This is an experiment. A test. A trial. The goal? I want to see if I
can cheer myself up by sheer will power. Verbalizing the process may
help. Let's begin.
It's amusing, that I would try this. This in itself has already
started to cheer me, brighten my mood. Already I have a devilish grin
on my face, for no good reason at all. Why is this? Can one really
cheer oneself by sheer will power. It's not something I read,
something somebody did for me. It's just a way of thinking. It's easy,
try it. But when your depressed, it can seem impossible. Why the bad
mood? I don't know, but there it is. What can I do to get rid of it? I
must try really hard. A bad mood can kill you; you end up thinking of all the
bad things and worrying about every little detail, when that does no
good. It's not productive work. It adds nothing. It affects people's
reactions toward you. People don't like talking to or even looking at
someone who's got a sour look on their face. So if you're socially inept
as it is, a bad mood only makes it more so. Remember to smile. Open
yourself to the wonder of the universe. Try typeing with your eys
closed. It can be fun. It can also lead to a lkot of typos. Hmm.
Eat something. You're shaking like a leaf. Too much coffee, have to
stop drinking the stuff. Makes you jumpy.
What can i do, what can i do? Think a happy thought. You are
ultimately responsible for your own happiness, and your own well
being. It's up to you; no one else can do it for you. So do it
yourself. Take a deep breath, continue typing. Smile at a stranger. If
they smile back you'll feel all the better. If they frown, smile all
the larger, or laugh like a lunatic. Maybe be a lunatic.
What if there is no free will? There basically three
possibilities. The first one is that there is a god, maybe God, maybe
some other god, and they defined some initial conditions for the
Universe, and are just letting it run. No divine intervention. Just
running a simulation for the real thing. But the thing is, there's no
free will, all thoughts, conscience, sentient life, all an illusion
really, an excuse we make up so that we can think ourselves better
than the animals. It's still all just chemicals, cause and effect,
everything. We are simply the sum of our parts, but we've fooled
ourselves into believing otherwise. This case required evolution, or
punctured equilibria, or some sort of mechanism for improvement, but
this is not at odds with the god who set the initial conditions. The
god is just watching the simulation play out. So the entire Universe
can be described by science, because the creator has made rules for how
the Universe should operate. This is maybe not science humans could ever
understand, but science none the less.
A second possibility, there is a god, or gods, and it or they
participate actively in the world. It or they perform miracles, and so
on, but they are themselves a product of the universe, and cannot
exist outside it. The question about free will comes up again, and the
existence of gods allows for things outside the realm of that which
may ever be described by science. So maybe we have free will or maybe
not. In this case science can never completely describe the universe;
there is no grand unified theory.
Perhaps there are no gods at all. Those are a fabrication of
humanity, created to give some guiding rules, something bigger than
themselves, something to believe in. Or maybe a way for the stronger, more
ingenious people in a society to control others. Cause and effect
could again reign, or something higher than science could be at the
root of sentience. It could go either way, a universe completely
described by math, or a universe only partially describable by
math.
Hmmm, I think I took a little tangent. This will be a daylog for a
while, and maybe when I feel like cleaning up the logical fallacies and
straightening the arguments, I'll put this little tangent in a node of
its own. The above has far reaching consequences, especially in the
area or human relations, particularially in love. It raises the
question about whether love is something more than chemical and
hormonal responses. I would prefer to be a romantic and say there is
something more, some deep and timeless connection, but the more I
think about the nature of the universe, the more I think everything is
just cause and effect. This does not negate the illusion of free will,
we still control parts of our lives, but cause and effect dictates a
destiny of sorts. What I mean I guess is that saying that because the
Universe is cause and effect, I don't have free will and therefore I
an not responsible for my actions is wrong. That's an excuse, and not
a very good one. The illusion of free will allows us to make decisions
and control our own destinies as far as we are concerned.
Oh yeah, this touches death heavily too. If the universe is cause
and effect, then when you die, you're dead, just dead. Not in heaven,
not in hell, just dead. Plain old dead. Dead like a door nail. This
does not allow one to behave badly just because there is no eternal
punishment. That comes in how you affect those around you. How you are
remembered is your risk or reward.
This is getting a little heavy. It's time for lunch. I'll straighten
this all out later.