Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S4 E26: Nostalgia and the Human Consciousness
31 Plays10 days ago
Today, John and Dejan discuss the sentiment of nostalgia and the legacy the past has on us.
They also touch upon what consciousness is and how our experience dictates our ability for consciousness.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Nostalgia and Emotions
00:00:00
Dejan
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about a very interesting topic in the realm of sort of philosophy, and that is the concept and the feeling of nostalgia and other emotions related to human consciousness.
00:00:22
debatablediscussions
Yes. So as you described there, Diane, it's a very... Today we'll be doing a deep dive into ideas amongst the human consciousness, but mainly experience, so nostalgia, and how we treat experience and the past as a philosophical idea.
Is Nostalgia a False Emotion?
00:00:39
debatablediscussions
um So Diane, you've got your own theory for nostalgia. So can you please start the episode and state what is nostalgia for you?
00:00:49
Dejan
Well, to me, nostalgia is an inherently fake emotion. It's an incredibly false emotion, a deceitful emotion.
00:01:01
Dejan
I don't think you can ever feel nostalgic for something that was.
00:01:05
debatablediscussions
All
00:01:05
Dejan
I think you feel nostalgic for something that didn't exist, but you think it existed. And there's there's a couple of examples of this. so There's a great book, and It's called the Homo Irealistus, something like that. And it explains in the introduction how Diorso felt nostalgic for the feeling of leaving Egypt.
00:01:33
Dejan
So he didn't feel nostalgic for the Egypt that was then or the Egypt that was when when he was writing. He felt nostalgic for when he was 18 and looking and looking towards a life in Paris, which he never even experienced.
00:01:47
Dejan
So it's that it's other things such as, you know, people in the in Russia now being really nostalgic about the USSR. Even people who didn't experience it and everyone sort of painting in this really positive picture.
00:01:58
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:02:00
Dejan
Now we saw a new study around 30, 30, 40 percent of Spanish people really are nostalgic about Franco's dictatorship. And They're not remembering, they're not nostalgic about the realities of it, but about this sort of deceitful image that they've got in their minds about that time.
Philosophical Perspectives on Nostalgia
00:02:19
debatablediscussions
Yes, I think it's nostalgia is a present emotion. um it's It's a way of understanding the world through actions. And they're not my words. They are the words of Martin Heidegger, a 20th century um philosopher um who...
00:02:37
debatablediscussions
who viewed nostalgia as being this sort of reflective quality, as you're describing there, Diane, which is sort of embodied in our experience of the world.
00:02:48
debatablediscussions
And I think it's a very interesting thing, nostalgia, to be nostalgic about something. Primarily because, as you described there, nostalgia, especially about the past, it includes this idea of glamorising it.
00:02:55
Dejan
Yeah.
00:03:04
debatablediscussions
or fantasizing it in a way that makes it seem better than it was, to make it seem like almost a comfort to present-day troubles. Typically the cases, you gave the example there of Soviet Union, um or Franco in Spain, or even things like the British Empire.
00:03:22
debatablediscussions
ah Britain was, you know, there were worse living standards onto the empire. Yeah. commonly ideas about morality then were very different to those today and therefore in that sense it's ridiculous for people to be nostalgic about an empire because it's it's obama this but i think it was brack obama who said the world we live in today is the best possible world in the sense that science and all these other things have developed to take us to where we are in the world today
00:03:46
Dejan
that.
00:03:53
debatablediscussions
And so that applies with nostalgia. It's this idea of trying to seek comfort in the past where perhaps there isn't really that much comfort to
Nostalgia, Aging, and Youth
00:04:03
debatablediscussions
be sought.
00:04:04
Dejan
Well, yeah, definitely. I think, you know, looking back to that example of Franco in Spain, I mean, Franco, a dictator, a butcher, killed hundreds of thousands of people or had people kill and torture hundreds of thousands of people.
00:04:15
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:04:18
Dejan
You know, mass graves and just natural just a lot of suppression of human and basic rights.
00:04:28
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:04:28
Dejan
and and And people feel nostalgic about it. But I don't think it's the memories... It is this sort of glamorization that you've mentioned, but it's also, I think, other other factors. so for example, you know, people feel nostalgic about the past because they were younger and they were, you know.
00:04:44
Dejan
And right now, if you are sort of on the older side, maybe you've got some mobility issues and, you know, you've you've had your life, you've had your best moments and your best moments did happen during a really nasty time. You still remember that time as a lot better because, you know, you you went out with your friends and you had this sort of adventure almost of life.
00:05:03
Dejan
and And it's really easy to fall into the trap of just associating those really positive feelings of your youth with really a time of depression, really, i'd say.
00:05:14
debatablediscussions
Yeah. Yes, and I agree there. And will decant another philosophical opinion in a second. But a quick message to our listeners.
00:05:25
debatablediscussions
Can you do please subscribe or follow us if you are listening? And do listen on to the end. Similarly, check us out on all social media platforms. And after listening to this, do listen to a past episode.
00:05:39
debatablediscussions
But as you described there, Diane, I think a key idea about nostalgia is this idea of present consciousness. And this is an idea which has been articulated by Edmund Hussle.
00:05:52
debatablediscussions
I may get the pronunciation wrong there, but he was an Austrian-German philosopher in the 19th and 20th century. And he viewed nostalgia as a retentional act in which consciousness intends the past as still being meaningful now. so it's very similar to as you described there.
00:06:10
debatablediscussions
And that it's not the past that we're feeling. It's a present consciousness of a past experience. It's trying to create the past in the present.
00:06:22
debatablediscussions
And I think... I think we've got a habit of doing this perhaps as humans. Do we try and intuitively find comfort in something or appeal our minds? Do they try to appeal to something that seems more comforting than the world we're in because we perhaps get used to it or dramatise the world that we live in?
00:06:41
debatablediscussions
And I think perhaps we do.
00:06:42
Dejan
Yeah. Yeah, i think i think you're right there. I think, you know, the great example of it, although, you know, fictional is is in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, where the sort of protagonist is, you know, falls in love with this girl, and then for the whole of his life, he looks back on that time very nostalgically. Even if he wasn't, you know, in the best physical form, he he was quite unhealthy, really, had some...
00:07:11
Dejan
health issues. His eyesight was quite poor. He didn't have any resources, but, you know, he worked long hours, but he looks back on that time as if it was you know, the best time of his life. And, you know, it might have been, but, but again, there is that element, John, as you've, as you've mentioned before, of, of looking at it as a, from a comfort perspective, you look at the past, even if it wasn't that great. And you imagine yourselves in being in this really amazing, you know, relationship and there this really amazing position, this really amazing,
00:07:47
Dejan
life that you had when in fact you didn't and you're just trying to mask the issues of your of your life now.
What is Consciousness?
00:07:56
debatablediscussions
Diane, all of these sorts of thoughts we've had around nostalgia, they're all orientated towards, as we addressed at the start of the episode, this this wider idea of the human experience and consciousness.
00:08:09
debatablediscussions
So perhaps we can just touch on that quickly. What do you think is consciousness? It's an ah idea that's been, i think, debated back and forth by philosophers over centuries. But what is consciousness for you?
00:08:22
Dejan
Well, going going to quote newva you Yuval Nair Harari on this.
00:08:25
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:08:26
Dejan
Um, I think it's the ability to feel emotions. I think again, echoing Harari again, it is very different from problem solving. Problem solving is the.
00:08:38
Dejan
ability to you know solve a problem it's to get a solution to find an answer so ai is very good at problem solving but ai doesn't feel an emotion so you know if you're playing chess against an ai it can play chess can problem solve but it it doesn't feel sad if it loses or happy if it wins i think that's the sort of defining factor what do you think john
00:08:44
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:09:00
debatablediscussions
Yeah, I like that emotion. I don't really have a preconceived idea of consciousness, but it would be something similar to the ah to being on those lines, primarily because I think, I believe that animals aren't fully conscious.
00:09:14
debatablediscussions
Or if they are conscious, it's not to the level of sophistication that humans have. And I think that's because perhaps we have a more, ah and this isn't scientific, Dan, you may know more than, you you will know more than me about this, but I don't think they're as sophisticated as perhaps emotional beings, or from an intelligence perspective, in the sense that humans...
00:09:36
debatablediscussions
um our interactions with one another have developed to far higher extent, you know, to develop to using things like technology, for example.
Intelligence vs Environmental Impact
00:09:45
debatablediscussions
um And I think I think that almost needs to be a way of, and I think your definition did this, of separating the consciousness that a plant may feel, ah which obviously cannot feel emotions, to that which rats may feel, to that which a human may experience.
00:09:45
Dejan
Yeah. yeah
00:10:03
Dejan
Yeah.
00:10:04
debatablediscussions
um Yeah.
00:10:06
Dejan
Yeah. i think I think you've actually touched on a great point there, which is that Although humanity sort of objectively, one might argue it's the most intelligent species, one could also argue we are the most stupid species at the same time.
00:10:15
debatablediscussions
yeah
00:10:22
debatablediscussions
yeah yeah
00:10:23
Dejan
I mean, if you look at what we're doing, I mean, you know, what's the point? You know, you look at what we're doing and and and we are we are genuinely, you know, we are destroying the planet.
00:10:34
Dejan
Full stop. No question. No question. we We have this really almost human instinct, almost the second nature of wanting power and doing anything to, you know,
00:10:50
Dejan
get it even if it means that we are actively hurting and damaging other people it's it's the opposite of what an intelligent life form would be if you think about it but at the same time we you know we live in this paradox of humanity being incredibly clever but also still incredibly stupid at the same time
00:11:00
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:11:10
debatablediscussions
And perhaps it's even more cyclical than that, because we find ourselves doing environmental harm. But it is it perhaps so we can achieve this highly sophisticated and perhaps in many parts of the world, luxurious life that we have?
00:11:26
debatablediscussions
um In the West, we find ourselves simply having to destroy fossil fuels. And it's now seen as...
Dualism, Materialism, and Consciousness
00:11:31
debatablediscussions
you know it's it's basically just an inevitable reality of maintaining the world uh or the society in which a country like the united kingdom functions it would be very difficult from an economic perspective to not destroy the environment in the sense of fossil fuels but going back to consciousness diane um there there are two theories and that often gets thrown around within this idea of consciousness, and that's dualism and materialism.
00:12:02
debatablediscussions
For our listeners who don't know, can you touch on what these two perhaps landmark opposing philosophical theories are?
00:12:08
Dejan
Yeah.
00:12:11
Dejan
Well, well, materialism, you know, coming from the sort of material is that, you know, there's no separation. Whilst dualism actually does literally mean the separation between the body and the mind.
00:12:23
Dejan
There's two separate entities and the mind slash soul. Some, you know, there's a quite, there's a very fine distinction there, but the mind and this body being two separate entities and that it's not all governed by atoms and reactions and you know and hormones in your brain.
00:12:40
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:12:44
Dejan
Materialists do think that materialists have this sort of desire, almost this obsession with proof.
00:12:51
debatablediscussions
ah okay
00:12:52
Dejan
And because they can't find proof for many of the dualist perspectives, God, you know, the there's no yeah proof. They do go into this very hard line materialist view of we are just atoms arranged in a certain way and all our emotions and all our feelings are the result of chemical reactions in our brains and things colliding and enzymes working properly and we're not actually the product of a sophisticated separate entity as in our mind that enables us to feel these emotions
00:13:23
debatablediscussions
So so would you you would you say you're more of a dualist then? Yeah.
00:13:28
Dejan
yeah i i i would yeah i think i think materialism is is frankly ah ah sad theory it's a very pessimistic outlook
00:13:35
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:13:39
Dejan
And it does ignore the miraculousness of the human perspective.
00:13:45
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:13:46
Dejan
yeah Again, I've said humanity is very stupid, at the same time, we're incredibly intelligent.
00:13:46
debatablediscussions
Yes, I mean... Yeah.
00:13:50
Dejan
The fact that we've managed to evolve the way we have evolved, maintaining ourselves at the top of the food chain, but also involving ourselves with the arts, with culture, with high culture, you know, novels, books, and also keeping things like this, you know, I mean, this is an epic poem written in 1400s, and it's still kept today.
00:13:50
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:13:56
debatablediscussions
Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:12
Dejan
And that that to me does give... a
00:14:17
Dejan
something that cannot be explained purely by by chemical reactions and atoms. there's something more.
00:14:22
debatablediscussions
Yes, I don't know why I personally fall on this. um and And I appreciate the arguments of both sides. There's inherently, I feel like I may be more of a materialist, but but ah only elements of materialism, though.
00:14:37
debatablediscussions
um because because i do i do think that fundamentally everything we we believe can perhaps be traced back to something material in the sense of it can be proven scientifically but that's purely restricted I believe to the brain you know you can look at chemical imbalances but then even there there's a limit of what you can discover obviously we're not at such a sophisticated level in which a computer can detect human thought, um that isn't possible.
00:15:10
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:15:13
Dejan
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. I think it's a very tough question and one that has been debated and will continue to be debated forever, really.
00:15:17
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:15:20
Dejan
I don't think there's much because both sides are in this very weird dilemma of materialists wanting evidence, hard evidence, and dualists almost saying that, not all obviously, but almost saying that
00:15:29
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:15:37
Dejan
you know, there's some things beyond evidence and that is this concept of the mind and of the soul.
00:15:40
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:15:43
Dejan
So there is no evidence. So, you know, both sides have diverged by this evidence dilemma and one saying we really want it and the other saying, well, it doesn't exist. You know the concept that we're looking at doesn't have any evidence for it, but it just is.
00:16:01
Dejan
Because there's no evidence against it, you know? So I think i think that's the sort of main dilemma people face when when deciding where they're at.
00:16:10
debatablediscussions
Yes, that is very interesting. Diane, as a final question, and in you know to reflect upon any philosophical episode or any philosophical discussion, it always ends in free will, it seems. It's an idea that philosophers love. So perhaps can you touch upon how does consciousness relate to free will, in your opinion? They're two landmark um debates, but is there ah is there a relation between the two?
Free Will and Predeterminism
00:16:41
Dejan
Yes, well, you know, free will and and and consciousness are obviously interlinked. ah You can't have free will unless you are conscious to be able to make your own decisions.
00:16:55
Dejan
But there's also another level, I think at least, to this whole debate and it's what level of free will, how much free will do you need to have in order to have to be conscious?
00:17:09
debatablediscussions
okay yeah
00:17:10
Dejan
You know, because some people would would claim that there is no free will. We're all, you know, the again, it's a predeterministic path that we're walking. And whilst we have this illusion of free will, it doesn't actually exist.
00:17:19
debatablediscussions
yeah
00:17:22
Dejan
And in that case, you know, why would you need consciousness if everything else is already decided for you? So i I do think that the two ideas are ah very much sort of connected.
00:17:32
debatablediscussions
Yes, I think they are connected in that it almost depends on the relationship is fundamentally about the level of consciousness we have and how that influences our free will.
00:17:43
debatablediscussions
A fully conscious being should have more free will, one who's in more control of their thoughts.
Simulation Hypothesis and Existential Questions
00:17:50
debatablediscussions
But are we fully conscious? And to finish off, it's sort of related to this idea of the simulation hypothesis.
00:17:58
debatablediscussions
um And this is this idea that we are almost in a computer game or simulation and that we believe we're conscious, but do we actually have free will? um are we Are our consciousness believed, to have we free will, believe believe that we have free will, but we do not actually? Sort of tautology almost trying to explain it.
00:18:19
debatablediscussions
um And it's it's and ah's a hypothesis that is quite hard to get your head around in a way, the simulation hypothesis, because would we truly ever know?
00:18:26
Dejan
Yeah.
00:18:28
debatablediscussions
um it's something supported by Elon Musk, which know does not at all help credit the theory. um But there is an aspect to it in the sense that you never know. but if we do, so what?
00:18:43
debatablediscussions
ah It doesn't affect the way we live.
00:18:43
Dejan
Yeah.
00:18:45
debatablediscussions
um and
00:18:46
Dejan
Well, it might.
00:18:47
debatablediscussions
it might but it doesn't affect the way that we understand the world because I still know i can do this if I want um and as long as I believe that I'm happy in doing it and that it's my free choice I'm fine what do you think Dan?
00:19:04
Dejan
I think it's a question of meaning though, because at the moment, do your actions, you know, for most people, your actions have meaning, you know, unless you're a nihilist or they' sort of an extreme absurdist, your actions have meaning.
00:19:04
debatablediscussions
yeah yeah
00:19:14
debatablediscussions
yeah
00:19:20
Dejan
But if if if we do live in a simulation, then why? what Where is the meaning? Why does it matter? You know, i i you wouldn't be sort of hung up
00:19:26
debatablediscussions
Yeah.
00:19:31
Dejan
um on this idea of lacking for meaning constantly
00:19:35
debatablediscussions
Yeah. ah But yes, and sort of related that, it wouldn't change the way i live my life in a way, um because I still believe I'm living freely.
00:19:45
Dejan
yeah
00:19:45
debatablediscussions
And so with that, we'll conclude the
Conclusion: Nostalgia and Consciousness
00:19:47
debatablediscussions
episode. We hope you've enjoyed listening. We've certainly had a very interesting discussion on aspects of nostalgia, human experience and human consciousness.
00:19:59
Dejan
Thank you guys. And we will see next week in another debatable discussions episode.
00:20:05
debatablediscussions
We'll see you then. Please do follow, subscribe, like, give us five stars and anything else.
00:20:10
Dejan
Bye-bye.
00:20:10
debatablediscussions
Thank you very much.