Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

The universe is not predisposed to good or bad there’s no reason to expect life to be happy. If by perfection you mean ‘lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind’ why is happiness inherent to perfection? I would have thought that qualities and values are specific to human experiencing and can not be attributed to the universe itself. Are you simply saying that the make-up of the universe is such that if experienced by a human sans identity, that human experiences felicity? Billions of years before humans evolved (excluding life on other planets) the universe ‘just was’, its perfection having nothing to do with happiness or felicity, right? Are not humans – like everything else in nature – ‘perfect’ with or without emotions and however miserable and dissociated? Why is the physical world ‘too big’, ‘too neatly complex’, and ‘too perfectly organised’ for miserable lives? If misery helped survival, having miserable humans would be blind nature’s perfection. Am I restricting the options when I say that either the universe is meaningless or there was a designer ‘God’ with a meaning in mind?

What I do understand now is that the universe ‘can be’ felicitous (for all we know). Gone is the block thinking the universe can’t be a happy or perfect one. It is clear to me that the universe is perfect (as are humans in their actual state)... Why does that imply excellence though? What I was really opposing was the statement: ‘This universe, this physical world humans all live in, is *too big* in its grandeur, *too neatly complex* in its arrangement, and *too perfectly organised* in its structure for humans to be eternally doomed to perpetual misery’. Most humans have a similar suspicion because of a belief in a god that wouldn’t allow them to suffer forever. What do the size of the universe, its complexity and its organisation have to do with whether or not humans will be eternally doomed to perpetual misery? The view I have is that happiness and all ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings are sourced in the brain while the universe is a perfect but ‘neutral’ one. It seems anthropomorphic to say that happiness – an animal phenomenon – is inherent to perfection.

What I was really opposing was the statement: ‘This universe, this physical world humans all live in, is *too big* in its grandeur, *too neatly complex* in its arrangement, and *too perfectly organised* in its structure for humans to be eternally doomed to perpetual misery’. (...) Emotions evolved in humans naturally. If self-awareness had not become feature of the brain, then humans would be doomed to suffer with emotions in an enormous, complex, perfectly organised universe. What do the size of the universe, its complexity and its organisation have to do with whether or not humans will be eternally doomed to perpetual misery? Is there something about the *size* of the universe, or the *complexity* of the universe, which makes freedom from emotional suffering possible?

Can there be values in the actual world? Where are these values? Can I see, feel, sense them in some way? How do we know they exist? I don’t see how values are not constructs of the mind. To use the word ‘perfect’ in the sense of ‘complete-in-itself’ then absolutely everything in the universe is perfect, with or without emotions. In this sense, murders, wars, malice and sorrow are all perfect manifestations of the universe, as is the desire to be rid of these things. Emotions exist, do they not? Why not include emotions when saying ‘everything’? Where and how do emotions and identities exist, if not within the universe? The universe is not split into two realms of ‘actuality’ and ‘reality’ is it?

Sensation is inherently happy, due to the perfection. Not ‘sensation’ then. Is the act of sensing one that is inherently happy when there is no emotion seemingly taking away from the perfection of the universe? ... as that’s where the perfection becomes evident? Is felicity an inevitable human reaction to the perfection? Is the felicity inherent to apperception caused by chemicals in the brain?

But the Universe is a harsh place even without humans.

What beneficent creator would permit the sort of suffering so widespread in nature? The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. It seems to me that the thin red line between Nature (cruel survival instincts in humans, animals, birds, viruses, other life forms) and Universe (matter) is arbitrarily drawn by actualists, it’s an artificial divide. I can’t reconcile the statement that the Universe is benevolent with the fact that a life form (even free from instinctual passions) has to feed on other life forms in order to survive. It has to kill. Also, about the imperative that this universe has ... to (constantly?) improve locally, to reach the full of its potential, the best possible outcome .... where is the evidence for this on other planets, stars, comets? Maybe, just maybe, we have a hard time just accepting the evidence: we live in a meaningless, breathtaking universe.

So there is an ultimately precious infinitude of the universe that is when ‘I’ cease to exist. What are the qualities of the infinitude of the universe? Creativity? Timelessness? Bliss? Intelligence? Boundlessness? What is ultimately precious is sacred. You are simply changing the words. Is there a need to be viewed as unique?