Framing is the way we look at things. Having a baby. It could be "magical," could be mistake, could be simply the further reproduction in the evolution of a species.
I'd like to point out that we frame almost everything in a way that our parents and society have taught us (which makes a lot of sense), BUT that makes us unaware. I'll give a few examples. The idea of a birthday wish already assumes we don't have everything we want. So does the idea of a dream. The fear of death is ingrained in us as something horrible, but it happens to everyone. How can it be horrible? Our society emphasizes the importance of the individual. And in the grand scheme of things, our only affect on the world is likely to be our children. Yet we believe that there is nothing more important than the self. Society emphasizes having a great career. But there are a lot of careers that manipulate the masses in order to achieve greater profits. And again, the concept of the self is more important, so we want to make money at the expense of others.
I think about a certain frame a lot. It's one where you can put a creature in an environment and watch it. Like if you watched rats or puppies or monkeys in their natural habitats, what happens? And now,
if you watched a video of yourself, what would you see? I go to work 5 days a week, and probably spend of my non-work hours alone. I eat well, exercise from time to time, and I'll see my friends maybe 2 nights a week. Once a month, I visit my family.
Try this exercise with your own life and someone else's life. What would life be like as a billionaire? What would life be like as a lunch lady? Or a sweatshop worker, or a prostitute, or a soldier, etc. Think of how your day to day would change, and how your relationships with other people are different. Imagine yourself as another person, then think about the community, the country, the human race, then how we fit in this universe. And on every level, the frame is different.
On the universe level, we are all part of the same flow of events. We are the product of some series of events that created the Earth, created life, and life has evolved to our current state. And the universe will continue, we will die, our offspring will evolve and the flow of things continues. Yet sometimes it seems like we work so hard to go against the flow of things. Society gives us the impression that we should all want to be rich models with fancy things, but statistically, less than 1% of people can obtain all of these things. And if that's the case, then were we born likely to be depressed. But from a different frame, aren't we incredibly unlikely to be born? In which case, we should be born likely to be ecstatic.
"The fear of death is ingrained in us as something horrible, but it happens to everyone. How can it be horrible?"
ReplyDeletei think something can be considered horrible even if it happens to everyone/is inevitable. lets say you fall and hurt yourself/get a paper cut/lose $20 etc. these things happen to everyone almost inevitably as well, and i would consider them to be a negative part of life.
Yay, my next post was going to be about opposites actually. Negative implies there is something positive. And these concepts are made up and are relative. People create these terms and assign things as good or bad usually due to human instinct. Anyway, it's fair that we think of things as being a negative part of life, but I think it's important that we also have a frame of mind that is resilient to things that will happen or is likely to happen in the future. I think the way I worded this in the post is a little misleading. But my point in the post was more "We should not let nature/natural things consume us with fear" and my opposites point was like "What we think is 'bad' may not actually be 'bad'."
ReplyDeleteLike you said about human instinct, it's very natural and makes complete sense that we focus on these negative aspects, fear life and make sure our personal needs are taken care of first. It's evolutionarily an advantage to focus on death and make it such a scary thought - if we didn't have that instinct, there is a much greater probability that that species doesn't make it through the gene pool, and so right now descriptively, this phenomena that you are describing occurs. In this sense, I don't think it's artificial at all, and it makes complete sense why we assign these values - it's part of what has kept our species alive.
ReplyDeleteThe next part is what you are talking about - being able to move past the instinct and control it. This is very much what the Existential philosophers say - understand that our world is out of our control and that we inevitably will die, but that you should come to grip with it and lead life to whatever purpose you may find. In Existential speak, you must understand that Existence comes before Essense - you must accept the human condition before proceeding onwards. Then, you must live an Authentic life - understand your freedom and choices and create yourself.