(#39) Soon this might be over
Greetings! from another side of the world.
This is a newsletter where you get three perception-altering ideas every Saturday that help you become a better person. These insights mostly come from books I read, and my journal. And I share only what I find helpful. So, please share, if you find any of this valuable.
Here are this week’s insights:
1. To the supernatural
“Because we are conscious, we feel that we exist … and we wish to feel the existence of everything else; we wish that of all the other individual things each one should also be an ‘I.’” (Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life)
What the good thinker means is this. That we are conscious but we know nothing about whys and hows of consciousness.
So then, when we come across something we don’t understand, instead of reasoning & systematic study, our tendency is to turn to the supernatural. We think some divine entity (or entities) must be behind it.
We try to personify everything that’s beyond our grasp. ‘The aura.’ ‘The soul.’ ‘Sending vibes to the universe.’ ‘Law of attraction.’ And whatnot.*
2. Dreams aren’t omens
“People think that dreams are omens because they recall the time when they dreamt a relative had a mishap and she did, but they forget about all the times when a relative was fine after they dreamt she had a mishap. Or they think immigrants commit a lot of crime because they read in the news about an immigrant who robbed a store, but don’t think about the larger number of stores robbed by native-born citizens.
“Confirmation bias is a common diagnosis for human folly and a target for enhancing rationality. Francis Bacon … wrote of a man who was taken to a church and shown a painting of sailors who had escaped a shipwreck thanks to their holy vows. ‘Aye,’ he remarked, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’”
3. Soon this might be over
“Here’s how I feel: People take one another for granted. Like, I’d hang out with Ingrid in all of these random places—in her room or at school or just on some sidewalk somewhere. And the whole time we’d tell each other things, just say all of our thoughts out loud. Maybe that would’ve been boring to some people, but it was never boring to us. I never realized what a big deal that was. How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head. You just think that things will stay the way they are. You never look up, in a moment that feels like every other moment of your life, and think, Soon this will be over.” (Hold Still, Nina LaCour)
Until next week,
Pooran
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*tl;dr:
But no matter how complex things are, however mysterious they seem, they must and do have some system supporting them. A method behind the madness. I mean, Critique of Pure Reason doesn’t transform into a cute panda when you turn it to page forty-seven. Nor do you see hammerhead sharks flying above Mount Everest. Nor do pine trees sing Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. Neither does a neutron star materialize outside your door on a rainy day.
So, even if it appears that a god with a celestial golden chariot guides the sun, it is not so. And even if it seems that the Universe can sense your “vibes” and conspire to give you what you “desire”, it is not so. It’s more like, you conspire for yourself, and since you desire something very badly, you work for it, and because you work for it, the chances that it will become true, increase.