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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
Couldn't agree less. I'm entirely and firmly convinced that all human beings, including all those who lived and died in the past, occupy entirely original personality and experience niches that never existed before and will never be copied again. We are not numbers, not clones, not robot ants. Our individuality is absolute. Is this reasonable? Think about the realities of snowflakes. And no, this is by no means some knee-jerk, defensive reaction on my part, reflecting some emotional fear of what you describe. It's a point of view I've developed only after many decades of experiencing my own and other people's internal realities.
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Yes, all humans have an individual combination of opinions, personality traits and types, talents, features, etc. however this is not what I was referring to. I know that every human has an individual makeup that cannot be duplicated by any natural means. What I meant is that virtually every individual characteristic has been done before. A personality in its whole is never completely duplicated but on occasion, combinations of the above individual characteristics can make two people virtually indistinguishable.
I appreciate the level-headed-ness of this response, and that it was not merely an emotional knee-jerk reaction. That's more than I can say for at least one member aside from you who has commented here.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
Yeah, we have those capacities. Many people choose simply not to use them. And those who don't use them are a significant percentage of the whole, quite possibly a majority for all I know. Those are natural capacities, inherited from our animal ancestors. We can choose to act otherwise. Why would we do so? Because humans also have a specific, inbred intelligence of the fact that acting as good samaritans does everybody good.
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I don't think there is a person alive or dead in all of history that has completely abstained from all of those. There are those who personify them more greatly and those who only personify them less. Those who personify these things (intentionally) less often, I am sure would be in the majority, but that doesn't stop every human from having these traits in some way shape or form, and from personifying them at points in their life, thus spreading a cycle of harm and negativity. These same people may indeed go on to do a great deal more good then bad but the negative resonates more deeply in human kind than the good does.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
Oh, but you're wrong! Your kindnesses can live forever in an infinite chain of individuals affected by your own goodness.
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Importance is completely relative and as fleeting as life, in my opinion. Once you die, by my belief, you cease to exist, so I would be incapable of holding anything as important to me after that point. However, that kindness sprung from some action a person makes may live on for decades afterwards through a spread of actions, I can concur with. In physics, it is something commonly referred to as the butterfly affect.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
And will be immediately replaced by other beautiful things perhaps even more beautiful than what has passed away.
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This is not a certainty, and to say "immediately" is stretching things fairly far in most of my prior experience.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
All evolved, living beings MUST consider their own interests first, otherwise they will die. There is nothing wrong in doing so. There is no contradiction between doing what is needed to stay alive and helping others.
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I know it's only natural for a person to do such; I know it's obviously from an instinct to survive, but seeing the selfishness of the world is depressing at times.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
Ah, my friend, there is EVERY point to living. Living is a celebration of a very special form of matter in which we are terribly lucky to take part, a line dance hundreds of millions of years long in which we join as the absolute elite of the universe of material things, since most matter is rock and sand and gas.
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I agree that it is, in a manner of speaking, extremely lucky that we are able to participate in life. The possibility of being in existence on a planet with the correct conditions in which to sustain life, is literally astronomically low.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
That's a shame. Change is possible for many, perhaps for you too. Try to imagine a life without this awful vibration between joy and misery. No, you're quite right, there are no guarantees. But many, many people have graduated from one to the other.
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Perhaps change is possible, but behaviors present during childhood and for several years thereafter are difficult to change.
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Originally Posted by Ygrec23
Again: change is possible. Find out whether that's so for you. It's intense work. Requiring the commitment of a special forces soldier. You have to want it with every molecule of your being. But then things happen. You see and feel things you've never seen or felt before. Try it. It's worth it. And take care.
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You can want something with every fiber of your being and still not be motivated or have energy enough to do anything to change thing. I know it’s within the scope of possibility for things to change, but I don’t know how it would actually happen.