An interesting thought experiment that I vividly remember from undergrad philosophy courses is the trolley problem:

You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:

1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

A variation of the problem that we were also presented with was:

You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing on a bridge that runs across the trolley tracks. There is a large man on the bridge next to you, who if pushed over the bridge and onto the track, would safely stop the trolley, saving the five people but killing the large man. Do you:

1. Push the man over the bridge, saving the five people.
2. Allow the trolley to kill the five people

Which is the more ethical options? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

... The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of events leading to the future Kingdom of God reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It shows a mentality for which the present, real world is, in itself, joyless and barren, without value. The present can have value only in terms of meaning—if, like a word, it points to something beyond itself. This "beyond" which past and present events "mean" is the future. This the Western intellectual, as well as the literate common man, finds his life meaningless except in terms of a promising future. But the future is a "tomorrow which never comes", and for this reason Western culture has a "frantic" character. It is a desperate rush in pursuit of an ever-receding "meaning", because the promising future is precisely the famous carrot which the clever driver dangles before his donkey's nose from the end of his whip. Tragically enough, this frantic search for God, for the ideal life, in the future renders the course of history anything but a series of unique steps towards a goal. Its real result is to make history repeat itself faster and more furiously, confusing "progress" with increased agitation.

—Alan Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity. 1954

One of my biggest hobbies and passions over the last 10 or 15 years has been essentially all of the above. I'm not the smartest or the most well-read lady out there by any means but I enjoy exploring the more shadowy realms of discourse. There's lots and lots of dross but occasionally a nugget of something magnificent, and over the years it's eroded away my original scientific materialist atheism completely and my thinking now is more animist, panpsychist, deist. I've spent years off and on experimenting with (actual, not stage) magic, and though I was never super committed to the full ceremonial experience like others I've seen, it's become a part of how I think.

So I was wondering if there's any here that don't fit into the typical scientific materialist box in one form or another. And if so, what're you reading or experimenting with right now?

Currently I'm reading through Conversations with God and it's persuaded me to start practicing loving-kindness meditation. I've only been at that a few days but I'm interested to see what impact it has on my daily life. It's definitely true that up until these past few days I've never actively focused on trying to love myself and others, which kind of surprises me when I think about it. But that sort of thing isn't really something I see emphasized in our culture or in my own little circle.

How about you?

I'm interested in patterns and culture. I think it's a fascinating topic from many perspectives. Mathematically there are many tools for pattern analysis and formation, but at the same time philosophically our minds try to make things fit into patterns generally (maybe because it requires more energy to remember a whole thing than a set of rules that describe the thing). A mathematical example of cases where order arises from pure disorder (or maximum entropy) would be Ramsey theory.

I'd like to discuss the cultural influence on our pattern analysis/synthesis, but also explore a bit what is a pattern, whether everything is a pattern or nothing is a pattern, whether patterns are interesting in themselves or not, etc.

I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for readings in this area, or if anyone has an opinion on it. I know of many works regarding a single pattern (for example the different theories of linguistics, the different theories of music, the different theories of cooking... you get the idea) but I've never seen a meta-perspective on why are we so interested on patterns and whether our approach actually makes sense.

Thanks!

I read some things about the philosophy and I'd really like to go deeper into it, but the book is so hard for me to read! I can't make sense of much of what I'm reading, maybe it's the vocabulary I'm not sure... Is there a more accessible book about absurdism?