zimok

Shut off the lights, shut off the noise in your head, relax, and really contemplate what you're watching here,

Introduction

Cosmic Significance

Abundance

The BIGGER 'bigger' picture..

I've been thinking a lot lately, if you really sit down and watch these.. you cannot help but feel utterly insignificant.. it's preposterous to think we are in any way 'special' as our ego sometimes leads us to believe. The process that made us is just as mundane as any other law in the universe.

Everywhere we look with our telescopes, we find the same organic building blocks of life that led to us. We go about our daily lives chasing money and scamming other people that, like us, have an iota of significance on the grander scale of things.. 1 million dollars is something I've always wanted, yet, that too is a miserable little clump of paper that fits in a purse, what will that bring? Freedom and happiness for some? egotistical self-indulgence for most?

When you put these things in perspective, the only thing that seems worth pursuing is your own happiness, through whatever means that may be. What is happiness though? why do we strive for so much? Is it because the ticking of the evolutionary clock has driven out the unmotivated? Are we simply happy, when we are, because the order of our A,C,T & G's in our DNA is telling us to be?

Is what drives us, at it's very core, the same thing that motivates little cells & the little fish to wander so purposefully around, looking for their happiness through fulfilling their basic needs? How much of our life can we really call our own? Are we simply slaves of our unconscious & emotional DNA rewards?

A lot of people find happiness in helping others, is that too, another selfish reward of our DNA? What are we really aiding in? The further destruction our planet and reproduction of more selfish individuals? What does money really say about us? What good have humans ever caused to this planet?

If ants were conscious beings, I imagine they would see us as the most vile, incessant, greedy, unproductive scum of the earth. What if we all died? The world would flourish to its true potential. Plants & animals would work on restoring the equilibrium once had before the apes that led to man brought the world to it's knees

What good will it do, the worlds #1 parasite unseen, and the world is beautiful again, when another million pound chunk of ice comes crashing down on our insignificant lump of rock doing circles around a massive body of nuclear power, that in total indifference will eventually consume us in a fiery inferno?

To me there is no good, no evil, no morals, no ethics.. all of them are evolved by us to help our own selfish desires at stability and prosperity. There is only the utter indifference of physical laws & time.

Probably tl;dr for most(not really busy at work this morning lol), but even if you just watched the videos.. What do you guys think?

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You can't effectively ride two horses at once.

Metcalfe

Heavy post, I just found this stuff:
Watch The Elegant Universe (full-screen version)

I suggest taking a look at it. It's ridiculously informative

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DanBo

Ya gotta love science.

Uzzz

Zimok.... as the once great Sean Connery told Indy... just let it go son... let it go.

But thats some deep shit. Let's have a beer!

This reminds me of a game i use to play when i was little.... i'd close my eyes...and touch myself....... no really..... i'd close my eyes shut.... and try and picture myself....i'd then slowly start expanding my bubble outwards.... my room, ...my house...my street, my neighorbood....etc etc... the planet.....solar system....galaxy....universe....at this point i'd have my eyes closed so tight they be shaking...trying...to ...find ....out...what is out there.... and then poof! ....all come racing back to me....i open my eyes and i'm still in my room. i say woh.... and then go play with my transformers.

ahh .. good ole childhood and imagination....i need a beer. Story time over.

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nvanprooyen

That's good stuff - it was originally a book converted into that documentary. It's sort of heavy, but if you watch the videos first, and then read it...it's pretty consumable.

subigo

The Elegant Universe is one of the greatest NOVA series ever.

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mpmarketing2006

Thats a chilling statement.

amanda11

You forgot the spiritual side of things -- I don't wanna sound like a religious suck nut, but having an astral project (3 times!) changed my experience when it comes to the nature of reality.

I used to be a hardcore nihilist, but then I was like, "You know, I should chill, do some stuff makes me happy, whatever".

nvanprooyen

@amanda, there is definitely a component of that involved too. You should check out What the Bleep - Down the Rabbit Hole. A lot of it is pseudoscience in my opinion, and should be taken w/ a grain of salt - but definitely opens up your mind to some things.

zimok

@Metcalfe: watched those a while back, really enjoyed them. If you want to watch something equally interesting, look for "BBC - Do You Know What Time It Is? with Brian Cox. Such a simple question holds a lot of potential as you will see in the documentary.

@Uzzz Get me an Innis & Gunn, I'll have what fatbat keeps on his porch rolled & ready.

Amanda & Nvan,

I'm reading my post in preview, and it sounds like a barrage of attacks.. I'm honestly glad you guys are sharing your opinions. It takes a whole lot of questions before I give in to holding a belief on something, as it should be for everyone. I expect the same scrutiny from you guys.


I didn't forget spirituality/religion, I left them out for my complete lack of belief. What does it say when you can reproduce the same effect you've experienced with simple drugs? What exactly did it change in your opinion of reality? It's just simple chemical reactions affecting your own personal outlook, you chose to attach meaning to your experience; perfectly acceptable, since people have been doing it since the dawn of time with religious visions, spiritual awakenings etc.. I also have my personal account of why I don't believe in these things..

A few years ago my grandfather saw a hornets nest in my mouth, spiders crawling on the ceiling, and a constant trickle of buzzers coming out of the nest at the hospital. He knew what he was seeing was fake, I knew it.. It didn't make the ordeal less real for him, but it didn't change the fact that his body was deteriorating and causing small veins in his head to burst, inducing the visions. He was a smart man, and he didn't claim the visions changed his reality. Why would a simple, yet ulterior vision which in all probability has just as banal of an explanation, change yours?

Why do you say there's 'definitely' a component of that? You don't think spirituality is another one of those 'nice' ideas to believe in? If you were never introduced to the concept of spirituality, do you think you would of ever conjured it up? If the belief wasn't instilled in you at first, you would of never had the experiences that were later connected, by you, to that belief.

I hate being the fun killer, but that movie was also a total waste of time, and another perfect example of how flawed we are. People in general just love finding themselves in other things, no matter the quality of the source. I know you said it's a lot of pseudoscience, but it doesn't change the fact that you support it & bring it to the table. I'll sum up the movie for those who haven't watched.. It's basically a dash of quantum physics with a cargo ship filled with bullshit.

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You can't effectively ride two horses at once.

Uzzz

you know...after reading that again... i've come to the conclusion that....



COME HERE!!


So what exactly are you asking here? What's the point of it all? Are we self aware of our own insignificance?

Yah... i'd like to think i am...but then again... i try and not think about it. If that makes sense. What i do like to do is listen to the rain beating off the rooftops...smell that morning glory after a nice rainfall... feel the sun beating down against my face. lying face up in a crystal clear lake and listen to the distant loons...

i like to just be.

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nvanprooyen

@zimok - No offense taken. I'm a hardcore logic / INTJ, so I have a hard time swallowing any of it...but it is interesting to look at.

I guess my point is, there is a whole lot of stuff out there we don't understand / can't quantify or put in a nice little logical box. And when you start to look around, you see a lot of interesting "coincidences". I'm not going to go off the deep end "The Secret" style, but from my experience there is a quasi-metaphysical element to reality that's difficult to get your head around.

riddarhusetgal

@nvanprooven. I would really recommend not being bound by logic. The ultimate flaw of logic is it relies on what has happened in the PAST. That is why Einstein said "imagination" is more important than logic.

When I started really discovering some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs that have come to pass, logic would have largely robbed us of nearly all of them....

In a world where the earth appears to the senses to be flat, it's wasn't "logical" for a certain someone to keep listening to a voice inside his head that told him the world was round.....

When Emanuel Swedenborg the scientist created a drawing and proclaimed that "some day man will fly even to the moon", it wasn't logical to believe that something not born with wings could fly. In fact it took the technology of 100+ years into the future to make is so...



So the question is what came first, man's beliefs in the "illogical" or what?

As for the "the Secret", the sad part is much of what is discussed in the movie is supported by science.

And by "fact" I mean the basic thesis that energy and matter are interchangeable and our thoughts being energy must necessarily have SOME effect on the world in which we live. The degree is up for debate of course, but if EVERYTHING is ENERGY - EVERYTHING - and if the findings of contemporaneous M Theory and String Theory are correct, there's a lot more to life that what we can hear, touch, smell, taste and see...

Dupont Company has sponsored tests at PEAR - The Princeton Engineering Anamolies Research center - Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research

The problem is that alot of close-minded scientists try to sweep under the rug findings that they have found despite how STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT they are which make them feel UNCOMFORTABLE. To me that is not REAL science when you try to discount something that doesn't fit what you consider to be "logical"....

Anyway, I guess I really am one of those people who believes "anything" IS possible because I know almost every single thing man has labeled impossible at one point over the past 100,000+ years has proven to be "very possible" - even walking on water

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riddarhusetgal

By the way I think The Elegant Universe is The bomb :P!

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riddarhusetgal

That's some cool shit Boy if we could have the creativity and imagination of youth again.....

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zimok

Ahh hah, thanks for that! I guess I don't really know what I was asking for, simply wanted to put it all in perspective and see what you guys thought.

You're absolutely right, it's this 'undiscovered' reality that makes it all interesting! There's so much we don't know and so much left to be figured out. It astounds me to think where we will be in 5..10..25 years in terms of understanding the world around us.

Also, Is there anything on youtube that sums up your views on this quasi-metaphysical aspect?

Give this a watch to see where it went,

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You can't effectively ride two horses at once.

nvanprooyen

@zimok - Not off the top of my head, but I'll have a look around and see if I can find something close. I have difficulty quantifying it myself.

And absolutely, without a little mystery life would be pretty boring.

As an aside, I fucking love this forum. Definitely found my home. Intelligent conversation about politics, religion, physics, boobs, and pretty much everything else I find interesting + being around a bunch of brilliant online marketers. Seriously. This place is fucking awesome. Cheers Jon!

Boomstick

Old, but classic

Dance monkeys dance!

nvanprooyen

hahaha, nice boomstick