavens Gate mass suicide to understand that these people genuinly thought the world was going to be destroyed and that they would join Jesus on a UFO behind a commet. They wasn't depressed or looking for an easy way out. They thoguht they were doing the right thing for their soul. Could they use free will to NOT commit suicide? No.

Yup, they could. Either decision was their choice. You assume these people had no doubts. I doubt that assumption.

Their past experiences and circumstances created a mind set that meant suicide was the only choice they would make. Free Will to choose not commiting suicide exists only as an illusion as they will never choose that route.

There are no 100% forced circumstances. As long as you have options, there is choice. As long there is a choice, you have free will. Incredibly hard or having the choice between a rock and a hard place does not mean you have no free will. It just means that your enacting your free will will not lead to an improvement of your situation. Free will does not depend on good outcomes. Just on choices.

We can't escape our circumstances. Our circumstances derive from choices we make that were biased by previous cricumstances.

Any thing we impose on our minds in habits can be reversed. It just requires the tough choice of undergoing that reversal. That's the free will part. That's independent from the second thing you mention: We can't escape our circumstances. That's only true for external circumstances. While the world surrounding us may not be changeable, our reaction to it is in any micro-second of our existence.

All this "We can't experience our circumstances" seems to derive from behaviour-observing approach used by psychology to learn about human behaviour. The underlying assumption is that inputs A and B will lead to output C. This led to IMO narrowminded thinking that we are input/output machines slavishly reacting to external stimuli. We aren't.

This choice was made because external behaviour is the only thing easily observable, leading to all kinds of misjudging what's going on IMO. See Tart for a longer discussion of this, IIRC in "States of Consciousness".

I'm really starting to talk myself out of believing in free will here.

As long as you hold on to the premise that "free will" equals for you that choice should be easy ("free ride") in order to qualify, you will come to no other conclusion. But every time a person willfully choses a different path for their life than what their circumstances dictate you're proven wrong. Happens all the time - in real life, but not in hypothesis-land.

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

And,

every time a person willfully choses a different path for their life than what their circumstances dictate

they grow.
And that " sounds like a plan " to me.

[Tom]

Because it annoys me to hear people going on about big topics like free will and the lessons we are supposed to learn and the things that happen after death, I try not to go on about such things very often or for very long at a time. It seems plain to me that no one can actually really know for sure. It seems plain to me that the thing to do is to do your best with the cards you've been dealt. Ideally along the way you can help a few people, if only for the reason that doing so will make things easier for everyone involved - yourself included.

[Korpo]

Well... There are people who say they have spoken to their guides. And people who uncovered part of this life plan for themselves. I know some. This does not mean it is evidence. Not at all. But it to them it surely is.

If I think about it there may be no irrefutable proof for this. That's the belief part. There may be only subjective proof. I mean - if aliens landed tomorrow in your backyard, bringing along the president of the US and the Dalai Lama as witness, and tell you what your life plan is, you could still chose to believe they are lying, or that you are hallucinating. It would not constitute proof to you. If an entity in the astral told you, you could believe "It was just a weird dream". And if a guy on the street tells you, it could just be a weirdo. See, where I am heading? Skepticism is a very selective art.

That's the "consensus" part in consensus reality. We agree on what is real to us by believing the experiences of some and protocol. But do you really know they fissioned atoms or landed on the moon if you did not witness it yourself? Does a measurement curve on a computer screen prove that nuclear fission happened? A minimum amount of belief is required to accept anything IMO, even what we call objective is just an exercise in trust since we cannot know all and everything. Cannot experience everything at the same time. We believe howerver things from "trustworthy" sources that fit our own belief systems, how rationally we might construct them.

I mean nothing in physics has ever been truly proven. Things like energy conservation have just been observed. Repeatedly. If ever one person observes the opposites once in "all time", physics as we know is simply wrong. Maths fares surely better there. But we chose to trust this repeated observation. We chose to trust the observations of others to benefit from their conclusions.

Oliver

[Tom]

And here I thought that those of us here were going out of our way to break the agreements which "consensus reality" have been requiring of us. My problem is when I get the feeling that in order to belong in the club I have to conform with the local noncomformists.

If you'd like I can tell you that I found a Spirit Guide who says you are wrong about everything you've ever believed and that it is my life plan to tell you how wrong you are.