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John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

theguardian.com

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Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#91

Post by fendy3002 »

mlang23 wrote: post #84
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of enlightenment is to eventually not re-emerge.

Doesn't that also imply that life is a sort of punishment? Once you get the lesson, you are no longer forced to play the game?

I'm not a good Buddhist, so this is what AFAIK. Chance to be reincarnated as human is low, it's rare so we are lucky to be born as one. As human we have a chance to gather good karma and attain enlightenment, thus ending the cycle.

I think rather than punishment, it's more like a lesson. And dukkha is often mistranslated as "suffering", but in reality it's closer to dissatisfaction or unhappiness (sadness) rather than suffering.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#92

Post by thinkingemote »

willis936 wrote: post #82
guram11 wrote: post #37

we will always opt to view and live through our imagined future, it's how we issue priority in the plans and contingencies of our lives, the best we can agree is to spend more time living in the moment and not otherwise in a loop we call regret where the decisions(past) is being redo in our minds to better imagined outcomes(future)

Right? It seems strange to call wisdom from a creature living in a simplified rule set. Throwing out imagined future necessarily throws out all of society and human knowledge.

gray is not saying that at all.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#93

Post by jayjader »

mlang23 wrote: post #84
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of enlightenment is to eventually not re-emerge.

Doesn't that also imply that life is a sort of punishment? Once you get the lesson, you are no longer forced to play the game?

I disagree that it must be seen as a punishment; once you've attained your degree you no longer need to go to school, but going to school probably wasn't a punishment in the first place.

I guess it depends on your personal outlook.

c.f. notions of transcending for other possible interpretations.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#94

Post by keiferski »

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

- Nietzche

The issue with this "only the present matters" shallow take is that the imagined future does matter in terms of the present. In other words, your imagined future influences your actions in the present, often to such a degree that it actually forms the future. If you discard these imagined futures, you end up with a "Eh, I have no agency anyway, why bother with difficult things?" and slide into an apathetic, presentist hedonism.

The game is about constructing imagined futures which are productive and optimistic, not simply checking out entirely.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#95

Post by peterwwillis »

keiferski wrote: post #94

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more…

Also, man is a laughing stock to the ape. "What are you doing without hair? Why so weak? Ugh, what is that you're eating?!" I can scarcely imagine what kind of unsustainable sacrifices the Übermensch will make in service to "progress".

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#96

Post by brazzy »

> In the last election he voted Conservative, persuaded in part, he says, by that need to get Brexit done, and laughing now at the delusional hypocrisy of “democrats”, who wanted a second referendum “without the option that people had voted for the first time even on the paper!”

And there he loses all credibility. Very nearly everything that makes Brexit such a fiasco stems from the fact that "the option that people had voted for the first time" was not concrete and well-defined.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#97

Post by peterwwillis »

edjrage wrote: post #83
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of enlightenment is to eventually not re-emerge.

Exactly. They say the Buddha was a very pragmatic man and the whole purpose of his practice was to find a way out of Samsara, the cycle of existence and suffering. I always wonder if he would have advocated for suicide if only he didn't believe in rebirth.

It always struck me as very weird that Buddhists want to escape suffering. That's just saying you want to escape life. Suffering is beautiful and one of the best parts of life (the only thing better is momentarily overcoming it). But having neither is just sitting around waiting to die.

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#98

Post by rhn_mk1 »

airstrike wrote: post #48
Razengan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life is preferable to the alternative Because you are alive. If you didn't exist you wouldn't have preferences.

> If you didn't exist you wouldn't have preferences. So if my living self prefers to live and my dead self has no preference, on average I prefer living over dying

Dying is not the opposite of living, it's its consequence and requirement (so far). If you prefer living, you also prefer dying.

It's also the inverse to being born.

Its opposite would be not living (and not being born, and not dying).

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#99

Post by [deleted] »

peterwwillis wrote: post #95
keiferski wrote: post #94

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more…

Also, man is a laughing stock to the ape. "What are you doing without hair? Why so weak? Ugh, what is that you're eating?!" I can scarcely imagine what kind of unsustainable sacrifices the Übermensch will make in service to "progress".

[deleted]

Re: John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

#100

Post by freetonik »

bredren wrote: post #53
serf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different take : the cat is trying to coerce you into an early feeding, because it recognizes that you as an entity have the power to make such things happen for it.

I think my cat can count to two. He only goes outside a leash, and we walk together 2-4 times a day. The harness has two plastic clips, and he will sit still until the second clip is secured. After that second sound, he will stand and walk to wait near the door.

This raises the question what counts as counting (sorry). It could be that the cat interprets two actions not as the multiple of one (thus counting 1 → 2), but as a single event with that exact pattern of sounds (thus interpreting "no event" → "event").
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