How much do we know about who we are and what we're doing?
Are we really aware of who we are? Are we aware of the drives and motivations that lead our behavior? Learning about the human brain and psychological structure allows us to know more about our capacities and functionality. We learn more about ourselves. We are all human animals, and all share a common body and brain physiology that produces or creates consciousness within that body. We have much in common when it comes to knowledge about ourselves.
To understand ourselves more is to gain self-knowledge. This is also known in past times as the quest to know-thyself. Self-knowledge is part of philosophy which is philo-sophia, the "love of wisdom". Wisdom is not simply knowledge input or understanding processed. The greater wisdom is from acting and living in alignment with principles of moral truth. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is the love of right-action. No one would say doing wrong-actions or acting foolishly would be to act wisely.
Many people can be said to live by a philosophy. Maybe for some it's more of an ideology with the implication of being stuck in a box of thinking where false things have been accepted as true. Ideology is just having your drives and motivations being led by one or more ideas, which we all are in some way more or less. There's nothing inherently bad there. We are going towards the future in life with change and potential improvement in mind, hopefully. We can change ourselves and the world. We need to envision better things in consciousness in order to try to create them into existence. The idea of a greater moral truth to actualize and realize into existence is something to strive for. The thinking and attempts to derive a way of living -- how to act and behave -- can be more or less morally true or false by comparison.
Philosophy -- love of wisdom, love of right-action not wrong-action folly -- is not just about learning and trying to understand things more, but the goal is towards understanding right from wrong, true from false, moral from immoral. Learning a moral truth and taking it into our own will, will guide our actions and determine our conduct in life to act more rightly.
There are many ways of living. The way we live has multiple aspects to it that we might not know are violating the way we say we want to be living. We are often blinded by our conditioning into the current condition we live in, just accepting and not really thinking about it. But we can enhance or develop more moral understanding if we look see what's going on. To realize the real lies with real eyes. Then the threads that make up our way of living can be separated to clean up the bad philosophies or ideologies we have accepted.
When our philosophies are flawed we can create foolishness and suffering for ourselves or others, even we don't know. Think of how our taxes go to fund wars. We foolishly engage in tax funding so that the war machine and the military-industrial-complex can keep pumping, and this not only creates suffering for others in foreign lands that we ignore the plight of, but we also suffer in debt and more printing of money that inflates the money, and on and on where eventually the ones who suffer from all these money manipulations are the regular people. We keep this going and it makes us all foolish, and we and others suffer for it.
The "love" of wisdom to behave and conduct our lives in a way that is conducive to producing rightness, or simpler to say reducing wrongness. We don't need to heal if there isn't something wrong. It's more about healing the wrongs than trying to think of right things to do. Anything not wrong is right by default. We can heal ourselves and the world from its current condition by stopping to do all the wrong things, things many of us aren't even aware we are doing. In a way we are unconsciously living, unaware of what our actions are even doing. Taxes are one example of the harm and suffering we create for others by acting foolishly in our out-sourcing and abdicating our authority to a hierarchical ladder of representatives while we just want to enjoy life and not think about things more deeply.
If you're following so far, philosophy is ultimately about optimizing our way of living to be wise and act-right, not foolish and act-wrong. The greatest affect on our behavior comes from having or lacking understanding of a moral truth. If we don't pay attention to what our actions are really doing to others in the long interconnected chain of how things happen on this planet, then we will remain ignorant of what's really happening behind the scenes of our personal lives. There are often consequences to our actions, even if we aren't the ones feeling it. We can grow our awareness to include what our actions are doing to others, both in nearby and long-distance places, and in the short and long-term.
What we do is part of who we are, an important part. What we do -- our actions and behavior -- is an external culmination of internal aspects of consciousness: our thinking and feeling. Our behavior is who we are because it's a reflection of who we are internally that creates those actions and behaviors. This is why self-knowledge -- to know-thyself -- is important, because we have internal drives and motivations that lead us to create our actions. Our actions define us and our character. Actions are the etched onto us like characters for others to recognize.
We have various ideas, beliefs, truths and falsities accepted, as well as many unconscious and subconscious factors that influence what we do. If we don't know what is driving us, then are we really leading and living our own lives consciously, willfully? Or do we only think we are -- while we're more on autopilot -- because we haven't gained enough self-knowledge to understand the human brain and consciousness functionality -- nor our own individual psychological framework -- that influences us to live a certain way?
Let me know what you think ;)
Read. Stare. Read everything again. Reflect. More staring. I pretty much had a hard time organizing my thoughts after the first read. But in the end, I think I'll start with saying self-awareness. Like you said, we're living in auto pilot. That comes from many things like up-bringing, culture, liefstyle, etc. When I was 13, I tried a public school. I was confused by many things and couldn't relate to a lot of their conversations. Then a classmate got sick and had to go to the hospital. The next day, she came to class with her IV line and cried when the teachers wanted to send her home. She begged them not to. Before the weekend, a few classmates asked me if I wanted to come with them and visit her. When I saw where she lived, I saw why she was desperate. Her family lived in a house about a quarter of the house I lived in. She couldnt afford to have even a fraction of her grades dropping because we were in a full scholarship section/class. And that was true for a lot of my classmates. I spent many nights thinking because I always thought everyone lived in 3-storey houses (I lived in a building but we only used the top) because all my playmates lived in such spaces or bigger ones. And little by little in that school, I saw that there was a disparity. Where some people could buy food and not finish it , others would make do with the little amount they could get and stretch it out for as long as possible. Where one could afford to be relaxed, others have to work twice as hard. It was an awful, awful feeling. That year was an eye-opener.
When we moved away the following year and I was in a private school again, I realized it was going to be hard fitting in because a lot of the wasteful things the other kids did pissed me off. To hear things like why if I finished this instead of throwing it away, is it going to make those hungry people feel full? Just because it's the normal doesnt make it right. I had to see another reality from my own reality for me to be self-aware what an effed up crap other people promote. No wonder my dad didnt agree with my grandparents. Raised that way was pretty messed up. Ugh all the food wasted when people were dying from hunger. In any case, after moving from the grandparents, my dad made sure we werent going to grow up self-entitled. I can still remember all the tears I cried when I spent the whole night washing the dishes that I can now do in half an hour lol. Ah! How we all need to wake up and learn to change our mindset and worldview enough to impove ourselves. Still cant get over how wrong it was to be so... Excessive.
Yeah, I don't waste food either. I'm not rich lol, but the only garbage I take out each weak is compost bin and recycling. The small garbage can is like once a month or longer some times. Thanks for the feedback and your life lessons that helped you learn.
Not rich either. Just on the lucky side then. (Not anymore lol). There's a zero-waste town in Japan, I just can't remember the name. It would be awesome if the world started to lean towards that gradually. And when I saw my reply on the pc, I realize I will have to make it a point to refrain from giving TLDR comments. I'd blame you for the great articles but that would be stupid lol.
Great explained. Most of the people not know what they are doing. We are doing as a routine not think what should be the right for doing right. Only some people plan best and act upon it. Every one need to learn from his own behavior as well as acts he did . self analyzing is a difficult task , we do not want to do this because we think we are doing best .
You got it :)
We think we are much busy what are doing will be right. Not see ourself as a critic.
Wow, so much deep thought involved in reading this post.. you bring me back to when I was learning about Socrates and his quote that "An unexamined life is not worth living."
There is so much that we don't know, and as long as we're aware of that, and constantly trying to learn, I think we can all survive this life! :)
It's a good saying to reflect upon, and then reflect upon what we do ;) Yeah we can keep learning and it always lets us see more and be able to make things better. Thanks for the feedback.
All of this is good. Philosophy of the brain is hard I feel, because of this
Our brain is trying to analyze everything. Like a computer. But when it tries to analyze itself. It has an error. This error is consiousness, it creates the self. Because it can't properly analyze itself without doing that. And doing that creates something to abstract for it to analyze .. if this makes wny sense. You got you self confirming biases, and your magical belief lotteries. All a product of your brain being blind to itself.
That's interesting hehe, thanks for sharing that possibility ;) It could be hehe.
Yes we get into trouble when we try to analyse ourselves. A good example is the White Lab-Coat syndrome where you go into a medical lab for a crucial test , see all those folks in White coats, you then get very nervous, and your blood pressure goes up, unconsciously. If someone was performing an experiment, lets say reviewing hospital care in this situation, the results would be 'off' somewhat due to the hidden effect of the "White Coats"
Our lives will be more meaningful if done with positive thinking, the human brain works normally, but sometimes humans can not control themselves to a great passion. With lust we can learn more about the challenges of life, because lust is the only big challenge and if we can face it we can return to the normal course.
Your thoughts are very good, you tell about this philosophy of life, the way a good human brain works begins with the firmness in us.
We can if we want to do what we want in ourselves, as long as it is with positive thinking. With this positive thinking, we will automatically perform or work well every day. To be a trial in life is so much, especially if we are still dependent on others, it will be very difficult for us to stand by itself.
Living with policy is very good, let alone we love peace. People always think that the successful person comes smoothly, but that is very wrong. Every successful person must start with a hardy and hard work, no results if we just sit and sit sweet without working and trying.
Thank you @krnel for sharing this life story, i am motivated with your story.
Upvote & Resteem ^^
Yeah lust and hedonism is problem for much of us, as we let our lower consciousness base desires lead us. Thanks for the feedback.
I like the way you analyze it. ^^
I agree, the path to self awareness and enlightenment has no end. Anyone that considers themselves "complete," has plenty more to learn. Thanks for sharing!
Knowing there's always more to learn and improve about yourself is what makes life worth living :)
Yup, we can strive for perfection as the next thing relative to where we are, to continually improve ourselves when possible, but there is no complete absolute perfection.
Good article.
Our actions are born from the internal but are they indicative of us for they can change but who we are, we have always been?
Perhaps the point our actions are born is not us either for it need not have been present always.
The base we all share is consciousness that is blank. Then we are all in different places at different times, never occupying the same place at the same time as another. We all have different bodies and brain structures, and with the conditioning of the environment and society we are influenced to do or not do things as we try to figure out certain scenarios. We're always a unique individual different from others despite sharing common core biology and psyche, but we can and do change from the moment we are born until we die -- to varying degrees.
Active willful self-development has more changes, than just going with the flow, status quo, go along to get along, not thinking more deeply but just "enjoying", and not self-reflect, introspect or analyze ourselves or the world and the way we live. The actions we take represent the present moment of who we are at that time, making that choice, based on our thinking in consciousness. Everything that came before has led to that moment, then the next, etc. Mistakes can be made of course, and those reflect a lack of understanding which is then attained to improve our learning and not be fooled again.
That's how I see it working in life. Thanks for the feedback ;)
That is an interesting way to look at it. Thanks
Hey, I've heard this before. It's my favorite song lol. No but the similarities to what you just said is crazy..
Very nice post @krnel
All of a man’s ways seem right to one, but we all should know that God examines the hearts.
There are many different layers to reality.
In the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, the "heaven" that all of the characters reach is nested, with the smallest world being the external, physical one that they all thought was the real world. They reach the next version of reality by going through a door, only to realize that the world inside that door is bigger than the one outside, and in this world they finally reach a garden, only to realize that the world inside this garden is itself bigger than the world outside the garden.
In many ways, this is what our reality seems to be like. Outside we have the external world, and many get stuck watching and reacting to that. But inside is all of this complexity that intuitively informs us about the deeply nested nature of reality and teaches us about our origins and motivations, with the quantum nature of subatomic particles possible teaching us something about the zero point field and therefore the nature of universes beyond our own.
The Gnostics believed that the external, material world is only the beginning, while inside each of us is a divine spark, and by searching inward we are able to "know" without being taught the things that this divine spark knows, to see the world of this divine spark, which is of course a more expansive world than the mechanistic newtonian world of the external.
Questioning, searching, thinking, interacting -- the path to enlightenment, all made better through internet connections like Steemit!
great post! full of wisdom! thanks for it!
followed+upvoted+resteemed