When I was in highschool, I had this idea for a book (at the time I wanted to be a writer) where the main character relinquishes control and lets their body carry on with life as some sort of philosophical zombie (i.e. functioning in the world, but without any kind of sentience or self-hood). I guess I was more hopeful/optimistic at the time because my idea was that the main character would still "exist" somewhere in the unconscious mind, and would witness increasingly harmful things that their body does (become some kind of oil baron, abuse their employees, get married, have children and be an absent but bullheaded partner/parent); then towards the end, the main character's body would end up in a plane crash with their partner, where their partner dies, and the main character (well, their buried conscious mind) would claw their way back to the surface and take control again, and try but fail to save their partner (only to be alone, in the wilderness).
I don't really want to die. If I could, I think I would prefer to step back and watch as a mere passenger. Even if I would still experience everything, suffering isn't so bad if it's not my fault, and as long as I'm not causing ever more harm/inconvenience to others by continuing to exist. If only the absense of free-will in this world could be experienced directly and we could all sit back and watch. But it seems that experience must participate in a bidirectional interaction with action; if you don't experience the right set of motivations, your body doesn't do its work; if your body doesn't do its work, doesn't strive for survival, you end up without experience. I wish this wasn't the case. So maybe there's no point in imagining what it would be like. But my main issue is that I don't feel like my motivations and responses to the world are sufficient to make me keep going without being a burden. I wish I could just step outside myself and tell my body to go live a normal life, to step up and do its damn work, but it just doesn't; not without directly experiencing the right motivations first.
I get the sense that part of the confusion surrounding free will, responsibility, etc. is due to the framing of personhood and indivduality in the western world. Clearly if a motivation doesn't exist, there's something real in the world that is missing; something that differs in this unmotivated person's mind compared to the minds of their functional peers. But the western world asserts that the only way to approach or understand this is to frame the self as an agent; to separate the individual from the universe and command the battle for life to get underway, under the grace of god or whatever. I think it's interesting that Christianity asserts that god offers humans free will, but sets up a divine order that they must participate in. The trinity - the rigid, untouchable, indescribable god, all being, all knowing, all seeing; the powerless, doomed human manifestation; the invisible impersonal holy ghost that bridges the gap - the universe, seperated into three impossible things, torn apart and trapped together. A body, a mind, and the power of shame infusing society to connect the two. I feel like Daoism offers something approaching a more sensible perspective; there is some unknowable thing, the Dao; it is us, and we are it, but it is always and entirely unknowable; and yet it contains all that is known - all knowledge and action. I don't know, I think I'm rambling now.
I'm wondering what other people think. If you could let go, and just watch your life unfold, would you be willing to let it go on? Could you endure the experience of suffering if you knew that your body (from which the experience arises) would keep going and not harm others regardless of the consious experience it passes on to your mind (i.e. if there was a one-directional flow from the determined physical world to your consious experience of it; like watching a movie)? If your experience of suffering didn't make your body curl up into a lifeless ball, could you accept that experience?
I don't really want to die. If I could, I think I would prefer to step back and watch as a mere passenger. Even if I would still experience everything, suffering isn't so bad if it's not my fault, and as long as I'm not causing ever more harm/inconvenience to others by continuing to exist. If only the absense of free-will in this world could be experienced directly and we could all sit back and watch. But it seems that experience must participate in a bidirectional interaction with action; if you don't experience the right set of motivations, your body doesn't do its work; if your body doesn't do its work, doesn't strive for survival, you end up without experience. I wish this wasn't the case. So maybe there's no point in imagining what it would be like. But my main issue is that I don't feel like my motivations and responses to the world are sufficient to make me keep going without being a burden. I wish I could just step outside myself and tell my body to go live a normal life, to step up and do its damn work, but it just doesn't; not without directly experiencing the right motivations first.
I get the sense that part of the confusion surrounding free will, responsibility, etc. is due to the framing of personhood and indivduality in the western world. Clearly if a motivation doesn't exist, there's something real in the world that is missing; something that differs in this unmotivated person's mind compared to the minds of their functional peers. But the western world asserts that the only way to approach or understand this is to frame the self as an agent; to separate the individual from the universe and command the battle for life to get underway, under the grace of god or whatever. I think it's interesting that Christianity asserts that god offers humans free will, but sets up a divine order that they must participate in. The trinity - the rigid, untouchable, indescribable god, all being, all knowing, all seeing; the powerless, doomed human manifestation; the invisible impersonal holy ghost that bridges the gap - the universe, seperated into three impossible things, torn apart and trapped together. A body, a mind, and the power of shame infusing society to connect the two. I feel like Daoism offers something approaching a more sensible perspective; there is some unknowable thing, the Dao; it is us, and we are it, but it is always and entirely unknowable; and yet it contains all that is known - all knowledge and action. I don't know, I think I'm rambling now.
I'm wondering what other people think. If you could let go, and just watch your life unfold, would you be willing to let it go on? Could you endure the experience of suffering if you knew that your body (from which the experience arises) would keep going and not harm others regardless of the consious experience it passes on to your mind (i.e. if there was a one-directional flow from the determined physical world to your consious experience of it; like watching a movie)? If your experience of suffering didn't make your body curl up into a lifeless ball, could you accept that experience?
