Want to share something I've been thinking about for a while.

One of the features of this world is that an individual has very little, if any control over it. Or over his / her life. If you really think about it, we have no control over the outcome. Working hard does not guarantee success and wealth. Being lazy does not guarantee poverty. Perfect driving on your part does not guarantee you getting there, because someone else can make a mistake and hit you. (I had just that happen, some guy lost control in a parking lot and hit my car, which was parked). Nor does being real stupid mean you will get into an accident. Nor does getting into an accident mean injury.

So the world is too complex. Too many variables. It is downright chaos. There is a saying that "Life is what happens when you have other plans". How true. The underlying truth is that an individual is almost wholly powerless in this world to do anything. Let's honestly look at it. I know I am. I cannot change problematic people in my life. A person has no control over when he is born, when he dies and essentially everything in between. No matter how many people you look at, there are no guarantees you will find a good, acceptable spouse. Marriage does not guarantee children. Statisticaly, a north american male can expect to live to let's say 75 years, on the average. But it is an entirely meaningless statistic, just an abstract number with no relation to your life and not to be used as a guide for anything. If you are 40, it does not mean you have 35 years left. You may have a few days left, or more than 35 years. You have no solid control over your health or emotional state.

It seems we walk through life with every day being uncertain, unpredictable and essentially having null control over ourselves and our environment and the people in our lives. When I was younger, I was idealistic, thinking I could save the world. I came to believe that the world will do what it wants, with our without my consent, and my impact on it is about as significant as a bug flying into a truck's windshield.

I am saying what seemingly nobody wants to admit. An individual is powerless. Notwithstanding some isolated individuals who have changed history - George Washington, Jefferson, Edison, and many others. Washington's famous river-crossing to defeat the british did not guarantee him anything. That's why it was an act of courage. He did not know if it would work. Now, 200 years later, we can look at it and analyze it and it's all so simple. It wasn't obvious then. Nor was it really obvious that the light bulb would work.

However, none of the above negates the fact that people have choices. This is all we have been given. We can choose, but we have no control over the consequences of these choices. This is a limited power, but it is a power anyway. That's all we have. We can choose option A, B or C, or all the way to Z, and it is not clear if it leads to 1, 2, 3 or 999. Trying is wholly within our control. Succeeding is utterly outside of our control.

It is interesting to see how the pop-culture has reflected this sense of powerlessness. Most movies shown today have people who have supernatural abilities, extra skills, or just luck. Example: Superman, Batman, James Bond, spiderman, robocop, all the commando-type movies and now this "Matrix" nonsense. It is escapism and an inability to deal with reality. It is a projection of what people think. The reality is exactly opposite. Our skills, effort, luck --- none of that controls the outcome. The outcome is not determined by anyone human it seems. Not sure what determines it.

This is one of the reasons why I am not an atheist. Atheism as a worldview and philosophy, is quite immature and naive in my opinion, because it holds that the man and man only is responsible for the world. That everything is a product of your effort. And rest is determined by chance. Even the creation of the world was by chance. I can point out instances which negate it. I maintain that the man is a relatively insignificant player in world's events. Major governments and regimes have much more control than the individual. And individuals in these regimes have no control over these regimes. It is not just dog-catchers who have no control over events. Even presidents have basically no real control. Some Roman emperors tried to save the Republic and they failed.

Therefore the obvious question that arises is if the man doesn't really control the world or his personal circumstances, who does? There are two possibilities - 1. Meaningless chance and luck and 2. God. In a God-based worldview, where a man does not determine the outcome of his effort (it's an illusion), it has to be God who really shapes the world. How it happens, or why, are answered questions, possibly unanswerable.

I think all this raises more questions than it answers but I think an individual's effort is synonymous with success, that's all you can do and hope that through divine inteference, your efforts will turn into something real and tangible. The mechanism or logic of that remains not clear (to me, anyway).

 

carpe....have you had a rough day....or week? with this post and the post about being single and your repsonse to the guy in love .... you seem kinda down. Just checking... after reading all of your thoughts it could really bring a guy down.

 

I would dispute the first of your last two obvious possibilities for explaining a little of what you are talking about,"1. Meaningless Chance".

At the beginning of your musings you suggested the world is complex, in fact too complex to understand. I would agree with this to an extent. There are too many variables out there to 100% accurately predict what will happen next. That is why we have things like insurance. Perhaps no human or computer will ever be able to describe what is really happening in the world, all the interconnections, and all the actions resulting therefrom, but that doesn't make 'it' meaningless.

In fact it makes it the exact opposite, everything must have meaning. For if it was no meaning there would be no chaos, no complexity, no variables.

Just because we cannot grasp or understand the whole picture at once doesn't make the picture any less valid.

As for God, I don't really understand...unless you have watched 'Clash of the Titans' too often.

Whistler

 

Crape - you have been down in that basement writing code waaay too long. Come out and join us.
Dono

 

Well, while I do agree that no matter what you do, something completely unpredictable CAN happen, but by working hard, you increase your chances of being succesful, or not, by drinking, you increase your chances of killing someone in a n accident at 0230 in the morning, while you cannot completely secure the outcome, you can chose an outcome, and make the decisions that will make it more likely than another choice might make it.

 

"Knowledge is Power"

 

whistler


Yeah, that's true. Just becaue someone fails to grasp the complexities, does not mean they are meaningless. Maybe nothing is.


Jimmy Dean

Well, I see your point, but you got to admit my theory has some credibility based on the number of those who see their every day commute as Indi 500 and somehow get there in one piece. I understand what you are saying, stick a screwdriver in your hand while fixing the truck and there is a real high chance of injury, but the converse does not hold, the most careful person can still injure himself, through no fault of his own really.

dono

Well, it is really interesting to figure out how the world really works. Because if you do, you no longer sleep-walk through events but assume a more positive active role in it. Though I must admit, despite all of my thinking, I still cannot figure out how the world works and the underlying processes. Probably never will. Really, a waste of time.


fisher_of_man


carpe....have you had a rough day....or week?

... or year.. or decade? Century maybe?

That's right. Progress is painful. That's what I want, to figure out how to live a meaningful life beyond consumerism and every day inconsequential fluff which consumes us.

Really, on a positive note, I think I am a verge of a breakthrough. Earlier, when I would work on cars, or the truck, or something like that, and couldn't figure something out, I would get mad, and quit - and then not try again. These days I've adapted a different attitude. Failure has become more acceptable to me than before and I am learning how to walk away with the right attitude. So I try more, and in the end have a higher percentage of successes.Auto stuff is just one example and with it, I did things I never thought I would. Sometimes I fail, other times I suceed but overall it is better than before where you are so afraid of failure you never try anything. I've acknowledged that I don't truly control the outcome and that somehow has given me more confidence in the process of trying.

 

Well, what I am saying is that while you can never know exactly what will happen, or exactly what will coem of your actions, you can make one or two outcomes more likely than another one or a hundred.

ex. you drive to work, careful, speed limit, you take proper care of your car/truck, you let little ole ladies and their buicks in...blah blah blah, however, there is still that chance you hit a piece of glass, your tire blows, while carrening of the road your car flips and you die...it sucks, but its life......

where as, you can drive 95 to work everyday, never take care of your car, drive recklessly, and make it to work everyday, safe as can be. Until you get hit by a drunk driver on the way home, and no matter how you were driving the same thign woulda happened.

Her is how I look at it, I speed, you say it makes me more unsafe, how about that time that half a mile behind me, and 18 wheeler flipped, and caused a big pile-up. I i had only been doin 10 over, I would have been involved, but I was doin 20 over, and was ahead of the accident when it happened. Now If I was doin the speed limit, maybe I woulda been far enough back to comee to a safe stop, or been hit when someone else slammed on their brakes and slid, or what if the accident had been antoehr 1/2 mile back? If i was speeding at all I would have avoided it, If I was driving how I was supposed to, I might have gotten myself killed...It is all a decision, with alot of luck, I choose to drive fast, if soemthing happens, maybe I can speeed away to stay out of it. And my truck can still stop faster than most vehicles on the road.

 

things happen and its up to US as humans to deal with those occurences in the best manner, and to learn and grow from those experiences. its part of the human process and while some things may randomly happen to anyone, i see that that is the nature of existence and i try to learn and grom from even trivial experiences...

 

Jimmy Dean

Good point, that's what I meant that based on what I learned, there is no true correleation between cause ---> effect. We don't have a firm control of outcome. We have some control of outcome, definitely. But not all and not most of it.

Just yesterday I was driving my Caprice at night and run into a deer. Or a deer ran into me, however you look at it. I was going the speed limit on these curvy narrow country roads and well, it just happened. Lost one of its turn signal lights and dented the door. This is the second deer attack that car had in that same place, an earlier one resulted in another dent, also on the same side.

I was doing my best to produce one outcome -- that is get from point A to point B in planned amount of time and that got disrupted despite my best effort.

Oh, I got there anyway, but later than planned. Other consequences were - I had to remove the dead animal from the road, et cetera; now I have to find that turn signal, and so on. I would have been really disappointed had it happened to my 'heavy duty' pickup.

someone can say I should have been more careful. I could have been, or maybe should have been, nevertheless, I wasn't. Or maybe I was, but it happened anyway. So this is modus operandi of life. You do A hoping to get B, but you get B+10 which ends up C.

 

Attitude is everything.Sometimes we have to surrender to win.
Give others the right to be wrong.Forgive yourself as others have forgiven you.Everything happens for a reason.Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.Look hard and you will realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Just food for thought.

 

Hey Carpe. What you said is true, but i like to help the odds a little when i can. I wander what the odds of a realllll cold beer being hid in the frig are.

 

Man, Carpe,

You have smoked my head again on this one, I enjoy your mind provoking posts, but I agree somewhat with the others, you seem a bit down on things for now, but that too, will change. Life runs in cycles, kind of like a sine wave on a o-scope, your on top of the wave a while, then the law of cause and effect kicks in, and then you have to ride the low curve a while.
I have only been on this earth for 51 years, but I know one thing for certain, there is nothing simple about life. You just jump in and live it, and do the best you can, and try not to get a answer for everything that happens, because there isnt one. I read the paper today, where a young mother and her two children, 4 and 6, were killed in a head on collision with a drunk driver, the dd had scrapes and bruises, and lives to kill again. Wheres the answer for that one ? If one sits and tries to makes sense of it , it will drive them to insanity.
I remember when I was 21 years old, working for a electrical contractor, we were doing the electrical refurbishing on a infirmary for the nuns, at the convent. As I went from patient room to patient room daily performing my job, I started noticing that almost all the elderly nuns were mobile, with canes or walkers, but most were still mobile without assistance. I started to wonder to myself, why are there so many nuns in here, that are seemingly , still functional?? After about a week of working there , the answer became quite clear , they were mentally incapacitated. Most of them would walk or sit,, all day long , just verbally ranting jibberish. Now at that time , Alzeimers wasnt spoken of much, ( I dont personally recall hearing the word anywhere at that time) so this may have been the primary ailment of the nuns, and just not diagnosed .
But myself, being a Dr. Phil wanttabe, I see it this way. The nuns spent their entire life, devoted to faith and helping others. One could not ask for a more commendable life choice, and I am thankful that people get the "calling" to do so. But, on the other hand, is a person really mentally equipped or designed emmotionally to handle a life time of solitude, with days upon days, upon hours, after hour , of praying and seeking answers ?? I think there have been a lot more people, than has been accounted for , that have driven themself to insanity, searching for the "answers" to the meaning of life. ( not implying you will So, in my simple mind, I think that is why God put women , wives, children,and Ford trucks here for us men. They keep us occupied ALL the time, and we dont get to sit and think TOO deep about anything, ha, once again, my post is true, but dont take it as law, just an opinion, cheers to ya guy,

 

Yeah, I think you are right.

I used to have a high-paying job in a cubicle, which I've quit because I got so bored and felt I was wasting my life. Then the IT market crashed, I came back to the farm, did nothing but read a lot of interesting books, thought about things... searched for answers...

I've made a lot of progress in my thinking and every time a question is answered, more questions are introduced. So I think you are correct. All these Big-Picture type questions about the world and condition of mankind are just total utter BS. These days, I am only interested in issues pertaining to the individual. In my case --- me. There is no big picture. There is only small picture involving me.

I've become much more content, too with what I learned. My anxiety about these big issues has slowly disappeared and has been replaced by faith, I suppose. And focusing on what *I* can do.

It is a Biblical truth. The best you can do is all you can do. Never mind the world. Never mind the outcome. We control our decisions 100% (you have total power to choose A over B... or Z) but we have a weak grasp on outcomes of those decisions, because we don't control other people, or the weather, or the stock market and a zillion other variables (literally). So it is pointless to even worry about the outcome. Not my problem. God's problem if you will.

Interesting story. I know someone with a 80 year old mother, walks around, not real sick, but her mind is gone. Totally so. I tell you, being in that conditon is real scary.

 

Outcome, schmoutcome! I'm enjoying the ride...


When life becomes too much work, what are you going to do - resign? I don't think so...

PS: It helps to simplify (I think an algebra teacher once told me that - might have been philosophy or social studies too though. I don't remember )