Comment by JohnDeHope | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnDeHope | Hacker News Reader

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This reminds me of Candide. I can't find a quote that perfectly lines up with TFA. But this comes close. Read the book if you're piqued.

  "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there "ut operaretur eum", that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."

  "Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable."

The author of the post here is coming at this idea from one specific angle: it's worse than you think. But this is a specific instance of a larger insight. None of it makes any sense, nor has any meaning. He could go one step further with all of this. yes, it's true that your to do list is a complete f-up. No doubt. But it's not just your to do list, or your imposter syndrome, or etc. It's all of everything. The whole of existence. It's all just one complete cosmic joke of a guy slipping on a banana peel joke.

I think the Hitchhiker Guide Galaxy books by Douglas Adams captured this. When I was a kid I didn't realize the existential dilemmas that kept cropping up. I just thought it was funny. Now in my mid-40s it's still funny, but it feels a lot more true, too.

I'm also getting vibes of this from Jesus.

  John 18:36 Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place."

My angle being, this world is not what's important. Sure it's important because you're here now. There is that. But don't get too caught up in it. It's all going away soon. It doesn't really ultimately matter if you're late to your daughter's orthodontist appointment.

From what I'm beginning to realize more and more is that the central problem in humans is the mind: the constant intrusions of random thoughts, generating self-conflicts based on past remembrances which are also projected in the future.

Your mind is obviously out of control: if you had your mind under full control you would be able to sit for 1 hour in a dark room and had zero intrusive/distracting thoughts. And yet if you try this you might last a few minutes but then you'll start to fantasize and get lost in future/past images and you won't even notice when you got sucked into them, it happens so automatic, without one noticing it.

So thus the question becomes: how can one deal with this? What needs to be done/seen for one to overcome these random thoughts?

I'm exploring this now through Krishnamurti. There are many Buddhist monks, but how many of them reach enlightment? Practicaly zero, so obviously they are doing something very, very wrong.

It seems like what should follow from this is rejecting the idea that the brain should be under conscious control. Brains just don't work that way. Why not find a way to make use of that?

>Brains just don't work that way. Why not find a way to make use of that?

If that were true this means that anything you try and do is futile because you will always revert to a hardcoded state, basicaly meaning that you are a full robot.

I have experienced permanent changes through understanding/seeing my own mental patterns.

So yes, the brain can be brought under consious control, but one needs to see it's patterns: once you see a pattern it dissolves, freeing you from the thought.

But to truly see a pattern "in your bones" aka have an "euroka moment" can be quite difficult at times. Intellectualizing/philosophising is a dead end. It must be an instinctive realization, not an intellectual one.

So it's not that you bring the brain under consious control through action: it's via negativa:

You regain control by removing the random/conflincting thoughts.

Why so binary? There are states between full control and no control. You can learn about yourself and make changes without silencing unconscious thought.

In fact, intrusive thoughts can be a valuable tool. Last week I found myself wondering "what if I have stage IV cancer?" in response to a tiny medical issue. So I thought about it. Developed a plan. Decided I was satisfied with it.

Then I thought about the changes I wanted to make, and started thinking about whether some of them would be a good idea anyway. I'm still thinking about it, as the weights on various choices are a lot different if I'm not actively dying. But there's stuff to think about. Choices to make.

And this is because I actually make use of the random things my brain produces, instead of attempting to remove them.

Oh and the Bhagavad Gita hits this too. "Thou hast power only to act, not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result, and without succumbing to inaction." Really this is a universal that every philosophy has to speak to. It's really interesting.

As a Christian I've been attempting to focus on the concept of letting go of the worldly and focusing on "Kingdom". The unique challenge that I'm finding is that I'm not particularly tied to my possessions, positions, or wealth but it's important for me to provide those things to my wife and kids.

I can deny myself those things but I find it nearly impossible to deny my family those things. We live way above average and I would prefer at minimum to bring it down to average but it's so hard to say no when I have the ability to say yes.

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