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Post by bear on Nov 10, 2021 22:31:41 GMT -5
Immortality might be one aspect of fame desired by humans, but I feel like many don't care much about being remembered after their death and have an obsession with fame for its immediate perceived advantages (attention, chief of all). yeah but humans don't just desire fame, they invented it too. it only exists by the will of the society that "makes" people famous. and i think we as a society started giving certain people fame in an attempt to make them immortal. |
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Post by Skelly Craig on Nov 10, 2021 23:28:07 GMT -5
True, fame is not an inherent property. I can see how a willingness to cultivate it might come from a desire for the possibility of (a kind of) 'immortality'.
As for animals, I don't think it's a huge leap between self-preservation and an awareness that one may die. I believe "instinct" is not considered a scientific term anymore, because there's many factors we don't yet understand and that are in fact controversial. Just like death is an abstract concept, so is consciousness... even more so is that of another species.
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Post by B. on Nov 11, 2021 2:04:02 GMT -5
I didn't read all the replies, but this turned into a great discussion, fantastic job guys
Edit: no sarcasm at all, misc genuinely needs more threads like this
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Nov 11, 2021 4:06:44 GMT -5
I'm not so sure the desire for fame isn't a consequence of the natural desire for acceptance in a society. Humans are complex beings, with very complex ways of thinking...
I mean, from childhood we see children participating in kite championships, marbles, and collecting things. We see children striving to be the best in the class or, on the contrary, to be the worst in the class. When you get some kind of recognition, I think that there's some hormone in us that gives us pleasure, and it gets reinforced every time it happens... and sometimes we get either addicted to it or feeling abstinent from it. So if hormones are involved, to what extent would it not be natural or not?
In general, having to give up fame or the opportunity to have it is that it is a process involving a conscious decision and it takes mental effort to do so, although not all desire for fame is equal, I think. Maybe I'm misusing the word fame. Is being recognized for what you love to do the same as wishing for fame?
I am a Christian, and among Christian values are modesty and selflessness. I mean, Jesus clearly taught that trying to succeed in the world is dangerous. In fact, he was tempted to get carried away by the desire to be world famous in exchange for betraying God. But that doesn't change the fact that he really was recognized for what he really loved. Well, in case he loved the right things.
Having said all of that, I can say that I actually feel a little uncomfortable in assuming that I feel a desire for my book to be a success. I don't want to be a hypocrite, but I've learned that denying the existence of a feeling is the surest path to disaster. I really hope I don't end up sacrificing my spirituality out of selfish ambition. I've been trying to tell myself that the problem is not wanting to be recognized for my book, but rather betraying my beliefs or my God in return. I will try to stay alert.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Nov 11, 2021 13:32:09 GMT -5
Personally I agree with Skelly Craig that it's not necessarily that huge of a leap betwen self-preservation and an awareness of death. I think humans frequently make (generally negative) assumptions about other animals to set ourselves apart as somehow totally 'other', but really there's no reason to think that way; after all, we're animals, too. (I'm not, of course, saying that you specifically are trying to set humans apart, just that in general among humans there is a great tendency to do that.) EDIT: Well, I really messed up that attempt at quoting. Sorry, I should really be better at this by now. |
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Post by bear on Nov 11, 2021 14:16:23 GMT -5
True, fame is not an inherent property. I can see how a willingness to cultivate it might come from a desire for the possibility of (a kind of) 'immortality'. As for animals, I don't think it's a huge leap between self-preservation and an awareness that one may die. I believe "instinct" is not considered a scientific term anymore, because there's many factors we don't yet understand and that are in fact controversial. Just like death is an abstract concept, so is consciousness... even more so is that of another species. well, i am interested to hear the arguments against "instinct" as a real concept, if you have a source. and i didn't say an awareness that one MAY die --- it's an EXISTENTIAL awareness that is unique to humans, the constant awareness that one WILL die, no matter what. humans only have this knowledge because of language, which allows us to concretize abstract concepts. with this knowledge came the whole world of artificial defenses, religion, culture, etc, that ONLY humans have created, in the observable universe! when did it become controversial that humans are the most intelligent animals? yall trippin. |
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Post by bear on Nov 11, 2021 14:18:24 GMT -5
(i know nobody said humans weren't the most intelligent animals, i'm just being cheeky.)
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Post by Skelly Craig on Nov 11, 2021 22:19:27 GMT -5
True, fame is not an inherent property. I can see how a willingness to cultivate it might come from a desire for the possibility of (a kind of) 'immortality'. As for animals, I don't think it's a huge leap between self-preservation and an awareness that one may die. I believe "instinct" is not considered a scientific term anymore, because there's many factors we don't yet understand and that are in fact controversial. Just like death is an abstract concept, so is consciousness... even more so is that of another species. well, i am interested to hear the arguments against "instinct" as a real concept, if you have a source. Google resulted with relevant keywords: "instinct ... is not now used commonly as a scientific term because of the difficulty of distinguishing between some aspects of learning and some aspects of so-called instinctive behaviour. (Collins Dictionary of Biology, 3rd ed. © W. G. Hale, V. A. Saunders, J. P. Margham 2005)". Here's another scientific paper from 2016 (see Abstract). I'm not a biologist so I don't know the current trends in that field, but I remember I was told that "instinct" is an outdated term by a philosophy of nature professor. Kind of a chicken and egg thing concerning the knowledge of death and what you call "artificial defenses", and not the one way street you make it out to be. It goes back to unresolved questions about the extent of interdependence between thought and language, and how proto-humans acquired language in the first place. If we gained that knowledge from somewhere then it's feasible that other species are aware of their own mortality. Look up "animal suicides". |
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Post by bear on Nov 12, 2021 9:06:35 GMT -5
yeah, animals ain’t ever committed suicide, outside of the odd absurd anecdote. as opposed to our million suicides worldwide every year….
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Post by Invisible on Nov 12, 2021 20:07:18 GMT -5
I'm in two minds about it. It would be great to have at least a little bit of attention. But the negative side of that attention would no doubt destroy my mental health.
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Post by tricky on Nov 13, 2021 6:54:12 GMT -5
i'm the same as invisible, but i feel like having a (small) audience would keep me accountable to keep creating things and inspire me to not just scrap all my projects.
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