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Originally Posted by AB517  Quote:
Originally Posted by greywolf90 wow great stuff og. i love your whole concept of self, sacrifice, and core. i never really thought about self sacrifice really being an extension of self preservation, but it really makes sense to me now. your point on how the brain sacrifices the arm in order to protect itself reminded me of apoptosis, where billions of your cells kill themselves for the benefit of the core. it also never occured to me that your self can be extended beyond your body (i vaguely remember you mentioning this sometime before, but i didn't understand it). your ideas really gave me some food for thought.  | You do not understand sacrifice if you think this.
This explanation of self sacrifice is put forth by people who can not see beyond themselves. The ego raises itself, or lowers everything around it, to try and equal itself to all things. In effect it puts their ego as divine because their ego can not see anything bigger than itself. The ego can not justify its death and thus it explains this to itself as such to make sense of that witch it does not understand … killing itself for something else. Ego does not understand this, for to the ego, there is nothing else but itself. There is nothing else but the body. |
if i do not understand something, do not simply tell me so; enlighten me. what do you consider sacrifice to be? as for me, i think og's theory is an appropriate explanation of human behavior. why do you think thousands of your cells are killing themselves every day? it is for your benefit; your cells will die in order to protect you because survival of the whole is more important than the survival of a part. you can also consider og's example of sacrificing your arms in order to protect your head. unlike cell death, this is the voluntary response of your nervous system, and again, it is the death of a part in order to protect the whole. now consider how this relates to human sacrifice.
why would a person sacrifice themselves to protect their family? why would a soldier die for a country that will probably never remember them? why would a person die for a religion or an idea. this would seem to go against the laws of self preservation, but what og was trying to explain was that it really doesn't. we are willing to sacrifice our lives because instead of thinking of ourselves as a whole, we start to see ourselves as a part of a whole, and we are placing the survival of that whole at a higher importance then we the part. i think that this is what og meant by the Self being whatever we die for.
if you still consider explanation wrong, please contribute your superior explanation. also, i think your accusation of og's ego is contrary to what he is saying. it is hardly egotistical to consider yourself a part of a much more important whole.