Hey guys, I was wondering if people could help me out with this one. I've been wondering if there are ideas or concepts that seem really normal to us that really shouldn't be there. I have a feeling that I'm on to something so here are some theories.

The first one I'll start with is swear words. This concept just doesn't make sense to me. If I hurt myself or are surprised does it really matter if I say dammit, shit, fuck or just groan? They all mean the same thing really (in context). I don't understand why saying a certain word in public is bad when there are other versions of it that are acceptable with the same meaning. If the concept of swear words never existed would it be better or worse (overall)?

My next idea might cause some controversy but is about Christianity I guess and their idea of faith. In other words, believing in something makes something happen. To me it seems like it's the wrong way around. Isn't faith kind of like hope that does stuff but as a belief? It's never made sense to me (and I used to be a Christian) because I never knew if god was meant to prove himself to you to have faith or if you won't experience or have evidence for god unless you have faith. How different would the world be without the idea of faith? I suppose the idea of god in general might count but I'm not sure.

Now here's my last one for this post. The concept of love. Romantic love that is. The way I've always seen it love is mistaken for physical attraction and is more about some kind of other force, I guess. It's something unexplainable that apparently we can sense and will know if we meet the right person. Is this stuff actually true? Obviously, I haven't experienced true love but has anyone really? If it didn't exist then we could just use our natural physical attractions to find mates and we wouldn't have to look for the 'perfect' person for us. Were we really meant to have the concept of love?

I hope you understand what I'm getting at here. These might not be the best examples but I'm hoping that other people can help me out with this :D
I'll hopefully think of some more later that I will post.

On the concept of love: well i have heard that it was 'made'or 'created' in the early roman era and over time it spread and eventually became a very well known concept all over the world.however in my opinion I think it is a good thing this concept actually came to be because with out it are entire society would be different and that goes for all of those concept you worte. Without religon stuff the crusades would not have happen certain people would not have died and others would have and swear words well... im pretty sure they would be made up no matter what kind of place you lived in.

The concept of swear words being bad is kind of silly.
A word is only as bad as one makes it, right?

Christianity is actually quite beautiful.
I've been getting into some of the Orthodox stuff and if you look at it from the concept of maybe a poetic epic, it's not so bad.

Also, Christ gave us nice things to think about and he tried to leave a good life.
That's good enough for me.

The idea that there isn't a god, in my opinion, is pretty god damn retarded as well.

Love is a chemical frustration. Nothing more.

>it was 'made'or 'created' in the early roman era

I lol'd hard.

>>1 You can argue this about literally any idea. All ideas were created by people based on our surroundings. They have no actual meaning other than the meaning we have prescribed to them. Actually, that's what an idea is, unless you subscribe to Platonic idealism.

In this sense, I agree that none of these ideas makes total sense or 'should be there', but this applies to every idea that's ever been thought of.

>>5 +10

>>4 Are you sure? Do you think someone could intentionally come up with a weird concept just to troll with us though?

>>7 Pretty sure the concept of love was around before the Romans.

I have a feeling that people aren't getting what I'm trying to say. It's not about history. It's about how a concept or idea confuses people or makes people act in a different way. Something that would make the world really different if it didn't exist.

Maybe I'm just bad at explaining things or maybe it just doesn't make sense what I'm saying..."sigh"

you arent wrong

>>9 Our world is built entirely on ideas. That is why when electricity is shut off, civilization breaks the fuck down within a matter of days. The ideas of money, fairness, law, etc. all disappear if people don't choose to place value in them. Any one of the thousands of ideas that hold us together would drastically change the world if they were gone.

I feel too many people would agree with what is essentially an observation rather than opinion and there wouldn't be much discussion, but there is a very good chance I'm wrong.

Hmm... When I read this post, the first thing that I thought about is Racism. I really don't get how white people are more superior that the blacks. I know that it was already in history but I don't really get how it started. I don't get how Asians(I'm one by the way) are mostly seen as intelligent while there are a lot more of the ignorant ones who are "not-so-intelligent".

About the curse words. I think it has just become habitual because language evolves everyday. Maybe some years from now it'll be considered as a "normal word".

About religion, I don't actually get it either even though I'm a christian too(or more accurately, my parents dragged me to it). Sometimes, I think:"How did everything became as it is now?". Those are times that I believe in religion but sometimes, I'm like:" Maybe religions are just fabricated stories to make people believe that doing good things will save them from death?"

Hmm, don't really know how to put this into words..., but I'm still saying it. About the Religion part, Are you saying that God should proof and reveal himself so people would have their faith? Well of course,some things need to be proven to be believed. But for religion context,i think that things should go with what's already going. Well,for example: what do you think if God reveal himself to everyone? what will people do,change their believe?finally having faith?regretting everything they've done?grateful for everything they've done?or even just simply don't care? i think that God is simply giving us guide for we to believe on him. but of course,having faith and having any kinds of religion you had is up to you for decide. Your religion is your religion and My religion is my religion.

Faith is sort of a blend of what you were saying, it isn't blind, but it isn't proven to the point of tangible evidence, hence you need faith. This isn't a very good example, but it is a bit like gravity. You know it is there, but you can't prove it tangibly. That analogy isn't perfect, obviously gravity requires a significantly smaller amount of faith to believe in, but it's all I can think of as an example right now.

Aaaand I clicked the wrong reply button, I'll re-do it later

Aaaand I clicked the wrong reply button, I'll re-do it later

Faith is to believe in something truly, however as for Christianity, many "believe" to either feel they have something on someone else, or to keep them safe from going to hell, "Just in case it's real." And will use this to convince others to join, however, this isnt believing in God or Christianity at all, but self preservation. The vast majority are of these two options, with a small amount dedicated to truely understanding it, or atleast thinking they do but taking it too literally, while still being kind. For example, love someone because you love someone, not because a reeeeeally old book said so. This should be common sense, Christianity goes through this phaze every once in a while where it takes every word as is written, which unfortunately, is whats going on currently, the bible is intended as a metaphor, and Christians, your stories are one of a kind, and that doesn't make you right either, the stories were taken from a library for which many religions write to and from, but they are just to teach you lessons. I am a Buddhist, and no, I'm not some, "Bald godless dickweed." Buddha isnt a god for me, nor any real Buddhist, he's a mortal man who enjoyed thinking about the world, yeah, we have heaven and hell but it doesn't mean a literal flaming land of torn flesh where you are punished for eternity. {continued later}

>>10 Too vague. Where you referring to me or...?

>>11 I apologize if I made it unclear but it's not about an idea changing the world but changing it for the better. As in it shouldn't have been there to begin with.

>>12 Racism is a good one. Thanks for your input.

For everyone else, I know that I put up a controversial religious topic but that isn't the point of this topic. Could people please stop arguing about god and faith in the rest of this thread. If you do get what I'm saying about it though then feel free to rephrase it and explain it better. Thanks :D

For another idea on ideas that shouldn't have existed I realized that their might be another aspect to it. Ideas/concepts too vague that cause confusion.

I'll try to explain with the original concept that got me thinking about this. With loyalty I have realized that there is good and bad loyalty. If you are just being blindly loyal to a leader/organization or whatever then isn't it pretty much making yourself their puppet or becoming a robot?

I thought of Griffith in Berserk when he was talking about his Band of the Hawk. He said that he cares for them and all but doesn't consider any of them as his friend. He said that for them to be his friend they have to have their own dream and try and obtain it, even if it means going against his own. He thinks of them as just people living in the shadow of his dream. He says that for someone to be considered his friend they must be his equal in every way.

I think it's true though, to an extent. But is loyalty bad though? I think that their would be a kind of loyalty that's good and that's when in a mutual bond with a friend and both consider yourselves equal. It's the kind of relationship where you trust and rely on each other. That's loyalty isn't it? I suppose that the real loyalty is the kind of thing that probably shouldn't have existed. It causes people to give up on finding a purpose or reason to live and just live for a human in its place. Not even for any particular reason really.

I hope this was a better example that helps you guys get what I'm saying and help me come up with new ideas

>>22 You seem to think if the ideas went away, like racism and such, suddenly the world would be better because people wouldn't believe them anymore. Ask yourself: who is putting meaning into these broken, non-logical ideas? People. Those same people will do the same to another idea, which is why 'ending racism' didn't end the hate, but rather just shifted it onto gays, which will then shift onto some other group of people. It's not about being black or gay, it's about hating someone, which is the precise factor everyone is ignoring. It's also the same with any idea, be it loyalty, faith, or love. People want to be loved, they want to believe in something, or they want to hate someone, so they create these ideas to satisfy what they really want to do. The ideas are meaningless by design.

You can't change the world by changing ideas. You have to change the people that create and put meaning into those ideas. Without those people, the ideas are meaningless. Basically, you'd have to change human nature.

That's what I think we should be discussing. Rather than the ideas, we should be talking about why we believe and uphold them in the first place.

Fair enough. I just wanted to see if there would be an interesting response that might expand on this. I suppose I also wanted to put more "philosophy" threads on the main board. You going to start a thread on that then Inuhakka?
If someone has a good philosophic topic then please post in on the main board. Thanks XD

>>26 Hey, all I'm doing now is discussing it. You got 26 responses, more than I ever got on my thread. As far as I'm concerned, this is still a valid discussion topic. I am of the opinion that ideas are not important, however it is clear others think differently.

I tried starting a thread like this, about free will, but it wasn't very successful. To a certain extent, getting discussion threads going is difficult.

Well actually, the world turned evolutionary mainly because it was built up on ideas itself , illogical ideas are the start of the motivation to create logical ideas , hence begins the creation and the basis of "human nature" If ideas created to suffice greed weren't created.
The society will never be competitive , there'd be no war , however from another perspective, technology being created was for the reason of competition between countries or societies. Technology benefited mankind, in terms of communication and security etc.

Of course technology has caused many problems as well. Thus , I think the truth is it depends on the mentality and perspective of one

>>27 Thanks for defending my thread. To be honest I thought it was going no where but I'll keep it around a bit longer to see what happens then.

>>28 Sorry but I don't think I understand what you're trying to say. With what you said at the beginning, though, does that mean that there might still be some illogical ideas out there? To be honest I never really thought about how people could have come up with all of these ideas. Does that mean that there are ideas/ concepts that we still can think up that make sense? If that's how the world evolves then that's awesome.
With greed I don't think that the idea itself was bad because people would be naturally greedy either way. It's probably more of a good thing because people made it a negative thing so now people would be put off from being greedy because they don't want to be a bad person or they don't want to be viewed upon like that.

I'll try another one then. What about the idea of having a purpose or meaning in your life? The way I see life now days is that there are too many things in normal life that distract us from finding a purpose or reason to actually live but is that how it's supposed to be? Is it just distracting us from progressing as humans? Things like technology keep advancing but I've never really thought that it mattered at all but if it's the other way around then thinking about our purpose and questioning things is the distraction. Some things might be able to be explained if science progresses enough so maybe we should wait for science to explain these things rather than figuring it out on our own. If the idea of our purpose or meaning in our life didn't exist then would we advance enough to the point when we've found answers or even obtained our goal as the human race?

Or maybe it's the other way around and that something like this just makes life harder for us. If we are looking for a perfect meaning in our life then we might never be satisfied. It just makes adjusting harder. If the idea of meaning and purpose didn't exist then there wouldn't be as many problems in life to do with choosing a job or whatever.

I don't know how well I explained that or if I used the best words for it but let's see if we can get a good discussion on it with a range of views.

Unified religion, capitalism, and bureaucracy.

Thanks for my daily dose of mindf*ck.
As far as ideas that should have never existed, in a sense the were all necessary to get to this point. Any idea weather it's great, common, bad, or even horrific is a part of what makes thought possible. For example, what would you say when you accidentally run into something painful if the idea of explicit words never existed. Even the loss of a relatively common or unimpressive idea could destroy the fabric of how the mind works. Lose one thought, and they all fall apart, then that problem could spread into a massive quagmire of an oblivion like state of existence for a lot of people.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

>>30 Please explain. You probably are on the right track but please go into more detail.

>>31 I don't think that that is how it works. It's easy to say that the world would be completely different if an idea didn't exist but how many ideas don't exist already? If ideas were created at some point in time then that means that before hand the world existed without them. There will probably more ideas that seem completely normal and just a part of life that will be created after our time.

I also think that not all ideas are the same kind of thing. I think that there could be ideas mixed up in there that shouldn't be there because if people make the assumption that they all should be there then no one would notice. The world obviously isn't perfect and I think that some ideas are contributing a lot to it.

Here's my new idea then. Happiness. I don't know if other people who think a lot about our existence and purpose think about truth vs happiness but I've always thought that it was that simple. There are the happy-go-lucky cheerful people who make others happy too and don't think too deeply about much and then there are the people who don't get very happy or exited about things and spend time thinking a lot about life. That's how I used to see it but my question now is why do we care so much about happiness?

A few years ago my definition of happiness was this. Happiness- to be able to enjoy life due to shallow unawareness and understanding of what's really going on. I also said that there could be another way of having happiness though because even now I don't understand how it works or what it's purpose is. But is happiness just a distraction from thinking deeply and figuring out why we are here? If the idea of happiness and that our purpose is to live a happy life then would we be a whole lot closer to figuring out why we are here and what our purpose is?

I don't believe in god. There is no real proof that one exists. We live in a world where we don't even know if the future exists, however, the past exists... Even if it's tainted with misunderstandings and delusions if the people themselves believe in it the past it the truth.

>>33 Wow, I've never heard that before.

>>32 Happiness is based on physically pleasing reactions being replicated. We can't ever describe physical pleasure, because we are experiencing it ourselves. But, we can feel it, we can know when we are feeling it, so we try to replicated it socially. That is what happiness is in my eyes.

>>32 Ok, I see what you mean. But what i meant was something similar to the butterfly effect. Damage/remove one idea and it could have massive implications down the road. For example, Einstein came up with the theory of relativity while riding a public bus. If he hadn't thought to ride the bus, we wouldn't have the masterpiece of a World famous physicist. On the other hand he could have potentially came up with something far more genius. Same thing goes for bad ideas. When a person had the idea to commit murder, it could lead to brutal killing. But what if that idea weren't there? Could they have potentially came up with something even worse?

These changes to individuals would alter the thoughts of those around them. and as word spread and time progressed; it could lead into potentially infinite tangents (think string theory). I wouldn't doubt that a single missed thought could have massive effects.

>>33 i dont believe in god or jesus either and never will. i enjoy the freedom of creating my own reality and truth and right and wrong instead of being told what to believe in or do by someone who died many many years ago. i also don't believe in heaven or hell, i think the concept of easily dividing people into "good" and "evil" is extremely selfish and childish.

>>33 Of course ther isn't, just like ther is no "real proof" for any theories on existence.

>>37 I respect your belief, but just because you don't like something isn't proof against it. I can say I don't like taxes, and call the government selfish and childish, but guess who still has to pay them.

In context with this, i think everyone has the ability of classifying people , and thats the fact. >>37 I respect your beliefs too. However the reason there is a government , there ar normal people, arrested criminals are there to make the people THINK they are safe. Although everything might not actually work and arent that affective, there is a need for classification of "good" or "bad" so that people can rely on that even for selfish means.

Without these systems, people start worrying and panicking. They would not trust anyone and start killing each other for nothing. Thats true havoc.

“I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.” - Albert Camus

Just copy and paste but it is something to ponder about. Just saying, peace~

>>36 You get it. It's hard to know the effects of whether something exists or not will have on the world.

Can people please not turn this thread into a debate on whether god exists or not. That's not what this thread is about.

bump

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Slavery, in my opinion was the worst idea ever created, instead why not just use manipulation and take control of the situation your in and use the people within it to make the situation the best it can for you personally, that's how I live my life.

>> 44 Manipulating huh? I guess it's understandable in a way that I could see. But I could go ranting on all different other things so I'll just stop there.

As for curse words, yes I really don't see the big problem and why it's so bad using it. But as far as the other people in the society sees it, it's "bad" and "influencing" young children. For Christianity though, I will not speak about since typing on an Android is extremely difficult for me and I could ramble on to no ends.

But for love? Yes it's factual that our emotion merely came from chemical reactions, but looking at the other side, it's simply something else more than just chemical reaction in which it'll make you feel stupendously frustrated over it. Though I've only had 2 crushes in my life before, I guess you could say I had a taste of it before. But then there's true love.
I feel completely idiotic to say this, but I believe that it's possible for it to exist. This little intuition of mine probably crushed the whole conversation of the facts and reality here, but this is simply what it is to me.

>>45 That's quite an interesting perspective you have there your quite an interesting human to say the least and wonder what your everyday life must be like to develops such emotions and feelings.

>>45 I think you and I are the same way, but I don't want to lump you in with me, so correct me if I'm wrong. I believe there is love, like "true love" but I have never experienced more than a crush which I simply left and it faded. In short, I believe others can feel love, but that I am not designed with such a capacity.

>>47 your quite interesting as well, to have the exact same opinions maybe your minds are connected some how , or maybe subliminal messaging.

For the 1st part of your answer watch the Vsauce video on youtube, he explains it pretty well... I believe it's called "Why Bad Words are Bad".

Xbox one well the name at least

>>46 No no, I'm just an ordinary teen girl who lived a pretty normal life. Emotion and feelings? Well I'd be lying if I had spent with those feelings in my life as much as I wanted. More like, I'm trying to reach something out of all the knowledge I had drank from.

>>47 I don't think we aren't that different when it comes to that topic actually. You explained it very well for what it is in my case also.

>>49 And I shall check it out later.

Atom bomb

>>52 why do you think the atom bomb is so bad

1) I think that overall, swear words don't affect society much. I don't use them, but I have friends who do and I don't mind at all. My parents never use it, and discourage me from doing it, and I don't mind either. I just think people shouldn't enforce it that much, because curse words don't affect people life for the worse, do they? There's not anything wrong with 6 year olds running around, yelling "SHIT!!!"; quite frankly, it would be hilarious.
2) About the whole God thing, I think faith is incredibly important. I am Christian myself, and though I don't get everything I ask/believe in. However, if there was no faith, think about how people would view their lives. Faith is the thing that keeps us going, even when we feel there's nothing left. To believe in something means that you think that it will always be alright, and without faith everyone would give up. Whether or not your Christian, faith is universal, and I think that it is incredible necessary to everyone's normal lives.

Using the minority as a scapegoat for all a country's misfourtunes.

>>55 do you mean stuff like racism etc?

>>52 While the atom bomb in itself seems like a bad idea, thus far it has never been used for anything I at least would consider "evil." The deployments at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while unfortunate, would simply have been replaced with mass carpet bombings
.

o.O Wow this thread has progressed more than I thought. I suppose I should join in since I started it :D

>>54 It's not about the swear words themselves but the idea that certain words should be put on a different level to normal words. Like whether you say crap or shit matters when they both mean the same thing. There are replacement words for swear words that are acceptable so doesn't that ruin the point of swear words?
As far as faith goes, I think you are getting it mixed up with things like hope. Hope is different. The way I see it faith is pretty much combining hope and believing but the way I see it it's that the hope/belief itself will change what happens. Like you won't see god without having faith (or something along the lines of that). Which just seems backwards to me. I used to be a Christian and it never made sense to me then either.

>>44 To expand on slavery maybe the idea that we aren't all equal? Things like race and family name make people think that they are more/less important than others so is there a concept that started this that shouldn't have been there? I suppose that this might not work since the idea of equality was probably introduced afterward but meh.

>>45 What you said was good and I agree with it (on love). We don't need to keep with a scientific point of view. Let's get creative and imaginative here. "True love" probably does exist and isn't something that we will understand but can only experience.

>>47 I think of myself the same way. I think that I probably won't (or won't be able to) experience love but that doesn't mean that others can't. I'm an Agnostic though so I think that anything could happen, it's just unlikely.

I'll say it again to avoid confusion. This thread wasn't meant to be about scientific points of view or history (although that can have its place in it too). It's supposed to be about creative and imaginative ideas that will be interesting but possibly could be true.

>>58 The idea how we aren't all equal, well yes equality came after slavery but what if it didn't come at all, how interesting would life be then, if slavery didn't exist and everyone wasn't equal but there own person would force everyone to use eachother for there own good and manipulate them rather than have to depend on people survive.

The concept of gender based clothing. Girls can wear pants so why can't guys wear skirts if we want?

>>60 haha, good point. I'd like to see guys running around in tiny miniskirts :) (not really, but still, good point)

I know my friends would like to see me in my skirt more, but people harass me because I'm wearing "girl's clothes" but they're wrong. They're not girl's clothes they're my clothes, and I don't understand why people get on my case about it.

>>62 Is it like a kilt?
Or are you kidding? I really can't tell right now.

I'm being sincere, I actually have a skirt, not a kilt. I personally prefer to wear feminine clothes.

>>60>>61>>62>>64>>65 It's not exactly what I meant by getting creative but I guess it's true. I suppose that I just don't see the need to do something like that. Try not to talk too much about it.

You are free to do what you want and DON'T give importance to the other people. :)

Faith is believing in something that your senses can not confirm actually exists

>>68 To expand on that, this is a scientific definition of faith like a belief in Australia even though my senses have never proven it. You have to have a little scientific faith in almost everything. You never experienced history, so you have to have faith that every history textbook in the world isn't a lie. Or faith that news reports are true, since your senses didn't prove it. You can even go Meta with it and say that you have faith that your senses aren't lying to you., but that is a discussion for a philosophy topic.

worldwide

worldwide

worldwide

worldwide

Well, I will only touch up on one of your topics, love. Now, to make this as simple as possible, "true love" and "soul mates" are not real.That is why I'd prefer to never get married when the time comes. There is a high divorce rate, and divorce is just too many papers to fill out.

>>69 Hmmm...I'm not sure about that. If you make something vague enough then of course it makes sense. I sort of get what you mean and it is an interesting thought but I'm not sure that I agree with you on that one. I might not get what you mean though.
>>68 So is faith kind of like a sixth sense but in belief form or something? Does faith lead to believing in something?

>>74 Could you expand on why? So do you think that the idea of "true love" and "soul mates" shouldn't have existed?

>>75 I think we are thinking of faith in different proportions. the faith I was referring to there was very small, you may be thinking of it in a greater sense. What exactly do you disagree with?

>>32
Unified religion:
I find this self-explanatory. Most wars throughout history were waged because of religious persecution or in the act of trying to extend a religious belief onto foreign people (see the crusades, colonizing the Americas, WWII, the Spanish Inquisition, hundreds more). Unified religion has also had a long history of being corrupt in the most hypocritical way. Of course there are dozens of other government systems who have managed to do this, but when we think of religion, the concept of it is something we easily link to virtue and sanctity. One of the more popular beliefs, Christianity and Islam, can be far from those things. In particular I stress that any form of "unified" religion is corrupt because they're all just cults so large they've been deemed normal by society. And when a sense of normality is established it's easy for the masses to shun anyone who's different. We've had famous explorers enslave thousands of indigenous people because they've had the financial backing of a monarch and the blessings of a god these "savages" didn't know. When people are driven by the glory, power, and pride for a religion, especially one that has such a large following, people are more inclined to flex their superiority muscles over everyone else and force their beliefs on them. Religion even has significant influences over culture and poltics which skew lots of rational thinking. I'm not going to rant about how it's hindered scientific discoveries because again, self-explanatory.
While I can't deny that religion has helped millions of people, becoming a follower of one is really just the most ironic thing anyone can do.

If I'm going to subjective on anything I'd like to say that religion isn't something that's needed per se. You don't need a thousand metaphors in one book to teach someone to not be a dick. Be a good person. That's really all it takes. When we align ourselves with a religion I find it narrow-minded. If people have to believe in any higher being in order to feel as if their somewhat significant in life, or in order to get some sort of direction I'd like to tell them that we're all very individualized so no path/belief is necessarily the best. If you want to be more human, I'd find it best to not devote yourself to one thing, but be critical. Find the flaws in every single belief, now find the good in each of them. Incorporate what you believe is right to your own person, so that you may reap the potential you were born with. Following a unified religion is like eating rye bread everyday and not knowing what pizza tastes like. A pity really.

I'll get to my other two ideas later since I'm at school atm.

>>77 You make several good points, which I think are true. However, they make several generalizations. You assume that people conform to a unified religion, instead of unifying because they share a religion. Now don't get me wrong, far to many people DO do this, but not everyone does who is Islamic or Christian. Secondly, unified religion being abused for bad reasons (eg. Hitler claiming God hated Jews) isn't the real problem, but the fact that people decided to blindly follow. They didn't even follow their own beliefs, and in fact changed them when a persuasive speaker came up and told them to. As to your final point, I think you are looking at religions as mass bodies that follow a strict system of beliefs that everyone shares 100%, when all you need to look at is Westboro Baptist and compare it to almost any other Baptist church to see that isn't true.

hola