On liberty: losses and gains

[MarcusA]

Man simply is. - Jean-Paul Sartre

God bless that Catholic bastard.

Yeah, I miss the days when some things could "just be."

It's a rhetorical lament - there have not been such days in my memory. Take the abovementioned man as an example. Religions have all sorts of more-or-less divine reasons for that man to be. Biology has them bees and them flowers. Also sex. Hot and steamy sex. Still, one seldom gets the answer as to why a man is. Personally, I think it's an invalid question. "What is the cause of a man?" Why assumes motives that may or may not have been there to begin with and may or may not have persisted, changed or unchanged, until the moment of asking.

Why am I who I am? The cause and effect seems to me to be choice.

[Asmodean]

It's an equation with far too many variables to handle. Yes, a lot of it is your choices, and those of others, reflected upon you in different ways.

In a deterministic universe, you are as you are because "the first proto-matter did thus," and the rest is the distribution of energy. Assuming a model more workable from the perspective of a human life, the "larger" you is the sum of every choice, event and interaction that led to your life and those that affected its course.

This answer is not to The Big Why, however. It answers a question of lesser scope; "How did I become who and what I am today," vs. "Why do I exist?" The more honest answers to the latter are... Less-than-satisfying. Perhaps the least satisfying is "You are." There is no why, really.

[MarcusA]

It's an equation with far too many variables to handle. Yes, a lot of it is your choices, and those of others, reflected upon you in different ways.

In a deterministic universe, you are as you are because "the first proto-matter did thus," and the rest is the distribution of energy. Assuming a model more workable from the perspective of a human life, the "larger" you is the sum of every choice, event and interaction that led to your life and those that affected its course.

This answer is not to The Big Why, however. It answers a question of lesser scope; "How did I become who and what I am today," vs. "Why do I exist?" The more honest answers to the latter are... Less-than-satisfying. Perhaps the least satisfying is "You are." There is no why, really.

All variables direct our choices, but in the end, reason rules.

[Asmodean]

In so far as it is the method used to put at least some such variables into an understandable model.

If anything can be said to "really" rule... I propose entropy. On the scale of human life and the cosmic scale alike.

[MarcusA]

In so far as it is the method used to put at least some such variables into an understandable model.

If anything can be said to "really" rule... I propose entropy. On the scale of human life and the cosmic scale alike.

Death is not the last thing to consider here.

[MarcusA]

How are we to live? One's freedom is another's prison.

[No one]

Death is usually the last thing anyone does.

[MarcusA]

We must live in the knowledge that we will die one day but we must not let it worry us into regretting being born.

[No one]

Being born, makes me regret being born.

[MarcusA]

Being born, makes me regret being born.

Well, you have to be alive to regret anything.

[No one]

Ain't that a shame, you have to experience life, to realize just how fucking awful it is

[MarcusA]

Ain't that a shame, you have to experience life, to realize just how fucking awful it is

It's better than not having existed at all.

[No one]

Vehemently disagree.

[MarcusA]

Vehemently disagree.

So, why are you still living?

[No one]

Mushrooms.



Plus, all that baby blood has made me immortal.