Tryptamine said: 
Legga said: 

I prefer my meaning. I crave for meaning, it is ingrained in my brain, and it will be ingrained in my children's brains, and they will go through life chasing for a ghost that does not exist and it will always be their life's purpose until the end of my genetic line when Jesus finally takes me and tells me what my life was about and where this all started and how it all ended and how I am special and unique.

You sound a bit unhinged. I was assuming this was all a troll, still sort of am.

So what? Crazy is what we label anyone who doesn't conform.

 

Turncoat said: 
Tryptamine said: 
Legga said: 

I prefer my meaning. I crave for meaning, it is ingrained in my brain, and it will be ingrained in my children's brains, and they will go through life chasing for a ghost that does not exist and it will always be their life's purpose until the end of my genetic line when Jesus finally takes me and tells me what my life was about and where this all started and how it all ended and how I am special and unique.

You sound a bit unhinged. I was assuming this was all a troll, still sort of am.

A lot of Legga is for the sake of discussion.

While some of it can be, this is not. I am pretty insane. You need to be a bit insane to stay sane in this world.

 

Turncoat said: 
Your only responsibility as a professor is to teach people the material. Anything beyond that is you taking liberties within the confines of those limitations. 
I think you misunderstood. I am talking about research students who rely mainly on my help, not course students. I have reasons to believe that my students do listen to me, but you could be right, of course. I also agree it is not my official duty to let my students know what life after their graduate studies would be, and I think I exaggerated a little, for comical value (I was a bit tipsy). However, I generally make it a point to not hide the the negative aspects of life in academia, career prospects, and so on, to make sure that my students know what they are getting into.
 
On the opposite side, there are faculty members who sell their students a fake dream. These students sometimes (quite often, actually) find themselves hopelessly lost after their 5th postdoc when they realize nothing is lined up for them. I'd rather make sure my students have a clear picture of how things work.
 
Not to say that there is no benefit to belief in yourself. Sometimes you need to dream. If my students know the risks and still go for it, I'll do everything I can to back them up. Does not always work, I have made mistakes in the path, and I still have room to improve. Nevertheless, I would like to think I have done an OK job so far.
 
I guess you agree with me, more or less? This is independent of my God claims.

 

Who's to say that someone wasn't meant to learn as a drifter? 

Why do the paths need to be rigidly pre-defined, instead of simply an adaptive expression of who we are? 

I do not disagree with you. Paths do not need to be rigidly pre-defined. I said there is a grander purpose which we can choose to fill if we want to.

 

As I've alluded to before, it's to live like Turquie. 

Turquie is a member here, right? I do not know him or how he lives.

I try to live like a free man.

 

I am not sure where you are, Turncoat. However, look around you. You see many things. Can you see a pencil? Can you locate one? I can see one, for sure.

Now, take that pencil, and use it to stab your hand. All the way through.

You can not do that. You are simply barred from doing it. If you think about it logically, there is nothing barring you from stabbing your hand except your mind. Yet, we both know you will not do it. Everyone knows you will not do it.

That's just the averaged result of Darwinian survival genes. The ones who otherwise lack this trait are otherwise mutants or likely died off, as that lacking produced less offspring.

I've been able to convince myself to do some pretty dumb shit, but it takes some sort of infectious motivation to try to push beyond what otherwise comes naturally, to change me into trying to change myself further. 

I do not disagree with you that it could be Darwinian survival genes that make us unable to stab our hands with a pencil. My point is that I dislike our inability to express our free will. And God gives me the ability to break free of at least some of those confines.

Your darwinian genes also prevent you from doing many things, including outperforming the standard deviation, to do what you want. I want to be a freely thinking agent.

 

So you want to jump from one conformity to another? 

I do not see myself as conforming due to my belief in God. It just happens to be true that God exists. I see no conformity in accepting that as a fact.

 

The real "lost" path is one you design yourself, completely from scratch after a maddeningly long time separated from everyone else. If it borrows from an existing convention, there's a foundational basis behind it. 

Yes. I think that with the help of God you can certainly design a path for yourself.

 

Every single major life change that I have ever experienced did not come from me resulting to conformity. I had to fight for my life, and I had to go against common sense, and I had to defy all the basic senses that were screaming at me, telling me not to do the things I chose to do.

Aren't we all told to be better than ourselves? 

Yes. But my point is that many people are unable to follow said advice.

 

To follow God is to accept your own frailties, not to aspire to become more than yourself.

Perhaps to some. To me, accepting God means to become more than myself.