Develop what you have to maximize yourself

The first universal truth

Perception allows for "free will" (which could be an illusion) to emerge. Perception in the case of a human is the sum of our 5 senses. These five senses are taste, sight, touch, smell, and sound. The concept of qualia emerges as a result of different perspectives from which these five senses express themselves. The concept of difference itself emerged from the various perspectives of experiencing these five senses. To elaborate, to have an ability to recognize a distinct information pattern requires the ability to sense (detect) information patterns.

In order for there to be a choice which gets made between options there must be a capacity for discrimination. This capacity is enabled by the five senses. All animals which can feel pleasure and pain have nervous systems and these nervous systems (brains) over time have optimized to seek pleasure whilst avoiding pain. The ability to sense is the ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain and the more capable the sensory capacity the better the ability to distinguish information patterns. Qualia may represent the pleasurable stimulus but what is pleasurable contains subjectivity inherently.

Develop what you have to maximize yourself

The first question is what is a self? The second inevitable question is, does a self even exist? Is there really an I or is that an illusion? If we look at the strict physics there is nothing to distinguish where the universe begins and where the self ends, as it's the same particles making up everything that is or can ever be. The same particles that make up the sun, make up all life on earth, make up the entire observable universe under the standard model.

So when I say maximize "yourself" it must be noted that there may not be a such thing. There are on the other hand five sense. Whether there is free will or not, there is a capacity for experiencing suffering in the universe. Whether there is a distinct you and me, there are 5 senses which mammals all tend to share alike. We also know there is a pattern among mammals to want more pleasure and less pain. To develop what you have will require knowing yourself as well as you possibly can to even discover what you are in the context of all that is. To maximize yourself is to take that understanding of self without artificially limiting, and to figure out the way to grow.

Some ideas:

• Science is a means of increasing our knowledge of ourselves. Whether it be the history of life, or the mechanics of the universe from which life emerged. All are connected in a web leading directly back to the big bang.
• Knowledge of self is knowledge of all that is. To leverage that knowledge requires a continuously improving understanding of knowledge of self. Science is merely a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself because science provides no meaning to anything.
• To maximize is to evolve the self continuously, to stay dynamic, but it also means there is no permanent "self". The fittest instance of the self survives in the moment. The point being that growing means continuously renewing the self. On a deeper level this is how all life evolved. Individually or collectively the same rules of growth and evolution apply. In other words life itself is a shapeshifter evolving to sustain itself in as many environment as possible.