Hi Proporcrutch,
Your reply reminded me of another good quote, this time by Geoffrey, the post was a response to the question of… “Let’s say an actually free person witnesses their child being brutally murdered, would he feel anything?”
Geoffrey: Is my child being brutally murdered again? It’s not the first time. It appears to be the default scenario that pops up every time there is talk about having no emotions. “But what if your child is being murdered?!” Maybe because it’s as close as it gets to a I WIN button, in this kind of discussion. Either one admits that of course, they’d feel something… and they’ve just shown they’re not actually free. Or they confess that no, they wouldn’t feel anything, and they’re immediately diagnosed/internalized/executed, lose all possibility of being heard even again, get thrown away from any admissible discourse and, let’s not shy away from for it, get thrown away from humanity at large.
What’s very interesting here, is that the question is not about what one would DO in such a situation, but only what one would FEEL. And if that was the criterium for belonging to humanity…
Various people’s behavior in such a situation, be it just before, during, or after the event, would vary widely… but surely, they’d all feel the same… at least all the normal people. That’s the important thing, right? How they’d feel.
Curiously the question is never asked why anybody cares about what these people would feel, since the decisive factor in any objective situation, the only important factor in dealing with it in the best possible way, is what they’d do.
What’s implied is that what people do - what anybody, surely, does under such a situation - is notpredicated on the facts of the situation, in a sensible way, in order to do whatever can be done under the particular circumstances… BUT on the feelings one is having at the time, the justifiablyoverwhelming feelings one is having at the time.
Feeling anger, tremendous anger, to the point of jumping at the aggressor, and say, his four friends with guns, to quickly find oneself on the floor weakly clawing at the aggressor’s leg, bleeding out? Fine.
Feeling sorrow, to the point of despair, and getting to one’s knees begging the aggressor to also take one’s life, confident that if he does not, you’ll do it yourself as soon as you can? Fine.
Feeling fear for one’s life - surely, those child killers won’t stop there -, beg to be spared, and then live one’s life in insurmountable guilt, for who thinks about one’s life when one’s child is dead? Fine.
I could go on.
I could even mention, even if that wouldn’t really be considered normal: Feeling bliss, love and compassion, and smiling at the aggressor. For the aggressor is you and you are him, or it’s just a dream anyway, or it’s just the unveiling of universal consciousness, or it’s god’s plan, or there was never a child in the first place, or you’re so enlightened that you just feel bliss love and compassion whatever happens anyway, utterly detached.
But… which behavior is it, that is the appropriate response to the situation? Those are quite different behaviors… And yet they’re all fine, as far as humanity goes (even though you’d have to get into special circles for the last one to be appropriate lol), they’re all fine because they are dictated by feelings. Whatever one does, as long as it’s dictated by feelings, is considered fundamentally fine. Even though it does nothing to deal with the actual situation at hand - or worsens it -, it’s fine because it’s human.
Now, what would an actually free person do?
This is where Claudiu’s use of the term « hypothetical » is appropriate. An actually free person does not deal in hypotheticals. This is not a sleight of hand, not an escape, not a refusal to answer the question. There is not actually such a thing as an hypothetical situation. So there is no way to answer that question. If I were to indulge nevertheless, I could only answer: I do not know what I would do. Not in the sense that this phrase is commonly used, which is “I don’t know what feeling reaction I’d get, and what behavior would ensue”, but in the sense that the particulars of the situation would be everything. The actual situation at hand. Which would include me. You may specify the situation with as many details as you want, draw the scenario to painful precision, you’d still be infinitely away from an actual situation.
All I know is that a decision would be made, and an action would take place, and that it would be the most sensible action that could take place under the circumstances of the situation. I am experientially 100% confident in this. Not that it would be the ‘best’ action in an abstract hypothetical scenario, nor that it would be the ‘best’ action anybody could take - for the reason that an integral part of the actual situation would be me, this actual body, in all its particularity. But that it would be the ‘best’ action possible that this body could take considering the actual situation in its integrality.
This confidence (that whatever happens, this body will do the best possible thing it can) is congruent with an absence of consideration for hypothetical scenarios in actually free human beings. Because why do people usually consider hypothetical scenarios? Why do they ask themselves “what would I do if…”… because they (rightfully) lack any confidence that when the moment comes, they’ll make the best decision possible according to the circumstances. So they draw hypothetical scenarios, and derive from abstract moral or ethical rules what the appropriate behavior in that scenario is, or they just directly copy what they’ve seen or heard the appropriate behavior to be, and convince themselves that this is what they would do, so that when that moment comes, there is a chance they might do this. But without even considering that when/if the moment ever comes, their feelings will be what dictates their behavior, one can see that this action they’ve decided on - on the basis of abstract principles or social propriety, in an hypothetical scenario miles away from the actual situation - is probably not be the best action they could have taken in the actual situation.
I remember that before ‘I’ had enough PCEs, and was trying to picture such an actually free person not feeling anything in such a situation (and ‘I’ was having trouble going over the moral condemnation, the scandal, the inhumanity of such), ‘I’ tended to picture them doing something alien, like just walking away, or making a joke, not caring at all. Because if they don’t feel, it’s that they don’t care, right?
Nothing could be more wrong. An actually free person utterly cares about one’s fellow human beings. That actual caring is in its scope without any comparison to the caring that stems from feelings such as love. Even paternal love.In conclusion, what an actually free person would do, in such a situation - what an actually free person does in any situation -, is simply taking the most sensible action, the best action possible considering the facts available to them of the actual situation, which include themselves (and their actual caring for their fellow human beings).
I remember the next bit in particular got some laughs out of me back then :
Geoffrey: You say it’s one person with a knife. Ok. What person? Are we talking crack addict, vengeful ex-girlfriend, mafia goon, terrorist, pissed-off neighbor, anti-actualist radical activist? Are we talking somewhat reasonable person or psych ward? Are we talking ex-spetsnaz or soccer mom? Can the situation be defused without a fight? How would a fight likely go? I could go on for pages… What’s the room configuration, how far am I, how sharp is that knife, is it double bladed or can I somehow grab it if necessary, is the floor slippery, are there objects around that might help… I could go on for pages and the hypothetical scenario would not even remotely approach the actual situation.
But that’s not the answer you want. You want, out of this pretty barebones hypothetical scenario of yours, an answer on principle. Something like: this is what I’d do in this situation and every situation related to it. Which is precisely what I described in that post above, what feeling-beings do when they make hypotheticals. And then… they actually do whatever. Because I can picture many scenarios in which a random feeling-being, in the situation above, and despite having made the firm and constant decision in their hypothetical scenario that “I’d jump on the aggressor without any consideration for anything, to give my life away for my child, because that’s the right thing to do”, would actually freeze, or collapse on the floor, or be terrified for their own life, or start making grim scenarios about what will happen after the whole thing is over, or prioritize saying goodbye to their kid, or do some crazy thing like putting a knife to their own throat in some weird threat, etc. All behaviors that presumably would not resolve the situation because they’re actually not taking the facts of it into consideration, only the overwhelming feelings that are being had at the time.
What actual freedom does in that regards, is free up native intelligence, and allow it to come to most sensible decision possible according to the available facts of the situation at hand, in the moment, and as such provide the best probabibility of seeing the said situation resolve for the best.
](javascript:void(0)) inasmuch as, whilst identity is in the driver’s seat (i.e., is the agent), any such giving of permission to have the controls be let go of without same will result in said identity being an out of control agent in some ASC or another (bearing in mind the three primary psychoses – schizophrenia, mania, and depression – are also altered states) rather than in an out-from-control and/or different-way-of-being virtual freedom.
