Pre-Thought

Does pre-thinking and considering variables in life make a big difference? What aspects can it be applicable for?

Any time you come across an unexpected situation that you haven't dealt with before, there can be a lot of stress and pressure. Stress is a useful instinct to make an animal react quickly and often to avoid the situation, but our modern day society has far more complex variables than the environment that a lot of our emotions were perhaps developed for (as I further explained in a post; Update Pending: Subconsciousness). Since our environment became so complex as a result of human conscious thought, perhaps conscious thought is more suitable as a tool to be used in this environment. If you consciously consider variables that might come up in life, is it likely to change your reaction in a beneficial way for a pressuring situation? 

Once you understand the concept (and have consciously thought about it), it seems pretty obvious that conscious thought is generally more accurate and effective than subconscious reaction, since conscious thought allows analysis of variables and the causes and effects. So if thinking about a potential scenario consciously, is likely to perceive a more beneficial reaction for an individual, then it should follow that pre-thought would be more likely to cause that individual to result in that more beneficial reaction, if pre-thinking can alter future subconscious reactions. 

Thinking conscious thoughts, can shift those thoughts into subconscious reactions if the conscious thought is significant enough to trigger neurological positive reinforcement of which someone's subconscious reacts based on, or through repeated thought (as I further pre-thought in a previous post; Sub -Conscious Shift). So pre-thought can allow future quick subconscious reactions to follow the same route, but in what parts of life is this applicable?

The most widely applicable pre-thoughts would be considering generalized concepts which can apply to many varying scenarios. Some things you were taught from your parents or at school would very likely be examples of generalized concepts, such as; math, which can be applied to adding or subtracting any objects or quantities in life, or “don't be rude in public” can be applied to so many situations where someone ends up in public. Values and principles are other examples of widely applicable concepts (more detail in a recent post; Principle Principle) which can be very beneficial to pre-think. 

But many concepts and considerations are not typically taught which can still be very useful. How the mind functions is a good example, which can be applicable to basically every decision someone makes, and why someone themselves or others react in various ways. Almost every topic I’ve written about is not typically taught, yet most are applicable to some part of life or another (and so far it’s been over 270 topics, so there is a lot of potential for useful concepts to consider out there). Some potential topics for beneficial pre-thought are more narrow and less generally applicable, but a lot are very widely applicable, such as the concept of philosophy itself, in terms of considering new undefined aspects of life (or perhaps the concept of pre-thought ;) 

This general method of considering potentials ahead of time, isn’t only useful for generalized concepts, as any specific circumstances can be pre-considered, but simply is only applicable in fewer situations. More detailed situations for pre-thought can of course be applied more for individuals that know they are more likely to be in 1 of those scenarios, than others.

Overall, it does seem to be fairly significant to consider potential scenarios ahead of time to likely cause a much preferable decision and reaction for any individual when that scenario occurs in the future. This can be applied to specific circumstances if someone is more likely to be involved in that scenario, or can be more generalized to various degrees, using generalized concepts that apply to many differing situations throughout life, such as pre-thought of Pre-Thought.

Practical Personal Principles

 How can someone apply personal principles in a practical way, when they contradict societal norms and rules?

Virtually everyone has differing principles, at least when it comes down to a small degree, or specific details within the countless potential scenarios of complex modern day life and society. So this would indicate that the majority of people would have some specifics to their principles which would be in opposition to the rules and regulations of their country and township, as well as the common preferred behavior by the culture and society they live in. So what is the best method for an individual to cohabitate any contradictory principles with the society they abide in?

It seems like there are 3 main potentials for this conflict (besides leaving society entirely);
1) someone can abandon their principles and follow all the rules and common acceptances.

2) Follow their principles by hiding the actions of their principles which contradict society.

3) Follow principles upfront and accept consequences 

1) seems like the easiest route for someone that wants to easily avoid conflict, but they would be leaving behind any individuality and meaning for what they believe in. If someone is willing to follow anything that authorities and others in their society happen to say is the actions that everyone should take, then life seems it would be fairly meaningless. When the rules and norms of any location someone happens to be, are circumstantial and could be anything, then the only significance left in life, seems it would be living life like a robot or animal. Humans are technically animals, but that which distinguishes us from animals, is our capability of awareness, comprehension, and consciousness. If someone is not using their conscious ability to comprehend for themselves what is best and important in life, it seems they are disregarding that distinction from animals. Giving up independence and individuality is a dangerous game to give someone else all authority and control, whom could likely only have selfish intents (as happens all the time throughout history and today with people with too much power).

2) seems like a reasonable method for someone to continue to follow their principles, giving meaning in life, and avoid conflict, but would be hiding their principles from the potential for others to benefit from learning from their principles. By hiding actions of principles, someone is not revealing to others what their principles are, and what value there is that the individual believes. This reduces the potential for collaborating ideas and beliefs and information, reducing the potential for others to understand, realize, and adopt valuable principles. 

3) is also a reasonable way to continue to follow principles and add meaning to someones life, but also allows much more potential for others to be aware and learn from those principles through observance and understanding. The downside is consequences of being straightforward with principles which contradict rules or regular society acceptances. Consequences to opposing laws can be significant and potentially reduce the individuals potential to share their beliefs, if they for example end up in jail or bankrupt from fines. Consequences from societal norms could be a lack of acceptance, but that reduction of acceptance would only be from people that disagree or ignore the individuals principles. Perhaps this is not such an overall bad thing, as they would still be accepted and be more aware of those who do agree with them. 

Perhaps a balance between 2 + 3 could gain the best results overall. Always following principles to have meaning in life, but hiding actions in situations where there will be significant consequences that reduce quality of life and reduce potential to share beliefs and principles for others to benefit from. But in many situations where consequences will be minimal, or have a silver lining (such as removing ppl from their life that dont believe in the same principles, while narrowing down and coming closer to those that do), someone could be forward and outspoken with their principles and reasons why. So overall, if someone doesnt want to reduce meaning in life, by abandoning their values, and wants to allow the option for others to benefit from becoming aware of the meaning, then perhaps creating a balance based on circumstances, between being straight forward and hiding beliefs is a decent method for applying Practical Personal Principles.

Principle Principle

What is included in being considered to be someone's principles, and what exceptions could there be?

A basic summary of “principles” could be; a set of beliefs about methods of living and interacting with others, which someone follows. By this understanding of the concept of principles, most people have them, as long as they follow generic methods which they believe in. This concept can apply to a very wide range of structures for someone to base their decisions and actions on throughout life. Some people could potentially have very few or even no principles, if they either don't know what they believe, or dont care, but generally most people do. 

The typical interpretation of the concept of principles is more commonly; a belief in actions based on morals, but technically, principles could be regardless of morals, or even in opposition. I further distinguished aspects of morals in a post from 4+ yrs ago; Moral Mess, basically outlining morals as based on instinctual reinforcement, and can be difficult to accurately determine applicability in many situations. 

So regardless of moral beliefs, the fundamental requirements for someone to have principles, are they believe in it, and follow it. Both of these requirements don't necessarily have to be 100% of scenarios, but in order to fit the concept of principles, should be overall the majority of the time. The person should generally and mostly believe that acting or reacting in a certain way is better from their perspective. There could be a few instances where the individual changes their perspective from believing the principle is best, as long as they mostly believe it. For eg, someone might have the principle that getting revenge is bad, but for a few hrs might change that perspective if they watch a movie where someone getting revenge seems beneficial. But if they change their perspective back again, after thinking it through, that revenge causes more harm and potential continued retaliation, then they still hold the overall principle. 

The same occasional exception applies to the requirement of following the belief, since there could be a few circumstances where they still believe it is best, but falter from following the principle. As long as they mostly do and mostly try to follow it, it should still be considered a general principle. For example someone might believe the principle that violence is bad, but might falter from following the rule on an occasion where they are very angry and someone pushes them intentionally. They could still have the principle, just fail to follow it, in a moment where emotions are controlling their mind more than conscious decisions. 

Besides occasionally changing perspective of belief, or failing to follow a principle, there can also be many detailed circumstances that might apply differently for any overall principle. There could be exceptions included in their belief to a certain principle, based on certain factors involved. This would basically be getting into specific details of their belief and principle, but would not really be faltering from following or believing in the principle. For eg, someone could have the overall principle of not lying, but might believe there are certain circumstances, such as if lying would save someone's life, where they believe there should be an exception to the overall rule. Many detailed circumstances might not even be known by the individual for whether or not they believe there should be an exception to the rule, since there is virtually an infinite potential of combinations of factors in this complex modern world. 

Thought experiments of hypothetical scenarios can be helpful for someone to distinguish their principles to more accurate degrees, for a wider variety of potential detailed circumstances. Considering hypothetical scenarios allows someone to consciously decide what they believe is best, based on many scenarios. This can be helpful since if a similar situation comes up in real life, they would be much more likely to make the decision or reaction which is more beneficial according to their personal conscious thoughts. Many scenarios can have a lot of pressure to react or decide, which can cause someone to quickly react based on instinct or subconscious, which is much less effective than conscious thought, at distinguishing beneficial outcomes of the more complex scenarios of modern day life and society.  

Overall, the concept of principles is commonly interpreted as being based on morality, but could also have other bases. Someone could rarely change their mind on a belief of a principle, or fail to follow it (despite believing it), as long as they mostly believe and follow. There may be many detailed circumstances in this complex world, of a generic principle, where an individual could make an exception, but overall following a set of beliefs, is the Principle Principle.

Animals’ sign-of-akin's Significance

How significant are animals?

Animals seem to be quite significant to exist in the 1st place as a being that can reproduce, and move and interact with its environment. Animals use instinct as their default triggers to react to vague factors in a way that has proven to be the most effective reaction to survive or reproduce for their species (as further described in a post; Instinctivity). Instinct also is the genetic preset for reinforcement triggers in order to use subconscious memory to develop new reactions based on the environment (as further described in a post; Subconscious Subjection). For (most) animals to have developed these abilities by evolving from something not living in the 1st place is amazing. So animals' existence is very significant, but what about their experience and perception?

To try to understand animal experience, we can try to compare and relate to human experience. Humans have the same abilities and basic function of instinct and subconscious memory, so there are a lot of similarities (which makes sense since humans are animals, and evolved from them). The big difference is we have consciousness, and part of the difficulty of trying to think of how all other animals think and experience life, is that you are using conscious thought to try to understand it (as well as trying to understand anything). To intentionally and knowingly try to think of or understand anything, is to use conscious memory access (as further described in a post; Conscious Comprehension), which all other animals cannot do. 

Humans do have subconscious experiences regularly, but when those experiences lack conscious awareness, that person cannot later consciously access those memories (perhaps with some exceptions) of subconscious experience. There are degrees to conscious awareness though, so there are times when anyone has an experience in between subconscious and conscious awareness, and this could be 1 way to relate somewhat to what an animal experiences. Any time someone is dreaming, they are in a subconscious experience, since there is no conscious decision making, or awareness, or memory of the experience in general. If you can remember dreams at times, that is 1 exception with minimal conscious memory of subconscious experience, but as you likely know, those memories are rare, and fleetingly difficult to retain. Lucid dreams are an example of in between, where someone can be aware that they are dreaming, but these are very rare, and difficult to stay either aware or asleep. Being very drunk or very tired and or paying no attention to surroundings are other subconscious experiences humans have. 

Basically, animals experience life similar to those examples which humans occasionally experience, where they have no conscious memory of what happened recently, how they got where they are (similar to a dream), and don't even question or wonder anything at all. Animals simply react to their environment and body, and never consider or decide to do anything. In my last post; Significance of Our Significance, I considered animals to seem insignificant and meaningless. This was referring to their experience, because of this basic (compared to human’s) reactionary system. If you went through life in a dreamlike state of not being aware and not remembering anything in connection to anything else, would that be meaningful?

But this doesn't mean that animals' experiences are totally insignificant. Just as humans have experiences of mostly subconscious with bits of conscious neural connection between factors, there's a good chance some animals experience this as well. The smartest of animals (besides humans) do seem to have occasions where they might be making minimal conscious connections in their experiences, such as examples of problem solving, and communication (with more than 1 factor involved). 

So regarding animal existence in general with capabilities of interaction, it does seem to be very significant. When considering their experience, their lack of awareness and connection in memory seems to be insignificant. But those rare moments of some animals' ability to make a further step of potential comprehension (even if to a much lesser degree), is perhaps an Animals’ sign of akin Significance.

Significance of Our Significance

What is the significance of our current time and existence?

To attempt to comprehend the significance of this world's current state, and your and my current experiences, it seems relevant to compare our current situation to history and the circumstances which existed throughout. To start with the basics of the significance of humanity, IMO, likely the most significant aspect of human existence is consciousness. Besides humans, there is likely no other being (other than God) that experiences consciousness regularly. Before human consciousness, there were likely only subconscious animals throughout all of history (of our solar system at least). Without consciousness, everything is occurring in more of a robotic way, of cause and effect, with no awareness or comprehension of anything. This seems very insignificant and meaningless from my perspective. 

Supposedly humans have been around  for about 300 000 yrs, which seems like a very long time. But animals have supposedly been around for about 800 millions yrs. So taking that into perspective, conscious beings have only existed for the last 0.0375% of time which any animals have existed. That's only about 3% of 1% of the total time that there has only been meaningless subconsciously reactive animals existing on Earth. It is very difficult to comprehend that amount of time where life has existed on this Earth with only animals and no comprehensive awareness. To be born and exist with the significance of consciousness within that small time frame, seems lucky. Though to be fair, there is the “observer's bias” to take into consideration, that the only way we can be capable of “observing” or comprehending our existence, is that we were born within that time frame (so far). But existing as a human with consciousness, is not the only significance we experience today. 

We live in a time with very convenient technology and information. Before technology, human life seems like it would have been a lot more difficult and uncomfortable, and have a much shorter life span. Most technology has only been around for the last 100 yrs. So the chances of being born within the last 100 yrs, rather than the previous 300 000 yrs would be nearly the same percent again, of 0.03% (though thats not including population increase). But perhaps more significant than comfortability and life span enabled by technology, is information. 

Before the capability of humans sharing information across the globe effectively, chances are, you would live with very little accurate knowledge of our planet, universe, other humans, and ideological structures. The Internet might be the most effective tool humans have developed for the allowance of widespread accurate information, and the internet has only existed for the last 50 yrs (less than today's average lifespan). Considering consciousness to be the most significant capability in the universe, using that consciousness to comprehend and be aware of many more significant aspects of this world (through information sharing) should be incredibly valuable. I think I’m only grasping this concept more so “significantly” now, as I write this out and become more acutely conscious of the factors (as is the case with most all concepts and philosophy). Information is a very valuable gift to utilize our most significant gift of consciousness, to understand and comprehend so many aspects of this world we live in. 

To top it off, we are now living in a time when perhaps the most significant invention ever, is being created: Artificial Intelligence. If consciousness is humans most significant capability, there's a good chance we are about to develop that capability artificially. To develop another being with the most significant capability, could be considered almost as significant as humans evolving in the 1st place. If AI is able to comprehend and be aware of things in general, it will also be functioning in a different method of neural activity, which will likely eventually give it profound advantages of speed and accuracy, with its benefit over us of artificial adaptability for neural network functionability. For us to be alive and witnessing the development of something potentially so significant that it could very well take control over the planet for the 1st time from humans (and perhaps make humans obsolete), is quite exceptionally significant. 

In all, for us to have the capability of conscious comprehension of our own existence in the 1st place, as a human out of all the potential subconscious animals, is likely more significant than we really appreciate. The potential that we could very well be witnessing the development of a new and more powerful conscious being for the 1st time in history as we know it, is another step. But for me to be writing this, or you to be reading this and comprehending such concepts, utilizing technology, internet, and previously learned ideological structures of science, psychology, values, and function of society, is perhaps a significant component of the significance of our significance.

Harm many or Harmony of harm

What is harm? How direct of effects from an action, count as harm?

A basic explanation of harm could be; the cause of a reduction of function, health or well being of something or someone. This could potentially apply to an inanimate object, animal, or person. The significance of harm toward varying things could be subjective, but a lot of people’s perspective (including mine), would likely be that harming an object is least important, harming a living thing without a brain (such as a tree) would be considered the 2nd level of importance, an animal would be the 3rd most significant, and harm towards a human would be the most significant. AI might fit on this scale somewhere, but I’ll leave that out of this context. My perspective is that harm toward a human is most important to avoid, since humans have consciousness which causes a more in depth mindfulness of emotions, and more awareness, comprehension and understanding of their experiences. 

Distinguishing what actions of an individual counts as harm towards something else is a more difficult concept. For attempting to understand this concept, I’ll use a common denominator of harm toward a person, since it seems most significant. 

Direct intentional harm toward someone seems like the most obvious type of harm. Direct unintentional harm towards someone could be considered not as significant as an action causing harm, since the action could be less so to blame (but intention is complex). In a post from about 3.5 yrs ago; Immoral Quantity Question, I went into further detail on how intentions affect the morality of someone's actions. Unintentional harm may be considered not as immoral, but is still harm, and could be regarded as important to learn and avoid. 

The next step of distance for an action causing harm would be indirect harm, where the direct actions of someone cause an effect, and that effect causes another effect of harm. An example could be if someone leaves a campfire burning when they go home, 1 hour later the wind picks up and a bunch of dead leaves blow into the fire. The embers of the burning leaves blow across the ground to ignite a forest fire which ends up spreading and burning someone's house down and injuring them. The action of abandoning the burning fire did not cause direct harm to someone, but the effect of the remaining fire caused the fire to spread once an additional variable of wind was added. This example still seems fairly straight forward that the action counts as harm, since without that action, the other would not have been harmed.

If multiple actions are needed to cause harm indirectly and unintentionally, it becomes somewhat less distinct if each action should be considered an act of harm. For example, as millions of people do every day, driving a car or using electricity causes pollution, which unintentionally and indirectly harms others, through a reduction of health. When it takes many actions to contribute toward an indirect harm which is very difficult to measure or prove, distinguishing this as a harmful action is much more vague. 

Perhaps another difficult action to distinguish as harm, is an action of inaction to aid someone, when it could reduce harm. This could likely be considered to not be an action of harm, since the action of not doing something does not cause the harm. But the trick is, a significant amount of harm, and perhaps much more harm could result from inaction. For example, if you see someone crossing the street, and see a car heading straight for them, which they dont notice, a simple action of yelling “watch out!” could stop the harm, where inaction would cause them to be harmed by the car. An example of indirect inaction causing harm, could be simply not donating money to a charity that reduces harm. The problem with considering inaction as harm, is there are countless inactions any 1 person is taking at all times.

In all, an action counting as harm can be obvious when its direct or if its the sole cause of indirect, but the more steps of cause and effect to result in the harm, or less measurable, or the more actions it takes in total to contribute, creates a fogginess of appointing an action as harm. If harm is the important thing to avoid, it seems inaction could potentially cause as much, or more harm, as action. Besides what action or inaction causes harm, distinguishing blamability, responsibility and morality seem to be another very difficult related element. Perhaps the potential to reduce actions and inactions that harm many, is the harmony of harm.

Dear God above all

Thank you for large and small

Thanks for all taken for granted

including any board thats slanted

Sorry for any fault that I’ve done

But with your aid I become one

help me come closer to you

and love for my neighbor to brew

Guide our souls, just in case

We haven't realized your grace