Why?

Why?

Hello once again ATS! FTR this will be my first new OP since the upgrade... so I am a bit excited and nervous both. If I botch it, I blame change!

After many days of deep and solemn internal reflection I have come to the conclusion that the most dangerous and destructive question a human being can ask is the very same question that makes us, essentially, human...

Why?

Of course the context behind the question makes every bit of difference in the world as to whether we are raised upward or plowed under by it. The concept of "why" is very much like a tool, or a gun, or a drug... It can be used for such great good and to such miraculous effect. But it can also poison us to death and rend our blood from our bodies. Why, itself, probably remains utterly impassive and unmoved by how it effects us. Why just is. It is us who empowers it to be positive or negative. And most of the time, we aren't even aware that we are doing so.

Why do people get sick after they're exposed to other sick people? - the very question that, over generations, led to a near mastery of communicable diseases... with only a scant few evading our control.

Why did she/he have to leave me? - the last words or thoughts of far too many who left this world before their intended time - filled with pain and with their own hand to blame.

These are examples of why being both positive and negative.

For the sake of this thread we will choose to ignore the passive and playful why... The why that follows a friend throwing a snowball ( or water balloon if you are a season snob ) at us... or the why that loudly leaves our lips when we realize that our favorite television show has just left us with a doosy of a cliffhanger and countless months to wait for the next season to begin. These whys make up the vast majority of our lives and our question asking - and I am sure that brighter minds than mine could ( and probably are ) extrapolating all sorts of usable and telling data from the mendacity of the common form of why. But such pursuits do not serve our purposes today, so leave them be, resting where they sit, we will.

It is this word "why" that has brought me out of a posting silence ( this time not a deliberate sabbatical - more of a "just been busy" thing ) to try and craft together a few words that might get a conversation started and cause others to think about things they might not otherwise think about. Obviously we have in-house ATS members who spend their days pondering such things. To them my meager thoughts will probably seem infantile, derivative, and naive. I ask those enlightened individuals to exercise patience with me. It was not too many years ago that my only "whys" were all rooted in hitting the bars on a Friday night to try and get drunk, into a fight, and into the home of some lovely young lady - in that exact order ( though I was quite willing to adapt and go with the flow should circumstances dictate )... Thus I ask the very spiritual and metaphysical to keep these realities in mind as they read. Or they may simply choose to skip this altogether, seeing it as a beginners course.

Then again... sometimes my mind, and the things that come out if, can surpass my apparent level of knowledge. So maybe sticking around wouldn't hurt either. I cannot promise epiphany but I can promise a passionate and intently crafted journey.

The choice, ultimately, is yours - but I welcome all guests!

By this point in time the more astute among us have probably deduced that the only reason a person would be writing a thread about "why" is because that person currently has a "why" effecting them. This, I confess, is the case. Well, in a manner of speaking it is at least. Let me explain.

Today was a very odd day in the wonderful, wide world of Heff!

Customarily speaking I possess a strange sort of "luck" ( we will clarify this term eventually - assuming I don't get sidetracked from doing so, which does tend to happen ). My luck is always either nuclear hot or arctic cold. It is all or nothing. I do not have "good" days, I have GREAT days. Alternatively, I don't have bad days, I have "Since when does Hell make housecalls" days. It's been this way for as long as I can remember and I have always hated it. Especially since these trends tend to linger. Bad days tend to lead to a subsequently slightly less bad day, then another, and another.... until it all works back to good. The reverse is true as well. Peaks and valleys and they always tend to be long journeys between.

But today I had a mixed bag... and that never happens! The event, quite honestly, has left me rather confused and deep in contemplation. It might be hard for others to comprehend, but when a life is lived fully shifting between feast or famine... well walking into a well portioned balanced meal can be unfathomably off-putting. In fact it can be downright scary. Like the kind of scary that makes you want to abandon your entire life, leave your possessions behind, and hitchhike to the nearest monastery to seek help from a higher power.

The specifics of my day aren't terribly important. I had an amazing conversation with an online friend today that left me filled with good cheer and a smile upon my face. That was one positive. One negative - a Linux video card driver update left three of my machines acting like Hal in the last half of 2001 and behaving like a post-mojo'd fembot from Austin Powers. It took a LOT of trickery to get them back to good. These are just two aspects of a day that has been filled with such aspects. In fact it has been about a direct fifty / fifty mix between amazingly good things, and terribly horrible things... and it's left me exhausted, contemplative, and feeling a lot less intelligent than I normally feel.

So I write.

The downside to my coping mechanism? You end up reading.

The crux of the issue has been painted a thousand different ways by a thousand different minds. Karma, reciprocity, fate, destiny, the power of positive ( negative ) thinking, ya get what ya give, win some - lose some, as well as a nearly endless myriad of other aphorisms to describe what I am trying to articulate. One might say "Damn dude, it's been covered over and over again, like you just said... so why not post "Cest le vie" and be done with it?

Ah, but you see.... I've already given you the key to that question. I've already exposed my inability to simply accept that stuff happens... Because I am cursed to ask why?

I'm just not eager to accept the list of options the run of the mill theories want to spit out at me....

I am not quite prepared to accept that a butterfly farted in the Amazon canopy three days ago and, therefore, my day has been so schismatic.

I am pretty sure that God did not wake up this morning and say "Hey, everyone, check this out... I'm going to totally drive Heff insane for the lulz!"

I am also pretty sure that Satan did not wake up today and think "Yeah, Heff needs a bit more poking and prodding. I like making him dance around like a monkey on hot coals!"

edit on 9/10/13 by Hefficide because: (no reason given)

The Universe - the all - the everything that some worship? Yeah if it even knows I exist, I am pretty damned sure it doesn't have time to mess with me. That would be like digging up the worlds largest ant colony just to find one specific ant so that you could then lick your fingers and put a trail of spit around him so that he couldn't sniff his way out. It take a lot of ego to think that eternity is eyeballing you in particular.

If it is karma - then karma is a crappy bookkeeper because it seems to be trying to balance both sides of the ledger at the same time. And that's just BAD business practice!

The notion that I had some angry thoughts the other day and am now paying the price ( physics, action and reaction ) might make sense - if there was continuity involved. Except I have not recently had a day where I bounced back and froth from positive to negative - so this theory falls apart as well.

I've both pissed off and befriended witches of various disciplines - but don't think I matter to any of them enough to toy with my world in such a way...

And the list goes on and on... NONE of it answering "Why?"

Drunk magic forest gnomes who wandered into my backyard? As possible as anything else. Actually makes more sense than a lot of the "conventional wisdom". Maybe today was the Russian remote viewer / telepath office party and they drew my name out of a hat as the target of their party games? That too, I suppose is possible. In fact maybe the sun flared and things only Phage could explain are pulsating and undulating around me, changing my polarity every few minutes.

Or it could just be dumb luck.

The point, Dear deep thinkers of ATS... am I the only one who tends to wonder "Why" so damned often? In ANY situation it is almost always my first thought. Run into this room to tell me that the house is on fire and I PROMISE you that the first word out of my mouth would be "Why?".

Wanting to know why overpowers almost all else in my mental processes. It is the ultimate and most common query.

Are there others like me out there? If so, have they found any answers that I am missing? Any means of discerning or controlling the patterns?

While I write for all who wish to read, it is to these people, particularly, I hope to hear back from,

I imagine that I will get a fair number of Christianity based replies. While I appreciate those and am not adverse at all to such things, I have an uncommon interpretation of Christianity and tend to avoid such discussion as, well as I fear villagers with pitchforks and stakes saying "You tie him to the pole, I'll get the kindling".

I also imagine that I might get replies about Niburu and the galactic plane, and higher dimensions and vibrating.... I'll just state up front that, while I respect your beliefs... none of that has ever rang true to my heart. Thus I am resistant to it.

I'm not saying folks cannot offer such advice as the above... only that they not be offended or shocked if I don't react exceptionally positive to it.

If this all seems disjointed or even self serving, I do apologize. This is the deeper end of my pool and putting somethings into words is exceptionally difficult - especially abstract notions such as the ones running around in my mind right now. I'd beg a big of indulgence and patience in that regard. It is all meant, at least, in the spirit of engaging and exchanging ideas!

So tell me ATS... Why

Great thread. Great, stellar writing. If your dumb luck propels you to do this, please keep inflicting us with it.

I always read your threads, to absorb some of your skill, hopefully, and just soak all that in, but seldom reply.

But this one I had to. Why? I've been punished severely throughout my life for asking, so I try not to anymore. I observe, instead, the synchronicity with which WHY is visited upon my life. My advice : Don't be too humble. You think here, in words, the universe couldn't possibly that interested in lil' old me.... Gotta tell ya: read up on the NSA lately, Heff? Someone is watching all the time, all of us, for we are living in a voyeuristic type of climate....isn't that obvious?

Regardless, a mixed bag of a day got you unsettled? I had to laugh at that. I've had similar experiences, and laughed at myself for my reaction later. As per..."Hmmm, i've been asking for less extremes and more normalcy, and then when I get it, it's friggin frightening. It's just your psyche, not used to something that mundane, even when there may be very little left here, that is actually mundane, really. That's the great joke on us all, I think.
Respectfully,
Tetra50

reply to post by Hefficide

Back in college, that was a final exam question to essay. We opened up a single folder and took out the essay subject...all it said was..."WHY?" and please write upto 1,000 words.

I thought about and began to write but I kept getting sidetracked. So, I finished, put the short essay back with the topic into the folder.

My answer? It was..."WHY"?...I answered with..."BECAUSE". My professor gave us back the folders with a red grade in the upper right corner. I got an A+.

He had written a short note in the envelope for me....it said..."Good job! But next time...could you not make it so lengthy?!"

reply to post by mysterioustranger


Excellent, truly, reply.....
and good on your Prof, too....

reply to post by tetra50

Hello, Tet. I will say I was initially stunned...and overly worried about the test results.

Much later in a different semester, this prof had another one of these 0-1,000 word finals....this one was "Oh, yeah?!"

A friend took my example and answered "Yeah! So there!". She too got an A-with the prof's usual reply..."Awesome!"

mysterioustranger
reply to post by tetra50

 

Hello, Tet. I will say I was initially stunned...and overly worried about the test results.

Much later in a different semester, this prof had another one of these 0-1,000 word finals....this one was "Oh, yeah?!"

A friend took my example and answered "Yeah! So there!". She too got an A-with the prof's usual reply..."Awesome!"

LOL....wish I could meet that Prof and bend his ear and listen for a few hours. Guarantee it would be very interesting....
Wonder if he/she was teaching in exchange for the grant money to do research in their particular field, as is often the case....or just rebellious like the rest of us, here.
Take care
Tetra50

and btw, I think we're on to Z surely, now...
Tetra
Thanks for all the neon.....

My background: I spent many years in the east. Shinden Zukuri, Lao Tsu, Bushido, Confucius, The eight fold path. I don't follow the epicurean ideal that one can take a little from this a little from that. I went for full immersion at each meal. And all that was just a beginning.

My contribution to the topic: Have you heard of the zen-shield? It is a type of self fulfilling feed back loop, where the object of one's own desire is shielded so hard that every effort to reach the target deflects off into other directions. And the stronger one tries to hit the target the stronger the deflection is. At this moment the Sensei would tell the student to empty their mind of all desire.

Yet from the background, and history laid out in the opening post, a story of extremes is laid out. It's all great or all terribad. Nothing in between. And now the mixture is disconcerting. Could it be that the intensely positive conversation was a false positive, that the person was actually in pain and putting on a brave face (so to speak). And that the negative three-computers-down could have been a moment of keeping-one's-skill-young, but the subtext of the false positive started to come through and invert the experience.


Mike

reply to post by Hefficide
Hi Heff, great writing as usual, but not to sound too negative, there is no "why". After reading the bible, urantia book, enuma elish, quran, and all types of just theory based literature, I have come to the conclusion that crap happens. We and others by our random and even non related actions cause end results that just happen by chance. There is no karma, someone pulling strings, or micro conspiracy to the events that happen in our lifes. Even with an omnipresent powerful being within our sight, they will look at us as less than an ant in a mass colony and never a second thought or look. Our universe is beyond our imagination in mass and size, and the countless universes beyond that goes into a 360 degree mass explosion of space that has no such end. An omnitype has too much of a theater to be distracted by and the micron that is us is of no issue and as such are completly pointless, and who the heck knows what ultra evolved lifeform is 987 Trillion light years from the edge of our consecutive universe.We are told to except control and boundries for the good of mankind, therefore some take it, some do not. There is no why, and no reason, so live life, enjoy the company of good people, ignore the bad. Take a nice stroll with someone you care about and gaze at the stars, This is a short film and you have the leading role, as a human sometimes you lose track of your lines, never let that define you or change the way you live.....

reply to post by Hefficide

Why?

Because life is full of Y's Heff. And those Y's represent the conscious and unconscious choices we make, every minute of everyday, that place us where we are at any given time, to experience the effects of our choices and decisions.

And we live in a world, where everyone's Y's intersect and cross, making it inevitable that we will experience the effects of other peoples Y's at any point during our day and lifetime due to our own Y's, as well as theirs.

I hope that sheds some light on your question of why?

reply to post by Hefficide


Thanks for an interesting thread, still trying to absorb all that you felt about a simple why. I guess I have found it's easier to look past a why , unless I can affect some change that the why is related to.
For example, the most important why in my life is why did my wife have to die at 48 years old?? After 3 1/2 years of searching for an answer, the obvious became clear to me. There is no way to alter what has happened ; asking why me , why her, why now..... The important why's in our life must simply be accepted as part of our life experience , the result of that reaping what we sow, even if we can't fully comprehend the fairness of it. It all seems more bearable when I realize that whatever I face in life is what I deserve....not what God did to me or it's all someone else's fault.
Don't know whether to say amen or good-nite. Sorry, this is just where a why took me. Just one more why. When I typed this , I broke this up into paragraphs and then went to preview , where the paragraphs disappeared !

Why , how, what ... questions we asked gazing up at the stars as kids and never an answer forthcoming. So life took on a mysterious aspect with lots of hidden secrets. Of course curiosity set me looking for the answers to the riddles and the paradoxes and I certainly wasn't alone, there was a long line of hopefuls stretching back through history and each seemed to have their own message to offer.
Anyway we know all this. I don't ask anymore. Whenever I gaze up at the stars I focus on what is there and look out for what might suddenly appear and I simply accept everything for what it is because the one thing I did manage to learn is that the mystery is really myself and the answers lie within me and are reflected in the way I live my life.

reply to post by Hefficide



Why?

Because.

reply to post by Hefficide

Why?

Because.—It's the only proper answer to such a question.

We believe there is an answer because we are capable of asking, not because there is an answer.

reply to post by Hefficide


Hi, reading your thread , the key word for me was aspects = Astrology Take it or leave it.

The why , isn't there a prophecy about that . Cheers 1%

reply to post by Hefficide
[more

"Linux video card driver update left three of my machines"
Why your machines failed?
The driver update had bugs.
Why this happened?
You installed the update.
Why did you install the update?
Update is synonymous with better
Why did this bother you?
Update was the opposite of better(worse)

Why ask why
Because you were the cause of your grief today. You did something that wasn't necessary, and asked yourself why.

I have to agree with the popular opinion here. This was fantastically written. Never have I laughed so many times over one thread here on ATS. A second off-topic note, you refer to some computer problems as "terribly horrible" occurrences. From an objective viewpoint, that would be downright blasphemous. However, as a bit of a computer nerd myself, I have shared your pain. Just one more thing I found humorous in your post.

So, to the matter at hand. Why?

Why not?

I know it's bad form to answer a question with another question, but, well, why not? Even if you don't think there was some conscious cosmic being controlling the circumstances, you should be able to agree that when we come to expect certain results, the exact opposite has a tendency to happen. But if you start to expect even that, who knows what will happen? In statistics, we know to exclude the outliers, the anomalies, from our averages. But in reality, we learn from the strangest events. They can't be discounted offhand just for being abnormal. They possess valuable potential experience for our minds/bodies/souls. Maybe, just maybe, this is what you needed to learn, or what you wanted to learn, or what you put into the universal "vibe" to teach you. You never really know how you'll react to something until you've had a chance to react to it.

Like another poster said, sometimes the object of your desire is too protected to be achieved no matter how hard you strike and the only option is to release yourself from all desires. Maybe in this case, you learned how you react to good and bad and it causes so much turmoil that you may need to learn not to react at all.

But what do I know? I'm just some human. Take care. And seriously, fantastic writing. Keep it up.

-GIR

reply to post by Hefficide

The only way I can wholeheartedly answer your question is with Christianity, because I feel like it is such a deep question that it relies on the trinity to answer most accurately. That is to say, to answer your question, I have to mention that Father (consciousness/concept producer/thinker/creator), Spirit (will/motion/force/nature), and Son (body/form/elementary matter/structure) have always existed.

So... Yahweh is consciousness. The role of consciousness is to think/create concepts; and we think thoughts (like why) because it was Father's will to create our form like his own. Why did he create us in his likeness? Because it pleased him - it was good. Basically, all of reality is trying to produce [good] concepts and when you act against that production, your conscience kicks in to correct you. Most often, bad people aren't really even doing bad - they're doing what they think is good, but their version of good has become corrupted/immoral.

So there's your answer: You ask why because you are consciousness living in a deterministic realm; and you are conscious because God thought it was good to create you that way.

However, since what you really wanted was an irreligious answer, I will oblige (read first without the notes and then again with the notes):

Random fields, which had no order at all [see a:] randomly created some fields that had order [see b:]. Upon the creation of order, fields were stabilized which allowed for the random production of animals. After order randomly begot animals, animals randomly produced awareness, which in turn, randomly produced thought. Once thought was obtained, awareness thought that thought was good to reproduce - it benefited awareness to have thought/asked questions about its random reality [see c:], because answering what was, and what will be, allows it to better survive.

To sum that up: Why/thought helps animals survive. [see d:]

a: you truly can't have fields without order, and you cannot have order without rules, and you cannot have rules without concepts, and you cannot have concepts without the thinker/his will/and his body; But we will pretend you can have fields without concepts for the argument's sake.

b: order implies concept, will, and, of course, structural matter. For this argument, we will pretend the motion that creates different fields (different forms/concepts) is not willed but is somehow present without rules that govern motion. Pretend heavily, I guess.

c: this sentiment implies randomness created a thinker and the thinker thought reality was deterministic. In truth, reality IS deterministic and random should only be used to stress that something is extremely difficult to calculate. That is, if order exists at all, then randomness/chaos cannot. Thus, if randomness actually existed at any point in time, it ended when order began - but then that would kill the rest of the hypothesis about animals randomly arising, etc and so forth, so we have to pretend order does not end randomness (so we can pretend randomness created animals and evolution blah blah blah.)

d: obviously this is not the answer though [a:,b:,c:] - if it were, if all there was to questions, conscience, and emotions was survival, then the concept that keeps pushing evolution to new generations would have certainly produced a god amongst us by now. The reason it hasn't, yet it appears to be trying to, is because we're looking at the order of operations in reverse. Consciousness created evolution - evolution did not create consciousness.

reply to post by Hefficide

Good days and bad days are a matter of the mind. Release your desire to define a day as good or a day as bad and you are left with a day. Live like the wind and neither know where you come from or where you are going.

If that doesn't work you may be Bipolar