{"id":67305,"date":"2024-04-14T07:19:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T12:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67305"},"modified":"2024-04-14T07:19:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T12:19:27","slug":"acceptance-forgiveness-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67305","title":{"rendered":"Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\nSince I\u2019ve come to the (tentative) conclusion that we have no free will (and that in fact there is\u00a0no \u2018self\u2019 to have free will<\/a>), it\u2019s utterly changed the lens through which I see the world. I now see that our behaviour is completely conditioned by our biology and our culture, given the circumstances of the moment, and that \u2018we\u2019 have no \u2018choice\u2019 but to do what we do. We are all doing our best (though that is often, seemingly, pretty awful), and no one is to \u2018blame\u2019. For\u00a0anything<\/em>. Even though our conditioning, so often, causes us to inflict, and to suffer, horrible violence and trauma.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve internalized this, my writing has morphed from describing what I think \u2018should\u2019 be done to instead just trying to understand\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0(ie as a result of what conditioning and what circumstances)\u00a0things are as they are<\/em>. So I now use the \u2018reminders\u2019 list above, to cope with the accelerating collapse of our civilization and its component systems, instead of any action or preparation list. We can\u2019t act, after all, other that how we\u2019re conditioned, and we can\u2019t prepare for something we cannot possibly predict.<\/p>\n

Still, even this list is really wishful thinking. I cannot \u2018choose\u2019 to do or not do these things. I can, perhaps, by keeping it in front of me, track the degree to which my behaviour does or does not align with these \u2018reminders\u2019. If that helps me to cohere somewhat to these reminders, it is only because that is what my conditioning already inclines me to do. Everything is\u00a0determined<\/em>\u00a0(ie a consequence of our conditioning, and of the circumstances of each moment, neither of which we have any agency over), but nothing is\u00a0determinable<\/em>\u00a0(ie predictable, because, unless we are gods, we cannot know how we are next going to be conditioned, nor what the circumstances of each moment will be).<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude Since I\u2019ve come to the (tentative) conclusion that we have no free will (and that in fact there is\u00a0no \u2018self\u2019 to have free will), it\u2019s utterly changed the lens through which I see the world. I now see that our behaviour is completely conditioned by our biology and our culture, given the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12373,10379,150,11065,3647,32260,31446,32259],"class_list":["post-67305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-acceptance","tag-biology","tag-collapse","tag-conditioning","tag-culture","tag-dave-pollard","tag-free-will","tag-how-to-save-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67306,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67305\/revisions\/67306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}