Meaning, happiness and the story of self

[Bramble]

This is a fascinating article that examines the nature of what it might mean live well. Written entirely from the standpoint of western philosophy, what struck me most forcibly is how at variance its approach is in fundamental respects from some eastern traditions. Is 'the final end of every rational being ... the building of the self' or are we better off just being empty, as Zhuangzi put it?

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/memory/all

[Nearly Sane]

This is a fascinating article that examines the nature of what it might mean live well. Written entirely from the standpoint of western philosophy, what struck me most forcibly is how at variance its approach is in fundamental respects from some eastern traditions. Is 'the final end of every rational being ... the building of the self' or are we better off just being empty, as Zhuangzi put it?

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/memory/all

Oddly the last bit seems to link to this that for other reasons I posted on SfG.



https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/is-your-true-self-a-kind-of-ghost-1.4093448?mode=amp&fbclid=IwAR3ay_x16CHf1MQTYWnjnziEDEaj60CDL_qbgCdqON2QNOKNNnRA6_SB_Qo


I would see myself as episodic, even though as a child I did feel as if I was telling the story of my life and in doing so re-enacting it. I would agree it's a very western approach and assumes a coherent self in a way I/we/them don't experience it. I am not so much empty as a multitude. And I wonder where is Hume's comment's in this whereby the one thing that cannot be observed and therefore narrated is the/a self.  I am pulled back to the idea that there is at veery least a split as laid out in both articles on how we perceive - again I will link to one I/they/we/you prepared earlier.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=13903.msg673968#msg673968

But the more I read the forum, the more it feels like each participant perceives in their own way, sometimes overlapping, sometimes unique but always individual. We are the sum of our perceptions but maybe that is lessthan the sum in total.

[ekim]

Is 'the final end of every rational being ... the building of the self' or are we better off just being empty, as Zhuangzi put it?

..... or is it as St. Augustine put it .... " You must be emptied of that which fills you so that you may be filled with that of which you are empty."

[Bramble]

NS

I would see myself as episodic, even though as a child I did feel as if I was telling the story of my life

I think that would also describe my experience. As a child I don't think I ever came across the idea that life might not be a narrative that I had to work hard to author, with success always fleeting or out of reach and failure ever snapping at my heels. Knowing what I believed and 'stood for' seemed to be very important in this respect and this in turn involved having considered opinions and being able to defend them. Whether there was a 'real me' that I had to discover and embody or whether I had to fashion a meaningful 'good life' out of all the shoulds and should nots that others had implanted in my consciousness, it was my responsibility to make something of myself and 'be someone'. It took me a long time to realise that it wasn't actually necessary to live like this.

I am not so much empty as a multitude.

That's a pretty good way of describing what Zhuangzi actually means by being empty. His theme is that of freeing oneself from the fetters of a fixed identity in what he calls non-dependence, which is to wander freely in total dependence on whatever happens (this is, in any case, unavoidable - it's just a matter of not resisting it) such that one's identity is fluid and ever transforming. This obviously requires that we are empty of any fixed essential nature.

But the more I read the forum, the more it feels like each participant perceives in their own way, sometimes overlapping, sometimes unique but always individual.

Yes, our endlessly different perspectives provide much scope for debate and misunderstanding. Zhuangzi has much to say about this too!

[Bramble]

..... or is it as St. Augustine put it .... " You must be emptied of that which fills you so that you may be filled with that of which you are empty."

Yes, maybe. Sartre was very close to what Zhuangzi had in mind, I think, when he described the human as a becoming - 'a being such that it is what it is not and is not what it is.'

[Sriram]

..... or is it as St. Augustine put it .... " You must be emptied of that which fills you so that you may be filled with that of which you are empty."

Yes...that is the simplest way to put it.

[Nearly Sane]

NS

I think that would also describe my experience. As a child I don't think I ever came across the idea that life might not be a narrative that I had to work hard to author, with success always fleeting or out of reach and failure ever snapping at my heels. Knowing what I believed and 'stood for' seemed to be very important in this respect and this in turn involved having considered opinions and being able to defend them. Whether there was a 'real me' that I had to discover and embody or whether I had to fashion a meaningful 'good life' out of all the shoulds and should nots that others had implanted in my consciousness, it was my responsibility to make something of myself and 'be someone'. It took me a long time to realise that it wasn't actually necessary to live like this.

That's a pretty good way of describing what Zhuangzi actually means by being empty. His theme is that of freeing oneself from the fetters of a fixed identity in what he calls non-dependence, which is to wander freely in total dependence on whatever happens (this is, in any case, unavoidable - it's just a matter of not resisting it) such that one's identity is fluid and ever transforming. This obviously requires that we are empty of any fixed essential nature.

Yes, our endlessly different perspectives provide much scope for debate and misunderstanding. Zhuangzi has much to say about this too!

My experience was somewhat different, the narrative I felt had already been lived/written and I was the avatar of myself who was recounting the story from the viewpoint of having lived it. Instead of life flashing before the eyes of the me who was at the end of the story, it was a matrix like recreation that they were narrating.


As per the earlier link, I find reading some of AB's posting on SfG so alien to my experience of 'being me' that the monist/dualist point in the article seems close.

[wigginhall]

Interesting article.   I did a series of Zen retreats, where I bashed my head against the narrative idea.  This seemed to come back to memory, my life is a story because I remember bits, and stitch them together.  I think I cried a lot over this, it's very painful to let go of it.   In the end, I have a mixture of story and emptiness.   The story gives a structure, but the emptiness of things provides great beauty.  It's not a bad compromise. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

And I wonder where is Hume's comment's in this whereby the one thing that cannot be observed and therefore narrated is the/a self.

Nothing to add to the discussion, but just to say that I once heard a nice line that perhaps reflects this: "You can't cut butter with a knife made of butter".

[Samuel]

NS,

Nothing to add to the discussion, but just to say that I once heard a nice line that perhaps reflects this: "You can't cut butter with a knife made of butter".

That is nice, except I would bet good money that an egineer/physicist would be able to work out a way to actually cut butter with a knife made of butter

[Samuel]

Yes, maybe. Sartre was very close to what Zhuangzi had in mind, I think, when he described the human as a becoming - 'a being such that it is what it is not and is not what it is.'

I think Satre pinched that from Heidegger, who concluded that being is time

[Walter]

That is nice, except I would bet good money that an egineer/physicist would be able to work out a way to actually cut butter with a knife made of butter

freeze the knife made of butter , simple !

[Outrider]

freeze the knife made of butter , simple !

Accelerate the butter-knife (not to be confused with a butter knife) to a considerable portion of the speed of light in a vacuum - it might not be the cleanest of cuts...

O.

[Walter]

Accelerate the butter-knife (not to be confused with a butter knife) to a considerable portion of the speed of light in a vacuum - it might not be the cleanest of cuts...

O.

i think a clean cut would be likely if kept in one continuos plane ,
As in the 'tablecloth ' trick principle

[Outrider]

i think a clean cut would be likely if kept in one continuos plane ,As in the 'tablecloth ' trick principle

Even with the low friction you get with butter, at those sort of speed differentials the friction is going to eject massive amounts of vapourised super-heated dairy I'd imagine... This must be how Randall Munroe feels.... I wonder if you'd get a Leidenfrost effect... that'd cut down on the vapourisation?

O.

[Walter]

Outy ,
Knowing the answer to this would make me very happy and I think you're the man who knows ;
When in a cubicle shower with one 'wall' made of flimsy nylon curtain
When I turn on the water after a few seconds the curtain starts to billow inwards toward me
Is this the Bernoulli effect or the Coanda effect at play here ?
I'm guessing you know 👍

[Outrider]

Outy ,
Knowing the answer to this would make me very happy and I think you're the man who knows ;
When in a cubicle shower with one 'wall' made of flimsy nylon curtain
When I turn on the water after a few seconds the curtain starts to billow inwards toward me
Is this the Bernoulli effect or the Coanda effect at play here ?
I'm guessing you know 👍

Bernoulli - total pressure in a moving fluid (like air) is composed of a static pressure acting in all directions and a dynamic pressure resulting from the moving air.  As the air in the shower is moved downwards by the viscosity of the water so the dynamic pressure increases and the static pressure drops correspondingly.  The static pressure on the other side of the curtain is then slightly higher, and pushes the curtain in towards you - it's the same effect you get if you gently blow between two sheets of paper that brings them together and a component of the effect that makes aerofoils work.

The Coanda effect may apply to the airflow down the inside of the curtain to have it keep contact, but it won't cause the curtain to move inward, it's the tendency of moving flows of fluid across a surface to try to remain in contact with the surface, and is a contributor to turbulence at the trailing edge of aerofoils (and less aerodynamic surfaces).

O.

[Walter]

O.

I'm guessing the Leidenfrost effect would not hve enough time to form at such speeds
Plus the kinetic energy held by even a thin flat profile blade would cause explosive reactions as in even small meteorites at very shallow angles hitting the suface of the moon causes round craters

[Outrider]

O.

I'm guessing the Leidenfrost effect would not hve enough time to form at such speeds
Plus the kinetic energy held by even a thin flat profile blade would cause explosive reactions as in even small meteorites at very shallow angles hitting the suface of the moon causes round craters

The more I think about it, the less I think Leidenfrost is relevant - that forms when a heated surface is transferring heat to the lower surface of an otherwise (relatively) cool object, and here we're talking about the friction heating both elements...

That said, I wasn't thinking about the scraping motion of lifting a thin section of butter, I was thinking about a more perpendicular cut to slice a block of butter in two...

O.

[Walter]

Bernoulli - total pressure in a moving fluid (like air) is composed of a static pressure acting in all directions and a dynamic pressure resulting from the moving air.  As the air in the shower is moved downwards by the viscosity of the water so the dynamic pressure increases and the static pressure drops correspondingly.  The static pressure on the other side of the curtain is then slightly higher, and pushes the curtain in towards you - it's the same effect you get if you gently blow between two sheets of paper that brings them together and a component of the effect that makes aerofoils work.

The Coanda effect may apply to the airflow down the inside of the curtain to have it keep contact, but it won't cause the curtain to move inward, it's the tendency of moving flows of fluid across a surface to try to remain in contact with the surface, and is a contributor to turbulence at the trailing edge of aerofoils (and less aerodynamic surfaces).

O.

After watching this happen many times ( and without using any Mathis ) I concluded that both were at play with the Bernoulli effect being vastly dominant
However the falling water next to the curtain would cause some movement in the curtain to some lesser extent

Thanks
Walt

[Walter]

O.
Here's another question regarding prop driven aircraft
This year I've spent a lot of time watching and recording video of the WW2 Lancaster bomber
from very close up
I was surprised to see all four engines rotate the props in the same direction .
I would have thought to eliminate unwanted tork and reduce vibration each set of two engines would rotate in opposite directions
Any thoughts on that please

[Outrider]

After watching this happen many times ( and without using any Mathis ) I concluded that both were at play with the Bernoulli effect being vastly dominant
However the falling water next to the curtain would cause some movement in the curtain to some lesser extent

Thanks
Walt

The water isn't likely - except in the most forceful shower - to be a consistent fluid source across the surface of the curtain, but is likely to be present in small irregular quantities sufficient to break up any laminar flow of the air over the surface of the curtain (from a fluid dynamics point of view, the air and the water are both fluids) which would reduce any effect the Coanda effect might have

Where it might kick in, at the lower edge, as the curtain gets pulled inwards the Coriolis effect would draw in air from outside to an extent and further eliminate the effect by creating a zone of moving air on the other side, with an additional Venturi effect perhaps as the air gets pulled into the narrow constraint between the wall of the bath and fabric of the curtain.

O.

[Walter]

Sorry
That should say torque 😤

[Outrider]

O.
Here's another question regarding prop driven aircraft
This year I've spent a lot of time watching and recording video of the WW2 Lancaster bomber
from very close up
I was surprised to see all four engines rotate the props in the same direction .
I would have thought to eliminate unwanted tork and reduce vibration each set of two engines would rotate in opposite directions
Any thoughts on that please

The vibration effects aren't that dependent upon which direction the blades are turning in - and indeed, some effects will be magnified by counter-rotation* whilst others will be dampened.  Historically I think it was more common than it is now for them all to rotate in the same direction, although it's far from universal to have counter-rotation these days.   It does cause a slight tendency to create torque roll, but generally it was not enough to counteract the benefits of only needing one set of tooling for the mass-produced engines.

Over time, particularly with engines with a broad range of operational rotational speeds, the issue became more of a control problem, and it was identified in particular that it caused significant problems during some forms of engine failure with twin engined planes which prompted some people to shift.  The most common 'class' of counter-rotating engines are on training aircraft - it's generally considered something that's commonplace and easy to counter once you know how to fly.

O.



*Not to be confused with contra-rotating engines, where there are two propellors turning in opposite directions on the same engine mount.

[Walter]

Thanks O
When I asked that same question to one of the machanics who works on it every day he didn't give me a satisfactory answer only to say that's the way it is ??