Fixation

peace.
I am looking for sound advice and help with diagnosis.
[After writing everything below, I’m writing this. The entire description is very subjective and reflects how I see myself. It’s very possible that I see what’s good about me with a magnifying glass, but this is what I have and with that I come to ask.
The site is public and that’s a bit limiting. The question at the end is trivial and the answer (whatever it is) is probably short, but I’m presenting it from my personal experience and that’s why it’s long. For me, it’s a serious matter and that’s why I got carried away writing. Not everything seems related to the matter, but in my mind it’s connected and I really apologize for the annoying length. After I wrote and deleted part, I don’t exactly know what else to delete. If it’s too long and overwhelmingly overwhelming, I’ll edit it a third time in a succinct manner and then I’ll ask you to delete this.
I feel like I’m stuck mentally. It may be a natural and accepted process, but I’m very unhappy with it.
There were a few turbulent years when suddenly all opinions were examined and overturned and shaken with a loud noise. Almost every serious book (usually philosophical or tangential. But also ‘just’ literature, I don’t know exactly how to explain; I read it before, but it’s different) that I read in those years had a pretty significant impact on my thinking and opinions. And there is a desire to read more and more of everything that comes my way.
In terms of the inner feeling I remember feeling – I felt a drive and freedom. Like a hungry truffle hunter running through the forest and finding prey. And if it’s not good, then go back to the forest and come back with another, even better (in my opinion) prey.
It’s not always pleasant to overturn a previous fundamental opinion, certainly not opinions that I thought were well-founded in me, but it certainly happened and happened a lot. Everything has changed. Even ‘conclusions’ that remained the same as before have been placed on new foundations (this is a complete change for everything).
But then there are two or three years of stabilization, at the end of which opinions more or less freeze, on every major issue that I consider part of my general and religious worldview. Then there are another five years or so where, looking back, there are no changes in thought, only tiny variations.
I’ll put it this way, from a mental perspective I don’t identify with who I was ten years ago. What’s wrong with me? But who I was five years ago is also completely who I am now (in terms of opinions, I’m talking. The core of the personality has probably been with me since the age of 4 or something). By the way, even during the period when I changed, I remember that arguments didn’t have an immediate effect. I read, sometimes I’m amazed, I think, and it’s still as if there’s no change that brought me to Puma Galia. But it seeps through, and after a while I realize that I’m actually convinced by a particular argument or opinion. There have been a lot of changes (even within one topic from here to there and from there to there), but very few that after reading and thinking I immediately knew that it was a boom, it’s convincing. Probably just a kind of unconscious human defense mechanism. On ‘small’ issues, I sometimes get convinced quickly. I had a friend (who was great for me) who sometimes didn’t understand what I wanted from his life. We’d argue for half an hour and then suddenly I’d fall silent and agree with him. “What convinced you all of a sudden?!” – And then I recite to him what he’s been telling me all this time. “But you said so and so about it?!”. I didn’t always know how to explain to him what exactly had changed. Since the yeshiva, I don’t remember it happening to me in a face-to-face conversation. In writing it still happens sometimes.
I tell myself that I’m open to any argument. And yes, I have a feeling inside that when I hear arguments, I’m able to examine them ‘without prejudice.’
But in practice nothing moved.
My conclusion from this is that I have degenerated. Because it is unlikely that all the arguments I go through will not seem strong enough to me to change paradigms.
Although the ‘strong’ arguments on the ‘spiritual’ topics that are important to me (theory of cognition and morality, religion, economics, philosophy of science (and law), identity and politics) that I see, I have usually already seen more or less before.
But it doesn’t make sense that this convenient excuse covers the whole picture. Because the sea is big.
There is one issue that has indeed changed, but there is global hype about it, and the change is not really in the infrastructure of opinion, but more in awareness and perhaps also a certain social and cognitive pressure (the society I read, not the one I live with).
I think I’m still quite exposed to a wide range of opinions, forgive me for being pretentious, but my personal opinion of myself is that I think seriously about issues that seem important to me, and invest the time required. In particular, if I have reason to believe that a certain number will lead me to new, major conclusions – I will undoubtedly read it.
I am interested in more than one topic and more or less keep up to date and discuss (with myself and others) on a regular basis (subject to the constraints of time that have shrunk from the need to stay in the race for ‘practical’ academic knowledge, and from life itself, except for the idle times that have always been and will be).
But in practice nothing moves. Where is the hungry hunter and where am I? More like a tourist in a supermarket who sees a new brand of pickled cucumbers humming and puts them back on the shelf.
[I don’t know if this is relevant, but maybe: I have several simplistic and extreme opinions (I don’t really like giving examples in this request and I don’t think it’s necessary). I navigate and understand (in my opinion) complex opinions and in the end I find myself at the edge.
I really have no problem spending hours poring over the intricacies of various methods, theories, and proofs, especially those that I held with all my might at a certain time, and I both enjoy it and think I can represent them quite well (and I’ve done that quite a bit.
Because unlike you, who openly and brilliantly express your opinions without any hesitation, I have different faces in separate circles of my life. And they are not all the same as the face I show myself in the mirror. Please understand.) This is another (albeit weak) indication for me of degeneration because it seems quite strange to me that I stopped there. But that’s how I think. What can I do.]
Why am I turning to you?
Because I saw at the beginning of the first book in the trilogy you wrote that you changed your opinions on important issues.
And that’s after all the reasoned quartet (I don’t know if anything significant has changed, I haven’t seen it anyway, but if you thought that way about all the topics in the Q&A, you thought even more than I did about the other topics that were less present there, such as ethics, economics, politics, and others).
So I’m jealous. When I read the introduction, I closed the book and went to turn over in bed.
I don’t know if it comes naturally to you or as a matter of conscious decision and personal process, but I also want to. A candle for one, a candle for a hundred. The truth is, as an outsider, it’s hard for me to believe that something fundamental has changed even in you at a late stage. When I look at myself, it somehow seems exaggerated to me. Because everything is fixed and fixed. Although I understand that it’s unreasonable that what I once thought would be okay for me. I’ve also developed a kind of inner arrogance (some of it has been with me since I can remember myself as a child). Today, I identify myself with my opinions, much more than with my behavior. But maybe that’s part of the problem.
And that’s what I’m asking and requesting. It may sound pompous, but it’s really a deep anxiety of mine. One in six is ​​dying. That’s why it took me a while to dare to admit it to myself, and without the empirical retrospective I wouldn’t agree with this diagnosis. And if someone from the outside had told me it, I would have rejected it with contempt. Lately, this fear of degeneration has weakened. In retrospect, I’ve been degenerative for years, but I see this weakening as a self-warning siren, and if not now, then when. Or is it simply that this is it, all I have left to do is play in the discussions. And if that’s the case, then I’ll just stop. There are always fascinating, beautiful, and important things to continue learning, and it’s a waste of time to rummage and waste time on trivial topics that, in the end, I end up ‘reading to catalog’. Even though these trivial topics are somehow, in my opinion, the most important. I’m always running around between natural and computer sciences (my career, and I’m completely into it) and topics of ‘worldview’ in a broad sense. And if this impasse is a stable and final point of equilibrium, then I lived among you and thank you for the fish.
I want advice on how to reopen the willingness in my head. And maybe also identifying what is actually bothering me. And maybe some encouragement. Or is this what it is and I need to close the old page.