Monday, May 18, 2009

Definitions

The seven 'deadly sins': Pride, Anger, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, Greed

Gluttony, greed and (excessive) lust are all variants of the same thing. They're all attempts to move away from nonexistence which end up being excessive. (Although I'm not too sure when (if ever) lust gets excessive exactly. Fellini's Casanova?) They are straightforward attempts at happiness that are failing.

Sloth or laziness is an existential problem where you can't really see the point in doing anything. No matter what you do you won't actually be moving away from nonexistence so why bother?

Envy is where you see that someone else has some valuable thing that you perceive possessing would move you away from nonexistence. Envy is tied into hate/anger as we're hardly planning on using reason to take away the thing from the person. Instead some form of force is used.

Anger is about wanting to use force because you perceive that some person stands between you and decreasing your distance from nonexistence. And you think they can't be reasoned with.

(Excessive) Pride is more interesting. The dichotomy is pride versus humility. But it's quite close to being closedminded versus openminded. Excessive pride is like arrogance, being too sure of yourself, too convinced you're right, that you're wonderful, etc. All of that is basically just closemindedness. While being humble instead can mean seeing that you could be wrong, that you hardly know anything, etc, which means basically being openminded.

But of course what they really wanted was for people to bow down to god, considering him all powerful and themselves as disgusting bugs in comparison. This idea entirely trumped the openminded/closeminded idea that would have been of such great use. So people think of pride versus humility and they picture some imaginary god that is so so great compared to them. They're pitiful in comparison and should meakly follow the rules he has already laid out for them. And so that's what they do instead of seeing pride versus humility as being the same as closedminded versus openminded. And so they're humble before an imaginary god but arrogant before all real people.

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'Unhappiness' is the perception of moving closer towards nonexistence. The essential types are anger, fear, sadness and existential nihilism (boredom, laziness...). When you perceive that you are moving towards nonexistence is there any alternative than these 4 essentials?

To try to overcome your feelings of anger (or hate, frustration, annoyance...) you can at least recognize what's going on. You think someone can't be reasoned with so you're subverting to your monkey ancestry and wanting to basically beat the crap out of them to force them to do as you say.

It is at least better to feel anger then fear. With anger you've at least got an idea what you actually want to do to remedy the situation. Some entity is causing you to move closer to nonexistence and they need some force! Fear is on the other hand perceiving that you're moving towards nonexistence and being very doubtful about what action you can possibly take.

Sadness is the form of fear where you want help from others. Sadness is better then fear right up till others reject you/will not give you any help. Although at least then you've got a bit more to work with to turn instead to anger...

One can get away from anger, fear and sadness by going instead to existential nihilism. (Instead of being stressed, realize that life is ultimately a short and meaningless thing.) And then when they get sick of that they can hopefully instead go get stressed out again.

Otherwise one can attempt to change their perception of the situation. (By actually changing the situation or by some other way.)

I'm not entirely sure where disgust/revulsion belongs. It is the considering of some thing that we perceive would move us closer to nonexistence but that we don't really perceive it to be that much of a real threat. And/or we take a step back and try to look at it 'objectively'. It seems it can be tied to fear or anger.