What motivates you, day after day, to contemplate the kinds of existential questions we pose and respond to here? What are you looking for? What do you want? Kudos for digging up (and sharing) an ulterior personal motive that keeps you active here!
Why do I hang out with the inmates at the loony bin? Because there is no āoutside the loony binā - its loony bins all the way down.
So we are bound to do our best, and freedom from the self seems like an important topic.
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We are all lost in the funhouse. Perhaps knowing this is freedom?
actually I wanted to qualify this : the dictat of self centered action might well be responsible for all man made suffering and torture on this planet.
Canāt think of anything horrible going on right now that isnāt due to this authoritative feeling of being me. (planets colliding and snails eating leaves aside - Iām talking actually caused by us, that could be avoided like : Putin, Trump, global warming, mass extinction, war and starvation in Sudan or wherever, thousands drowning in the Mediteranean, stuff going on in peopleās homes, all conflictual relations etc)
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You are here to deepen your understanding of the self to be free from it?
The story Iām going with is that Iām here to look into this self business with whoever might be interested
Maybe that is why so few people actually stay with this? We are conditioned to believe that we can be free of this āself- thingā and then be something else, someone else? Like a super self improvement. And when it doesnāt āhappenā we (some of us) move on to other things. We can glimpse what might be involved in this change: observer and observed are one, no division, actually ābe the worldā, not āexistā etcā¦.but the brain canāt imagine it, it is too radical.
This whatever it is, is not likely to happen in some other brain if it canāt happen in this oneā¦.whatever it is.
But the world is burning, we can sense that!
And I think as @macdougdoug is pointing out, the āblameā is not āout thereā.
I am curious to know if you forgot to include also Biden/Harris, Macron, Von der Leyen, Netanyahu, Zelensky, Stoltenberg, Sholz, and the rest of the managers of the so called democratic countries in order not to make the list so long, or because you consider that all of them are free of confusion and therefore without any responsibility for the chaos of the world (the present and the one to come) of which you speak of; and that as long as they can rule, the whole world will be free of conflict?
I just mentioned the most obvious pathological stuff that any reasonable person could recognise - why do you ask? Is it important? If so why - I mean : are you a fan of the people I mentioned or do you really think we need to discuss the policies or name all politicians?
PS. just in case you really are honestly curious : I do not think that x or y politician staying in power will result in the ending of conflict
Good but why? What motivates you to look at the self?
Post canāt be empty - so here are some words that you can feel free to ignore
PS. I find the origin of harm to be an essential topic
Essential for what reason? What is your (our) underlying motivation for spending all this time and energy exploring the I-construct? To end suffering, to make a better world, attain wisdom, intelligence, power, esoteric knowledge? You know, I-stuff!
Are the existential questions we pose here different from the existential questions that any of us might ask ourselves more or less on a daily basis? Are the people here different from any other people we might encounter in our daily lives?
Perhaps to meet another friend to take a walk with and think together about the questions we both ask ourselves about our suffering and its causes?
Personally, nothing that I can find (or not find) physically in my daily life.
A virtual forum is nothing more than a reduced representation of the life that we all live daily in relation to others. If we cannot relate to each other in our daily life due to prejudices, conclusions, etc., we will not do so here either (unless, of course, we live in the same fantasy that many Catholics live when they meet other Catholics in the Church, or many Buddhists when they meet other Buddhists in the Gompa, to give just two examples).
Why are you asking yourself questions about suffering and its causes? Out of interest and passion for learning? Out of desire to minimize-end suffering? Both? Neither? I am looking for motivation: What drives us to explore, inquire, discuss?
Because one suffers and fortunately or unfortunately one has heard someone casually talking about a āselfā as a possible cause of that suffering, and this has aroused oneās curiosity to such an extent that the more one delves into this so-called āselfā the more one perceives that what one has heard is not just a possibility?
I think I just answered this question in my last message. If you feel itās not enough, feel free to keep asking.
Is the fundamental intention to minimize/eliminate suffering? Is that possibility what keeps the engine humming? Pure curiosity, without benefit to the self, is limited.
Not for me, for me it has nothing to do with minimizing suffering, which would imply that the suffering is still there. Nor does it have anything to do with eliminating something that I donāt know what is actually causing it.
No, for me since I was 5 years old (probably since I was 3) until today (close to 65 years old) the only thing that has kept āthe engine hummingā as you say is just the intention to deeply understand human suffering and its causes, and to discover for myself if that suffering is only mine, or that of all humanity.
And the āfunā is what?
Perhaps knowing this is freedom?
Knowing whatā¦that weāre in a fun house or that weāre all lost?
If we know weāre in a fun house, we know weāre not lost, but if we know weāre not having enough fun in the fun house to justify being here, we want to step out to something more noble, more meaningful, more serious than fun.
Sounds unusual for a child and only slightly less unusual for an adult. Why does this understanding matter passionately to you? Caring deeply about things that directly impinge upon your quality of life (i.e. your suffering) is unsurprising. But caring about suffering and how it works generally, not specifically for you, is surprising.