threegallonsoficecream

[threegallonsoficecream]

Do you know what it is like, my friend, to stand in front of a man who wants to physically crush you? Above you he towers - fit - strong. So confident that he looks at you with near contempt, until you lock up in combat. Then the smirk is gone, replaced with the strained face of battle. Can there be any feeling in the whole realm of human experience so ancient, so enduring, so utterly satisfying, as that of accepting his surrender? His gaze lowered in respect; exhaustion, pain, and failure the fathers of his newfound humility. We measure ourselves in many ways, but none is so rich as that of entering the fray and walking home with the riches of victory.

Renzo Gracie

[threegallonsoficecream]

Politeness and Good Mannerisms

“Because it’s good manners.” “Because it’s polite.” These statements are familiar, if nostalgic to a degree. Most mature people don’t hear these phrases any more, or at least not directed at them. Politeness and good manners are ingrained in well-socialized adults to a degree such that the premise of these two example statements is never brought into question. However, let us bring it into question now.

What is the premise of these two statements? They are quite simply based on a set of behaviors that are both demanded by society and incapable of claiming true kindness as their motivation. Take, for example, the classic response (in English-speaking society) to a sneeze. Offering literal verbal blessings, whatever the reason, does nothing whatsoever beyond allowing an impression that a requirement was fulfilled. The exact origins of this cultural meme are widely debated, but none disagree that its religious original intentions – including protection from demon possession, the Black Death, the loss of the soul, or sudden death – are no longer valid. Many no longer, or never did, believe in the fundamental ideological system of Christianity that led to this habit.

This same argument applies to any behavior that fits the two-pronged premise outlined earlier: that it is demanded or expected as behavior in a well-socialized individual, and that it cannot claim an actual beneficial effect other than the fulfillment of an expectation. Greetings, goodbyes, thanks, welcomes, pleases, hand-shaking, elbows on tables, purely age-based respect hierarchies – all fit this premise. You will find that the inevitable response to a questioning of these cultural memes is a variation of one of the two responses given earlier, and that any further questioning will be answered either with circular reasoning or none at all.

I find these behaviors to be indefensible. It is true that acting out the motions does not take a significant amount of time and energy, but that is hardly a reason to do so. These behaviors are useless and wasteful, and I see them as often-exploited opportunities to express sentiment that is not genuine. If you truly wish to offer welcome –that is, inform the person that he or she is literally well come in every sense of the word – then offer food, drink, and a bed if you are in your house, assistance if you are in public, or any significant action that indicates either that it was a well (good) thing for the person to come to you or that it was a well thing for you that the person came to you. If you truly wish to offer thanks, show genuine materialistic or intellectual appreciation. Detail exactly why and how you appreciate the actions of another.

Dispense with useless polite expected mutterings and express your ever-nuanced sentiment with the full capacity gifted to you by your sentience.

[threegallonsoficecream]

OP, if I'm reading you correctly, you're asking about the causal origin of aesthetic appreciation. I think part of the answer lies in the immense human capacity for the recognition and sorting of patterns. Which patterns we prefer depend, in my opinion, mostly on our experiences. In other words, nurture over nature - mostly. 

However, this goes beyond society. Infants have very few reflexes, and they  have to do with rapid or jarring stimuli. As we age and acquire more experiences, we develop other reflexes - reactions to smells, sights, sounds, and sensations. We can even overcome our initial reflexes - for example, loud/arrhythmic music (cough black metal cough), bright light, blue cheese, hot peppers, and straight-up old kinky pain - with an accumulation of positive experiences with such stimuli. These experiences need not, by definition, be dictated by social pressures. One single positive initial experience is often enough to pique an interest or preference. 

Back to patterns. Essentially, stimuli are patterns - often very complex patterns, but still patterns nonetheless. An appreciation for a complex anti-dimensional object like a song cannot be isolated to one cause. However, the patterns exhibited by such objects are just that - patterns. Patterns have distinct characteristics and are therefore identifiable. 

I will assume that, as you wrote your post in English and like LP/RKS, you were socially conditioned by Western society. This influences several things - such as, to a significant extent, the preferred intervals between frequencies in your favorite music. Western music is entirely based on a twelve (or eleven)-note octave system, with occasional bends or intermediate notes. Eastern music - defined here as the music originating in the indigenous cultures of Eastern Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and some parts of Western Asia - does not restrain itself to this system, and as such (although this is not the only reason - rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and aesthetic differences exist as well) sounds odd and sometimes unpleasant to one who is accustomed to the patterns of western music. Your music preferences - once enough information is acquired about them - can be predicted to a good degree of accuracy. Music-streaming software like Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and Pandora show that algorithms can be written to do just that. Essentially, the properties you associate with certain patterns become associated with other (similar) patterns, and your likes and dislikes stem from other likes and dislikes. 

There are some caveats - for example, we generally appreciate the property of predictability in patterns. We are animalistically satisfied when a pattern fulfills our expectations or toys with them in specific ways. Patterns that are too unpredictable are unpopular among most people - atonal or arrhythmic music, some modernist poetry, animal stampedes, and rapid social upheaval are some examples of this general principle. 

Essentially, aesthetics can be boiled down to complex pattern preference.

People: What Are We?

Here’s the thing: we’re all biologically similar, right? But at the same time, we’re completely different from each other. If you think about, we’re even completely different from our past selves. There seem to be infinite possible personalities, but I don’t know if it can all be explained through DNA and circumstance. I understand that we all go through different lives which affect us differently, but how exactly does it work? Like, okay. So we listen to a song, our brain releases serotonin as a response which makes us happy, and so we listen to the song again. But how does our brain know to release serotonin instead of some other hormone that would make us not want to listen to the song again? Who decides which song we like and which songs we don’t? Who decides what makes us happy and what makes us sad? These things seem pretty automatic, so I don’t think we really decide this for ourselves. Once we know whether something will make us happy, we can decided to do it again, but how do we get that first data point? That first spark that tells us what we like?

Sure, society plays a role. If everyone listens to Arianna Grande, then I’m much more likely to want to listen to her, either because I want to fit in or because I’m often exposed to her music. So why do I prefer LP? Or Rainbow Kitten Surprise? They sound very different from Arianna Grande. Nobody told me about them, I found them myself. There was no peer pressure, no need to conform. I just enjoy their music. But why?

I don’t know if we have souls, or if we’re part of some monistic force of existence, or if we really are just atoms buzzing around. But even if I believe in any one of these concepts, there are still more questions that don’t have answers. There will always be more questions. No matter how unsure I am of the nature of humanity, there is one thing that I do know: our perception of the world is so much more limited than the truth that exists in our universe. 

[threegallonsoficecream]

Why does curiosity exist?

Knowledge is important, and so is discovery, as ways to better our quality of life. Yet they are also manifestations of our hideously selfish perception of the universe. Why is it so important that we know everything? Wouldn’t the universe go on whether we understood it or not? Ultimately, our need for knowledge comes down to two things: a genuine sense of engagement and curiosity in our surroundings while recognizing our particular insignificance, or a pathological need to believe that our understanding of reality somehow alters it in order to achieve a sense of importance in the universe. While both of these motives encourage progress towards the same goal, they originate from entirely different locations. The former grows from grounded serenity while the latter emerges from a place of insecurity and denial. I still don’t know which is the reason for my existentialism and scientific curiosity, which honestly scares me a little bit. Actually, it kind of scares me a lot.

–Em

[threegallonsoficecream]

You're shot out of a cannon. There's no leadup, no warmup. I felt like I was actually strapped to the outside of a rocket going through space and through clouds, the g-forces pulling down my cheeks - and it was just this mental storm, with nothing to orient myself. There was no space, there was no time, there was no self. And it was just unendurable, this punishing roar in my ears. Someone who had done it said, 'Eventually, it's like a takeoff, and you get into orbit, and it's very nice at that point.' But what happened with me is, I had the storm... the metaphor I used is, I can't explain this - you can't tell a story without place, time, and character, right? I had none of those. It was this inchoate energy. And I said it was like before the big bang. Remember that? Well, nobody does, but there was pure energy, and no matter yet, and no time yet.  That's where I was. It was horrible. It was terrifying. I thought I was dying. But then you come down. There's kind of a suborbital flight, and then I started coming down. Suddenly I could feel, 'Oh, I've got a body.' I was touching my legs, 'I have a body.' 'Oh, there's a floor. There's space!' And then there's time, and the universe reconsolidated. And I had this feeling of incredible gratitude, not just for being alive - which all of us have had at one point or another - but for the fact that anything existed. I was grateful for the fact that there is something and not nothing, because I'd seen what nothing was like.

Michael Pollan

[threegallonsoficecream]

We should, I think, once we have rid ourselves of inhibitory, destructive, restrictive, and frankly ridiculous social structures, take as our guiding principle the advancement of human happiness. In order to do this, several assumptions should first be made. I tend to think that these assumptions should be obvious, but I will state them. Firstly, we must be fully aware of changes in our understanding and knowledge. As a direct consequence, secondly, we must recognize that our definition of human happiness, and of all the terms and concepts related to our advancement of it, must be reevaluated at every possible juncture. This means that the ideas I am about to outline, while certainly better than our current situation, are not by any means perfect, and I would be very surprised if any of them turn out to be exactly spot-on.

We must entirely reevaluate our ideas of sexuality, substance use, economics, government, and morality. Everyone is wrong.

We must incorporate a full historical understanding of the development of these complex concepts. We must adapt an egalitarian hunter-gatherer attitude towards sexuality, a welcoming and scientifically exploratory attitude towards consciousness-altering substances, and a disdain for transactional value-placeholders like money which enable insane constructs like the financial industry. We must have an awareness that any government is completely at the mercy of the collective people it governs and that any government should act like a whipped dog: that is, to cower at the slightest hint of dissatisfaction from its master. We must remove Beliefs from any process that decides how one lives a life and how one affects the lives of others. 

[threegallonsoficecream]

The only point at which I will grant the presence of God, by whatever name, is in the Creation. The real Creation, the Big Bang, the beginning of our understanding of time and space.

Religions are simply another in the endless list of rather obvious power-based hierarchical systems designed to enhance the power of a select few at the expense of the lives and freedom of others. Their principles are, for the most part, transparent and meaningless, and their texts are carefully selected and maliciously abused collections of allegorical stories. I do not and cannot believe in the Christian deity, or any Abrahamic god, or Eastern god, or African or New World spirits, or any supernatural entity that has ever – at least to my knowledge – been proposed to exist.

However, I do not know what caused the Big Bang. This event violates our intuitive human concept of causality, and so here I cannot point out scriptural, moral, or practical problems with the argument that claims this is evidence of a Creator. I must admit, with some difficulty, that this is in fact evidence for a Creator.

This is as far as I can go, however. To extrapolate from this a conclusion that any religion currently in existence is therefore valid is to go too far. These systems have crucial flaws in their very ideological and intellectual bedrock that go further than this argument can reach to help them. In fact, I believe it to be wiser, once at this point that is my logical limit, to simply drop the matter.

If this entity is capable of dictating the unbreakable and universal laws of physics, of atoms and matter, gravity, light, mathematics, the dimensions in which we exist, even logic itself, then it is beyond our capacities in every way. It is beyond our comprehension. It is beyond our projected, agriculture-induced moral systems, and our petty nationalistic, geographic, and ethnic squabbles. It is beyond us in every way. At this point, attempting to discuss the effect that this argument should have on our behavior as humans - or to attempt to use it to dictate the behavior of other humans - is to admit to having delusions of grandeur on an order of magnitude such that one understands what it is to be a literal God.

[threegallonsoficecream]

I cannot begin to explain my frustrations with my fellow humans. I see them, all of us, from infants to the dying elderly, as insecure liars bent on simply living and enjoying the animalistic and intellectual pleasures this life has to offer. We collectively decide to fail to incorporate a perspective of our own infinitesimal status into our worldview. Most obsess over objects and symbols and actions, all meaningless things that will have absolutely no effect on anything other than their insignificantly small circle of influence.

I must do all of these things as well if I am to succeed in their world, as there is no other. If my existence is to continue, as I wish it to do, then I must become able to provide for myself in a self-sufficient manner. This entails playing their game. I do not want to play this game, and therein lies my dilemma. I am in school, to get a job, so I can have a roof over my head and food in my stomach, so I can… what? When does it end? When I die? What matter my accomplishments when they will have no net effect on humankind in the long run, when humankind itself will not matter in the long run?

For me, as of now, all the human pleasures taste false. The enjoyment of food, sex, love, material possessions, wealth, fades when I consider that I have been programmed to enjoy these things. I feel betrayed by my own physical body. I think I am pure consciousness attempting to exist without the dead weight of my body. Everything I am motivated (whether by society or biology) to do now is predicated on the fact that I must 1) maintain my body and 2) pass on my genetics, as is the physical goal of an organism such as myself. I will maintain my body insofar as all actions that, directly or indirectly, affect the keenness of my mind, but all else, and especially where my genetics are concerned, is simply an annoyance at this point.

I see my peers stumbling like blindfolded children in an unfamiliar room in their interactions with each other and in their awareness of themselves. I see my elders doing the same thing, albeit more gracefully. Perhaps they could be likened to blindfolded children stumbling about in a familiar room rather than an alien one, but the effect is effectively identical. It is disheartening to see such reflections of oneself in others wherever one might look, and it is this disheartening that I must reconcile within myself now. All are active believers in some multiple delusions, whether they be religions, econopolitical doctrines, or even the idea of their own free will.

I would like to be able to confidently say that we must wake up, but even that is not important, as the laws of chance dictate that at some point in time, the human race will no longer exist. Perhaps we will evolve past this current form, but it is more likely that we and the entirety of our knowledge will be destroyed in some astronomical cataclysm that renders all the work of humanity through all recorded history moot.