The motivation for every action of humans is to increase 'happiness'. Where happiness is defined as the perception of moving away from death. Every single thing you do, reading, gluttony, friendship, accumlate money, sleep, love, have plants in your house, take drugs, work to make other people happy, even caring about animals that you'll never meet, every little thing.

Except sex? I dunno about sex. Will have to think about it. There is surviving and then there is the instinctual drive to reproduce. 'Instinctual drives' though are normally about mistaken perceptions.

Do 'instincts' exist at all? I ask yet again. We have our rational mind and then whatever else is up there is outside of our rational mind. For every action the rational mind is actually the origin. Nothing can be dismissed to the hypothalmus or amygdala, etc. ((Or can it?) OK your blood pressure increase because of something you ate as opposed to a flight of fight response...etc. But the former is not an 'action'.) The baby suckling 'instinct' is an action but it is not an instinct. It is based on an attempt at increasing happiness. I don't know how exactly. But I think it follows that it must be so. Claiming anything is instincts is somewhat like saying 'godidit'. Endless actions, possibly all, have an element of the unconscious. But none are 'instinctual'. All things originate in attempts at rational thought. All actions originate in attempts at increasing 'happiness'.

Are animals sentient or are their actions the result of 'instincts'? They are the result of attempts at rational thought where the illogical directions that still manage to produce beneficial actions get passed down through evolution. The originating attempt at rational thought may have nothing at all to do with the beneficial action. But there is conscious and unconscious in animals the same as human. They have the same parts. They have conscious thought just at a lower ratio of conscious to unconscious most likely and thus more illogical actions. Still the basis is attempts at rational thought to increase 'happiness'.

Bleh.

We act in order to increase 'happiness'. We are happy when we perceive that we are moving away from death, no matter how untrue it may be. We have interest in increasing other people's happiness because we perceive that their increased happiness increases our own.

Fear. The chop chop against the tick tock. A balance? Or the eradication of both?

Without fear there can still be nihilism. Getting rid of fear is not enough. Nihilism can conquer fear. Fear can conquer nihilism. One could spend a lifetime bouncing between the two...

But it's not an either or. There are other options.

There is actually personally moving away from death. There is helping others literally move away from death and thus having the perception (not necessarily remotely true) that this is causing yourself to also move away from it. These are the primary concerns.

(sigh) Then there is personally being 'happy' through perceptions that aren't necessarily true. But the most happiness comes from choosing actions that result in longer term perceptions of moving away from death. Gluttony, drugs, etc doesn't do so much. Plants in your house? Sure, why not. Friendships. Sure. Love. Yes. Things that aren't necessarily actually moving you away from death at all. Plants not so much. (They are symbolic of a world full of life. Straight to the unconscious, reduces fear, IOW, reduces concerns that you might be moving towards death.) Love and friendships potentially really are.

Making a world with more love and friendships in turn could greatly increase your own 'happiness'.

The opposite of happiness is fear and sadness and nihilism.

I feel fear and nihilism. Fear is the perception that you're moving towards death and you ought to be doing something about it but you don't know what. Nihilism is that there's nothing at all you can actually do to move away from death.

Sadness and crying go together. Crying is a greater degree of sadness. They are where you perceive you're moving towards death and you are asking for help from someone outside of yourself. Whether or not you rationally really are meaning to ask for help has nothing to do with it of course.

Anti-happiness is fear, sadness and nihilism.

Can one actually manage to cry when they're only asking for help (mostly unconsciously of course) from other people as opposed to help from god? Hard to believe it could be possible.

What does it all come down to? False perceptions that you're moving away from death. Bad choices. How to correct them? Just make people smarter. That's all. But of nihilism? Sometimes false perceptions are the best possible choice...

.....

I don't use emotions to ask for help I guess. Thus I never actually get sad. At least I don't think I ever feel sad. I know I don't cry unless it's a movie. My anti-happiness it would seem is solely made up of fear and nihilism. But much more fear than nihilism. Nihilism is like boredom. The creativity killing thoughts are also the nihilistic thoughts.

Ultimately I prefer nihilism to fear. I happily kill the fear, kill the chop chop with the tick tock if possible. (That is if I can't put a finger on what in the world is really causing the fear.) If I can, then of course I should just solve it or perceive that I have and thus feel happy.

In plays and such, there's the protaganist and this part where a chorus sings about him. Drawing a blank concerning examples, but I recall it many times. And wondering about it. Who were these people, this chorus, where'd they come from? How bizarre.

They're the imaginary eyes. The reassurance of the imaginary eyes defeating the futility of life, the endless actions that don't matter, that are fogotten by all. They are angels watching your life.

And perhaps related to god. Being able to enjoy their place in the art. If you feel any positive feeling in them. You're "believing" in god/magic.

What are other examples where on a mostly unconscious level one is "believing" in "god/magic"? Crying... There were others but it's been a 17 hour day. (14 hour workday).

Army people are robotified but then to make up for it they disobey some silly cultural norm, like they make up x rated ditties to sing as they march about. This is an attempt to give some balance. So the soldier doesn't feel like such a rule obeying robot.

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We create and discard gods constantly unaware of what we're doing. We need a god to cry to. We need one to get angry at when we're angry at no one... We can best believe in magic when we're unaware we're doing it. We do it also when enjoying music...

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081201/sc_livescience/cleanpeoplearelessjudgmental
Saying clean words makes a person feel clean? Eh?

In response to harm

In response to harm there is sadness and/or anger. Are there any other alternatives? Crying requires belief in god, does any sadness at all require that...? Not sure. Is there some other undefined thing near sadness? Should sadness be broken down into different things? Is there a sadness that beseeches god or some person to help and then is there another kind of sadness?

The other is anger. For that one must believe in evil and thus think force is necessary. (Because the person knows they're causing harm and just doesn't care, thus reason will do no good; Reason versus Force).

What can cause a turn toward anger instead of to sadness? Some people are disposed to usually go towards anger instead of sadness. Of course, the main thing is simply believing in evil. That may explain it. Would you ever just get sad instead if you felt the cause of the situation was evil? If you feel that no one really is to blame, or the situation is just such a hard to thing to fathom that you can't see who could be culpable really... You could then turn to god for help, IOW turn to sadness.

Is there any other reason to turn to sadness? ...? Just in general if the situation is beyond the ability of humans to fix it. Or so far has been. If it seems hopeless. With no belief in evil there is no anger. Yet that only leaves sadness (if any generally negative emotion at all...) What does one feel if they don't believe in evil yet don't believe in god either? (And of course aren't just intellectualizing all the emotion right out of everything.)

Pity. Pity is a sort of sadness. Just a sadness for some other person; this profoundly stupid person. Sadness doesn't require belief in god. It's just that as a situation becomes hopeless we naturally start thinking about gods.

In this world of force, men with pride turn to anger instead of sadness.

To sadness there is potential crying; and men don't let some person who caused them harm, cause them to cry. They don't even let some person who caused them harm, cause them to be sad. Instead there is anger.

And he who turns to the rightwing adaptation first, wins. (He stabs the other guy in the back first, wins.) Anger is the rightwing adaptation.

The sad man is the loser (the jackals all laugh at him). The madman still has a chance...... :((((((( Or so he thinks. When really he's a bigger loser than the sad man.

Crying and Religion

Milan Kundera (eventually I want to note about 50 things he pointed out) pointed out a character trait of dividing oneself in to two pieces where there is the person and then a part of the person off to the side just observing. I do that to extreme.

To the point that once long ago I was crying about some truly horrific thing and instead I started really analyzing what was going on within me, what made it possible to cry, etc. I realized that I was doing something akin to praying/begging before the altar/statue of some god. I was realizing the existence of some godlike entity and asking it for help, showing it how pitiful my life was, asking it to take my pain. It was a very strong feeling. I suspect it's the same for others but, as with so many things, people don't carry this objective/observing of themselves to such extremes.

They say what makes us human is the ability to recognize ourselves, to recognize our existence, and for that matter (partially related) to look in mirrors and realize it's us. (Disproven with elephants and in general I don't assign any particular special trait to humans.) Thing is, though, anyway, we aren't actually that good at recognizing what the heck we're thinking, IMO. I'm often amazed to what degree people can't explain why they feel the way they do about a given thing. For example, "I'm just feeling depressed and I don't know why."

Anyway, I realized what it was necessary to be thinking about in order to be able to cry. The result was I went ten years without crying (only partially true as that probably wasn't the only reason of course). Whenever I thought about possibly doing so, I was stuck with understanding the reality of what would be occuring in my head, that I was so clearly believing in a "god".

And I do want to believe in a god. But my logic crushes my faith. (Except when it absolutely can't. I'm still bothering to live for example.) And so when close to crying, I'd instead think about the absurdity of god, the absurdity of the process it takes to cry and instead usually just laugh. It's funny the endless people calling themselves atheist who logically believe and don't believe all the same things as me who yet can cry up a storm utterly unaware of what the essential element it is that it takes to manage pulling that off at all.

What a ridiculous predicament we are in with the most intelligent occasionally crying up a storm to some unseen all powerful being who will then turn around and say, "Flying sky fairies? How ridiculous!"

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Also it seems generally, that focusing on the absurdity behind emotions can make it hard to still feel emotions. But eventually one can overcome this. I have reached the point where I can understand the absurdity and still go with it at least with crying. Well not so often.

Also of religion I think there is a huge difference between what people logically believe and how they live and the important thing is how one lives. If you're bothering to live at all, then you must not think it's in vain. If you really believe that you shall cease to exist and all memory of your existence shall simply disappear than you are living in vain. To logically face this would mean not bothering. Instead people say that's what they logically believe, yet, they keep getting out of bed most days. Thus they aren't living as atheists. There is no such thing actually.

And boy what an annoying thing pointing this out to atheists considering how I used to make fun of religionists. Very annoying to get the same ridicule in return now. The assumption of stupidity and the hate, etc. But yes, organized religion has been a horror in this world. No doubt of that.

But morality (acting in a fashion that doesn't clearly benefit the acter) is largely based on focusing on the very long term. Quite often well beyond any amount of time the person could still be alive to even potentially benefit from the action. This certainly doesn't mean theists are more moral as, again, what atheists logically believe and what they act like they believe often have nothing in common (same as with everyone else). And so a given atheist can go his whole life logically being atheist yet committing all these "altruistic" (to get technical beyond what I've done so far, real altruism doesn't actually exist, which isn't to take some ghastly Ayn Rand line) acts that can't possibly benefit himself in this life and never really understanding why he's doing so.