2017-08-26: Personality #11

topic

discussion notes

  • You can’t force someone to change themselves, as that will likely cause regression and reinforcement, rather than change

  • Change occurs in trusting environments, where one can feel free to change themselves, and learn from play (that is, venturing outside boundaries, making a fool of yourself, but trying again, and in this environment, foolishness is fun and progression).

  • Transference

  • Reversion to childlike defence mechanisms / subpersonalities

  • If she upset authority, then it would expose her to the world

    • Footage of regressive left and feminist being aggressive yet pleading in their argumentation, and then once they lose the argument, they call for an authority figure’s help, and when that authority stumbles too, they break down and cry

    • Footage of united airlines asian man removal, where the woman “how could you do that, somebody stop them” - a lot of faux-courage seems to be accountability/responsibility free - as soon as they themselves are confronted with the oppressor, they would likely run away, change sides, or plead

    • Collective Munchausen (mun-chow-zen) by Gad Saad

    • It is a reliance of the narrative of authority, in how they orient and operate themselves in the world. So when the authority recourse fails, they fracture. This seems to be causal with the desire for ever-expanding authority, code of conducts, and to make the world a totalitarian daycare centre for adults (safe space).

      • This happens for any threat to any world view. The best solution to this, is to engage with the threat, and adapt to it.

      • Code of conducts

      • Millennials, due to women entering the workforce, have been dubbed the “daycare generation”, where daycares are mostly maternal, where if one upsets another child, it is the upsetters fault, with no agency of the emotions of the upset, creating an early pattern of appeals to authority at emotional distress and punishment for actions/speech that may offend others, as to be upset is a moral outrage - which when continued in adult life, hinders rationality, and only gets you so far before it comes crashing down

    • Hedonistic treadmill / Hedonistic adaptation

    • People have these ideals of what their life should be, and they get upset when it is not like that.

      • West tries and changes their external world to match their internal world.

      • East tries and changes their internal world to match their external world.

      • When this mismatch occurs, they can either:

        • Blame the external world aka society - easiest

        • Blame themselves - you ability to match society

        • Blame their ideals - the worst, as who wants to admit their ideals are wrong, the things that you’ve set out and orientated yourself around for decades, who wants to blame that

        • Seems tied to Cognitive Dissonance, how when a mismatch of the 3 selves occur, one exists in angst/contradiction/disintegration until they drag one or both to match all 3 again

          • Should Self

          • Actual Self

          • Ideal Self

      • Entitlement to rights - please expect the ideals to already be met by society, that everything should already be perfect - and when that is not true, they will get very offended

      • Political decisions - people really hate to admit that they are wrong or to face the unknown, so they candour out irrational expansive ideas about what is going on - overarching explanations for everything, patriarchy, god, marxism, etc

        • This could be caused by people need to have a theory, in order to act. If you have different ideas that are incompatible, then you cannot formulate a plan of how to act.

        • Low-resolution thinking vs high-resolution thinking. The world is so complex, we can never understand all of it at high-resolution thinking. So a lot of the times, we defer to these stark low-resolution explanations of the world, just so we can move forward, as sometimes it is better to act wrongly than to not act at all. You have to be strategic with the balance on this.

        • It is rare to be critical of your own beliefs, as for many, an attack of their beliefs, is a personal attack, that hurts. You need reasons to be motivated to be critical of your own beliefs, with that, it no longer hurts.

        • People also tend towards confirmation bias, as correlation biases. Pro-abortion also correlates highly with global warming.

        • People also don’t know what they want, or what is good for them, what they need. People have a tendency towards hedonism, even it works against them. Delayed gratification is hard.

        • Philosophy is hard, as it is thankless. As a creator and a westerner, you want to manipulate the external world and get benefit from the external world. Programming takes months before you may get a result. Design is immediate. Philosophy seems is one of these delayed things. How do we justify the investment in it, when it is hard to see the results?

          • It seems what people want to do, is when they are trapped on a desert island, is to just trust their intuitions and build a raft, and get out of there. And when they get out to the ocean, that raft can sink, and they never systematically tested their intuitions, they just trusted their intuitions will guide them to safety.

          • Then you have the scientist, who tests their raft strenuously, over all sorts of conditions, over what could be years, which sucks as who wants to be stuck on a desert island for that long, but when they actually go out into the ocean, they survive.

          • It is only a matter of time, for those who built their rafts entirely on intuition, before the raft crumbles and they nearly down, or sometimes they do drown.

      • When your value system crumbles, you are only left with negative emotion, so one can prefer totalitarian certainty over nihilistic chaos.

        • Whereas a philosopher as well as the survivalists, will admit, that there are few things they do know, which could still be wrong, and there is also a lot that they don’t know

          • Jainism Syādvāda

            • Anekantavada

            • There are things that I know which are true

            • There are things that I know which are not true

            • There are things that I do not know, which are true

            • There are things that I do not know, which are not true

            • There are things that I know I do not know

            • There are things that I do not know that I do not know

            • There are things that I know that I know

            • There are things that I do not know that I know

          • Survivalists must know the limits and boundaries of their knowledge, as for them, it is life or death

            • Which is interesting, as city people generally despise the redneck survivalist

            • For city people, they know their comforts, and when they step out of their comforts, their world ends and they flip out

      • Postulation; City life is hard to be in touch with their human condition, they are dependent on artificial systems that protect them, and when they fall down they don’t know what to do

        • Socrates - the more distant one is from the results of their work, then the harder it is for them to draw motivation from their work

        • Stereotypes of Rednecks/Old people - they get very scared of technology, perhaps because it is unnatural for them

        • Socrates - all learning is remembering forgotten knowledge

          • Intuition could be considered a forgotten knowledge

            • Intuition is based on systems ingrained in us, that have been tested against the time of life’s beginning

            • Where our environment acts against our intuitions, it can stress us

          • Knowledge was a lot different back in Socrates times. At that time, if you could reason something, it was true. It wasn’t until Descartes started realising the limits of his reason with his early developments of the scientific method, and then Kant wrote his critiques of reason, that society started seeing there was knowledge outside of reason, and the emergence of objectivity occurred.

          • Intuitions may also be maladapted for modern living, as they may also be optimised for tribal living.

            • Lets have sex at every opportunity and have the tribe raise the children, until foreigners come to our land and STIs emerge, then we must invest the intellectual concepts of decency, modesty, and dignity to prevent the spread of STIs, none of which are intuition based

              • There are also genetic proclivities for monogamy and promiscuity
            • It is also intuitive to blame the 1% as it is easy to have the intuition of injustice and unfairness, with systems like capitalism requiring a lot more high-resolution thinking to see the fairness in the system

          • These shortcomings of intuition is why we invented the scientific method

      • People are also not capable of often knowing what they really believe. They are often walking contradictions of disintegrated concepts. You can also convince people through repetition of anything.

        • Are your beliefs really your beliefs, or are they merely things you have become accustomed to?
    • You teach them to become brave. They have the courage to try new things. They become bored of their comfort zone and desire expansion against the cage of their own boundaries.

      • Question: As the person becomes more brave, they can stand up to tyranny against them in a relationship. Would this also apply to their relationship with the state, being less able to be tyrannised by the state? And if the citizens of a society are made brave, are they less able to be tyrannised by the state?

        • What is bravery?

          • Not about not being afraid, about being afraid, and still acting despite your fear.

          • Courage

            • Courage (also called bravery or valour) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, death or threat of death, while moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss.

            • The classical virtue of fortitude (andreia, fortitudo) is also translated “courage”, but includes the aspects of perseverance and patience.[1]

        • If you know what to do in a situation, then people will perceive you as brave. Even if you yourself a terrified.

          • This then ties into what the rat does - it keeps exploring its fear until it becomes bored with it.

          • **Are leaders then people who either know what to do, or have an intuition about what to be done? **And as such those who don’t, trust them, and perceive them to be brave.

        • People with chronic pain do not feel less pain. This goes against the more pain you feel, the tougher you will become.

          • This is also a counter argument to the teasing the snail example, when applying that to humans for pain.
        • As you experience something, your competency with it increases. And as you become competent in one area, it spills into helping you to become competent in more areas.

        • Moral courage, is interesting. A lot of men would have bravely towards pain and uncertainty - teenage boys are a testament to this, in the displays of their bravery through dangerous means to be attractive to teenage girls, as those who are brave can do a better job of protection. But many of these people, perhaps do not have moral courage, despite having courage in other areas. Gad Saad talked about moral courage, where for him, he gets outraged at untruths, it physically hurts him and antagonises him, so he must do something to address it.

          • A lot of those from the regressive left appear to have moral courage. Although perhaps they have moral fervor, rather than moral courage, as often when their perspectives are countered, they panic and retreat.

            • They don’t risk anything, as their social environment agrees with them.

            • Moral courage would also be the courage to question your own morality to make it stronger.

              • Moral fervor just means you get outraged easily.
            • One can virtue signal their outrage and moral fervor. But as soon as they themselves are confronted by authority, they scurry away. As soon as their words have accountability, they run.

  • Existentialism

    • Definition:

      • Often explained in society as the matrix example; your perception of the world exists in your mind, so if you change your mind, you change your reality.

      • In this lecture it seems explained with similarity to postmodernism, although postmodernism seems to throw the baby out with the bath water, whereas this acknowledges no one body of knowledge can be perfect, however we can still find utility in each of them, and shouldn’t hold sacred reverence in any. And as such, because we can’t be sure of how we interpret the external world, at least at the very best we target our own actions and our agency, to the extent that it can affect the external world.

        • Seems an answer to Nietzsche’s “god is dead”
    • Individual agency and responsibility seems to be lacking in American society now

      • Sexual education is now the responsibility of the school, rather than the parents (also highly applicable in Sweden)

        • Justification is as both parents are now working, they do not have time to teach their kids such things (perhaps they both shouldn’t be working if they are having children - however there are economic reasons for it) so someone “has” to

          • Do they really have to? It is not that hard to figure out sex, as sex is intuitive for the most part, or a rewarding learning experience with your partner.

            • Hard to figure out STI and pregnancy prevention though.
        • It is good showcase of the problems of legitimation

          • Book recommendation: Ben Shapiro - Porn Generation

          • As soon as something becomes legitimised, it now delegates away from individual responsibility. As soon as it is taught in the schools, it no longer becomes the parent’s responsibility - even though school teaching is last resort, because IT IS the parent’s responsibility - they just aren’t fulfilling their end of it.

            • Because the school system now teaches it, we don’t need to anymore
          • Morality is communicated to the children from the political leans of the teacher - and with sexual education in schools, and school teaches being overwhelmingly left leaning, left leaning sexual morality is also injected into the children

          • The legitimisation of sex education, also legitimises more and more deviant things as times go by, that were not in the original subscription of STI and pregnancy prevention - now in Victoria, Australia can also be teaching of masturbation, dildos, vibrators, etc

        • Places without sex education in schools, also have higher teenage pregnancy rates

          • What is the extent of this study? As it is an observation, so we need to draw the right conclusions.

            • What is the relationship status of them? Do they keep the baby? Do they wedlock?

            • Are they as promiscuous outside of relationships, in relationships, and in marriage? It seems there will be more promiscuity in the schools that do teach it.

            • Sex is a component of relationships. Are their relationships more successful? How many divorces? How many long-term happy marriages?

            • Study communicated that the pill causes more teenage pregnancies - perhaps because more people are having sex with unintended consequences

              • Pill would imply, I can have sex without getting pregnant, then they do get pregnant.
        • Note that pregnancy is the result of knowing how to do sex. It is the intended biological consequence of sex. Pregnancy is doing sex right. Pretending otherwise seems naive.

        • In Egypt, it is the Islamic schools which teach sex education - with a focus on scriptural basis for sexual hygiene practices.

          • This seems a very good focus of sex education
        • Porn Generation - Sex education also normalises sex, rather than making it a privilege, which would also lead to the normalisation of abortion, as pregnancy then becomes an unwanted thing that you can get rid of your convenience, rather than something wanted/intended/desired from the sex which is something the stance “don’t have sex unless you want kids and are married” communicates

    • It seems the left/liberals has gain preference in western world, because the right/conservatives has had to go through an existential crises the past 20-60 years as due to the rise of technology, science, and secularism, it has been harder and harder to believe in a fantasy man in the sky, which a lot of their morality was based upon, so when you have repressed a liberal into a conservative system from the argument of god, and god can be questioned, then the liberal will not stay.

      • As such, a lot of SJWs seem to have come from more repressive religious communities, where without questioning how they were able to be manipulated by cult like behaviour, they’ve swapped out the previously socially acceptable cult, for a new socially acceptable cult, which has the same dogmatic and expansive belief systems (the overarching patriarchy, marxism, etc)

      • The right/conservatives as a party, and as individuals, have had to go through an existential crises, to question why they do things, and what is it about, and hence the focus now on secular reasoning, individual responsibility, and benefit to society - as the god reason is no longer enough

        • Nietzsche’s quote about the world is rife with suffering today, and a promise of a good afterlife is not adequate enough to ease importance of today’s suffering
      • This seems cumulated by Trump winning in this election.

        • One reason can be individual agency and conservatives have been neglected for so long. And the rest of the republican party are still outdated for today’s world.

        • Also a note, that it was not a “not hillary” vote.

          • Has also happened in Egypt, with the failure of the old regime.
  • Self authoring improvements, especially for men

    • Seems related to the masculine role being shattered over the past 60 years. Where women’s role has been strengthened into a very coherent story, and the masculine role has been weakened, where they have no coherent story besides being rapists and toxic.

    • Eliminates the assumption that socio political / cultural interventions must be required, over individual psyche interventions.

      • You do not have to change the system

      • You can change the individuals

        • And from that, even the system changes
      • Causes may still be socio political, but it does not mean the solution has to be!

      • We should still strive to address socio political factors as well - but we can weigh up the multiple factors, and address multiple factors, and consider individual psyche changes as one option

    • Observations of men and women communication differences in social situations

      • Men with men will often smack talk, and talk about systems and opinions

        • disagreements, resolution, responsibility, encouragement

          • Good to see this smack talk celebrated in the jordan peterson discourse lobby

            • In male workforce industries, this still exists in lunch breaks. But even women equalised work forces, even this masculine display in lunch breaks is condemned as a “toxic bros club”.

              • Feminist; argh, ew, why are they so aggressive?!

              • Feminine; great, they are becoming stronger

      • Men with women will talk about each other; hopes and dreams (goals and ambitions), and concerns and encouragement

        • responsibility and encouragement
      • Women with women will talk about people and experiences and how others disappointed them to appeals of sympathy

        • complaints, sympathy, and encouragement
      • These differences seem to be due to

        • Disagreeableness in men, making them more competitive, seeking to make themselves and their social circle stronger

        • Agreeableness in women, making them more avoidant of conflict and sympathetic to their social circle

        • Follow-up: Are women more aesthetically focused than men?

          • Women seem more focused on aesthetic of beauty, and judge themselves, men, and other women on this. As well as the aesthetics that they can get from men / their men (government / family) / their man (marriage).

            • What can help them get a man, raise a family, and enable their family/community, more productively

            • Women must display to be attractive, they need to look perfect and display they would be a good wife/mother

          • Men seem more focused on aesthetics of women, and aesthetic of tools

            • What can help them get a woman, raise a family, and enable society, more productively

            • Men must perform to be attractive, they need to perform perfectly to showcase wealth, responsibility, and protection

          • This focus makes sense to apply with modern politics as

            • Women are wired to judge the material possessions of men, as they are wired to want some of it

            • And the men are now, wait, what, we earnt that, and you are not wife nor the mother of my children, stop taking my stuff!

  • Gender and responsibility

    • Men and women are biologically different, temperamentally different

      • Difference for agreeableness is injustice and unfairness

        • Leads to the desire to make everyone androgynous

          • Women are pressured to behave as men

          • Feminists shame women into feminism

            • For the goal of equality -Why are they so obsessed with equality? What is so special about equality? Who cares?!

              • Perhaps it is a replacement of the religious dogma of work hard to get to heaven, instead work hard to get equality

                • People must fight for something. People die for even garbage causes.

                • If you equate money to power, then if you have less money, then you have less power, and if you have less power, then you can be exploited - not as simple as this though, there are other ways not to be exploited, and power is in more ways than just economic power, and also other ways to gain power than just money

            • What if women fought for the right to vote on other grounds than equality?

              • We are competent enough - we can contribute, we also have helpful ideas about how society should be.

              • Focus on proving that we can bring something positive instead of saying it is unfair if we don’t get to vote, since men get to vote.

              • Proving it by expressing good arguments and new perspectives that would benefit society.

    • Confusion between equality and equivalence and equity

      • Definitions

        • Equality - the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities

        • Equivalence - equal in value, amount, function, meaning, etc

        • Equity - the quality of being fair and impartial

      • Women fought to be equal to men (right to vote, right to work), now they are, and in many ways surpass men legally, as such perhaps now they are fighting for equivalency instead - which is delusional, as they are not, nor why would a woman want to be man?

        • Why fight feminism as a woman, when it gets you want you want, and as you don’t like conflict yourself.

        • Ties into earlier conversations about women, happiness, workforce, sacrificing their own family and local community around that family for a faux-workplace-community/family, satisfying maternal needs in places where maternal needs may not be best

        • Differences are there, for very good reasons

        • Fat Pizza - in Australia there has existed a large effort in celebrating not only cultural differences but even the worst parts of cultural differences (for Americans, think Russell Peters). Whereas now, you cannot even admit the worst part of cultures. Differences have become a taboo, rather than a celebration.

      • Women also have the trump card that they can be pregnant, something a man can never do. As such, if they are fighting for equivalency, then it would also naturally lead into “we don’t need men, as we can do all the things you can do, and more” - which trivialises the differences, the need for the differences

      • Equity applies the moral fervor to differences, viewing differences as unfair or unjust, even if they are also inevitable. How even the thought of nature-determinism is racist, despite it being true and non-negative of nature-determinism (their preference), you must acknowledge differences exist, and they may have good reasons why they exist.

    • There are forms of equity that cannot be measured, such as dignity, respect, discipline

      • In a circle of friends, their wealth changes over time, but they remain good friends and help each other, each becoming more successful over time, despite fluctuations in many measurable things

        • When a woman challenges a man, the man can turn it into a battle. If a woman elevates the man, he will do all sorts of things to please her. (probably goes the other way too)

          • Men will do things for a woman, that he will never do for a man.

          • Another approach women could take to equity, is to fulfill their feminine role with a person who is fulfilling a masculine role, as then the equity can also be shared

            • They don’t have to coerce men to give women more

            • They don’t have to act like men to get more

            • All are options

          • Are women undervaluing respect for men?

            • It seems in a large part, they are oblivious from this question. As seen by the anti-MRA lean. Mens issues do not seem to cross their mind outside of a feminist point of view.
      • There is one form of equity, than a man will never have, and that is the ability to get pregnant, this a traumatic disparity of equity

        • This is something that feminists look at deceptively

          • They view it as they women no longer need men

          • They also selectively ignore that it also innately acknowledges females femininity, and their role as a mother

          • The happiness of this point should be noted, as studies show

            • Men acting like men makes men happy

            • Women acting like men makes them unhappy

            • Women acting like women makes them happy

            • Men acting like women makes them unhappy

            • (of course, obviously, they are exceptions to this, probably temperamentally based exceptions, so the ability to do what is right for you, is best)

        • Tangent of polyamory vs monogamy

          • Cost of pregnancy is more to the woman, than the man

          • Polyamory works were tribes raise the children

            • Polyamory does not scale in modern day when everyone is pregnant with each others babies, only sustains in an unnatural hedonistic state of pregnancy avoidance
          • Monogamy works where wealth is propagated from families - rise of agriculture based societies

            • Man - I will clothe and home you, and care for you in old age, with my and my ancestors rewards from our work - and you in exchange will guarantee the child is mine, take care of the things I neglect, and take care of me in old age

              • Otherwise the male risks sacrificing his lineage for someone else’s

              • Otherwise the woman risks being impoverished

          • Genetic proclivities

            • The larger the penis, the more promiscuous the ethnicity

              • Sperm must compete with other sperm, women sleep with multiple men, the male who pleases the woman best gets her pregnant, and her vaginal juices will act as a spermicide to more inferior males
            • The smaller the penis, the more monogamous the ethnicity

              • No need for huge penises
    • Postulation: What would have happened if women, instead of arguing for the right to vote because they like men are breathing, instead arguing for the right of to vote because they will demonstrate they are competent and responsible enough to contribute to society in such a way.

      • This is in the context of conscription. Men had to be willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, and in exchange of that sacrifice, they get to vote. Women didn’t have to do that.

        • Follow up; how would one demonstrate their competency, how would this be measured, would it be measured from a masculine or feminine perspective?

          • Voting is about opinions. So demonstrating your opinions stand against criticism. That we are women and we can make good arguments that stand against criticism, and this demonstrates our ability to have reasonable opinions, and to vote. Rather than we are women, and we should get to vote, because feelings.

            • It seems the way they have ended up going about this, is the exact opposite - to try and tear down the scientific system as it is patriarchal, and that feelings trump facts.
      • Postulation: Do we really have a right to influence something, if we only influence it in bad ways?

      • There has been a large emphasis from feminism on ever expanding rights, but no emphasis on ever expanding responsibilities.

        • One could consider themselves to have no rights, and only privileges they have earned from demonstrating responsibilities.

          • Ha! Like the Stack Exchange and Discourse moderation systems.
  • Free will

    • If two set of conclusions can be drawn from the same experience, then you cannot say it was the experience that caused the conclusion. If you were bullied as a child, you can either grow up to never bully someone again or grow up to bully everyone - since both of these situations can happen, and be modified by individual intervention, it was not the experience that enforced the outcome, but the agency of the individual

      • Not that experience alone, but other experiences together with your biology will necessarily lead to one future (determinism).

        • You can’t change the past, but the future is still open - an intervention can change a person’s future behaviour.

          • Your future is also, your responsibility, it is no one else’s
      • If the individual does not realise it was their doing, then they require an intervention (usually in the form of seeking psychological help when their happiness gets too bad, or a court enforced intervention if their crime gets too bad)

        • Seems this is why books like “Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill” does so well for making successful people. As it teaches them their actions are the result of their character which is a result of their choices, conscious and unconscious, and while they cannot change the past, they can change their future, by changing their character, through awareness and goal setting and integrity.
    • Sam Harris - how do you have free will, when you can’t even control your thoughts

      • Imagine some doves. Who decided how many doves you imagined?

      • Notice your observational thoughts, the thoughts you did not call upon. Who put them there? They seem to just arise out of nowhere.

      • As an side

    • Follow-Up: If free will is defined as existing outside of causality (contra-causal free will), what *is *it? It isn’t randomness and it’s not caused by anything (or at least, there is a non-causal part of it) - what else is there?

    • If free will doesn’t exist, moral responsibility has no solid ground.

      • True, but it is helpful to think of responsibility as a tool. You hold others responsible to make them act better and you hold yourself responsible in order to improve yourself.

      • There is still a problem there - moral responsibility depends on free will existing.

      • We punish criminals because we hold them responsible - we don’t punish animals or nature in the same way, because we don’t consider them to have agency.

        • We punish criminals to condition them and to deter others - that depends on people acting predictably, it depends on at least some level of causality.

        • We hold humans responsible because we can interact morally with them - we can even hold dogs responsible to a degree since we can interact morally with them.

    • Definition mashups. Lets define; Free will vs choice vs agency vs destiny vs fate

      • Free will - are our choices our own? Is everything pre-decided? God only knows/decides.

        • Whatever the answer, it has zero utility, as we are subject to it and won’t be able to manipulate it.
      • Agency - regardless of free will, we still appear to make choices, which forces upon us the utility of agency, responsibility and morality - the limit of our agency is how accountable we are held in the eyes of the law - as well as the limit of our ability to self-actualise?

        • Certain animals (humans, dolphins, elephants, and others) display sophisticated morality

        • Dogs (and others) display basic morality, dogs will protest, if they do the same work as another dog and do not get rewarded in like

        • Some animals seem to display no morality

      • Destiny - what is our divine purpose

      • Fate - what is our human limit

    • Biblical reference

      • Humans were like animals and had no free will, until they ate from the tree of knowledge, and gained consciousness/agency/responsibility
    • Matrix movies and free will

      • The matrix movies are a testimony to the realisation of man’s agency against parental care. The ending attests to this - with a peace between the machines and the humans - those who exercise their agency may voluntarily leave the comfort of the matrix and fend for themselves in the chaos of the real world - however before the ending, it is also a testament to man’s drive for agency and self actualisation - the scenes between neo and the architect, the oracle, and smith explain this - with only neo and this team believing in the power of agency, and through this belief, and the architects disbelief of it, they are able to convince the oracle of the power of neo’s agency and conquer smith, and survive the humans who wish to tear them down (cipher from the first movie).

    • Cloud Atlas

      • Somni 451

        • To be is to be perceived. And so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds that go on apportioning themselves throughout all time. Our lives are not our own; from womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

          • This is an acknowledgement of nature’s role in our determinism and chose our own path, but then it is also an acknowledgement of the power of our agency and human spirit to guide our path (and shape the future, for us, and others) as we see fit

            • The past has shaped the environment of the game, you now get to pick how you wish to play it, and change it for the future generations
      • As an side, I really like this quote

        • You have to do whatever you can’t not do.